SHORT STORIES!

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

A FAIR MAN

"I ain't really sure," the old man said slowly, the way a man will when he wishes to tread with caution, "why you done this."

Sheriff Linn Keller sat on the old man's front porch in a crudely made chair -- crudely, yes, but made to bear a man's full weight: Linn knew hand work, he'd made such chairs, he knew the care it took to get multiple bore holes running in the same direction so the chair would fit together without warp or twist, and he recognized the skill it took the chair's maker to strip wood to make the wide withies used to weave the chair's seat.

It had been a very long time since he'd set on a woven withie chair, and he allowed himself a moment's memory as his weight came carefully onto the handwork.

"Mister Summers," Linn said slowly, "were you in that damned War?"

Old Man Summers shook his head slowly.

"I knew young men," Linn said thoughtfully, "boys they were, come to war and growed up too fast. It warped 'em some, like tryin' to heat season wood and gettin' it too hot.  Warps it and it ain't seasoned to the core."

Summers nodded.

He was a man who knew wood.

"Your boy come into town and he allowed as he'd be King Rooster and that didn't work too well."

Summers considered his son's black eye and swollen lip and considered the obvious nature of the injuries, the veracity of the Sheriff's words.

"He start it?"

"He did."

"Why didn't you lock him up?"

Linn looked over at the rancher -- the man was younger than the Sheriff, but looked older.

Hard work and high country will do that to a man, and if Linn was any judge, Jack Summers had honestly worked himself harder than he'd work any hired man, getting his ranch the way he wanted it.

"I thought about it," Linn admitted, "but I've led younger men and I figured he'd do better back here at home than in the calabozo."

"He mighta learned somethin'," the old man grunted unsympathetically.

"From the looks of that fat lip," Linn commented, "I'd say he l'arned."

Rancher and Sheriff lapsed into silence; the Sheriff's stallion slashed his tail at a pesky fly, stood hip-shot and sleepy and looking like he might lay his jaw over the hitch rail and start to snore.

Young Jack had taken horse and wagon back to the barn: Linn and the younger man drove back from town in the Summers wagon, with supplies he'd been dispatched to bring home: Linn rode beside the younger man, telling one outrageous lie after another, until finally he got the younger Summers laughing, and it was his boy's laughter Jack Summers heard first.

Jack got the supplies, but he got a snoot full, and he got to running his mouth, and he got in the way of a hard swung fist: unsatisfied, he managed to run his intoxicated face into a fist a second time before he realized the folly of that action, and by then he'd attracted the official attention of a certain pale eyed Sheriff, and that ended his sojourn into town.

What young Jack didn't expect was to be seen by the town's doctor, to be set down and fed (the Sheriff talked to the cook and fixed young Jack something that didn't take much chewin' as he didn't want to aggravate that bruised up jaw) and he didn't expect to be loaded up in his wagon and drove back to his place with this pale eyed keeper of the Law, who proved on the drive home that he, the dreaded Old Pale Eyes, was as full of it as two sacks full of politicians.

Now Linn set on young Jack's old man's front porch, speaking in the quiet voice of a man who has no need to raise his voice, and Old Jack spoke in the same voice, for the Sheriff came out to do him a kindness.

He'd brought his boy back without having tossed him in the calaboose, without putting knots on his head, without dressing him down in public.

Linn rose. "Reckon I'd best head back, make sure nobody's pried up my county an' run off with it."

Old man Summers rose, stuck out his hand.

"Obliged."

Linn took it, nodded, then smiled ever so slightly.

"I led younger men," he said, "and they didn't have their old man to guide 'em in that damned War. I never forgot what it was to be the Old Man to all of them."  He looked toward the barn, from which Young Jack was just emerging. "And I have sons."

Father and son watched a pale eyed lawman ride off.

Neither one spoke for several long moments, then:

"Now there goes a fair man."

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

GUT PUNCH

I was in pain.

I couldn't breathe.

He was on top of me and fightin' to get up.

The back of my shoulder was on the ground, my gut felt like it just inherited the business end of a Phoenician ram at ship-ramming speed, I couldn't breathe, but I was mad as hell and I planted my good right hand on his chest and shoved, hard.

He come off me and I fought to my feet.

Hands seized my shoulders, a knee under my backside as I started to collapse again.

The Captain's voice.

"My God man, are you all right?"

I fought to get air in me.

Ahead of me, the pumper, lit up, hose strung out from the Mattydale, the engineer on the flying bridge, gloved hands on ball-headed chrome levers: I threw my head back, resisted the Captain's pull, shook my head at his words.

I remember seeing the tan streak of one of our cruisers, lit up and accelerating hard, pursuing the vehicle that nearly ran over the fireman who was just settling his helmet back on his head and snugging up the chin strap.

The Chief came jogging over, stopped, stared at me, bent over, hands on my knees, trying to get my lungs fully inflated again.

The Chief looked at the at the Captain.

"What the hell just happened?"

 

The squad captain was driving.

He pulled into what used to be a driveway, the house was long since torn down and gone, but the solid stone bed remained under unmowed grass.

The squad was responsive from here, it was on scene at the house fire, he and Shelly got out, shrugged into their reflective-trimmed squad jackets and helmets, talkie in hand.

Traffic control was being set up.

The Captain looked over at the Sheriff, started to raise his hand in greeting: he heard a vehicle coming and coming fast, he saw one of the firemen crossing the road, he saw the Sheriff go from dead stop to a wide open sprint, and the Captain's spontaneous exclamation was at once most heartfelt, and quite unprintable.

 

The Sheriff was fast.

He was quick to admit his daughters were faster, but he was honestly fast.

When he saw the situation, there was no time for reflection or thought: he was in motion, he was moving and moving fast, his arm went around the fireman and he spun, using leverage to whip the man out of the way: he wasn't sure if he was just grazed by the bumper, or wind-whipped by the slipstream, and he really didn't care, because he went over backwards, and the fireman's air pack regulator -- worn in the middle of the man's front -- drove into the Sheriff's gut.

The full weight of a grown man, the weight of a self contained breathing apparatus, their combined momentum, drove the machined-steel regulator into the Sheriff's epigastrium just as he landed flat on his back, and honestly knocked every bit of wind out of him.

 

Shelly regarded the bruise on her husband's belly that night.

She looked at him, not as a paramedic, but as a wife.

She'd seen it happen.

She'd seen the fireman realize he was in the path of some idiot driver that wasn't even slowing down.

She'd seen him start to turn, start to move, she knew he was adrenalizing, but he was also starting from a dead stop and he'd never get out of the way in time, he was too late, too late --

Shelly saw something tan streak across the highway, she saw two men spin like they'd been hit, she saw them hit the ground --

-- a ranch-muscled arm shoved the fireman off --

-- the Captain was running toward them --

-- and Shelly stood, frozen, realizing as her belly fell about ten miles down the dark well of hopelessness, her hands coming to her mouth, the dread realization hitting her that she'd just seen her husband hit and killed --

-- and then Linn's arm thrust the struggling fireman off him, and he rolled over, mouth open, came up on all fours, fighting to breathe.

 

"HELL NO I'M NOT GOIN' TO THE DAMNED HOSPITAL!" Linn snarled quietly. 

"WIND GOT KNOCKED OUT OF ME, THAT'S ALL! I'M NOT HURT!"

The Captain frowned, considered, looked at Shelly.

"Stay with him," he said quietly.

Shelly sat on the rear bumper of the squad with her husband, her hand slipping shyly into his.

"I'll be fine," Linn said quietly.

"I know."

They watched the Irish Brigade working the fire.

Shelly looked over at her husband.

"I never knew you were that fast."

Linn nodded, blinked as if returning to the here-and-now.

"You should see me going after the last pork chop," he muttered.

Shelly turned her head, glared at the man:  she raised a fist, shook it menacingly.

"If you weren't my husband," she challenged, "I'd sock you one!"

"Promises, promises," Linn murmured, then grinned.

"Check on that fireman. I landed flat on my back but I knew I was goin' down. He hit the ground unplanned."

"Daddy is checking on him now."

"In that case, what's for supper?"

Shelly glared at her husband, raised her fist again.

Whatever retort she might've made was interrupted by the Sheriff's talkie.

He tilted his head and Shelly saw the corners of his eyes tighten a little.

"They couldn't catch him," he said, disappointment in his voice. "Pursuit broken off."

Shelly nodded.

"State boys are workin' that section of road. If he keeps up that speed they'll get him, and we already put out make, model and color."

"You're sure you're okay."

Linn's eyes were veiled.

"I'm sittin' here wastin' the County's time, gettin' paid to sit and spectate and hold hands with my favorite girl, all on the clock."  He turned his head, grinned at her.  "Damn right I'm okay!"

"Linn Keller," Shelly fumed, "I'd ought to knock you into the middle of next week!"

Linn lowered his head, leaned in closer and whispered, "Wednesday or Thursday?" and kissed his wife, quickly, unexpectedly, then stood and clapped his Stetson on his head, and walked back over toward the scene.

He crossed the highway, approached one of the firemen dragging hose.

"You okay?" he asked, and the man stopped, raised his visor and laughed.

"Sheriff," he declared, "you are the boniest mattress I ever fell onto!"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

VALKYRIE, TO WAR!

Valkyrie Three spun end-for-end as gracefully as a woman will spin when dancing.

She did not fire her thrusters.

She seized the fabric of the universe the way a cat will seize a window-screen, and stopped as gracefully as if she was turned to face a dance partner.

The last thing the opposing pilot saw, this warmaking opponent who'd just tried to blow her and her sister ships out of the sky...

...was a shining silver lance-tip, and behind it, a set of pale eyes glaring from either side of a silver nasal extending down over her face from the winged silver helmet she wore.

In that last bright tenth of a second before his life ended, he had the distinct, clear, unmistakable impression of the impossible: an obviously female curiass, a skirt of plates, shining silver shin guards, and the horse she rode was shining black, with wide white wings.

And the lance couched under her arm, the shining silver messenger of his death.

This image was captured and transmitted, and owing to the distance involved, did not arrive at the enemy's homeworld for just under a year, and by then they'd already met the diplomatic representative of the world from whence these warrior-women came.

In that one bright moment, just before the enemy pilot, the enemy ship, the enemy crew, all disappeared in a flare of silver radiance, this image of the impossible froze itself on their viewscreens, and somehow they were very glad they'd just signed a peace treaty with the pale eyed woman in the electric-blue gown ... that remarkable, quietly smiling woman with a persuasive voice...

... a woman with the same pale eyes as the one whose presence in the vacuum of interstellar space was utterly, absolutely, completely, not possible.

 

Valkyrie Three turned, pointed her nose toward the remaining enemy.

She'd long since learned to disregard the laws of physics.

She was a woman, and she loved to dance: rather than think in straight lines, she thought in curves: she banked, as if she were coming around in atmosphere -- something not possible in vacuum -- a quick thought, another, and two Hellbores ripped through shielding and hull and detonated.

The Valkyries were already gone before the unstable black holes formed, crushing the enemy vessels into an infinitesimal point of gravity, then they too detonated, scattering atoms in all directions.

Three formed up with her sisters.

Together, they made the jump back to their home, back to Mars, as easily as stepping through a doorway: they would debrief with their flight commander, they would debrief with their Ambassador and very likely the Ambassador to the Confederacy as well.

 

The Martian Ambassador had other concerns.

Not all interstellar travel was faster-than-light; not all travel was with a Valkyrie opening a hole in the universe and slipping through it like an actor slips between the curtains on stage.

Ambassador Marnie Keller closed her eyes and demanded her memory surrender the information she needed.

"Damn you, Sarah Lynne McKenna," she muttered, "what was it you did?"

Marnie seized the arm, clamped the arterial bleed with a hard grip, closed her eyes.

I read it in one of Daddy's Journals.

Marnie disciplined her mind, looked at the volumes on the shelf, ran her finger across them.

This one.

She remembered the feel of good rag paper, the smell of the century-plus-old book, she ran her eyes over the words.

She smiled.

"And I saw Jerry Roberts lying in Jerry Roberts' blood in the ditch and I said unto Jerry Roberts, Live; yea, I said unto Jerry Roberts, Live."

Jerry very dimly remembered feeling the tight grip on his arm: he couldn't hear much for the roaring in his ears, like the waterfall near where he grew up, but he remembered the grip, he heard the words in his mind.

It's not your time. 

 He felt suddenly warm, as if the warmth of life slammed into his body and drove the cold of his death from him.

Marnie rose, grabbed a shop rag, wiped the gore off her hand, looked at a crewman.

"Bandage that," she said crisply, "we don't want it getting infected."

She came to her feet, snatched up her skirts, ran down what used to be a spotless ship's corridor: the crewman that ran with her, punched quickly at the keypad.

The door slid open.

Marnie ducked as heat rolled over above her -- not flame, but heat -- she ducked, ran bent over, dropped to her knees.

"I'VE GOT TO CONTAIN THIS!" the crewman shouted, and Marnie barked "GO!" -- and turned to a man with half a normal face.

The other half was burned.

Marnie remembered Sarah Lynne McKenna could stop blood with the Word, and she could blow fire: Old Pale Eyes, in his time, did both, but even he admitted this was a gift reserved for the feminine, and he shouldn't be able to -- but when the need arose, he seized his niece Duzy's hand, placed a knife crossways of his son Jacob's wound, slapped her hand on the knife and spoke the Word, and Duzy felt the heat SLAM through her hand and into the wounded Jacob Keller, and the bleeding stopped.

Marnie swallowed hard.

Few things smell as bad as burned flesh.

She'd smelled it before, back on Earth, she'd seen things only the medics see, she'd brought people out of buildings in the process of collapse: she took a deep breath, cupped her hand a little, then blew her breath across the burned flesh, pushing with her hand as if pushing living flame from her.

There came an Angel from the East bearing Frost and Fire.

In Frost, Out Fire.

Marnie took another breath, blew again, lips pursed, a gentle stream of air across the flesh: in her mind's eye, she saw her breath blowing the flames from the man's tortured flesh, she saw her shining-silver hand pushing the flames from him.

There came an Angel from the East bearing Frost and Fire.

In Frost, Out Fire.

Marnie took another deep breath:  a third time, blowing gently, blowing the flames from the engineer's burnt face, pushing them from him, the words as audible in her mind as if she were speaking them aloud:

There came and Angel from the East bearing Frost and Fire.

In Frost Out Fire.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.

Marnie looked up, at the crewman.

He'd gotten an emergency force field up just as a section of hull blew free: he could not have cut it any closer if he'd tried.

There was nothing between the crewman and vacuum but the invisible force field.

He was staring out this ragged hole in the side of his ship, staring as if at something impossible.

He looked at Marnie and he looked back out this new window:  he shook his head, training took over.

"That field is as strong as the original hull," he said, "and it'll stand the stresses of powered flight.  If we can get her going again."

Marnie looked down.

The man's clothes were scorched, burnt in spots: Marnie placed gentle fingertips under his chin, turned his head.

She tilted her head and smiled as the man rallied.

"You have the loveliest complexion," she murmured, and he raised a hand to his face.

"I ... got caught in the blast --"

"Shh, now, just relax. You've had a hard time of it."  She looked over her shoulder, smiled.

"Get this man to Medical," she said, "and tell the Captain that crewman deserves a medal, he just saved us all."

 

After the award ceremony, the crewman excused himself: the ship's surgeon was also in charge of the crew's mental health, and so he discreetly tapped into whatever this particular crewman was accessing.

The ship's surgeon knew the crewman survived a life threatening event, and only his quick thinking kept himself and the Ambassador from being blown into space -- he probably saved the ship from catastrophic structural failure, thanks to the nature of the force field he'd snapped into place -- and stress of that level could have an effect on a man's mental condition.

The ship's surgeon saw what this young man was looking at.

He leaned forward, frowning, then his call chimed and the young man's face appeared on the screen.

"Doctor," he said.

"Yes, son, how can I help you?"

"Doctor ... am I going space happy?"

"Why, what happened?"

The ship's surgeon looked at the minimized screen in the upper right corner, looked back at the worried image of a competent and now decorated crewman.

"Doctor, when I looked out the hole in the side of Engineering ..."

"Yes?" the ship's surgeon nodded encouragingly.

"Doctor, what is the significance to seeing a Valkyrie, in armor, on a big black horse with white wings and a lance upright in her hand?"

 

Edited July 9, 2023 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

WEAPON

Perfection exists in the mind of God.

Deputy Sheriff Linn Keller stood at his father's grave, his cover correctly under his off arm.

It was a year to the day that the man fell over dead.

Oh, everyone did everything they could to try and keep him alive, but a clot hit the Widowmaker Bifurcation, and to quote Dr. Greenlees, "There was no salvation."

Linn stood, tall, lean, frowning a little as he looked at his Pa's stone.

"You made your mistakes," he said frankly, "and you made some bad ones, damn you, but you did a hell of a lot of good."

Linn looked up, looked over the garden of stone, looked down toward Firelands, considered that ancestors had stood where he stood now, men -- and women -- who'd said that final goodbye, and looked out over the town below, just as he was doing.

Pale eyes sought landmarks in the distance, and smiled a little: there, the firehouse, and the memory of his own son standing with binoculars in a light rain, watching for the ghost-fire of a dead railroader's lantern, restless at his grave, just before the fire disappeared and reappeared on the railroad track, in the rain, watching to ensure the trestle's safety.

He looked at the church steeple, remembered climbing up and marveling at the bell, leaning his young head back and studying the painted over damage where the Reavers came into Firelands: he looked down and imagined where the Parson and Old Pale Eyes' son Jacob must've knelt with Sharps rifles, driving buffalo loads into the screaming enemy pouring down their main street.

Linn stood, looked at the gravestone again.

"Children learn by observation and by imitation," he said quietly.

"You were a reader and so is Mama. That's where I got my love for reading."

He shifted his weight, frowned again.

"I've trained at Quantico. Several of us have. When they offer free classes for lawmen, I'd be a fool not to take 'em up on it."  He snorted. "That's another thing I got from you."  

He looked up again, looked around, looked back.

"Thrift."

Linn raised his eyes to the high peaks yonder, shining in the sun, bright and strong against the shocking-blue sky.

"I bear that in mind with my own young," he said aloud, then frowned.

"I recall when you backhanded me, damn you. You accused me of bein' drunk.  I was fevered when I come home. Hadn't had one drop. You never did admit you were wrong and I still hold that against you."

Linn felt his jaw harden: he closed his eyes, shook his head.

"I want so very badly to hurt you over that," he admitted, then he walked up to his father's stone, went to one knee, laid a hand on the quartz marker.

"I couldn't hurt you while you were still alive, so I'll have to do it now that you're dead."

Linn glared at the image, laser engraved in the stone: it was a double stone, his father's name on the left, over his father's grave; his Mama's empty grave was on the right -- when it was her time, she would sleep here, beside the man she loved those many years.

Linn chewed on his bottom lip, remembered his father's harsh words, the backhanded slap, he remembered falling backwards down the steps, he recalled hitting the wall, coming up with his fist cocked, ready to tear into his old man, and that's all he remembered, at least until he woke, weak, shivering, sweat soaked, in his own bed.

His Mama told him later, some time later, he'd collapsed from the fever as he drew back to charge his father.

He'd found out from other sources she'd turned to her husband and she'd given him the full glare of a mother's pale eyes when her claws slide from their sheaths and she is ready to tear down someone's meathouse for the wrong done her cub.

She hadn't torn into him, but he'd realized he'd made a most serious mistake.

Linn was on one knee, on his father's grave, Stetson under his left arm, his right hand on his father's stone.

He glared at his father's image and uttered the words he wished he'd have spoken while the man was alive.

"You hurt me, damn you," Linn whispered firecely, "so I'm going to hurt you now."

His eyes blazed with cold white fire, he took a deep breath, he bared his teeth, his right hand closed into a fist: his voice was little more than a whisper, and he swung the most potent weapon of revenge in the arsenal of a wounded child.

"Sir," he said quietly, "I forgive you!"

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

THE TROUBLE I MADE

Shelly's hands rested on my shoulders, started to rub, a little.

I closed my eyes and willed myself to relax.

We'd had supper, our young were clean and in bed and sound asleep -- my sons were typical boys, and I let them be boys, and once their chores were done, they exerted themselves into a state of happy exhaustion, the way healthy boys will.

The girls weren't as wholeheartedly active ... I remembered reading about Mongol falcons, or someone's falcons, who were manic-depressive:  they were either fired up in a state the falconers called yarak, or they sulked and wouldn't do a thing.

My boys were falcons, and they were wound up like an eight-day clock, until their head hit the pillow, then they were out like the proverbial light.

I stayed up, reading: I was revisiting an old friend, sleuthing through London with its most famous detective, at least until Shelly's hands began working at the tension in my shoulders.

I closed the book and she worked her way to my neck.

I knew she had her work cut out for her.

She worked in silence, kneading at the tensioned cords, at least until I murmured, "I'll give you a week to stop that."

"You're tense," she murmured.

"Bad anniversary," I muttered.

Her hands gripped my shoulders again, resting, warm, reassuring: I would do that with her, and she with me, it was a silent, unobtrusive way to say I love you in public, or mixed company, or when we either had not the words, or didn't want to disturb the silence.

I reached up, laid my hand on hers: her hands rose and fell with my slow, deep breath.

She pulled up a chair, sat: she knew when I did that, I was going to talk, and she knew it would be a conversation and not a comment.

"Shelly," I said, "am I a good father?"

Shelly looked at me with genuine, honest, unaffected surprise:  she turned her head a little, slowly, her eyes never leaving mine.

"Yes," she said slowly, "but I'm not sure why you are asking."

I leaned my head back, looked at the ceiling.

My ceiling.

My father never sat at this desk, he never lived under this roof, he never mucked my barn's stalls nor worked on my fence.

"Shelly," I said, "I've known good fathers, and I've known some poor ones, and now and again I've just beat the living stuffing out of some bad ones and slept well that night."

"I remember," she murmured.

I turned my chair, leaned forward, elbows on my knees, facing her squarely.

"Shelly, am I doing right by you and the kids?"

Shelly gave me a long, penetrating look, then she grabbed the arms of her chair, scooted in closer, again, until her knees were just touching mine:  her hands held mine and she looked through my eyes and into my living soul, the way that only a wife can do.

"You do right by me," she said -- it was almost a whisper -- "you have always done right by me, and don't you dare ever doubt that!"

"What about the kids?"

"You do more than all right with them."  Shelly frowned and turned her head a little, looked away, as if considering something, then she looked back.

"You might have done too good a job."

"How's that?"

"Have you watched your sons in public, Linn?  Really watched them?"

It was my turn to turn my head just a little, as if bringing a good ear to bear.

"Linn, your sons -- every one of your sons -- is polite."

I blinked, nodded a little, and Shelly shook her head.

"No.  No, Linn, not like that.  I mean" -- she leaned a little more into me -- "they are immaculately polite. Every one of your sons learned that from you!"

I reckon it was my turn to wear surprise on my face.

"It gets worse," Shelly continued. "Your daughters?"

"What about 'em?"

"You've given them a train load of trouble, Linn, you know that."

My bottom jaw slid out and I frowned some.

"Normally," I said slowly, "I'd make wit' da smart remark and say" -- and Shelly said the words with me, "Trust me to cause trouble" -- I hesitated and she laughed a little and said "I'm your wife, you pale eyed trouble maker, I know what you're going to say!"

"Yeah, you and my Mama," I grinned.  "Now what's this about me causin' trouble for the girls?"

Shelly sighed, let go of my hand, rubbed her forehead.

"Linn," she said patiently, "you've taught your sons ... you know children learn by observation and imitation."

"I would take that as a maxim."

"You've set the example. They've watched you treat me like a queen. They haven't learned how to treat women.  Linn, they learned -- from you -- how to treat a lady!"

"Good."

"And you've made life a lot harder for the girls. You've shown them what to look for in a husband. You've shown them that a husband and father provides and protects and they've watched how you treat me, and how you treat them and their brothers."

I nodded.  

"Reckon they have."

"Linn --"  Shelly stopped, her voice impatient:  she looked away, looked back, almost frustrated -- "Linn, you've set the husband bar so high they might not find anyone who can measure up!"

I nodded again, considering.

She's right, I thought.

I've done just that.

"And do you know something else?" Shelly asked, then she rose, leaned over, put her arms around me and kissed me.

I rose, took her around the waist, pulled her down into my lap, sat:  we leaned our heads together, in the nighttime silence, Sherlock Homles closed and forgotten on the desk.

"Linn," Shelly whispered, "I would not have you any other way."

"Even if I do steal the covers?"

I felt her silent laughter, her patient sigh.

I ran my arm under her knees, stood: I carried my wife to the front door and made sure it was locked, I carried my wife to the back door and made sure it was locked as well.

I carried my wife back through the kitchen and to the foot of the stairs.

"Mrs. Keller?" 

"Yes, Mr. Keller?"

"I think I'm going to go to bed now."

I carried my wife up the broad staircase and into our bedroom.

I didn't fall asleep quite as fast as my boys, though.

 

 

 

 

Edited July 11, 2023 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103
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[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

WISDOM, SHARED

I rose as my visitor opened the door.

The first thing I saw was his gentle smile.

Brother -- I'm sorry, Abbot William, was probably the one most untroubled man I knew.

He could be troubled, yes; he was a man with the same passions as any man, but he had a fine sense of priority, and knew which ones were worth his time, and which ones were best set down and abandoned.

"You don't have to rise," he said quietly.  "I'm nobody special."

I laughed, shook my head:  I came around the desk, extended my hand.

"It is good to see you again, my friend."

"And you."

"Have a set."

The Abbott turned, found the chair; he leaned his wrist-thick staff against the wall, folded his long tall frame like a jackknife and parked his carcass in a padded chair.

"You took the train?"

The Abbot nodded.  "I could have walked it, I suppose."

I laughed, hauled my office chair out from behind the desk:  the Abbot rose, turned his chair to face mine.

"Walkin' it strikes me as too much like work," I offered. "The train's less work."

The Abbot's eyebrows rose and he laughed a little.  "Two of our Brethren are steam certified."

I nodded:  I knew two of his Brethren worked at the Z&W Roundhouse from time to time.

"Steam engines are far more labor intensive than Diesel."

"No argument there."  I sat, leaned forward, elbows on my knees, rubbed my palms slowly together.

"You're troubled."

"You're right."  I gave the man a surprised look, then realized I'd betrayed myself -- sitting like this, close in, indicated a familiarity, a confidence to be shared: when I hunched over, I was being open, vulnerable, making myself smaller ... and rubbing my palms like that ... well, the Abbot knew me well enough that he saw uncertainty in my action.

I opened my mouth, frowned, closed my mouth, looked to the side.

Now dammit I know what I wanted to say! I shouted silently, my angry voice echoing in my skull.

Just say it!

I took another long breath, blew it out, then I pulled out my phone.

I tapped it and swiped it and glared at it and finally handed it to the Abbot.

He looked at the picture.

He held it out a little farther, the way a will when he realizes he might need reading glasses right here directly.

He raised his eyebrows.

He handed the phone back.

"I can see," he said slowly, "why you might be ... concerned."

"Yeah," I said, slipping the phone back into my vest pocket.

My voice sounded strange in my ears.

"Tell me the circumstances."

I nodded, looked down, realized I was rubbing my palms together again, slowly, my calluses whispering secrets to one another as I did.

I slapped my hands down, hard, on my knees, stood, angry that I'd just betrayed myself again: I've long prided myself on a poker face and a poker-faced body language, but here, with the Abbot, with a man I'd trust with my life and more, I reckon my defenses were down.

"Walk with me," I said.

I told Sharon I'd be on phone, I slid the phone into a hip pocket and we went out the back door and down the alley, toward the railroad tracks.

"That picture I showed you," I said, was taken three days ago. It was Angela's tenth birthday."

The Abbot nodded.

"Angela," I repeated, then folded my arms like I was rocking an infant.  

The Abbot nodded again.

"Angela."

"The Angela I held," the Abbot replied, "when she still had the warranty tag pasted on her cute little baby bottom."

I nodded.

"The Angela who learned to walk with her hands overhead, holding your fingers, the Angela that strutted with a barefoot confidence across the hook rug in the living room."

I swallowed, my throat suddenly dry.

"Yeah."

"The Angela that Shelly dresses like a Barbie doll, the girly little girl that likes frilly dresses, the Angela that delights in costuming with the Ladies' Tea Society."

I nodded again.

The Abbot looked at me, I could tell he was looking at the pocket where I'd deposited the phone and its damning picture.

"Tell me about the picture."

I looked up at the ceiling, at the stamped tin panels that had seen multiple generations of pale eyed lawmen, this office that belonged to ... well, Old Pale Eyes never looked at these, his original log fortress burnt down right after he died, he never had more than a bare wood ceiling, I don't think ... his son Jacob rebuilt the place and he would've put up the tin ceiling, I read about them being taken down with intent to re-use, and I remembered the yellowed slip of good rag paper they'd found under one panel that said This was all Pa's idea -- it was unsigned, so I don't know if the moment's rebellion was from one of the pale eyed bloodline, or the anonymous son of someone putting up the ceiling and using a son as free labor.

Or it could have referred to something else entirely, I don't know:  unsigned, with no supporting documentation, a frustrated comment from an earlier age ...

You're avoiding the subject.

Stop it.

I blinked, looked at the Abbot, at his patient, understanding expression.

"It was ... Angela's tenth birthday."

The Abbot's smile was broad and genuine. 

"That picture ..."

I swallowed again.

"Abbot, I was already gone when Angela came downstairs.

"Shelly said she came down slowly and she ... Shelly has the day off so she was fixing more of a breakfast than she usually does, and Angela came down the stairs with ... she didn't sound like she usually does."

Abbot William nodded, once.

"Shelly said she got to the last few steps and came down fast and noisy, she swung into the kitchen and struck a pose."

The Abbot nodded again.

"Shelly grabbed her phone because Angela turned on some music and started dancing."

I pulled the phone out again, woke it up, stared at the picture.

Shelly caught the moment perfectly.

Angela had a look of delight on her young face: her complexion was flawless, she was in mid-turn, her hair was loose and floating with the turn, her skirt was flared a little, one leg up and toe-pointed, she looked like an eighteen-year-old out clubbing ...

... she was wearing her Mama's ankle strap heels ...

... and they looked to fit her.

I stared at the floor and I honestly felt lost.

"My little girl," I said slowly, then I looked up at the Abbot.

"My little girl, Abbot.  My little girl."

The Abbot nodded wisely.

"I've known this to happen," he said slowly.

"She's just a little girl," I said, and I remembered how utterly ... helpless ... I'd felt.

It wouldn't be the only time, but it was the first.

 

I saw Angela that night, when I got home.

Shelly took her out for a Girl's Day Out.

Angela had a makeover and her hair was styled, she had her own heels (my God those are too high for a child!) and she was in a new dress and frankly she looked like a million bucks.

I came in the house, I hung up my Stetson, I turned ...

... and Angela was standing on the stairs ...

... she wasn't my little girl anymore ...

... she was honestly, gorgeous ...

I walked up to her, I looked into those shining blue eyes, I took her hand and raised it slowly, carefully to my lips, and I kissed her knuckles.

"I do beg your pardon," I said carefully.

"I was looking for a little girl named Angela Keller ..."

I looked over at Shelly.

"I don't believe I've been introduced to this beautiful young woman."

"Oh, Daddy," Angela squeaked, and threw herself into me, and I crushed her to me, and I hoisted her off the floor, and for a moment -- makeup, dress, heels and nylons notwithstanding -- for a moment, she was my little girl again.

Five minutes later I picked her up and held her like I would never, ever let go, because that's when Shelly gave me the news.

Angela was dying.

 

Marnie's face smiled from the screen for less than one-half of one second.

"Daddy, what's wrong?"

I swallowed and my bottom jaw was out.

I'd gone past loss and now I was madder'n hell.

"Marnie," I said slowly, "what can your Confederate doctors do for pancreatic cancer?"

Marnie looked to the side, lifted her chin, an unmistakable summons.

Dr. John Greenlees Jr came into the camera's view.

"Say again," he said, his face as serious as his father's:  I don't think Old John ever smiled, he just had varying degrees of solemnity: his son showed this same grim habit now.

"It's Angela," I said, willing my voice to steadiness. "What can your Confederate medicine do for pancreatic cancer?"

I felt the air shift and turned to my right.

Marnie stepped through the iris.

"Where is she?"

"She's in the kitchen with Shelly."

"ANGELA!" Marnie shouted, her eyes pale: I was struck by how very much she resembled my Mama, in that moment: her back was poker-straight, her arms stiff at her sides, she gave the immediate impression of a battleship cutting the seas at flank speed, I am going from HERE to THERE and stay the hell out of my way or get run over!

Marnie came back, dragging Angela like the tail of a kite:  Angela was almost running after her -- Marnie was in a long, electric-blue gown with a matching little hat, she wore a .357 in a background dyed, floral carved gunrig around her slender, corseted waist; Angela was in a fashionable dress and her new ankle strap heels, her makeup was elaborate and immaculate, and Marnie almost ran through the iris, my little girl in tow, then the iris disappeared.

Shelly came in as if sucked into the slipstream of their passing.

"Can they help her?"

I nodded grimly.

"Reckon so."

Supper that night was subdued.

Angela's birthday cake was on the counter, all iced and decorated with five candles at one end and five at the other, and a CO2 extinguisher beside it -- a standing joke from the year before -- it was uncharacteristic for silence to cover our table like a blanket, but it did.

I finally stood, looked at my wife, looked at our young.

She's ten years old.

She's in fourth grade.

She's just a little girl!

I disciplined myself: there are times when a man has to seize his feelings and shove them down in the iron kettle, and screw the lid down tight, and this was one of those times.

"This is need-to-know information," I said.  "It does not leave this room.  Understood?"

Young heads nodded solemnly.

Each and every one of them knew about need-to-know.

"Angela is being treated for a serious condition."

My eyes snapped up and left, toward the stairway, toward my study.

We heard two sets of hard heels approaching.

Angela and Marnie, two beautiful young women:  Angela wore no makeup now, but her hair was elaborately done, a little differently than it had been:  she still wore her heels, and Marnie, of course, was as gorgeous and as composed as she usually was.

"All fixed," Marnie announced. "We even took care of two teeth and she won't need glasses now."

Marnie flowed, dignified and beautiful, around the table, her gloved hand caressing every shoulder she passed: my young wore expressions of delight, they wanted nothing more than to launch from their chairs and mob her, but held their station, waiting for my release.

Marnie came over to me, took my arm, looked at Shelly.

"Story at eleven," she said, and I saw one of those looks pass between them -- women tend to do that -- Marnie looked at me and said, "I have to get back, but the cancer's gone."  

She came up on her toes, aimed her lips at my ear and whispered, "You did the right thing!"

She released my arm, circled behind me.

"I have an urgent matter to attend," she declared, "but nothing is so urgent that I can't pass up Happy Birthday Cake!"

 

I took another long breath, chewed on my bottom lip.

"Abbot," I said, "you understand, what I've just told you is under the seal of the Confessional."

The Abbot looked at me, chuckled a little.

"I'll carry worse than what you've told me, to my grave, Sheriff."

"Earth doesn't know about ... we have faster than light travel and communication, there's an entire interstellar civilization and Marnie's Mars is allied with it now ..."

"I know."

I stopped, stared.

"You know?"

"Of course."  The Abbot stopped, leaned on his staff, worked the bend out of his lower back -- like me, he'd been born with a sway back, and like mine, it gave him grief from time to time.

"Marnie explained it all to me last night. She thought you might want to talk it over with someone you could trust, and she thought I should have some background information."

I nodded.  "I'll leave that to her good judgement."

"You did the right thing, you know."

We started walking again, sauntering along the coarse-gravel ballast of the Z&W's twin tracks.

"Getting Angela to the Confederacy?"

"As hard as it was -- as much as you wished otherwise -- you told Angela she is a beautiful young woman, and you didn't try to keep her a little girl."

"She's only in fourth grade, Abbot."

"And she's still your little girl. I think she'll be happy to be Daddy's Girl for some time yet."

We stopped again.

I looked across the tracks, toward a stream I knew of that ran cold and fast off the mountain.

"I hope so," I admitted.  "I really hope so."

 

Turned out the man was right.

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

FIRST CONTACT

My first instinct was to turn and turn fast, and if I had turned, it would have been with a good handful of Colonel Colt's revolving pistol.

I didn't.

I said "You're late."

Then I turned.

One moment she wasn't there, the next she was, stepping out of something that looked like the giant elliptical pupil of a great cat: had I turned, had I fired, I would have shot a hole in the empty air.

"Daddy," she smiled, "raised no fools."

I looked at the pale eyed woman in a McKenna gown, a woman who looked at me with the bold frankness of someone who can walk up to and deck anyone she damn well pleases.

This did not make me comfortable.

What made me even less comfortable was that she looked just an awful lot like my daughter Sarah McKenna, but it wasn't Sarah.

"You're wondering about the resemblance," she said. "I read your Journal. Please, do write of this encounter. Your words will be read a century and a half later, and your words will be put to very good use."

"I don't often see women stepping out from behind a curtain," I said slowly, "with no stage involved."

She walked up to me, her eyes never leaving mine: she extended two gloved fingers, a white pasteboard between them.

"My card."

Ordinarily women did not use cards: men, especially men of influence, did, but only in the cities, only among other men of influence.

I raised an eyebrow, then looked at the card.

It appeared to be machine printed, but the work was finely done: it had an embossed, raised border, and printed on it -- machine printed with ink a little raised, I ran my fingertips over it -- and the ink was shining, shiny black -- I read it aloud.

"Ambassador Marnie Keller," I heard my voice say. "Firelands, Mars, Sol System."

"Please keep that. Use it as a bookmark if you wish, it will end up inside the back cover of your sixth Journal. I will find it there when Gammaw is digitizing your works and having them reprinted."

I frowned just a little.

"Is it Mrs. Keller?" I asked cautiously.

"It is not," she said tartly, planting her knuckles on her belt: she wore a finely carved belt around her slender waist, a revolver of a pattern unknown to me, two rounded pouches just to her right of her belt buckle, and on the left, a squared pouch of some kind, also floral carved and background dyed.

"It is not Mrs. Keller, though I am married to a fine physician of a husband. He is descended from your own Dr. John Greenlees, just as I am descended from you."

I slid the card into a vest pocket.

"Then I presume you are Mrs. Greenlees."

"I am Ambassador Marnie Keller, and you may call me Marnie, as you are my several times great grandfather."

"Mrs. Greenlees," I replied, "I hesitate to irritate you, but you seem to be less than entirely ..."

"Sane?  Rational?  My dear sir" -- she stepped up close to me, belt buckle to belt buckle, looked up at me with rebellion in her expression, a look I'd seen before -- "I assure you I am quite sane.  I am also from your future."

She raised a gloved hand, laid it along my face -- not a caress, really, more ... 

It's like she wanted to make sure I was real.

"Mrs. Greenlees, I'm not the one who stepped out of a cat's eye."

She tilted her head and laughed, and it was the kind of laugh a man like to hear from a woman:  she stepped back, turned, and I heard her take a quick breath.

She turned back and her expression was more that of an excited girl than that of a grown woman.

"Is that Rey del Sol?" -- her eyes were big, wondering, she extended a gloved hand, caressed my stallion's jaw, his neck, looked back at me.

"I saw his portrait," she breathed, "but he's so much better in person!"

Something silver moved above her:  Rey startled and she took his cheekstrap, soothing him wtih voice and caresses, murmuring to him as he backed, as he tried to rear.

I turned and saw something I'd seen before, but never this close.

Silver it was, long, like a cigar -- no, pointed at the nose like a swift, dangerous bird, steel legs swung down from its belly, it ... was kind of a really long cigar, with two cigar shaped bulges extending up its sides.

It was nearly silent: it settled on square steel feet, then damned if its bottom jaw didn't open.

Something -- someone? -- a small, slender man with a black, shining ball of a head --

"This is Valkyrie Three," Ambassador Mrs. Greenlees said, "and she is related to us both."

Bands detached from around this suddenly very female looking suited whatever it was -- some looked like they detached from where they'd been connected to the black, suddenly shockingly female suit -- the figure stood, stepped out of this long slender silver bird's bottom jaw and I saw it was some kind of a couch, but a couch exactly shaped like its -- her -- backside, from head to heels.

Black-gloved hands on black-sheathed arms reached up, gripped the billiard ball of a head, twisted, lifted.

She would have been a remarkably good looking young woman if she had any hair on her head.

She swung the billiard ball under her left arm and drew herself up, gave me a very correct hand salute.

I returned the salute.

I was in that damned War and I was an officer and I returned the salute like it was the most natural thing in the world.

She walked up to me, stuck out a hand.

We shook.

"Valkyrie Three," she said. "My friends call me Susie."

I inclined my head gravely.  "A pleasure, ma'am," I said. "I'm the Sheriff hereabouts."

"So I understand."  She tilted her head and regarded me as frankly as Mrs. Ambassador Greenlees had.

"You look just like Jacob."

"Jacob is my son."

"Not our Jacob," she laughed.  "Marnie here was Sheriff. She was drafted into Ambassadorship, and Jacob came up from Earth to take over."

"Ladies," I said, "please don't think I am entirely stupid, but I'm not understanding an awful lot of this."

Madam Ambassador took me by one arm, Susie took me by the other:  we walked over to that silver bird shining in the sun and stopped in its shade.

"We're so fair skinned," Ambassador Mrs. Greenlees said frankly, "we burn in five minutes or less."

She looked up at the silver bird's belly.

"This," she said, "is a ship. It's an interceptor. I don't know what your equivalent would be. It's extremely fast and very heavily armed, and those of us with pale eyes are the only ones able to fly them."

"Is that why you're here?"

"No."  Marnie reached over, patted my vest pocket where I'd put her card.

"This is why. It's proof that First Contact occurred well before the 21st century."

"First Contact with what?"

"Why, the Confederacy, of course."

I opened my mouth, closed it, frowned.

"I know you fought against the Confederacy. That was your war. Ours ... was much bigger. Suthrons were taken from that damned War and put to work fighting between the stars, only they turned on their captors and annihilated them. They are still reverse engineering captured equipment.

"This ship" -- she gestured with a feminine, uplifted palm -- "does not have throttle or rudder or sails. Its controls are the human mind. Susie here couples her mind with the ship and it goes where and how she wishes.  These" -- she swept a hand in a grand arc -- "are cannon. She can fire hardened lances of ... something beyond steel, at speeds impossible to achieve with current technology."

The bald headed young woman returned her helmet to her head, turned it a little: her voice came out of the open jaw of the silver bird.

"The time, Ambassador," she said.

Ambassador Mrs. Greenlees gripped my hands, looked very directly, very intently into my eyes.

"Listen close," she said, and there was an urgency in her voice. "Your desk already has a hidden compartment. Sarah McKenna knows a San Francisco clockmaker who is also very good with locks. Have him install a mechanism into your desk, and a compartment above your secret compartment. You must write everything that's happened here in your sixth Journal, and as you love God and your eternal soul, you pale eyed hell raiser, keep writing those Journals!" -- her voice was almost a hiss, her grip on my hands tight, her eyes penetrating, commanding.

"You will access this secret compartment -- the one you must put today's Journal in -- by opening the far right pigeonhole drawer fully, close it halfway, open fully, let it hang.

"Open the center drawer -- it's a small one -- halfway and stop, leave it hang.

"Open the leftmost drawer, close the right one, close the left, open it fully, close it fully, open it halfway and then close it and the small drawer at the same time."

I nodded.  "This will open the secret compartment?"

"No," Madam Ambassador Mrs. Greenlees smiled.  "The back of your desk will fall off and hit the floor and it'll expose your hidden Journal, and this card."

She raised up on her tiptoes and kissed my cheek, for all the world like Sarah used to, she skipped over to Rey del Sol and whispered to him, caressing his  neck, then she ran back and stood beside the young woman with a billiard ball for a head.

The woman in black turned, laid back on the couch -- kind of odd, seeing a standing couch, but she stepped back and laid herself against it, and it was like this big silver bird wrapped her up with a bunch of black tongues and then the bottom jaw closed -- 

Ambassador Mrs. Greenlees held Rey del Sol's cheekstrap as this silver bird lifted itself off the ground, dead silent, straight up, one foot: the legs folded back up into its belly, then it just ...

...disappeared ...

I heard a yelp, I heard Rey del Sol's sincerely voiced dislike of the situation, and I turned to see the Ambassador Mrs. Greenlees three feet off the ground, holding onto that cheek strap.

I reckon I should have been grateful, if my horse had run off I'd have had a long walk, and to my credit I did not laugh:  I taken his other cheek strap and bribed him with what was left of a plug of molasses twist and one of them cat's-eye things opened up and she stepped through it like an actor slipping back between the overlapped curtains of a stage, then it was gone too.

 

Marnie Keller looked up at her pale eyed Gammaw.

Marnie was fourteen, young and beautiful, completely at home researching with her Gammaw:  they both wore tailored blue suit dresses, they both wore ankle strap heels (by silent agreement between grandmother and granddaughter, neither mentioned this to Marnie's parents) and both had a studious frown.

"I don't want to tear this old desk apart," Willamina said thoughtfully, "but something tells me we have not found all of its secrets."

Marnie shone a small, high intensity flashlight into a drawer.

"Gammaw," she said, "there's something attached to the back of this drawer."

"Let me see."

Two generations of curious Keller women looked into the drawer.

"Your hand is smaller than mine. Empty the drawer -- yes, just set it there -- now reach in and feel what's on its back."

Marnie's fingers had eyes.

"A bracket," she said. "It seems bolted to the back of the drawer. There is a ... pushrod?"

"I knew it," Willamina breathed.

They began opening drawers, searching drawers; Willamina speculated on the presence of some yet-concealed opening, activated by a combination of drawer-pulls or positions, like a combination lock.

Marnie rose, tilted her head, considered.

"Gammaw, you work the drawers," she said. "I'm going to look underneath and see if anything is exposed."

"It's not. The bottom is solid, I've been under it before."

Marnie looked at the back of the desk, tapped it with a speculative knuckle.

She knelt, bent to look under it: her reflexes were young reflexes, and she caught the back of the desk as it fell.

Marnie stood, holding the back of the desk in both hands.

"Something worked," she announced.

The next day, Marnie and Willamina waited as the card they found inside the back cover of this just-discovered Journal was fumed with cyanoacrylate.

The cyanoacrylate raised a flawless, almost a deliberate thumbprint dead center of the blank reverse of the card.

Two pale eyed Keller women read the card again.

Two pale eyed Keller women looked at one another.

Two pale eyed Keller women looked at the print, taken off a glass plate, of Old Pale Eyes, standing in front of the original Sheriff's Office, beside his stallion, Rey del Sol.

They re-read the name on the card, looked at one another.

Marnie pressed her right thumb on the fingerprint reader.

Willamina fed the print, taken from the reverse of this just-discovered card, into the comparator.

Two pale eyed Keller women spoke with one voice.

"Identical."

Two pale eyed Keller women looked at one another.

Marnie spoke first.

"Gammaw," she said, "I think we need to read that Journal!"

 

 

 

 

Edited July 12, 2023 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

DEDICATED IDIOT

Fitz came out of the side door of the Firelands High School.

No, that's not quite right.

He didn't just come out the door.

He came stomping out the propped-open door and down the three cast-concrete steps, fireboots loud and vicious, turnout-coated arms moving in short, powerful, obviously angry exclamations: his words were well enough muffled by the air pack he wore to keep him from blaspheming the air a sulfurous blue color, but there was no mistaking the man's pique when he fair to RIPPED the white helmet off his head and SLAMMED it to the ground, he SEIZED his facepiece and tore it free with one vicious twist of his gloved grip, he dropped the air mask and let it dangle from its neck strap.

He looked around at an entire schoolhouse full of students and faculty, at an assemblage of deputies and city police, and -- uncharacteristic for the man -- he held his tongue for the critical moments it took to rearrange his thoughts in a less profane form.

Everybody but myself was staring at the man... me, and a handful of students.

I was busy shoving up on a telescoping aluminum pole.

The rain was only just starting.

We had many hands eager to help, and I was busy drafting from this rich pool of the Unorganized Militia: when the alarm came in, as nothing but pure, unmitigated luck would have it, I was just wheeling up to the Sheriff's Office in Mama's six-by, the one with Willamina stenciled alongside the hood: I looked up at the lowering sky, at clouds fat and heavy with rain.

I knew the entire building would be evacuating, and I also knew we'd just been given a dozen good sized canopy shelters, so with two deputies in back and Barrents beside me, we headed for the Depot and loaded these just-delivered treasures, and then headed for the schoolhouse.

I've long known the usefulness of a whistle as part of a lawman's load-out, and I put it to good use.

I wheeled right up to where the students were assembling, I bailed out, I stuck the whistle between my teeth and my fingers in my ears and I give a good long blast.

In times of uncertainty, someone who takes charge is a welcome sight, and I took charge of all those loose and available students.

I started drafting from this Unorganized Militia.

Willing hands seized the rolled, packaged canopies, hauled them out of the truck bed, stepping in and thrusting young shoulders under the long bundles, followed me at a running jog onto the open lawn: more hands converged when these faithful yeomen stopped, spinning out guy lines, pressing  and then happily stomping stakes into the ground: telescoping poles were positioned, set, raised, locked.

We almost looked like we knew what we were doing.

With a dozen of the damned things set up, we had shelter enough for the entire student body to keep dry.

We couldn't do much about the damp chill in the air, nor did we have walls to stop the wind, but I saw on most of the canopies, the guys were lining up with their backs to the wind, forming a living barrier to shelter their fellow students from spindrift and from the wind.

The Irish Brigade was busy stringing electric cords and setting those Ungodly powerful fans in place: the building was almost filled with smoke when they arrived, and they wasted no time at all in driving the smoke out of propped-open doors and swung-open windows.

I left that to their good offices.

When it comes to a fire structure, I am more than content to let the Fire Department handle the situation.

I was absolutely satisfied that our Irish Brigade was well more than competent to handle whatever the cause was, and when Fitz came out and I could see he was mad enough to bite the horn off an anvil and spit railroad spikes, I figured he'd found the cause of all that smoke, and he was not happy about it, not in the least little bit.

It took some time for the smoke to clear enough they let people back inside to get coats or backpacks or whatever, and then get the hell out again: heads were counted and counted again, students were ranked and lined up under the dripping shelters, and the buses came rolling up to the front of the building.

Just like I'm content to let the Irish Brigade handle the fire scene, I was more than happy to let the school handle their head count: I was kind of surprised to see a local electrical firm's van come wheeling in just as the last bus wheeled out.

Someone handed me a thermos:  I recognized it, the Fire Department's auxiliary was active in such moments, wives and daughters and other folk from the community who responded when the Irish Brigade did, to make sure our Irishmen had a meal if they were out any length of time: this particular dented, scarred container had the gold Maltese cross stenciled on it, and the red letters FD AUX, and I knew the Ladies of the Irish Brigade were making sure "Their Boys" were being taken care of.

I poured hot, steaming coffee into the tin cup, handed it to Fitz.

He downed it at a gulp, held it out for a refill.

"Now that I've scalded the hair off my tongue," he muttered, and drank this second one more slowly.

I think he might've actually tasted this second one.

"Chief!" a voice called.  "We found it!"

"Found it hell," Fitz yelled back, "if it's that damned transformer I already found it!"

Fitz looked at me and snarled, "Some dedicated idiot punched a hole through the block wall to drag wiring through it. They damaged the insulation when they connected to a transformer" -- his hand sketched a small square -- "about four inches by six inches, the old kind."

"Oil filled?"

"Yep."

"The old kind?"

"Yep."

"PCBs?"

"Yep."

Fitz downed the rest of his coffee, slung the dregs out, handed me back the empty, clapped me on the shoulder by way of thanks:  he bent, snatched up his helmet, then thrust his chin into his mask, pulled the spider over his balding head, slammed the helmet down on his shining pate, and stomped back into the school building.

I raised my chin to the nearest Irishman:  he was busy devouring a sandwich, but he came over at my summons, and happily accepted a steaming cup of sinner's-heart-black coffee.

Dedicated idiot, I thought.  

I'll have to remember that one.

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

THE FIRE CHIEF'S WIFE

I hung up the phone, slid it back into my vest pocket.

It was just Shelly and I at our big table.

I'd picked up supper at the Silver Jewel so she wouldn't have to cook -- I like to spoil my wife -- we ate, mostly in silence, and it honestly felt empty without our young on hand to share supper with us.

"That was Fitz's wife," I explained.  "She's not happy with me."

Shelly carefully split a sweet roll in two, buttered it -- it's always amazed me how dainty and feminine women are, and how they can take something as ordinary as halving a biscuit and make it look so utterly girly -- she closed it up, set it on her plate the way she did when something was on her mind.

She looked up at me.

"I hate you, you know."

I considered my answer carefully.

When your wife, your life's partner, your right hand says anything of the kind out of the clear blue, it just might be an unhealthy situation, and so when my wife told me she hated me, I considered my replies and gave a most circumspect response.

In an exaggerated nasal drawl I said "That's nice, dear."

Shelly snatched up another sweet roll, drew back, let fly:  I caught it neatly, tore it apart (with my usual masculine lack of efficiency) and slabbed a big gob of butter on the mangled lower half.

"Fitz's wife is going to beat me with a wooden spoon," I continued, straight faced, and Shelly was trying hard to scowl -- her attempt at a cold glare was less than convincing -- "it seems when we were over for supper last week and when you'd say something to me I either said "Yes dear," or "That's nice, dear," in that aggravatin' through-the-nose.  Oh, and "Whatever you say, dear."

Shelly lowered her head a little and her face was reddening some and that meant she was trying hard not to laugh: her face was doing its best to project a stern disapproval, and she had to turn her face away to try and hide the smile that was hijacking the corners of her mouth.

"Fitz started with 'Yes, dear,' 'That's nice, dear,' and 'Whatever you say, dear,' and he's been driving her nuts with it and she's going to take a wooden spoon to me for teaching her husband how to aggravate her!"

I still had my buttered sweet roll in hand, untasted.

I set mine on my plate, planted my elbows on either side of my plate, laced my fingers, leaned my mustache into my bent forefingers.

I considered my wife for several long moments.

"Out with it, Crane," I finally said.  "Tell me what's on your mind."

Shelly almost slapped the table in frustration. 

"Linn, how did you do it?" she demanded.  "My mother wanted me to become a nurse and she got all twisted and bent out of shape when I went Paramedic instead and now I'm doing the same thing with Marnie! I want Marnie to be a normal girl and be interested in girl things --"

I lifted my head, started to take a breath to reply, and my wife stabbed her finger at me:  "Linn Keller, don't you dare say that normal is a setting on a hair dryer!"

I raised an eyebrow and closed my mouth, blinked, then said, "Does ya knows me or what?"

"I should," she sighed.  "We've been married long enough."

"Your mother wanted you to become a nurse."

Shelly nodded.

"You didn't."

"You're damned right I didn't!"

"Why not?"

I saw the rebellion flare in my wife's lovely eyes and I reckon her wounded spirit snapped back in time like a rubber band, and the reply she gave wasn't that of an old married woman, it wasn't that of a veteran paramedic, it wasn't that of wife and mother and pillar of the community.

Her reply, and the voice that gave it, was that of a hurt girl.

"I wasn't ready to not have fun!"

I lifted my head slowly, lowered it slowly.

"And how did you determine that being a nurse wasn't fun?"

"Your mother!" she snapped.

I felt both my eyebrows head for my wigline.

"My mother," I echoed.

Shelly nodded.  

"Your mother ... I wanted to be like your mother, not mine. I saw my mother come home exhausted, she'd expect me to sit and listen while she bellyached and complained about knives in the back, overwork, understaffing, doctors that stole their pens and their stethoscopes and their scissors, she'd complain about administration and bureaucracy and then she'd ..."

Shelly looked away, almost guiltily.

"I didn't want to be like that. I wanted to be like your mother, not mine!"

"Why my mother?" I asked quietly.

"Mama wore jogging pants and clogs every day and every day. Your mother looked like a fashion plate. She was never elaborate, her fashion sense was very simple and very tasteful and very feminine, and I wanted to be like her!"  She folded her arms, slouched down in her chair like a rebellious teen-ager.  

"I don't ever recall your not looking feminine," I said slowly.  "Now why do you hate me?"

Shelly rose in her chair -- enough to sit up straight -- she leaned her forearms against the edge of the table and looked very directly at me, from the far end of the table.

"You talk to Jacob and to Joseph and to the littles and they listen."

I nodded slowly.

"When you make a mistake you tell them you messed up."

I nodded again.

"You've apologized to them when you've screwed up and you've made it right."

I nodded again, waited.

When it was evident she was ready for me to reply, I said, carefully, "Darlin', I am not the brightest bulb in the chandelier, but I try to learn from everyone I meet."  

My elbows were still planted on the tablecloth; my fingers still clasped:  I leaned my chin against them and considered before continuing.

"My father made mistakes. I've known men to make much worse, but he made mistakes with me and he never did admit he was in the wrong.  I held that against him for years.  Still do.  I finally went to his gravestone and told him the most hurtful thing I could generate."

Shelly looked at me, surprise in her expression: I don't reckon she'd expected me to admit the Old Man hurt me and I still felt it.

"I hurt him worse than he hurt me.  I told him I forgave him."  My smile was thin, more of a closed-mouth grimace.  "Damned shame he wasn't alive to hear it."

I looked at Shelly and frowned.

"I've made my mistakes with the boys. When I screw up I say so and I apologize. I set the example. Boys learn how to be men by watching the Grand Old Man. I want them to see a man who's not afraid to make a mistake and if he does, he's honest enough to say so."

"Why can't I do that with Marnie?" Shelly groaned.

"Tell me what happened."

"You know what happened," she snapped.  "I told Marnie I just wanted her to be a normal girl."

"Is that what you said?"

"Yes!"

I looked steadily at her, unblinking:  she twisted in her chair, uncomfortable, unable to escape my gaze.

"I told her -- I asked her -- why couldn't she be like other girls. Why couldn't she be interested in boys and clothes and makeup. Girl things!"

"And?"

"She came right back at me. She threw it in my face."

"Threw what in your face?"

"That my Mom wanted me to be a nurse and she didn't."

"And?"

"And I slapped her."

I already knew this: Marnie filled me in, as did various of the young who'd witnessed this moment of uncontrolled volatility.

"And?"

"You know the and. You talked to her and to me and she and I talked it out."

"So where's the problem?"

"Dammit" -- Shelly's hands closed into fists of frustration, her eyes cast left and right across the middle of the table as she sough the words to fit her thoughts -- "how can you do it so easily and I can't!"

She raised her fists to her face, lowered her forehead into them:  I got up, walked around the table, came up beside her:  I took my wife under the arms and I picked her up.

She didn't help me any.

I picked her up, I leaned her into me and I wrapped my arms around her.

"Shelly," I said softly, "you are a marvelous mother. You are an excellent medic and you're a pretty damned good firefighter, or so I've been told. You are my wife and I love you, and you are doing the very best you can with every one of your young."  

Shelly laid her face down on my shoulder and shook her head slowly.

"No," she said, her words muffled a little.

"Oh, yes," I soothed.  "You are doing the best you can. You're doing a much better job than you realize. Marnie's fashion sense is a lot like Mama's, she can wear a burlap sack and make it look good, but she'd rather be in blue denim and cowboy boots and you know something?"

I shifted my grip, kissed her gently, rubbed noses with her.

"She sounds just like you on the phone, she stands like you do, she is her mother's daughter, and she absolutely does not hold it against you that you wanted her to be a girly girl instead of who she is!"

Shelly hugged me and I hugged her back, and her feet well off the floor as I did:  I finally said, "Darlin', my supper's cold. What say we put this in the fridge for leftovers and I'll take you to the Silver Jewel for something nice and hot."
"I'll find your hardhat," Shelly mumbled.

"Why a hardhat?"

"Fitz's wife might come after you with that wooden spoon."

"That's nice, dear," I drawled in a horribly nasal voice.

 

 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

INVESTMENT

Esther watched from her office window, above the Silver Jewel Saloon, as a tall, lean young man removed his cover, and stopped, and gave a woman his absolute and undivided attention.

He'd stopped and turned a little to face her, and he gave every indication of seriously regarding her, every sign of listening closely to her every word.

Esther watched her son Jacob's interaction and smiled that quiet, satisfied smile of a mother who sees the father in the son, for that is exactly the way his pale-eyed father responded when addressed.

The conversation was not lengthy; her window was closed, and the exchange was across the street: she could not hear a single word spoken, but she could read people, and she read satisfaction in the woman's expression and carriage as she turned and went her way, and she read a quiet, confident consideration in Jacob's stature as he settled his Stetson on his head again.

Esther's were not the only eyes to regard this exchange, and hers was not the only approving assessment made.

 

Men talk: men talk about women, about achievements, about occurrences, men talk to work knots out of a problem, and men talk more freely when libations are included in the discussion.

When Daisy elbowed her way in between her big Irish fire chief of a husband, and the pale eyed Sheriff, standing at the bar with one foot up on the brass rail, one elbow on the mahogany and a beer in hand, she glared from one to the other before offering her comments, and Linn (for one) was grateful she hadn't brought a wooden spoon with her, lest she lay briskly about like a red-headed Samson among the Philistines, if only to make her point.

Daisy thrust a stiff finger up under her husband's nose, close enough to tickle a stray hair escaped from his carefully sculpted handlebar mustache.

"YE'RE WONDERIN' WHY YER SONS ARE S' FAVORED BY TH' GIRLS!" she declared, then turned and glared at the Sheriff:  "AND YOURS ARE TOO, IF Y' HAVEN'T NOTICED!"

Linn's eyes widened and he opened his mouth to make reply, at least until Daisy's hand came up and covered his mouth and she snapped "AN' DON'T BE MAKIN' WI' YER SWEET TALK, YER WIFE IS UPSTAIRS AN' ME HUSBAND'S BEHIND ME!"

Sheriff Linn Keller tried to look innocent, but it's hard to look innocent with another man's wife's hand over your mouth, and the other man behind her, trying hard not to laugh: Daisy whirled and punched her husband in the chest with a knuckled fist and snarled, "AN' DON'T YE BE SUPPORTIN' THIS WOMANIZIN' RAKE! THERE'S NO' A WOMAN IN TH' COUNTY THAT WOULDN'T RUN OFF WI' HIM!"

Linn considered that, first, he didn't think himself that great a prize; second, that he had his hands full with his wife of many years, and he seriously doubted whether he could handle another; and third, he wondered how in the world he managed to get himself in trouble without even trying.

Daisy whirled and thrust a stiff finger into Linn's necktie.  "ARE YE WONDERIN' WHY YER SONS AN' HIS ARE SUCH PRIZES?" -- she spun again and thrust her chin out aggressively -- "IT'S BECAUSE YE'RE BOTH RAISIN' YER SONS AS GENTLEMEN!"

She shoved with both hands:  east, pushing her husband hard away from her; west, shoving the Sheriff, her strength surprising the man:  each of the two lifted their covers as Daisy stomped back down the hallway to her kitchen, then each one looked at the other, wondering what just happened.

Mr. Baxter lifted the Sheriff's beer mug, and the man's sleeve with it, for his hand was still wrapped around the heavy cast handle:  the polishing rag spun quickly beneath the vessel, then he moved on, allowing the Sheriff's arm to lower the mug or raise it again, as he pleased:  he did the same for Sean's nearly empty tankard.

"She's right, you know," Mr. Baxter observed quietly.

Sean downed the dregs of his drink, sat his empty down:  the Sheriff considered this a good move, so he swallowed the last of his own, set his down, turned the handle toward the barkeep.

Mr. Baxter drew two more, struck the foam off with his foam knife, wiped the mugs before setting them down on his gleaming, slick-as-a-gut mahogany bar:  he snapped his polishing rag over his shoulder, leaned his palms against the edge off the bar, regarded Sheriff and Fire Chief, and allowed himself a quiet smile.

"Daisy's right," he repeated. "Your sons are gentlemen, and there's only one place they could have learned that."  He looked from one man to another, his voice quiet, just loud enough for the two of them to hear.  

"You both invest your time in your young. You show them with the living example of your own lives how to be men, how to be gentlemen, and women appreciate that."  He winked, nodded, the way a man will when dispensing a great wisdom.

"You both also invest in more than that."

Linn shifted uncomfortably, frowning a little.

He took pains to keep people from knowing his fortunes were instrumental in operating their schoolhouse, and in paying Emma Cooper, the schoolmarm:  he and Sean shared a guilty look, and Linn looked away quickly, for he'd only just discovered that it was Sean's money that got gas laid into the schoolhouse, that paid for the gas burners installed for winter's heat.

"You've both invested in our young," Mr. Baxter continued quietly, "and that's investment in our future, and you've both kept it quiet."  He resumed the perpetual burnishing of his bar.  

"Since you've kept it quiet, nobody's said anything about it, but know that I appreciate what you've both done."

He stopped, looked very directly at one man, then the other.

"Take that from a man who knows what it is to lose his family."

Mr. Baxter moved on down the bar: his momentary solemnity disappeared with a broad smile, a greeting, a turn:  another beer drawn, foam struck off and handed to another thirsty patron.

Sean's big Irish hand laid gently on the Sheriff's shoulder, and the big red-headed fire chief nodded thoughtfully.

"Daisymedear said you were a grand one f'r investin'," he said thoughtfully.  

Linn looked after the gregarious barkeep, looked up at the Fire Chief.

"Looks like we both are."

Two men hoisted their tankards in salute to each other.

"Here's to investin' in what matters."

They drank.

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

HE WONT BE SORE

Joseph Keller had the day off from school.

Joseph Keller was wearing his black suit.

His necktie was carefully knotted (he'd done it himself, and he'd succeeded in tying that neat looking Windsor knot his father favored), his boots polished, his hat brushed.

Joseph Keller was ten years old and he rode to the State Capital with his father.

Sheriff Linn Keller had to testify in a matter; it wasn't uncommon for him to take one or another of his children with him on such excursions, and today it was young Joseph who accompanied his father.

Joseph was as well mannered and as well disciplined as his older brother Jacob; Joseph sat in the gallery and watched as his father was sworn in and assumed the witness stand.

Joseph sat, silent, unmoving, his hat in his lap: he watched, he listened, willing himself to absolute, unmoving stillness, doing his very best to be invisible: still, he was a boy, and his young body, being healthy and vital, did move, just enough to catch the judge's eye: when the court recessed, the bailiff came to young Joseph, and asked him to come with him:  Joseph looked at his father, who winked and nodded, and Joseph obediently accompanied the bailiff to the Judge's chambers.

His Honor the Judge was considerably younger than Joseph was used to; he thanked the bailiff and asked him to wait outside.

The Judge came over to Joseph and stuck out his hand.

"Young man," he said gently, "I do not remember anyone in my courtroom who has paid closer attention to a case than you have today."

"Thank you, sir," Joseph said, taking the Judge's hand without hesitation.

"Are you related to the defendant?" the Judge asked: young though he was, Joseph could see curiosity in the man's expression.

"No, sir," he said solemnly, his hat very correctly under his left arm, "my father is Sheriff Linn Keller."

His Honor nodded and smiled a little.

"You are a credit to your father."

"Thank you, sir."

The Judge turned, went behind his desk, opened a drawer:  Joseph watched as the man pulled out a small pad, a pen, wrote something: he tore off the sheet, folded it, returned pen and pad to the drawer, came back around to his young guest.

"Please give this to your father."

"Yes, sir."

"Bailiff."

The door opened; the bailiff came back in.

"Could you see this fine young man to his father, please."

"Yes, Your Honor."

His Honor the Judge watched as a slender boy in a tailored, old-fashioned suit departed his chambers: he sighed out a long breath, smiled.

I normally don't allow children in my courtroom, he thought.

I'm glad I didn't notice him at first.

 

Sheriff Linn Keller was talking quietly with the prosecutor when the Bailiff brought his son to him.

"Your pardon, Sheriff," he said quietly, "His Honor sends his greetings and I believe he was impressed by your son."

Joseph held up the folded half-sheet.

"He said to give you this, sir."

Linn raised an eyebrow, read the note, read it again, smiled.

"Joseph," he said, "I am told my presence will not be needed for the rest of the day. Hungry?"

"Yes, sir," Joseph said, his face a carefully solemn mask: inside, he was delighted, for like most boys his age, he was a walking appetite on two hollow legs.

Linn shook hands with the prosecutor and his assistant: "Gentlemen," he said, "a pleasure, as always."

Joseph watched silently as his father took his leave; he was beside and a half pace behind his father, he turned as his father opened the lock box and retrieved two sidearms:  Linn facing the lock boxes, Joseph facing away, pale young eyes aware and un-trusting.

Joseph waited while Linn retrieved a cloth package, slid it under his coat: he closed and locked the weapons safe, turned, nodded to the guard, who waved back.

Linn and Joseph walked purposefully into the courthouse lobby, then into the men's room.

Two Keller men, one older and one younger, looked around: satisfied, Linn withdrew the wrapped bundle, handed Joseph a short, fixed-blade knife and a folder: he slid a folder into his own pocket, a longer fixed-blade into a sheath at the back of his neck.

Two pale eyed Keller men emerged, headed for the main doors, father and son, in suits and neckties, their black Stetsons settling on their heads, so much alike that anyone watching would have to assume they were related.

His Honor the Judge saw father and son again, that evening, but not quite the way he'd expected.

 

A meal, in a restaurant not far from the courthouse: the waitress was absolutely delighted with a courteous father, and his equally courteous son: Linn's manner just naturally put her at ease, and Joseph, silent, watchful, observed his father's approach, listened to his words, and remembered.

He saw how other customers were not as polite as his father; he looked with concern at his father when a waitress was berated by a displeased customer.

Linn looked at his son, saw a combination of distress and curiosity: he said quietly, "Story at eleven," and the waitress heard Joseph's quiet, "Yes, sir."

It wasn't until after their meal, not until father and son departed and were on their way to the depot, that Linn explained to his son why he'd had his son put a folded bill under his plate, just as his father had: that waitresses too often take grief from an ungrateful public, that he, Linn Keller, believed in revenge.

"Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord," Linn quoted, "and I am a subcontractor."

"Yes, sir?"

He looked at his son and Joseph saw a smile tightening the corners of his father's eyes.

"I avenge myself on the impolite of the world, by exercising good manners."

"Yes, sir."

"You recall we each slid a folded bill under our plate."

"Yes, sir."

"I over-tip a waitress because she's had to put up with so much grief."

Joseph blinked, looked away:  Linn could see the gears turning behind those observant young eyes.

Joseph saw his father's change: he felt his own internal engines fire, suddenly, he felt adrenaline surge and roar through his young veins, and he leaned forward into a run as his father powered into a full-on sprint.

It wasn't until he started moving that the scream of tires on pavement registered.

Linn saw the arms fly up, saw the body slam down, saw the delivery van stop: people froze, shocked, watched as a fast moving man in a black suit spun around the front of the van, hauled the door open, shoved his way inside: Linn slammed the shifter into PARK, twisted the ignition OFF, yanked the keys:  Joseph bellied down, looked under, came back up as his father came around the front of the van again.

"YOU! RED SHIRT, GET OVER HERE! STAND BESIDE ME! YOU! NECKTIE! DROP THE BRIEFCASE AND FALL IN! BESIDE HIM! YOU TWO, HERE, NOW!"

Joseph took station beside his father as the Sheriff verbally seized shocked-still onlookers and positioned them beside the van.

"YOU! WITH THE PHONE! CALL 911, DO IT NOW!"

Linn looked down the row of recruits: more people came up, until the van's passenger side was lined with humanity.

"ON MY COMMAND!" Linn shouted, his voice carrying the ringing crack of authority.

"EVERYONE SQUAT!"

Every last soul, squatted.

"GRIP UNDER THE EDGE OF THE VAN! GET A GOOD GRIP!"

Hands thrust under, fingers worked a little, people shoved themselves hard against sheet metal, united in purpose: in time of crisis, one man can organize an army, and in this crisis, one man was doing just that.

"WE WILL LIFT ON THREE! JOSEPH, STAND BY TO EXTRICATE!"

Joseph released his grip on the van's underside, squatted.

"ONE!  TWO!  THREEEE!"

That evening, His Honor the Judge stared at the evening news: open mouthed, he watched the broadcast of a bystander's cell phone video, as it showed a van being picked up by a row of bystanders, led by the shouted orders of a man in an old-fashioned black suit, as an active boy in a black suit dove under, as the boy emerged, hands wound into the shoulders of a pedestrian's shirt, dragging a bloodied figure out from under the van: Joseph pulled, got out from under the edge of the van, came up on his feet, set his heels and rolled back, using his weight for leverage:  twice more, a third time:  willing hands helped pull the victim free of danger --

"ALL RIGHT! LET 'ER DOWN!" the Sheriff shouted:  the van came down -- it came down quickly, which he expected, but not on top of anyone else.

Linn tossed the keys to the first responding officer -- surprised, the man caught them, then looked up to ask what these were for --

Gone --

The Judge stared at the TV screen as the scene was replaced by talking heads from the local news station, arrived on scene too late to catch the action, but commenting all the same; there was a brief statement from a ranking police officer, but a pale eyed lawman in a black suit and his pale eyed son in a black suit, made no further appearance on the evening news.

 

Linn and Joseph made a quick detour into the depot men's room, cleaned themselves up as best they could:  a janitor offered a surprisingly clean whisk broom, which father and son used to good effect, though Joseph was distressed by the state of his knees:  he took pride in his suit, as it had been tailored to fit  his growing young frame, and after Linn brushed off as much excess as he could, he took his son by the shoulders -- he was down on one knee for this detail -- he looked his son very directly in the eye and said, "Joseph, I am pretty damned proud of you," and ten years old or not, Joseph Keller was not at all bashful to return the heartfelt hug of his father's enthusiastic embrace.

 

The Lady Esther was one of the only steam engines to run into the big city depot.

She pulled a string of immaculately restored, brightly painted, brightwork polished passenger cars, a private car, reproduction boxcars -- fully functional, and actually hauling freight -- the sight of a polished, gleaming, hissing, living steam locomotive coasting silently with a clean stack into the depot, still gathered admiring stares.

Somehow it looked very fitting when a father and son, in black suits that looked like they came from a century before, climbed aboard the private car.

Joseph was grateful that his front was to the car; he knew they would be the subject of attention, as he'd seen people gawp and stare as The Lady Esther arrived on other occasions, when he'd watched everyone else at the depot: he swarmed up the cast iron steps, and into the private car, reserved for the Sheriff's travels.

Father and son settled themselves for the trip home.

Linn opened the bottom right hand drawer, pulled out a cut glass decanter, set two short, squat glasses on a desktop that had once belonged to another Judge.

He poured one finger's worth in each, looked at his son.

"Care for a snort?"

"Thank you, sir."

Linn settled the tapered stopper back in the decanter, returned it to the still-open drawer.

Father and son each took a glass.

Joseph followed his father's example: each hoist his glass to the other, drank.

Linn put the glasses back in the bottom drawer, slid it closed.

"Joseph," he said quietly, "normally a man wouldn't prime a ten year old with a snort of Old Crud Cutter."

"No, sir," Joseph said, his voice strained a little: to his young pipes, unused to the chemical assault, it felt as if he'd just swallowed a lighted kerosine lamp.

"This day, you did what damned few men have done."  

"Yes, sir?"

"You risked your life to save someone else."

Joseph considered, then shook his head.

"No, sir, I didn't do that."

Linn raised an eyebrow.

"You had hold of it, sir. You were not going to let it fall on me."

Joseph frowned a little and looked at his father.

"Sir?"

"Yes, Joseph?"

They heard The Lady Esther's whistle -- short little toots -- then the slack banged out of the couplers as the steam engine leaned into her load.

"Sir, wasn't it hard to lift all that weight?"

Linn smiled, just a little.

"I didn't lift all that weight, Joseph.  We had plenty of help. But yes, it was heavy."

"How did you do it, sir?"

Linn leaned forward in his seat, rubbed his callused palms meditatively together, considered.

"Adrenaline is a wonderful thing, Joseph," Linn said slowly. "The fellow you pulled out from under that van ... you grabbed a grown man and dragged him out and you made it look easy."

"It wasn't easy, sir."

"I know, but you did it anyway. You got him out from under with muscle power. Once you got yourself out from under, you used your weight for leverage -- good move, by the way -- and you got him damn near all the way out before anyone came in to help you."

"Yes, sir."

Linn knew they would be another few miles before taking a siding to a secondary roundtable: The Lady Esther would be turned end for end, she would be switched around an oxbow and she would back into her string of cars from the other end, but for now, they were picking up a little speed before hitting the first upgrade.

"Sir?"

"Yes, Joseph?"

"You said we tipped the waitress well because she puts up with grief from the public."

Linn nodded.  "That's right."

"Sir ... you're Sheriff."

Linn nodded again.

"You get grief from the public. Does anybody tip you?"

Linn laughed -- Joseph's young heart rejoiced as he saw the sudden, spontaneous grin claim his father's face.

"I wouldn't mind that, Joseph, but I think it would be called a bribe!"

"Oh."  Joseph's voice was disappointed.

"Sir?"

"Yes, Joseph?"

"Sir, did Gammaw waitress any?"

Linn blinked, surprised, considered for a long moment.

"No ... no, I don't think she ever did."

Silence grew in the private car.

Partly as a result of the manly libation he'd shared with his father, partly because the adrenaline wore off, partly because of the naturally soothing effect of steel wheels on steel rails, Joseph relaxed in his chair, drifted to sleep: Linn carefully, gently, picked up his son, carried him over to the couch, laid him down: blankets were in a nearby cupboard, and Joseph wiggled, just a little, as Linn carefully draped the blanket over him.

"Rest easy," he whispered.

I'll be sore in the morning, he thought, looking down at his son's relaxed face.

Like as not he won't, but sure as hell I will!

 

 

Edited July 15, 2023 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

JUST A NAP

I'd taken a leave of absence.

New fathers can do that.

It didn't last, of course, it never does, and when I found conditions such that I had to leave my home and go straighten things out, I was not in a kindly mood: one fellow didn't know I was anywhere near until I seized his shoulder, spun him around and drove the heel of my hand into his nose, snapping his head back and dropping him like a sack of grain, and from there, the fight was general.

Suffice it to say that rumors to the effect that Old Pale Eyes was hibernatin' in his hacienda making a goo-goo-gaa-gaa ass of himself over a newborn child, were rather quickly dispelled.

Now once the fight started, why, all the stress and all the aggravation and all the unwanted feelings of the entire family's routines being torn to hell, come out, and I let it.

The fellows who showed up in court stiff, sore, bruised, black and blue and otherwise showing the ill effects of challenging the Law, expressed their sincere regret at their foolishness: His Honor had no sympathy for their several states of discomfort, and sentenced them according to his usual stiff standard, which meant that these four, at least, would not trouble society for two years anyway.

Something to do with menacing, aggravated menacing, assault, aggravated assault, aggravated assault against a juvenile, against a senior citizen, against a rack of tater chips, mopery with intent to creep and impersonation of a human being.

Hell, I don't recall what-all they were charged with.

All I knew was, they come into town with intent to find some trouble, and by God! I saw to it that's exactly what they found!

 

The Bear Killer had ridden less in the Sheriff's cruiser and had instead become Shelly's shadow.

Shelly, by her own whining admission, looked like "an olive on a toothpick" with her pregnancy; she'd endured the swollen ankles, the discomforts and sleeplessness, the travails of carrying new life under her beating heart, and for those last months, The Bear Killer was stitched firmly to her shadow -- not underfoot, she never stumbled over him, he never tripped her, but when she sat, he sat, and laid his big black head on her lap, and looked at her with big, black, liquid eyes: when she lay down, he lay down beside her -- if he lay behind, his head was over her gravid belly, and if he lay before her, his head was over her gravid belly, or at least his jaw, and when she came wet and dripping out of the shower, The Bear Killer snuffed her swollen belly and licked it and then sat back and looked at her as if to ask when the new member of his pack could come out and play.

Her husband, that pale eyed Sheriff with the iron grey mustache, came home to find her in tears, hugging The Bear Killer, womanly tears shed for no reason other than she was a woman: Doc Greenlees explained that she was carrying a female child, which meant she was suffering the effects of a natural overdose of female hormones, and he could expect that kind of thing -- that it was normal, it was natural, it didn't mean he'd turned into the worst husband in the world, it just meant she was getting through carrying a girl, and so when Linn came home and found his wife sobbing into a pillow, he saw she wept with one arm laid over the neck and shoulders of a great, shining-black, curly-furred guardian, and Linn considered that he was right and he knew absolutely nothing about women because he'd laid down beside her and cuddled against her and she'd cried all the harder, claiming through pillow-muffled sorrows that she was happy and nothing was wrong.

Linn might not know much about women, and he might admit he knows nothing at all about the emotions of women, but he knew the Stork was on final approach and ready to turn base leg when Shelly began pacing.

He hadn't taken leave of absence yet, but he'd arranged staffing such that, if need be, he could absent himself when his wife went into labor: Shelly ate sparingly of breakfast -- Linn took over cooking, there as she neared full term -- young eyes watched as their Mama sipped carefully of juice and of water, and The Bear Killer did not lay his jaw over her lap as she ate.

He sat beside her, erect, alert, watchful, ears perked, almost quivering.

Shelly shooed Linn off to work, she even managed a smile:  "Scoot, now," she scolded gently, "you have a county to run, I'll be fine" -- it's what she told him every morning, but her smile was forced, and she began pacing, one hand to the small of her back.

Sheriff Linn Keller was not an hour into his day when the phone rang.

He picked it up -- he heard The Bear Killer's quiet, worried wooooo in the background -- it was Marnie, her young voice serious.

"Daddy," she said, "Mom says it's time, I've called the squad."

"Has her water broken?"

"Not yet."

"How long ago did you call the squad?"

"Just now."

A knock at his door, then it opened, Sharon leaned in.

"Your wife is in labor, she's called the squad," she reported, her voice professional, and Linn surged to his feet.

"Marnie, I'm proud of you. I'm on my way to pick you up."

 

Shelly Keller was no stranger to childbirth.

She'd brought young life into the world twice already; she knew when the stork landed heavily on her belly and dropped its payload into place that she would not have time to make their ER.

"Daddy," she gasped, "glove up."

The Captain looked down at his little girl, he saw the laughing little child she'd been, he saw the beautiful young woman she was when he walked her down the aisle, he saw a red-faced woman panting in labor, sweat sheening her forehead.

"Should we pull over?" he asked, his voice serious, and Shelly set her teeth, arched her back, gasped "Yes!"

The Captain looked forward.

"Pull over and stop," he called, and threw back the sheet that covered the lower half of his laboring daughter.

 

Sheriff Linn Keller almost skidded to a stop -- he moved at a long-legged stride as a matter of course, and his pace was urgent as he headed for the heavy glass double doors, until the dispatcher's upraised hand stopped him.

"Firelands ER, Firelands Squad One," they heard from the scanner.

Linn turned, leaned one palm down on Sharon's desk top, staring at the scanner with a pale eyed intensity that should have blasted a burning hole through its metallic faceplate.

Sharon looked at the Sheriff, saw the muscles in his jaw start to bulge, then relax as the man willed himself to control.

"Firelands ER, Firelands Squad One."

It was a different voice. "The Captain begs to inform of his name change to Willy Mays."

Another pause, then, triumphantly:

"It's a girl!"

The dispatcher was almost disappointed that the Sheriff didn't depart for the hospital under heavy, tire-burning, siren-screaming, wide-open throttle.

He left as nice and easy as if he were going to the All-Night to pick up a gallon of milk.

She could not see the big idiot grin on his face.

 

The hospital doors opened.

The staff knew better than to try to stop the strike team.

Father and son, shoulder to shoulder, marching in step, grim and pale eyed, one in uniform, one in a severe black suit and emerald-silk necktie: behind them, two pale eyed daughters, young and beautiful and feminine, and looking no less determined: beside them, silent as the Plague itself and just as deadly, a shining-black mountain Mastiff, like a pod-mounted weapons system attached to the side of an attack helicopter.

Doors were opened for them; they moved without interrupting their determined cadence, they flowed into a room, they surrounded a bed.

The Bear Killer crowded in between Linn and Jacob, tail swinging powerfully, black nose snuffing: Shelly's hand floated up from where it was laid over a wrapped bundle at her breast, and The Bear Killer snuffed loudly at her palm, licked it happily, gazed adoringly at the newest member of his pack.

Linn leaned down, kissed his wife.

"You're beautiful," he whispered.

"Liar," she whispered back, looked down at something wrinkled and red-faced and grimacing and wiggling.

"Say hello to your Daddy," she whispered.

 

Marnie and Angela took it as a matter of pride that they kept the house in My Mama Would Approve Order: of course, every one of the Keller boys did too: they'd grown up seeing how fiercely protective their Pa was of their Mama, and these pale eyed twigs grew as Old Pale Eyes bent them: Shelly came home to find the laundry was all done and put away, clothes hung up, floors spotless, her kitchen absolutely immaculate: when she insisted she would return to her full maternal duties, Linn reminded her gently that she was on leave, that they had everything under control, and she should take advantage and just rest, she'd worked harder than she had for a very long time.

Shelly protested, of course; still, when she lay down -- as Marnie said later -- "She experienced a Zen moment. As soon as her head hit the pillow, she became one with the bed."

The Bear Killer looked at Shelly, looked up at Linn: he looked with shining black eyes at this new packmate, his tail vigorously burnishing the hook rug beside the bed. 

A little girl in a pink knit cap and a pink blanket-wrap yawned, relaxed, and laid against the warm comfort of a maternal bosom, slept.

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

FORGIVENESS

Esther Keller's cameo glowed richly in the hollow of her throat as she turned and morning's sun shone on her face.

She was a fixture in Firelands, a woman of commerce and culture, a woman of kindness and achievement: she was known for her gentility, her obvious good breeding, and when she spoke, more often than not, one could hear her smile, in her voice.

It was a bit of a contrast when she tilted her head a little, and smiled gently, and said "You will unhand me, sirrah," and the gentleness of her voice, the pleasant nature of her smile, should have been as much a warning as the rumbling snarl of a mountain panther, or the sizzling rattle of a diamondback coiled up in a fighting S.

Esther Keller's complexion was fair and flawless; the color in her cheeks spoke of good health, and for perhaps a tenth of a second, silver fires -- or were these reflections of the rising sun, the long red rays that kissed her Irish-red hair and set it aglow? -- whatever the source, her eyes, these windows to her Southern soul, flashed a warning, just before those same shining red rays of sunrise painted the silent scream of a knife's blade as it painted death in a fast arc.

Movement, the realization of what the movement was, the sudden galvanic response to release this beautiful woman's arm and raise a hand to the slash in his face, gave Esther a little space: a second blade joined the first, thrust into the base of his throat, just above his necktie: the blade was slender, straight, very sharp, as long as her hand: she drove it in, gave a quick, circular twist, withdrew it, stepped quickly back.

A well-dressed man, his hand starting to slap the searing burn of a knife-slash down his cheek, detoured his rising hand to his throat: his eyes widened, he stumbled backward: a set of hard hands seized the back of his coat, and just before he hit the rutted, dusty street, he had the sensation of flying.

Sheriff Linn Keller glared at the choking man rolling over on his belly, clutching his throat: he looked at his wife, who had coolly shifted her knives to one hand so she could pluck a lace-edged, corner-embroidered kerchief from her sleeve.

"My dear?" Linn asked, and Esther's green eyes looked up at her husband: she did not smile -- almost, but not quite -- she slowly, precisely, carefully wiped one blade, then the other.

"I shall have to rub these down with limestone dust," she said thoughtfully.  "I do not wish them to corrode."

"I should have been closer," Linn snarled.

He watched as the man got up, choking, one hand to his throat.

Town Marshal Jackson Cooper strode across the street: the man stood a full head taller than the Sheriff, and the Sheriff was counted a tall man:  Jackson Cooper SLAMMED a great, broad hand down on the man's back, crushed a huge handful of material, hauled him off the ground.

He looked up at the Sheriff.

"The doc, or just let him bleed?" he asked in his usual basso profundo, a voice as deep as the man was muscled.

"The doc," Linn replied, "and that fella pays for his own."

Jackson Cooper touched his hat brim:  "Mrs. Keller," he acknowledged to Esther, who inclined her head in return.

The Sheriff looked at his wife, concerned:  "My dear, are you injured?"

Esther slid one wiped-clean knife into its sheath, then the other: her moves were controlled, feminine, dainty, ladylike.

"I am not, my dear," she replied quietly, "though I find that drawing blood this early in the day does give me an appetite. Please tell me Daisy has tea."

Sheriff Linn Keller reached behind his wife, gripped the polished brass handle of the Silver Jewel's ornate, brightly-painted front door.

Esther saw that her husband gripped the handle slowly, that his hand closed slowly, powerfully, as if it were wrapped around someone's throat.

The Sheriff opened the door, hesitated, looked very directly at his wife.

"Mrs. Keller," he said, "I do like the way you look."

"Mr. Keller," she smiled as she lowered her lashes invitingly, "you are the only man in the world who can get away with saying that."

 

 

Edited July 17, 2023 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

CHILD OF GRANITE, CHILD OF LIGHT

"Gammaw," Marnie asked with an elaborately casual air, "what's the best way to dispose of a body?"

Retired Sheriff Willamina Keller looked at her granddaughter and smiled, just a little, and Marnie saw approval in her Gammaw's pale eyes.

"You spoiled my shot, you know," Willamina said quietly.

It was rare for Marnie to be surprised, but surprised she was:  Willamina tilted her head a little to the side.

"I think," she said, "tea is in order."

 

Marnie Keller was coming into her maturity.

Her soul was seasoned, old, toughened by terrors and horrors no child should ever experience: the years of her girlhood were invested in her personal training, in her personal physical conditioning, until she was deadlier the year she got her driver's license, than all but two men on the Sheriff's office -- deadly, that is, with no more weapons than she carried when she took a shower.

Marnie Keller was a beautiful daughter of the mountains; Marnie Keller had an affinity for children, for animals of all kinds, she'd walked into a corral with a mean, hateful, vicious gelding with a reputation for hurting people, and though she didn't ride it, she did gentle it enough to let her stroke its neck and whisper to it, and when she rubbed it under the jaw, no attempt was made to bite her arm in two.

As Marnie bloomed, from the bright bud of girlhood into the flowering beauty of young womanhood, she quietly, discreetly, increased the heels on her trademark red cowboy boots:  nothing outrageous, nothing impractical, just enough to make a statement.

When Marnie walked down the boardwalk -- though it had been rebuilt twice since Old Pale Eyes trod these same warped, dusty boards -- she moved with the quiet and deadly grace of a mountain panther:  graceful, controlled -- and absolutely silent.

It was Saturday, and Firelands was busy, or as busy as it ever got: there were tourists, here for the scenery and for a ride on the restored Z&W Railroad; Marnie came into town, as radiant as a goddess astride her Daddy's spotty Appaloosa stallion: she dismounted, tied off, knowing she was being watched, smiling gently, the way a maiden will when she knows she has eyes on her, and ascended to the boardwalk.

Where Marnie moved like a great and deadly cat, Angela moved like a fairy: graceful, yes, but with the impression of lightness, as if a set of wings were about to switchblade out and propel her in graceful, feminine loops and banking turns, leaving a glittery trail of magic in her slipstream.

There were eyes on Angela as well.

Two more of the Keller young were nearby, and one not nearly as young, one who thumbed shining bottleneck rounds into a rifle's magazine and then closed the bolt, slowly, deliberately, with the knowledge that one shot and only one shot would make itself available.

 

Angela Keller's face held all the innocence and all the happiness of a secure, healthy child: big blue eyes regarded her world with delight and with wonder:  she went into the local drugstore, a holdover from an earlier age, where drugs and confections were dispensed: they had a short order grille and an honest to God soda jerk who wore his paper cap cocked well to the side, a gifted slinger of ice cream balls on a high arc, dropping them neatly into heavy-glass, flare-mouthed tulip shaped Sundae bowls: a spin, a flourish, a magician's pass, and sprinkles and chocolate syrup and whipped cream with a cherry atop appeared:  it was worth the price of a chocolate hot fudge Sundae to see it made.

Eyes watched the lovely young Angela Keller go into the soda shop.

A pale eye settled behind the rifle's scope, waiting with all the patience of someone who'd hunted men before.

Two brothers with pale eyes waited as well, the younger taking his cue from the elder, tasting copper but knowing that theirs was an honorable duty, and knowing they were protecting the family.

 

Marnie Keller looked down the street: she turned, quickly, easily, she did not run back to her Daddy's stallion, but her step was quick, purposeful, calculated to move her swiftly without drawing undue attention.

She did not so much climb into the saddle as she thrust a shining red boot into the black doghouse stirrup, and then levitate: a quick left-and-right, and she turned the stallion, rode him across the street and down an alley.

 

Jacob saw his little sister coming toward the front door of the soda shop.

He lifted his chin, saw Joseph lift his own, crouch, looking like he was cocking the main springs in his young legs.

Jacob remembered seeing his younger brother's pale eyes go dead white, and he knew Joseph was feeling his first surge of their inherited blood.

The side door of a windowless van rumbled open; Angela pushed open the shining, chrome-and-glass door as a figure in a black hoodie and ski mask rushed her.

Willamina's finger started to tighten on the trigger.

Jacob's bladed hand knifed under his vest, gripped the walnut handle of his engraved .44 revolver, and he surged from between the parked cars.

Joseph launched from his position at the mouth of the adjacent alley, powered into a full-on sprint.

Something fast and red drove in before any of them could move: there was the sound of a panther's attack, the snarling scream of a fang-bared mountain cat: Marnie was airborne, her arm locked around the would-be kidnapper's throat, her weight snapped his head around, bore him to the ground: Marnie released, rolled.

The kidnapper came up, looked at the open side door of his van, started to turn, gathering for a desperate sprint --

Marnie's heel drove into the kidnapper's gut, doubling him over, just as Jacob got his wrist and brought it up fast, hard and nasty behind his back, swept the leg and put him face down on the concrete.

Willamina's finger came off the trigger: teeth clenched, she whispered a quiet, most heartfelt profanity as her granddaughter's embroidered red vest whipped across the intersection of her crosshairs.

Joseph skidded to a stop, knees bent, teeth bared, the skin tightening on his face: his cheekbones stood out, he heard an animal snarl, something dangerous, something that sounded like a carnivore wanted to rip the throat out of its prey --

-- then he realized --

-- that was him --

Marnie hesitated as her Rage roared triumphantly in her belly, as its great scaly dragon's-tail whipped and thrashed and her Rage tried to take her over --

Marnie drew back, eyes wide and dead pale --

Angela drew back against the front of the soda shop, looked across the street, smiled, waved.

"Hi, Gammaw," she called cheerfully.

 

Retired Sheriff Willamina Keller and her granddaughter Marnie sat in Willamina's immaculate kitchen, drinking tea and talking quietly.

"I might have to dispose of a body sometime," Marnie said conversationally. "We knew this trafficker was in town and when we saw him park that van, we knew he was going to try a snatch."

"Nobody knew he was going to try for your sister," Willamina murmured knowingly as she sipped her fragrant, steaming oolong from dainty, delicate china well older than she was.

"No," Marnie admitted.

Willamina smiled quietly.

"A lady should have a good set of skills," she said, her voice quiet, gentle in the kitchen's hush.  "I just happen to know something about bodies being ... disposed of ... in my county."

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

WE DO

Shelly Keller wiped her hands on the dishtowel that lived on her left shoulder, more as a nervous habit than out of need: dishes were done and put away, the kitchen cleanup was finished, thanks to many willing hands; the baby was fed, changed, cuddled up against The Bear Killer, who was busy looking immensely pleased with himself.

Shelly opened the front door, stepped out onto the covered front porch, laid a hand on Jacob's shoulder.

He's as tall as my father, she thought.

No surprise there.

Another inch and he'll be as tall as Linn.

Jacob raised a hand, laid long fingers over his Mama's hand:  it was a gentle, reassuring move, something his father did when Shelly laid her hand on his shoulder in such moments.

The day was dying in a glorious bath of reds and oranges and streaks of blazing yellow, with the shadowed teeth of granite mountains biting into the firmament above:  Shelly knew if she stepped off the porch and looked straight up, she would see at least one star beginning to dance overhead.

She felt Jacob take a long breath and she knew he was going to say something.

Shelly Keller turnred her head to look at her long, tall son's profile.

He's as tall as my Daddy, she thought, but he looks just like Linn the first time I saw him.

"Mama?"

Jacob's voice was gentle, a voice suited for the quiet of the evening.

Shelly slid her hand across her son's back, hugged him into her, leaned her head over against the solid reassurance of a young man's lean musculature.

"Mama, how do we do it?"

Shelly shifted her mental gears: something told her she was going to have to work for an answer, for her son was suddenly deeper than she'd anticipated.

"How do we do what, Jacob?"

Jacob raised his arm, hugged his Mama to him, looked at her with a troubled expression.

"Mama, you're like a lighthouse. People come to you and just pour out their hearts."

Shelly hesitated.

"Yes.  I suppose that's so."

Jacob's pale eyes were busy, studying the lengthening shadows.

"I've taken deathbed confessions, Mama. I've heard things that would curl the hair on a bald man's head. People have ... trusted ... me with troubles and grief I'll carry to my grave."

Shelly nodded slowly.

"How do we do it, Mama? How do we put a lifetime under the lights and siren and keep some shade of sanity?"

"Sanity?" Shelly asked quietly.  "Jacob, have you even heard some of our firehouse conversations?"

Jacob gave his Mama a long look, and his Mama looked absolutely fearlessly into her son's pale eyes.

"Jacob," she whispered, "I've been told things too, things I'll never repeat, things that were entrusted to me."  She blinked, looked away.  "We lost a good medic once ... he trusted someone with a secret, and the medic he trusted turned it into a joke, and ... when the Chief found out why he'd lost a good medic, he ripped into the one who'd been trusted with something sensitive, and that's why we lost two people that week. Rodney was so humiliated by the betrayal, he never came back, and if Sandy ever shows up again ... Chief promised to kick Sandy's backside up to about the shoulder blades."

Jacob whistled quietly.

He knew Fitz and he knew Fitz's nature, and for someone to get the man that mad took some doing.

"I've been told things that would ruin marriages, I've been told things that would get people fired, or worse ... when you're in the back of a squad with someone and they're dying, you become their savior, their guardian angel, their devil of torment, their father confessor, their lover, their mother, their torturer."  Shelly blinked at the unexpected sting in her eyes.  "We do it because there's no one else, Jacob. No one else."

Jacob nodded.

"What happened, Jacob?"

"Someone I knew," he said slowly.  "Someone ... who ... who'd done a terrible thing years before and it ate 'im alive on the inside and ..."

"That was today, wasn't it?"

"Just after twelve noon today, yes."

Jacob took a long breath, blew it out, looked at his mother with troubled eyes.

"He called me Jaybird. He's the only one who ever did."

He pulled out a folded slip, torn from a pocket notebook.

"Found this with him."

Shelly took it, opened it up, read.

Jaybird, she read.

You listened.

Thank you.

She handed it back.

"I'll need to enter that into evidence," he said quietly.

"You brought him some measure of comfort," Shelly suggested.

"Reckon so," Jacob said quietly, slipped the folded page back between the leaves of his own pocket notebook, slid this into a vest pocket.

"Hell of a note," Jacob admitted. "I liked him, too."

He looked at his mother and smiled, just a little.

"Now here's the hard part. Who do we go to? Let's say outrageous fortune calculated my capacity like a jug and filled me plumb up with grief and sorrow, and I've got to spill my guts or I'll end up twanging my bottom lip, locked in a rubber room and stacking BBs for a livin'."

Shelly hesitated: Linn did this, he would ask a question, but as a prelude to verbally walking his way through a problem.

"If I go tell Doc about it, he's got all kind of people bendin' his ear with their troubles already and I don't want to go addin' to his burden.

"I could go to the Parson, but hell, everyone goes to the Parson, he already has to drive a dump truck to pack all the grief folks pour in his ears. I don't want to add to his load neither."

He pulled his shoulder away from the porch post, turned, leaned back against it, facing his Mama squarely.

"I could talk to you about it, but good Lord, Mama, you already carry too much of that stuff and I don't want to load you with any more."

Jacob shook his head.

"Folks are hurt inside and I've seen that dumpin' that burden on somebody else helps 'em heal."

He chewed on his bottom lip and frowned a little.

"Who heals the healer, Mama?"

Shelly laid her hands on her son's chest, looked up into what should have been young eyes, eyes that were much older than the fair and unwrinkled skin of his face.

"We do," she whispered.  "We heal each other."

Shelly turned, took Jacob's hand, pulled: they stepped down off the porch and started walking, slowly, holding hands.

"Jacob, your father told me about getting a call at oh too early in the morning. A buddy of his -- "Can you come over? I need to talk."

Jacob turned to look at his Mama, his face carefully impassive.

"His buddy ... his partner, this was when he was back East. His buddy had a righteous shoot, but even a righteous shoot will try the soul of a good man."

Jacob carefully made no reply.

"He and your father sat on the man's back steps and drank coffee and talked until the sun came up ... not of anything great or earth shaking ... but when the sun just edged over the horizon, he told your father that if he hadn't come over ... he was ready to eat a .38."

Jacob nodded slowly.  "I recall him tellin' me that," he said slowly.

"We carry each other's burden, Jacob. It's what we do. As far as who heals the healer ... I don't know."

Jacob stopped, turned, took both his Mama's hands in his own, gave her a long, thoughtful look.

He looked back to their front porch, smiled a little.

"I can see why Pa likes to take walks with you," he said quietly, and Shelly laughed a little, tilted her head a little the way a woman will when she is contemplating someone for whom she holds a particular affection.

"I reckon I'd best get inside and get my beauty rest," Jacob said innocently. "Last I looked in the mirror, I need all the help I can get."

Shelly gave her son a motherly look -- half amused, half a warning.

"I'd best sleep with my bedroom door open a little," Jacob continued, "so when I stack all them Z's they'll run downhill and not pile up until I have to get out of bed and open a window so I don't suffocate" --

Jacob looked at his mother, who was giving him another One Of Those Looks: she sighed, she shook her head, she patted his hard-muscled arm.

"Jacob," she said quietly, "you are your father's son!"

 

 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

GOOD THING WE'RE HERE

Joseph Keller cupped his hands under the faucet, splashed water on his face.

He hung his head over the sink, hands braced on the porcelain: he reached up, shut off the faucet, stood there and dripped for several long moments before straightening, before reaching for the towel, before wiping sleep and nightmares from his face.

He was surprised to hear the microwave humming to itself as his bare feet whispered downstairs.

Angela opened the microwave door one second before the beeper went off, drew out Joseph's mug of reheated coffee.

Hers was already on the table.

"I'm sorry," Joseph said quietly. "I didn't mean to wake you."

"Couldn't sleep," Angela lied, regarding her big brother with those bright-blue eyes of hers.

Joseph picked up the little ceramic pitcher, dumped in a good shot of milk: the two sat, drawing their chairs out carefully, silently, sitting at a corner of the table, the better to speak quietly and be heard by each other and nobody else.

"Nightmare?" Angela asked, then sipped her coffee.

Joseph grunted.

"And how."

Angela tilted her head, regarded her brother with big and solemn eyes, looking very much like a little girl in a white flannel nightgown and bare feet.

"I was at a party," Joseph grunted. "Some girl ... someone I went to school with, I think ... didn't recognize her, but she had some drink in her."

Angela blinked to show she was listening.

"I don't go to parties, Angela. It was at someone's ... we were by a shed or a barn or something and she came at me with a set of handcuffs.

"Pa's training kicked in and my gut told me not to let her cuff me.

"I got her wrist and put her in a cuffing armlock, someone got mad at me and took a swing so I kicked him hard in the gut and put him down, I took the cuffs like a set of knuckles and drove 'em a good one into the next guy's cheekbone and the fight was on."

Angela blinked again, nodded carefully, as if afraid she'd break something.

"I woke up just after I pulled a pair of .44 revolvers and allowed as they were all under arrest and they'd keep their hands in plain view."

"What happened then, Joseph?" she nearly whispered, her eyes big, glowing, hypnotic.

Joseph snorted.

"I woke up."

Angela nodded.

"What do you think it meant, Joseph?"

"Don't go to parties," Joseph said bluntly.

"You don't go to parties anyway."

"I know."

"Were they drinking?"

Joseph nodded, frowned, tasted his coffee, lowered the mug, looked at his little sis.

"Vanilla," he said softly.  "Thank you."

"I know you like it."

He nodded, sipped again.

"Daddy's teaching me too," Angela said quietly.

Joseph looked at his little sis with genuine surprise.

"He taught me it's cheaper to prevent a problem than to fix a problem."

"He's right."

"He's also tight fisted."

Joseph's coffee cup stopped in mid-air, descended slowly to the table top: he stared at his little sis, then a smile claimed his face and he realized he'd just been had.

"There's that smile I was looking for," Angela whispered, and mischief danced in her eyes: her cheeks pinked a little, and Joseph admitted to himself that she had eyes that could captivate the wildest heart.

"Do you think you can get back to sleep now?" Angela asked, tilting her head a little the way Marnie used to.

"Yeah, I reckon."

"Jacob used to wake up like this. He couldn't sleep so he'd be on radio, listening, maybe tapping on his Morse code key so he wouldn't wake anyone."

Joseph nodded.  "I recall."

They drained their mugs, rinsed them carefully, quietly, set them in the drain rack.

Brother and sister ascended the broad, solid built stairs in barefoot silence, until they got to the top, then Joseph turned to Angela and whispered, "Thank you."

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

IT'S HARDER FOR US

Reverend John Burnett was Chaplain for the Irish Brigade.

And for the Sheriff's office, the police department, and he pastored the little whitewashed church.

He was a man with a listening ear, a ready laugh, a man who would lend a hand when a hand was needed -- his skills were surprising: you don't often see the local preacher up on a roof, helping a resident repair storm damage, you didn't often see the local preacher running a table saw when a father's son was laid up with a burst appendix right in the middle of their living room gut-and-remodel, and you didn't often see a preacher in a suit and tie wearing dirty, wet fire gloves and pulling hose at a fire scene.

The man was liked and respected, probably because he was not afraid to get his hands dirty, because he was not afraid to wade into situations nobody else was comfortable with, and so when he brought in a fruit tray for the Irish Brigade, he sat down with them, cut an apple in two with a genuine Barlow knife, slabbed off cheese from the block he'd brought and drank firehouse coffee while listening to the typical bellyache-and-complain session that meant their red-shirted Brigade was in a good mood.

The good Reverend's background was not that of your normal nine-to-five shirt-and-tie sort; he was completely at home with men who swore and described horrors that would shock the workaday world, he was absolutely at ease with souls who saw people on the absolute worst day of their lives, did what they had to do, and still had the kindness to address these folk, as best as could be done.

"I'm glad you're back," the engineer declared cheerfully, relieving the block of cheese of a good slab of Colby-Jack: "we were afraid you'd find the soft life back East to your likin'!"

The Parson sliced his apple half down the middle, cut out the seeds and stem, laughed.

"No," he admitted, "the air's heavy and damp and the ground's too flat. Even near what they call the mountains ..." -- he shook his head -- "no, I like it here."

"Wha'd you go back for?" an incautious soul asked -- to his immediate regret, as several faces turned toward him, and none with a kindly expression.

"Performed my aunt's funeral," the Parson said bluntly, biting into a thick, fragrant slice of apple.

"Hard duty," Fitz muttered sympathetically.

"No worse than yours," the Parson countered.  "Every time you roll on a fire, you know whose house it is. Yesterday's fire -- your kids went to school with their kids."

"Yeah."

"You knew right where it was because the man is a friend of yours."

A fireman nodded, his expression troubled.

The Parson looked at the Captain.

"Yesterday you responded to a man down."

The Captain nodded, his face carefully expressionless.

"You got there and you said an old friend of yours was on the deck."

Captain Crane shifted, nodded.  "He was lying in the hallway. He looked like he was making himself comfortable."

"So you laid down with him."

"I wanted to put him at ease. I could see he was awake, his color was good, he didn't look to be in pain.  I put him at ease while I was assessing him."

"You all do the same as I did," the Parson said.  "You know the people you're taking care of. I've been told by other clergy that the hardest funeral is for someone you know. Those were the only funerals I'd done for several years, before my wife and I moved out here. You all do the same thing, you're going to people on the worst day of their lives and doing what you can to keep them alive and save their property. It's got to be easier for a stranger than for someone you care about."

Fitz laughed quietly. "I hadn't thought of that," he admitted, "but ... you're right."

"I will tell you something about yesterday's run," the Captain offered, and the Parson nodded his go-ahead.

"His grandson was staying with them and he was there when ... he's not been well for some time and when he got up to head for the latrine, he dizzied out and went down. His grandson caught him and he made a controlled descent."

The Captain saw the shade of a smile in the Parson's eyes at his description.

"That young man ... he's a head taller than me, he's half again wider at the shoulders, he looks like a linebacker -- he had the medication list printed out and ready, he was ready to help but willing to stay out of our way: I listened to his account ... this was probably one of the most stressful moments of his young life, but his thought process was organized, his actions were controlled, he kept his emotions in much better check than most grown adults."  The Captain smiled, just a little, reached for a slice of tangerine.  "He handled that better than most grown men I've seen."

"So there's hope for the younger generation," the engineer said softly.

The Parson nodded.

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

SHOW-OFF!

Joseph came through the door, hooked off his boots and left them in the heavy rubber boot tray, hung up his Stetson: his face was almost dried off, his hands cool and damp from washing up outside.

Angela raised up on her toes to see over her seated Daddy's head:  "Breakfast is ready!" she called cheerfully, frying pan in one hand, spatula in the other:  she slid fried eggs onto her Daddy's plate, then for each of the twins: she turned to the stove, set the empty frying pan on a cold burner and picked up the second hot skillet, went around the table dispensing smiles and fried eggs.

Bacon was already piled up on a platter, hot and fragrant: the toaster coughed, Angela was just finishing her orbit of the table, placed her now-empty frying pan on the second empty burner and industriously buttered toast and dispensed it as swiftly as a Kentucky gambler dispensing cards.

"How's Popeye?" Linn asked as Jacob took his seat:  Jacob grinned and said "Good."

Linn waited a moment, for any elaboration, then he bowed his head and declared "Hello, plate!"

He looked up and grinned -- it was a standing joke, when their mother wasn't there, that he talked to his plate before they ate -- then he lowered his head again and said a proper (but mercifully brief) blessing.

"Any word on Pete?" Joseph asked, looking at Angela, who was setting down her empty juice glass (empty orange hemispheres in the trash were fragrant testimony to fresh squeezed juice for breakfast).

"He has three infections," she replied, looking at her older brother: "the worst in his foot, they're going to drain it today; he has infections in the ankle and knee, and his grandson mentioned the possibility he was going to lose the leg."

Frowns claimed every face; more than one young throat murmured "Sure hope not."

"Pete's place okay?" Linn asked as a table full of Kellers industriously proceeded to process protein into fuel.

"It is, sir. He'd sold off all his stock, his barn's pretty well empty now, the house is secure, and poor old Popeye was so glad for some company!"

"I'd reckon," Linn agreed.  "Rottweiler, isn't he?"

"He is, sir, a big black lap puppy."

Every face at the table smiled: they all knew Popeye, and Popeye knew every one of them.

"He does like those mint flavored dental treat stick things."

Linn looked up and laughed a little: The Bear Killer was fond of them as well, and he'd go through a routine -- Gimme Five, High Five, sit, lay down, speak -- this was Linn's routine -- each of his young had their own series of commands, which The Bear Killer happily complied with, in exchange for either Doggie Cookies, or the dental care mint flavored sticks, torn into five pieces.

It was a standing joke that The Bear Killer and Snowdrift both bribed as well as any politician.

"Sir, his sister will be over today. I believe his grandson will be coming as well and staying."

"Good."

Joseph frowned, looked up at his father:  Linn saw the same look on his son's face as he'd seen on his wife's.

"We can put people on Mars," Joseph muttered, "and we can't keep a man from losing a leg from diabetic infection!"

 

Ambassador Marnie Keller folded her legs, arranged her long skirt, tilted her head a little and looked with interest at the bright-eyed children sitting on the floor with her.

Adults ringed the wall; there was a gap, then the children, sitting cross-legged, almost encircling the quietly smiling woman with pale eyes.

It was an Occasion when they had an Ambassadorial visit: news of the Martian colonies was interesting to nearly every one of the Confederate worlds, simply because these were natives of the Ancestors' planet, these were fellow Earthers -- only instead of being abducted by cold, uncaring aliens who wanted a disposable mercenary force, these were adventurers, explorers, who chose to leave home, who chose to come to a dead planet, knowing full well they would die there -- but going anyway.

And now an Ambassador from that planet was among them.

This pale eyed woman, this smiling, pleasant, cultured woman with a pleasant expression, immaculate manners, this woman in a gown that might have come from one of their history books, sat on the floor with their children, asking them questions, listening closely to their answers, answering their questions with the patience, and the skill, of a veteran schoolteacher, or a veteran negotiator.

The Confederate Ambassador was in negotiations in another part of their capital city, but the crowd assembled was ... well, "lightly populated" is the term he used later: the schoolhouse was filled with the curious, the officious, with folk who wished to see this remarkable woman they'd heard about, this Ambassador who was at once Sheriff, and mother; who was at once Peacekeeper, and wife; this woman who'd been instrumental in saving a crippled shuttle (she was quick to point out she hadn't been instrumental, she'd helped a little but the crew is what saved them), this woman who came among them and actually listened.

Ambassador Marnie Keller tilted her head and smiled, nodded a go-ahead as an awe-struck lad raised his hand:  "Ma'ambassador," he blurted, "are you Sheriff too?"

Marnie laughed quietly, raised a gloved hand, teaching finger upright:  "I was," she admitted, "but the current Sheriff is my brother Jacob."  She leaned toward the blushing questioner and said confidentially, "He's younger, smarter and better looking than I am, though!"

Smiles among the children, quiet laughter among the adults:  Marnie knew there were cameras on her, something with which she was long since comfortable, but she still wanted to put the best face on her Colony.

Her quick ear heard quiet comment of "Ma'ambassador," and chuckles: something told her this might become part of the accepted vocabulary.

"Do you have a farm?" a little girl asked.

Marnie nodded.  "We have," she said.  "We have pretty big farms, too! We raise as much food crops as we can."

"Do you farmit with tractors or do you farmit with mules?" another little boy asked and Marnie sighed, almost sadly.

"We don't have any mules," she said, "and we don't have any pets at all.  I really wish we did, I miss my Bear Killer!"

"You have a Bear Killer?" two of the children breathed, their imaginations shining from their eyes, and Marnie reached into her reticule, pulled out a light-blue cube -- through some trick of physics, a reticule the size of two fists was able to contain a box as tall and as long as her forearm.

She laid gentle fingertips on the cube: instantly a tall man with pale eyes stood astride the box, his bootsoles a hand's-breadth off the floor: he wore the tan uniform of a lawman, he had an immaculately curled mustache, a six point star on his shirt pocket with the hand-chased engraving across its front -- SHERIFF -- he was a few fingers over six feet tall, and he seemed to each viewer, to be facing them directly.

"This," Marnie said, "is my little brother Jacob."

The hologram turned, frowned:  "Who you calling little brother, little sis?" -- then he laughed, and the laugh was contagious.

The projection disappeared, and was replaced by something big, black, curly furred:  Marnie rose, caressed a canine shoulder with her gloved hand:  "This," she said, and both her face and her voice softened, "is The Bear Killer. He's a Mountain Mastiff and I miss him."

"Can I pet him?" a hopeful young voice asked, and Marnie looked sadly at the child whose hand was in the air.

"I wish I could," she admitted, "but this is a hologram too."

The great black canine disappeared.

"The Bear Killer grew up with me and he's the very best boy."

 

Two Ambassadors sat side by side at the state dinner that followed: speeches were made, in which Firelands was declared welcome here on this outlying Confederate world:  Marnie rose and thanked them for their hospitality, and when asked if there was anything she'd like to see, she indicated in the affirmative.

"I understand you raise mustangs," she said.  "If it would be possible, it has been too long since I had saddle leather under me, and I would very much like to see your Diggits Falls."

 

Joseph knocked, opened the door:  "Popeye?" he called, and a black nose thrust out the gap at him.

Joseph went inside, rubbed the tail-swinging Rottweiler's big head and shoulders, raising an incredible cloud of hair:  "You need brushed out, fella," he murmured.  "Let's go outside."

They went through the little cottage of a house, Joseph's eyes busy:  nothing appeared disturbed, no water leaks, nothing concerning: he sat down on the back steps, bribed Popeye with a minty treat and proceeded to brush him out.

The Rottweiler's tail declared his happiness, slitted eyes and a chin on Joseph's leg spoke of the big black lap puppy's contentment:  Joseph brushed an incredible amount of fur free, undercoat most likely, for Popeye was short haired:  he spent an hour with the fellow, which pleased Popeye to no end.

Pete's sister showed up, finally; Joseph opened the back door and called, "We're out here," and Cathy came out, amazed at the pile of fur Joseph brushed free.

"I've ridden the property," Joseph said, "everything looks hunky dory.  How's Pete?"

"They drained his foot. He's on IV antibiotics and the surgeon said he has absolutely no plans to take anything off."

"That will make Pete happy," Joseph sighed, relieved:  Pete had been a steelworker, Pete had always been capable and independent, and Pete absolutely did not like the idea of taking off weight via the Alfred Hitchcock method:  with a knife.

Joseph fed Popeye the last of the minty bribes.  "You'll be staying?"

Eli John came through the back door, grinning:  he and Joseph shook hands.

"I arranged for a week off," he said, "and a good thing. God must've had something in mind."

"Likely so," Joseph agreed.  "Pa said you're welcome to come over for supper."

 

Marnie stood in her stirrups, soothed her restless mount with a gloved hand.

The Falls were truly impressive:  broad, powerful, they threw up a cloud of perpetual mist.

Marnie allowed herself the luxury of a long moment's honest awe.

She'd chosen her saddlemount, she'd gone into the corral with bridle in hand:  persuasion and persistence and the mustang allowed itself to be bridled and bitted; Marnie coaxed him over to the side of the corral, where skeptical eyes watched as she looked el mesteño over more closely.

Her moves were that of an experienced horsewoman: more than one man, familiar with their herd, watched, surprised: a voice asked, "Is she from Texas? Only a Texan knows a horse that well!" -- 

Marnie wore a divided gown for the occasion: she mounted easily, before the approaching hand could offer to help boost her into the saddle.

Marnie walked el mesteño around the corral, nodded her satisfaction.

Which is right about the moment el mesteño decided it was time to come unglued.

Ambassador Marnie Keller grew up on her Daddy's little mountain ranch.

Ambassador Marnie Keller grew up riding her Daddy's saddle stock.

Ambassador Marnie Keller spent her girlhood helping care for her Daddy's horses and helping break her Daddy's horses and working with her Daddy's horses.

Ambassador Marnie Keller's teeth clicked together as el mesteño came down, all four hooves bunched, then proceeded to whip end-for-end, kick, sunfish, spin, launch, dive, kick again:  Marnie had her hands full, wishing she had a Stetson instead of the fashionable little hat pinned to her coiffure: had she a Stetson, she'd be whipping the horse's flank with it as she raked fore and aft with spurless heels: it was a vigorous contest, but the mustang was not a vicious soul: he wished to establish that he was a horse and he liked to snap the knots out of his back bone, and in the process he worked on Marnie's spine as well: he settled down to all fours, shivered like he was shaking off a pesky fly, and proceeded to pace around the corral just as nice as you please.

It was known that Marnie wished to see the Falls, and so there were people at the lookout point:  Marnie and her mesteño stood, marveling, delighting in this hydraulic expression of power.

With a horse under her, Marnie was not about to just go, and see, and be done: no, she looked at the Ambassador, riding a good looking chestnut mare: Marnie turned the mesteño's head, rode downstream, knowing the well-kept gravel path went down along the river's edge.

Here, too, there were spectators; some were on boats, waving, and Marnie waved cheerfully back.

She felt her mount shift, saw his ears swing around, then his head.

She brought him around, looked to the water, upstream.

The Confederate Ambassador reached for his talkie, swore: a spray of water, a vicious "HYAAA!" and the painted mustang with a pale-eyed woman astride drove suddenly into the surging waters, foam-streaks lining its currents: a child was fallen into the water, a boy, Marnie judged:  the mustang fought against current, got some footing, scrambled ahead.

Marnie's eyes were dead white, her teeth bared, she felt a snarl building deep in her throat.

In this moment she shed her Ambassador's title like a cloak, she cast aside any civilization and any decorum and she focused on one thing.

Marnie had made a dive into a mountain pool to bring a failing swimmer out.

Marnie had gone into a cold mountain river and made a jackknife dive to bust a car's sideglass and get the driver out.

Marnie felt her mesteño's hooves digging into riverbed gravel as they fought toward the struggling form coming downstream at them.

Marnie leaned over, seized the back of the boy's shirt, pulled: she turned her mount downstream, toward the place they'd entered:  she grabbed the back of the choking child's waistband, got him further up, ran her arm around his belly and broke him over like a shotgun.

He choked, he coughed, he threw up a gallon of river water:  Marnie grimly guided the painted mustang with her knees, felt him bunch his legs, thrust powerfully and surge back up onto the bank.

A rescue boat came cutting by, just in time to be too late:  Marnie rode through the parting crowd, rolled the boy up into her arms, swung down.

Willing arms relieved her of her wet, coughing burden: Marnie reached up, seized the saddlehorn, breathing hard:  she turned, rubbed  el mesteño under the jaw, whispered to him.

The mustang laid his jaw over her shoulder and Marnie hugged his wet neck, laid her cheek against his cold, wet fur: the first image sent over the planet-wide news net was of a woman, her gown soaked from the hips down, hugging a wet stallion, her cheek against his neck, this wild, unbroken broncho's jaw companionably laid over her shoulder.

There were other pictures, of course: the silvery spray of river water, shattered by steelshod hooves driving desperately into the current; a woman's face, grim, determined, her eyes pale and obviously in mid-shout as horse and rider fought through the shallows into the current: videos showed her arm shoot out, seize wet shirt-linen, and excerpts were grafted into lifesaving tutorials, showing how she immediately got an arm across his belly, bent hom over, evacuating his stomach before taking any other action.

Pale eyes regarded all this, on a screen in a solid old farmhouse, very near another Firelands: solemn eyes, young, and not so young, regarded Marnie's ride, her rescue, her moment with a courageous horse.

Linn and Joseph shared a broad grin as the twins regarded the video with wide and solemn eyes, then looked at one another and said with one voice, "Show-off!"

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

DIRT

A pale eyed woman in a fashionable gown planted the knuckles of her left hand on her belt.

Her right hand was raised, her Mommy-finger extended: she was vigorously addressing the long face of the offender: her forearm, her hand, her finger described short, tight arcs, her expression was stern, her shoulders rolled forward a little, clearly giving this offender Seven Kind of What-For.

The offender was not terribly impressed, and looked away.

Sarah Lynne McKenna ran her hand around the horse's jaw, pulled his head back:  "Don't you look away when I'm talking to you!" she scolded, then she turned, pulled up her absolutely filthy skirt.  

"Just look at what you've done!"

The horse shook his head, slashed his tail, assuming the absolutely nonchalant air of the terribly bored.

Sarah swept up the reins, turned the mare, walked her over to the convenient rock she'd used before: the mare looked sleepy, almost bored, as Sarah hiked her skirt and booted the stirrup and swung easily into saddle leather.

This time she landed flat on her back.

Sarah clenched her teeth, fought to get air back into her shocked lungs, opened watering eyes to see a truly huge, bristle-haired, shining-moist nose filling most of her field of view.

Her hand shot up and she seized the fractious mare's bridle: the horse backed up, surprised, which helped Sarah off the ground and onto her feet.

Sarah hooked her arm over the mare's neck, leaned heavily into the chestnut's neck, fought her diaphragm until it got to working again.

This time Sarah didn't use the mounting stone.

This time she was mad enough to climb aboard by herself, this time she drove her right foot into the free stirrup before the mare had a chance to sling her skyward again, and this time Sarah's legs clamped tightly around the shining, gleaming-healthy barrel.

This time the mare just stood there.

Sarah Lynne McKenna glared at the mare's ears, feeling very much like she'd just clamped her legs around a keg of powder with a sizzling fuse: she waited for the first muscle-shift, the first movement, the first precursor to equine ejection.

The only thing she felt was the very slight shift as the mare slashed her tail, coarse hairs hissing against horsehide as she discouraged a pesky fly, or perhaps just declared her boredom.

"Well?" Sarah demanded.

Equine ears swung back at the sound of her voice, swung forward again.

Sarah's legs never slacked their circumferential grip.

The mare looked around, bored, lowered her head to crop at a likely clump of grass.

Sarah lifted her reins, eased her spurless heels into the mare's ribs:  "Yup, girl."

The mare lifted he head, snorted, stepped out lively, eased into a comfortable singlefoot:  Sarah nodded to the ranch hand loafing indolently at the gate: as the gate swung open, the mare paced through just as nice and easy as you please, and Sarah pointed the mare's nose toward the dusty, two-track road and leaned forward slightly.

"Two bits says she'll come walkin' back," the ranch owner drawled, and his hand considered the departing mare and her filthy rider.

"I reckon," he said slowly, "you'll win that bet."

Most of an hour later, horse and rider returned: the rider was no less dirty -- if it's possible, she was moreso: in addition to her right sleeve bearing the ill effects of powder-fine corral dirt from a hard landing, in addition to her entire back, from the back of her head to her hemline, testifying to the clinging qualities of said soil, now her right side, even her right cheekbone, spoke to having made yet another unplanned descent to the dirt.

Sarah Lynne McKenna rode the mare up to the ranch owner:  the mare stopped, not at all winded -- Sarah had not pushed another man's horse, not this high up, -- she swung down, slipped two fingers into a pocket, pulled out a coin purse.

"You bet me sixbits I couldn't ride this one," she said, "then you doubled that on the number of times she'd throw me."

Sarah handed the man the purse, smiled.

"You win."

 

 

Edited July 24, 2023 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

HEARING AID

Death itself rode the wind that afternoon, utter destruction streamed black and shining in the full sun: a big-city car thief, or so he styled himself, looked over his shoulder at something about four foot wide and ten foot long bore after him like an ebony scaled flying serpent searing through the high mountain air.

The impact of a Malinois, when spring-steel jaws clamp down on a limb, when the full momentum of eighty pounds of fast moving muscle transfers to the target, is a marvelous thing to see: the impact of a Tibetan Mastiff weighing twice a hundred pounds could be catastrophic indeed, save for the fact that The Bear Killer was doing exactly as he'd been told.

He drove in between the fleeing criminal's running legs, hit him behind and between the knees and kept right on going, the general effect on the criminal being that of having a rug yanked out from under his Felony Flyers.

The pursuit was ongoing before they crossed the county line.

Sharon took the call and relayed information to her road units; the two most likely routes were set up for ambush, one with the cruiser in position and ready to launch ahead of the stolen sedan, the other -- on the less likely route -- set up with a deputy on either shoulder, ready to deploy tire spikes, on the theory that if they spiked both lanes, there'd be no way to avoid them in time.

Linn sat in the passenger front, Barrents behind the wheel:  like his father, Paul had a lead foot, and like his father, he was expert and past master at pushing the four wheel drive Suburban to its absolute limit on any surface, instinctively knowing just where the bare edge of control was, and staying there when absolute need presented.

Paul eased the Suburban into gear, left foot ready to drop off the brake pedal: he'd known impatient drivers to lock the brakes, up the RPMs and torque the back axle:  he saw no need to punish his machine for no gain, and held his throttle until just the right moment -- he shot out into the roadway, mashed the go pedal: startled, the pursued vehicle, a State Trooper not far behind, swerved, fishtailed: Barrents watched the mirrors as much as the road ahead, he'd timed it just right, the suspect vehicle grabbed the road's shoulder, threw up a cloud of dirt and gravel -- the State Trooper dropped back, expecting the vehicle to ditch, to cartwheel -- 

Barrents locked the brakes, spun the wheel and throttled hard, screaming several miles' worth of rubber onto the pavement as he came end-for-end, shivered to a stop.

Linn was gone, just that fast -- Barrents was not sure, afterward, if he'd bothered to open his door, or if he'd just passed through it like a vengeful ghost -- he concluded he must've opened the door, because the shotgun was gone with him, and shotguns don't just fade through the door like ancestral spirits.

He did know The Bear Killer was gone, and gone after the driver of the stolen car:  it was back-end-down in the roadside ditch, the driver's door open, and the driver legging it for a stand of scrubby trees.

"SHERIFF'S OFFICE! STOP AND LAY DOWN!" Linn yelled, sprinting across the rough ground.

The State Trooper felt like he was running through cold, clear honey: he was being outpaced by the thief, equalled by the Deputy, but that big black curly furred dog was putting them both to shame: even when the wanted man looked over his shoulder and saw his utter doom lancing through space and trailing Mach diamonds in the process, he did not slack his efforts, not until twice a hundred pounds of muscled mountain Mastiff drove his legs out from under him and he landed flat on his back, and landed hard.

A pale eyed deputy stopped and looked down at him, a stubby twelve-bore swinging casually from his good right hand.

"Keep your hands in plain view," he said conversationally, "and do exactly as I tell you, or I will blow your guts all over ten acres."

The Bear Killer circled, came up beside Linn, sat beside him, tongue out, panting happily:  shining button-black eyes regarded the supine sufferer as if he were regarding a slice of meat.

 

Barrents leaned against the side of the Suburban, arms folded, watching the State Trooper ungently haul the cuffed culprit back to his cruiser.

Once the prisoner was secured, the troop uncoiled his hand, palm up:  "Gimme five!" he grinned, and The Bear Killer happily planted his paw on the proffered palm.

Barrents waved at the troop, pried his backside from against sun-warmed sheet metal as Linn eased the round out of the shotgun's chamber, checked it again, closed the action and slid the high-brass double-ought back into the magazine.

He pointed the muzzle away, dropped the striker, opened the back door for The Bear Killer.

"I let Sharon know the pursuit was ended," Barrents said quietly, his face as expressionless as ever: it was rare for Linn to see emotion on his partner's face, unless he was pinning the ears back on his iron horse.

Linn secured the 870 back in its holder, reached up as The Bear Killer hung his head over Linn's left shoulder.

"That fellow didn't want to listen when you told him to stop," Barrents said quietly.

Linn rubbed The Bear Killer's big head, grinned.  

"That's okay," he chuckled.  "I brought my hearing aid."

The curly black furred hearing aid opened his jaws in a doggy grin and looked absolutely pleased with himself.

 

Edited July 26, 2023 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

THE STORM

Sheriff Linn Keller sat, slowly, deliberately.

Pale eyes regarded the approach of low, black clouds; thunder rumbled threateningly against mountain peaks, which of course the granite slopes rebuffed, swatting the muttered threats back at the rain-heavy cumulonimbus from whence they came.

Sheriff Linn Keller spread his arms, lay them along the back of the porch swing.

His children needed no more invitation than that.

Angela stood beside the swing, a pretty little girl in a pretty little dress and shining, little-girl slippers, her hair in curls and ribbons, delight on her face and wonder in her eyes: Linn used to sit out here when she was the size of the twins, she'd sit cuddled happily up against her Daddy, watching with big and marveling eyes as storms marched overhead, roaring and snapping and deluging and throwing their meteorological tantrums:  by sitting on the front porch with her Daddy, seeing him relaxed, leaned up against him and feeling him, solid, warm, safe, relaxed, Angela learned not only to take no fear in a storm, but to take delight in them.

She stood beside her Daddy now -- she looked over at him, and Linn's heart soared, for his daughter was truly lovely: he made a mental note to park a war club behind his front door, for given a little more time, when his little girl became an equally beautiful young woman, he'd play hell keeping eligible young men from wearing out his stair treads, coming to court this lovely lass.

A pale eyed little boy sat on the porch swing, leaned up against his Pa, on one side; a pale eyed little girl sat on the porch swing as well, leaned up against her Pa on the other: Linn lowered his arms from their spread across the back of the green-painted front porch swing, he laid his arms gently over his young and swung, very slowly, watching the wall of water sweep like a wet, gauzy curtain across the broad gap in the mountains.

The wind carried toward them.

It had been hot that day; heat is the fuel that stokes a thunder storm's boiler, and it had boiled clouds high, high up, until they flattened out like an anvil: Linn and Jacob were out a-horseback, reading the sky, and when they saw the anvil tops form, they turned their mounts back toward home -- as Jacob said with a laugh, "I've no wish to have my Saturday night bath two days early!"

Linn laughed -- he'd almost offered that he didn't want to get his tail feathers wet -- they'd made it home, got their horses stripped down, rubbed down, grained, made sure the barn doors were open so the horses could get in out of the rain if they wished (sometimes they did, generally they didn't, preferring to hide in the lee of a brush-overhung, rocky cleft) -- both men made it to their supper table without having gotten wet, and partook of their evening meal with their family.

Linn looked over top of what few Firelands roofs he could see, in the distance; his eyes ranged up the mountainside to where he knew Jacob's stone house stood: he could not see it from here, but he knew where it was, and he wondered if his son had his own young out on his own roofed front porch, watching the marching storm clouds.

A gust of cooler air came across the porch and Linn's nostrils flared appreciatively.

"Smell that?" he murmured.  "Smells like rain."

Young nostrils tasted the wind, young memories recalled their Pa's quiet words: in years to come, they would smell this again, and remember, and would speak the same words to their own children, but that would not be for some years yet.

The first few, fat, heavy, very cold drops hit the porch roof overhead -- loud they were, sharp, but with paternal arms around young shoulders, with that quiet, contented expression of a father holding his young and enjoying the show Mama Nature laid out for them, neither child felt any discomfort at the hydraulic concussion directly overhead.

Linn considered the clouds, watching for the inverted lumps that might indicate trouble, watched for the rotation that could foretell a twister: tornadoes were rare in the mountains, but not entirely unknown:  Linn considered telling his young what he was looking for, decided against it.

No, he wanted them to feel no fear at a storm, and describing a twister might plant the seed of fear.

His Grandma Gracie was terribly afraid of storms.

She'd hide in the fruit cellar with a blanket or a rug over her head, hugging herself and shivering until it was past: Linn blinked as a memory, unbidden, scrolled through his recollection.

He recalled how his Grandma lifted the quilt from where she'd draped it over her, looked out.

She'd blinked, surprised: she didn't recall bringing a candle down, but there it was, set on a shelf, lit, with a glass chimney keeping it from the stray air that philtered around the heavy cellar doors.

This wasn't what really surprised her.

What really surprised her was her nine year old grandson, standing facing the cellar doors, feet set apart and ax in hand.

He must have felt her movement.

He turned, smiled, that gentle smile that reminded her of her own dear Albert, and she asked, "Leeyin" -- she always drawled his name out -- "Leeyin, what are you doin'?"

"No storm's goin' to hurt you, Grandma," he said seriously, young fingers flexing and clenching the hand shaped ax handle.  "I'll not countenance that!"

Linn felt his twins, cuddled up against him sigh, one, then the other: he smiled a little, remembering how his Grandma hugged him, there in the fruit cellar, and how she'd laughed, just a little, and how his Ma told him later he'd done a good thing not taking offense at his Grandma's laughter.

Esther's mother, as well, feared thunderstorms terribly, and Esther was not comfortable with them, simply because her dear Mama was terrified of them, and she and Linn talked about that fear, and she'd asked him to sit out on the porch swing with their children during a storm, to show them there was nothing to fear -- or at least to show that it was possible to not fear them.

The twins weren't born yet when lightning hit the Rosenthal barn and fired it: Angela was but a very little girl, and Linn doubted if she remembered it (she did) -- but Linn remembered when an outlaw he was pursuing, rode hard past his house, lost his seat when his horse fell, and ran: he'd stopped, taken a shot at the pursuing Sheriff, and Angela raised a hand and a pointing finger, slashed it down like she was casting a horsewhip:  "Bad man! Dead!" -- and Zeus himself, at the behest of an incensed little girl with bright-blue eyes, cast a bolt of bright destruction that blasted a man into scattered meat, a pair of smoking boots the only intact part of his criminal carcass.

Linn rode up on Angela, who was standing there looking shocked:  she looked up at her Daddy and said in a tiny little voice, "Did I do that?"

Linn had never asked her to cast lightning again:  partly because he did not want to deprive her of the belief that she could actually do it, partly out of fear that she actually could.

(She'd slashed her finger down at a fencepost, the next good rip snorter of a storm that came along, and that fence post was blown to splinters by a lightning bolt. This was the very last time Angela ever tried it, for like her father, she neither wanted to find out she actually couldn't cast lightning, and because she was honestly afraid that she really could!)

A pale eyed father, his pale eyed twins and a blue-eyed daughter with her hair in curls and ribbons watched the oncoming grey curtain, heard the hiss of its approach, laughed together as it advanced over them and past them, enveloping their house and curtaining their roofed porch in the sudden inundation of a summer downpour:  Angela bounced on her toes, clapping her hands with delight, then pointing:  "Look, Daddy!  Hail!"

Linn felt the rain-mist on his face as he leaned forward a little, then looked to his right, to his left, looked to the front steps:  "Can you two see that?" he asked, and two energetic children slid off the front porch swing, hit the boards flat footed, scampered for the steps, stared awe-struck as hard, white pellets rattled off the treads.

Linn came up between them, went down on one knee, reached down, raked up a half dozen of the cold, icy sky rocks: he gave one to each twin, one to Angela, he popped one in his mouth, crunched happily on the fragile, convoluted, sweet pea sized gift from the storm's turbulent heart.

Esther and the maid watched from behind the screened front door, smiling:  Esther loved watching the storm, but from inside the comforting embrace of her home: she was not entirely comfortable with storms, but she did not outrightly fear them, and she smiled and closed her eyes and smelled the rain, and remembered standing on the porch of a Carolina mansion while her own big strong Papa went to one knee beside her, his arm around her waist, as they two watched the storm come, and deluge, and move on.

Linn reached one arm around one young bottom, the other arm around the other young bottom, and Angela jumped on his back:  Linn laughed, stood, easily bearing the weight of three of his young.

"Mother," he said, turning and grinning boyishly at his wife, "storms give me an appetite. Did I see a cake in there that hadn't been et yet?"

 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

BREAKFAST

Smoke rose, blue and thin, as bacon sizzled in the thin cast iron pan.

Hungry eyes watched the lean, wizened hand wrapped around the handle of the hand forged knife, saw the honed clip point spear and twist and flip the bacon, one thick strip, another: a second hand, companion to the first, reached down -- it wore a leather glove, seamed, hand sewn, fitted to its owner by a woman skilled in the art -- the pan was lifted, another few sticks of dry wood added to the hot little fire, the pan was replaced on the four rocks harvested for that purpose.

Woodsmoke, clean air, frying bacon: few things smell as good when the belly thinks the throat's been cut, when the belly is wrapped around the lean backbone: Kentucky-blue eyes closed with pleasure at the first bite of bacon, fried too long, perhaps, but by God! it tasted good!

Eggs, harvested but hours ago from an ill-tempered hen, cracked and added to sizzling bacon grease, bread was sawed off the cloth-wrapped lump, dipped in the bacon grease and fried just a little: strong white teeth sheared through the light crunchy crust.

Coffee.

Hot, strong, a grunt as the bottom lip protested the searing heat through the tin cup: some things are tolerated, some pain is worth the pleasure, and coffee of a mountain morning is a delightful thing.

Strong teeth crunched bacon and the taste of eggs and the flavor of bread barely fried in bacon grease, a thing best shared, and this was.

Gracie Maxwell, flying Valkyrie One, lay undetected against an iron meteor, silent in the vastness of space: her ship, its symbiotic systems attuned to her personal physiology, tended her every physical and nutritional need: Valkyrie Flight was scattered through the system, their minds linked: Gracie was remembering a breakfast, when she and her Pa rode out on muleback and were gone a week, and her sisters, her Valkyries, all smelled the coffee, tasted the eggs, felt the bacon crunch between their teeth: each Valkyrie was alone, isolated, separated from the next living soul by light-hours and light-years, but in this, their minds connected, they were shoulder to shoulder, sharing this common moment of delight.

Not all the Valkyries knew what it was to have a family; none but Gracie knew life in the mountains, yet all knew the feel of a good mule under saddle, knew the wise and approving look of a loving father as he regarded his darlin' daughter:  all shared in the moment when they came to the crest of a high point, and the world fell away at their feet, infinity stretching the horizon well beyond its normal limits: still, unmoving figures in spherical black helmets, silent on contoured couches inside long, slender ships, laughed and hugged their Papa and felt his muscles and his strength and his warmth and smelled his tobacco and his whiskey and smelled the mules and the mountains.

A pale eyed Ambassador, smiling, looked up from the treaty she'd been reading, her expression soft, for she too smelled the mountains:  she tilted her head and looked around the table at the several representatives of several governments.

"Gentlemen," she said, "I believe we are in agreement here" -- and so saying, she struck fire to a ceremonial beeswax candle, and heated a lump of sealing-wax:  her head was tilted slightly, a very feminine pose, as her long, slender fingers turned the dark-blue, shellac-imbued blob, turned it until it was soft, then pressed a deliberate, precisely placed blob on the document: her act was one of ceremony, her act was obsolete, but everyone understood the value of ceremony and of formality.

Lensless cameras recorded the placing of a stainless-steel seal on the soft, dark-blue blob, watched as feminine fingers pressed firmly: one camera zoomed in as the seal was lifted, revealing the Firelands signet -- a volcanic cone rising above a flat plain, with a capital F carved into the mountainside.

Ambassador Marnie Keller leaned back as an aide removed the treaty: the representatives rose, as did the pale eyed Ambassador in the McKenna gown and a fashionable little hat:  pleasantries were spoken, as they always are, hands were shaken, as they always are: in such moments, words are weapons, and deceit often lies behind a smiling face, but none who looked into those pale eyes, none who felt the firmness of her grip, doubted the veracity of her first words, when she spoke at the beginning of these proceedings:

"What I purpose, I perform," she'd declared, and she managed to hammer out an agreement between two of the Confederate worlds and the Central Confederacy, treading that delicate line that understood any member of the Confederacy was perfectly free to tell the rest to go pound sand, and yet emphasizing that a bundle of sticks is not easily broken, but if the sticks fall away from one another, each individual can be easily sundered, and the unraveling of such a bundle is made easier the more sticks fall away.

Marnie's role in these negotiations was unexpected -- after all, she represented a very minor colony in a very minor system, a very long way from the heavy table at which they'd been seated -- but hers was the role of a neutral party, one with so little to contribute that she could be considered truly neutral:  she'd listened carefully to each involved member, giving each the steady, unblinking gaze which at once declared her full attention, and seemed to say at the same time, "Lie to me and I will rip your guts out right in front of God and everybody!" -- her only distraction was, just as she'd reached for her sealing wax and prepared to light the ceremonial Candle of Accord, for a moment -- for just a moment -- she remembered a morning in the mountains, a morning when she, too, shared a breakfast with her pale eyed Daddy: it was as if, in the space between heartbeats, she felt the cool mountain air on her face, and she smelled the downdraft off the perpetual snowpack above.

 

Gracie Maxwell's body lay still as any corpse's: her lungs inflated, deflated, her heart beat steadily, her body's systems were carefully maintained, both by her own native physiology, and by her ship's augmentation: beneath the shining black visor that covered her face, she smiled, just a little, the way a young girl will smile when she feels her Daddy's arms around her.

She took a deeper breath, she felt the incoming message: it was as if she rose, as if she stood, as if she lifted her chin and lifted her arms, as if she herself launched off the iron meteor and disappeared.

"Valkyrie One, enroute."

Edited July 28, 2023 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

YES, THEY ARE LIKE THAT

"Linn?"

"Hm?"

Shelly cuddled up against her husband, closed her eyes.

"I'm going to kill Fitz."

"That's nice, dear."

Shelly drove her sharp little knuckles into Linn's ribs, bringing a grunt from her husband, and she felt the silent shaking of his laughter, which did not improve her temper in the least little bit.

"They're going to have a baby shower at the firehouse, you know."

"Kind of figured they would."

"I told Fitz I was having twins."

"And?"

"Today he gave me a little gift wrapped box. I opened it and there was the loveliest cedar chest -- just a little thing -- and a note that said "Seven Day Diaper Saver Kit."

Linn shifted a little, ran his arm around his wife's back, drew her closer, and Shelly wondered if this was a mark of affection, of reassurance, or to keep her from punching him again.

"I opened the cedar chest."

"And?"

"It contained fourteen corks and a note."

Shelly felt her husband draw away a little, as if looking at her in surprise: it was hard to tell, as the bedroom was fully dark.

"Fourteen corks," she repeated. "The note said this was one week's worth of Diaper Savers for a set of twins."

Linn held his wife firmly enough she couldn't get room enough for another punch to the ribs, but it didn't keep her from trying.

Next day Linn was absently rubbing his ribs.

Paul Barrents looked at him and asked, "You okay?"

"Oh, yeah," Linn murmured, looking away, then looked back and half-grinned.

"Shelly punched me a good one last night."

"What did you do?"

"She told me Fitz gave her a seven day diaper saver kit -- it was a box of corks -- and I laughed."

Paul Barrents' obsidian eyes were bright, dark, inscrutable, impassive, for at least five seconds, then he imagined the Sheriff's wife winding up and driving a haymaker in his boon companion's ribs in retaliation for a husbandly offense.

It was one of the few times the man grinned, outside of leadfooting it around a curve in a pursuit.

He nodded, slowly, said in a wise voice, "Yes, they will do that," then he gave Linn a long look and confessed, "He beat me to it. That's what I was going to get her!"

Two men tried hard to keep a straight face.

Two men failed entirely.

Sharon, at her dispatcher's desk, heard laughter from behind the Sheriff's closed door, and smiled a little to hear it: she opened her desk drawer and brought out a fresh pencil, and paused to look at the cardboard box, gift wrapped and ribbon tied, parked beside the narrow stack of yellow painted #2 lead writing sticks: she smiled again, remembering the moment when she realized the perfect gift to get for the Sheriff's wife's baby shower.

She'd taken a decorative little cardboard gift box and had her daughter, a calligrapher, carefully letter "Seven Day Diaper Saver Kit" on the lid.

Fourteen tiny corks did seem like quite a few, she knew, but fourteen it would have to be, for the woman was carrying twins.

The Sheriff will laugh at this one, she thought, and closed the drawer quietly.

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

IN DUE TIME

The maid felt a sudden tick of worry in her Irish belly.

She was the hired girl, she was an employee, she kept telling herself, though this Sheriff, his wife and their children, treated her more like a member of the family: instead of "Mary, do this," and "Mary, do that," it was, "Mary, could I trouble you for this," or, "Mary, could I ask a favor?" -- and of course when his several young came up to her, and gave her a spontaneous hug, or whispered a breathy "Mawwy, I wuvs oo" in her ear, it made her entire day bright and worthwhile.

Mary was, nonetheless, aware of Station and Place and that She was the Hired Girl, and They were the Lord and the Mistress of the Mansion, and mansion it was! -- her home in Ireland was but a single room hut, a hovel some called it, but 'twas laid up of stone with a good thatch on the roof, and it had been a place of laughter and of love -- hard work, aye, hard work is all she'd known, and when her family was pinched with poverty and with hunger, she'd managed to work harder and save her coin, and she'd bought passage to that new Ireland, to a place where a girl might tread streets of gold and wear fine gowns and not die broken and callus-handed!

The maid turned, slowly, then carefully, silently, placed the just-filled coffee pot on the stove: the Sheriff liked his coffee, and he'd told her once he had what he called "A Genuine Talent for Rotting the Bottom out of a Good Granite Pot!" -- he'd laughed, and it was in her nature to laugh politely, for that's what the Hired Girl did -- but she could not help herself: his expression was so woeful, his tone so filled with regret and sorrow, he'd rounded his shoulders and slumped his back and she'd laughed like a delighted little girl -- she'd covered her mouth with one hand, she'd gripped the back of a kitchen chair with the other, she felt her face reddening: the Sheriff winked at her, straightened, placed a dramatic hand to his breast and added haughtily, "Trust me, darlin', I can get in trouble just settin' in my easy chair!"

Now, this still-dark morning, the Girl set the just-filled coffee pot on the stove: the Sheriff was sipping the old coffee, that vile stuff that sat overnight and was not fit to drink, yet here he was, drinking it: she berated herself for not being up before the Sheriff, she mentally flogged herself for not reading his mind and having a full breakfast ready before the rest of the household began to stir!

"Darlin'," the Sheriff said quietly, "I owe you an apology."

The maid was bent over, she'd gripped a handful of kindling to feed the stove, and she froze at the Sheriff's words.

She pulled the kindling free, picked up the lifter, thrust it into one of the stove-lids: kindling went into an efficient little pile on the coals remaining from the night before; another handful, she knew, and she could fire the stove: it would take a minute or two, and so she turned, her hands folded very properly in her apron.

"Ye need no' apologize," she began, and the Sheriff raised a forestalling hand.

"Let me finish," he said quietly.  "Have a seat."

Worry was displaced by outright fear: I'm to be discharged, she thought, panic seizing her: where will I go now? -- but the Sheriff's next words relieved at least a little of her anxiety.

"You are a fine looking young woman (he's trying to bed me!) and you run a household like a fine watch (he's leaving his wife and he wants me to run off with him!)," the Sheriff said, his voice quiet, deep, almost fatherly -- his words were reassuring, gentle in the shadowed morning.

"We could not ask for better help than you've been."

"Are ye dischargin' me then?" she asked, her spine straight, her face wooden.

"No," the Sheriff said firmly.  "Absolutely not."

She felt the cold grip of fear around her belly loosen, just a little, a very little.

"Women are scarce," the Sheriff said, "and you've had suitors."

"I'm sorry, sir, it'll not happen again --"

Again the Sheriff's upraised palm.

"Darlin', sometimes I have trouble sayin' what's on my mind," the pale eyed lawman said, his voice still pitched to be gentle, reassuring: "when the time comes that you find a man that is good husband material, Esther and I are agreed that you should have a proper dowry, and you shall choose who walks you down the aisle to your new husband."

The Sheriff watched as his hired girl's eyes widened, as her mouth opened: she had the expression of someone who just felt the floor drop out from under her.

There was indeed a young man she'd been seeing -- Herself had seen to it that Mary had time off, and encouraged her to be about her own affairs, and she'd said it with the gentle and knowing look of a woman who remembered what it was to be young, to be a maiden, to have her hand pursued by fine looking young men.

"The Finnegan," she blurted.  " 'Twould be Sean Finnegan."

Linn raised an eyebrow and smiled.  "For husband, or to walk you down the aisle?"

"No' for a husband," the maid said quickly, lowering her head, and Linn knew if the light was better, he would see her blush furiously:  "I've ... I've been seein' th' engineer."

Linn nodded. 

This was not news to him; he knew -- from several sources -- that the man was of a mind to marry, and he'd gone so far as to ask Brother William to have a proper Catholic wedding for them.

"I'd no' leave ye wi'out due notice," the maid said almost shyly, and even in the weak light, she saw the Sheriff's quick, delighted grin.

"Your engineer has a house and land already," Linn said, "and he told me a man ought to ask the father for the maiden's hand in marriage."

Mary's eyes widened and her hand went to her mouth.

"He asked me for your hand, and I gave him permission to pursue your interest."

The Sheriff leaned forward a little, looked very intently at the shocked-still hired girl.

"Darlin', you are your own soul, and you have a say in who you choose for husband. You are free to say yea or nay. I've found women are creatures of remarkably good sense, and I will leave that choice entirely up to you."

Linn felt movement behind him.

As he'd planned, Esther was in the shadows, close enough to hear his every word, yet out of sight, until the right time: they'd talked about this moment, and they agreed it proper that Linn address the maid in such a way, for he was the nearest to a father she had on this continent.

Esther stepped out: the maid rose, ran to her: two women embraced, the Sheriff rose, slipped silently from the room, smiling a little at the weepy little squeak he heard behind him.

 

The time did indeed come when Mary was walked down the aisle, in the sanctuary of the Rabbitville monastery: she gripped the big, muscled arm of a red-headed, blue-eyed Irish fire chief, stiff and stern in a tailored suit he rarely wore: a man who looked handsome and formal in a new suit rather than his red bib front shirt stood, grinning, beside the tonsured Abbott: the newlywed couple rode the well-packed wedding train back to Firelands, where she was carried across the threshold of a fine, big house she'd never seen, into a spacious and decorated parlor, where a broad shouldered Irish fire chief and a pale eyed Sheriff kissed the bride and shook the groom's hand, where the banker handed the new husband title and deed to home and property, where a bag of gold coin clinked, bulging and heavy, in the middle of their tablecloth-covered, gift-heavy, leaf-spread dining room table.

The next morning, shortly before noon, Mary answered a knock at the door of her house -- her house! -- she wore a properly matronly gown, instead of the starched apron-and-cap of a hired girl.

She opened the door and, for a long moment, stared.

A young woman stood there in starched cap and apron: she lifted her chin a little, handed Mary a folded sheet of paper.

"I understand you'll be needin' a hired girl," she declared.  "A man wi' pale eyes paid me a month's wages t' come an' gi'e ye this."

The German engineer came up behind Mary, laid gentle, strong hands on her shoulders:  "What is it, dear?" he asked, and Mary turned and handed him the Sheriff's letter of recommendation.

It is to Mary's credit that she treated this hired girl, so much like herself, as she herself had been treated in the Sheriff's household, and when the time came, a dignified old fireman in a black suit walked her down the aisle of the Rabbitville monastery, where a nervous young man waited for her at the altar -- but this was in due time, and not for a few years.

 

 

 

 

Edited July 29, 2023 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

SWIFTWATER

"Swiftwater, arriving."

Yellow lights came to life, stainless-steel reflectors spinning around the stationary, candle-flame-shaped emitters, a warning buzzer's intermittent voice was harsh in the echoing stone bay: one moment it was cavernous, empty, harshly lighted; the next, a shining, boxy ship hovered, its landing pads extended, then descended the last few inches, until it stood on its own pins on the flawless, dead-smooth, absolutely-level floor.

As was protocol, the bay was empty during landing: the landing control officer was behind a heavy transparent wall, seated at the control panel, watchful, paranoid, ready to deploy any number of emergency devices, depending on what particular thing went wrong.

So far nothing had, but their LCOs were intensively drilled on simulators, they were very good at what they did: so far their skills had not been needed, but every last one of these intense young officers was determined that, if it hit the fan on their watch, they would do their level best to contain and minimize whatever losses may occur!

The boxy ship with the chisel-cut nose and black viewscreens lowered, powered down: the spinning yellow warning lights turned off, and the LCO pressed a toggle.

"Swiftwater, welcome home. You are clear to disembark."

Another toggle, and atmosphere doors slid open: yelling, running humanity surged into the bay as the shining shuttle's side opened, unfolded, became a surprisingly broad set of stairs.

Right ahead of the unfolding stairway was a brand new nose art, applied to a brand new ship: it showed a pale-eyed woman on a rearing mustang, shattering a restless river into shining diamonds: beneath, in a flowing Spencerian script, Swiftwater.

Marnie appeared in the doorway, smiling, blinking at the roar that greeted her emergence: she spread her arms, laughing -- This must be what it feels like to run for office, she thought, as she turned a little, waving -- then she picked up her skirts and descended the stairs, carefully, not wanting to step on her hem and end up on her face.

She'd done that before, but not since leaving Earth: she knew what it was to tread upon her hemline and fall downstairs -- her big strong Daddy caught her as she fell, and she was at once humiliated, relieved and delighted, for in such moments of surprise, nothing -- nothing! -- is as reassuring as finding herself safe and unhurt in her Daddy's arms.

The sound was impressive: men and women alike yelled their welcome, their approval, that Their Marnie was home, that Their Marnie, worker of diplomatic wonders on far away worlds, that she -- as peacemaker, negotiator, listener, persuader and used-car salesman -- was home, safe, among family, among friends, among community that trusted her first to keep them safe, then trusted her to lead them through the tumult and uncertainty of first meeting an almost-alien Confederacy, and becoming one of them -- and now, now that she was using her skills as Sheriff and as Ambassador, had chosen to return home, among the people from whence she'd come.

Ambassador Marnie Keller accepted the single red rose from a little girl with shining eyes and long, long legs, a little girl of few years who was nearly as tall as Marnie already: a little boy, grinning, held out a ceremonial stirrup-cup.

Marnie held the rose in one hand, accepted the cup -- her lips moved, but in the roaring commotion of happy throats, all shouting in greeting, anything she said would be utterly lost -- Marnie's looked very directly at her young benefactor, and he saw her lips shape the words Thank you, and it seemed that he and Marnie were the only two not screaming their emotions.

For a moment, for a heartbeat, as Marnie's eyes held an adoring boy's, they were alone, and her unheard words, shaped by unheard lips, were for him alone.

Marnie blinked, the spell broken: she raised the silver stirrup-cup, smiling: turning well to the right, then well to her left, she included all present in her salute, her image on the several screens lining the cavernous bay, turning with her.

Marnie brought the silver cup to her lips, drank.

The silence was as profound as the cheers, the roars of welcome, had been.

Marnie closed her eyes, savored the taste for a precious moment: the rose lay along her left forearm, as if it were a grand bouquet instead of a single stem: she extended her arm, an anonymous hand took the cup.

Marnie looked around, knowing her next words would be flashed planetwide, and those that knew her, saw the mischief in her eyes as she declared loudly, "WOW! THAT WENT DOWN LIKE A LIGHTED KEROSINE LAMP!"

Ambassador Marnie Keller, settler of disputes and arbiter of grievances, maker of accords and settler of disputes, dipped her knees and spread her arms: she seized a child with pale eyes, stood, then ran her free arm around a grinning man in a severely-cut but immaculately-tailored black suit:  Marnie kissed her child and kissed her husband, she threw back her head and laughed, and the three of them stood for the obligatory photo session under the brand-new nose art on a brand-new diplomatic shuttle.

 

 

 

Edited July 30, 2023 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

FLINT AND STEEL

Pale eyes surveyed the wash, read it like an old newspaper ... a very old newspaper, yellowed a little with time, cracked and wrinkled, but still very, very legible.

An artist's fingers held a pouch, cut from what used to be a long skirt: a pair of red cowboy boots, scuffed now, dusty and needing polished, skipped from one rock to another, careful to leave no track, no trace that could easily be followed: Marnie knew a skilled tracker, like her brother, would be able to follow her -- Jacob could track a fly across a glass pane! she thought, and her eyes smiled just as little as she did -- she read where a long ago flood piled brush, branches, vegetation: it was a natural bonfire, and once lighted, it would provide a beacon, a signal.

Marnie had enough fine stuff for tinder, she'd found what looked for all the world like flint: one rock, driven against another, and she had a fresh spall; she struck the back of her knife against it, a long, raking, experimental stroke, and this time she did smile.

Woman's magic, she thought.

I can draw fire from rock!

It was a stray thought: she pushed it viciously to the side: she had to concentrate on getting found.

Marnie remembered -- before they crashed -- the pilot said he'd gotten off a distress call: he didn't call it a mayday, he'd called it something else:  Marnie carefully piled tinder, dragged small branches over it, gauged the wind, judged that if she fired the pile here, hungry flames would carry well into the water-washed stack, now long dried out by the desert sun.

She drew back against the brush pile, listened, watched.

The silence was profound.

I'll wait until there's sign of rescue, she thought, now to find water.

She heard something crunch: she had a good position, or as best she could arrange while thinking of firing the brushpile: she was out of sight, no one could approach from the rear, or from two sides.

She saw movement: her hand was welded around the handle of her .357, and she tasted copper.

Voices.

Odd accent.

Isolated population, unique accent and dialect.

Marnie was lower than the surrounding sandy, rocky terrain: slitted eyes could just see the frayed crowns of two shapeless, sun-bleached hats, then a third.

"Doan' see no tracks. Nobuddy come this-a-way."

Marnie breathed slowly, through her nose, willing her soul to stillness.

"Goddenny wadder?"

"Spring yonder."

Marnie listened, waited; she rose, silent as a desert ghost, just enough to see over the rim of the ancient, water-carved gully.

Two figures, not far away, retreating.

One was close.

Marnie released the grip on her .357, slid the knife from its sheath: she was less a cultured Ambassador and more a mountain cat, silent, stalking, looking quickly around.

The third had no idea his quarry was within ten miles when a hard hand seized his chin, brought his head around: he fell back against something that smelled good, something kind of soft, all but the hand gripping his chin, all but the honed edge just cutting through the first layer of skin on his throat.

"One sound," Marnie hissed, "and you die!"

Marnie bent him backward, her knee in his back: he dropped a rifle of some kind, spread his hands, his fingers.

"Why are you here?"

"They wuzzn't all kilt," he gasped.

"How many of them survived?"

"Whattaya mean?"

"I mean we saw their ship go down. How many of them survived and why do you want them?"

"They's trespassers. We's gonna take 'em back."  He tried to move, until Marnie hissed, "Don't."

"How menny'a yew iz there?"

"More than you will like," Marnie whispered, her voice a dry hiss. 

Her cell phone vibrated, its quiet buzz inaudible: Marnie sheathed her knife, ran her arm quickly and unexpectedly around the stubbled man's throat:  she choked him out, quickly, brutally, knowing she had to silence him fast and effectively.

Marnie squatted, turned, satisfied herself she was alone: she withdrew her phone, pressed a button, tapped and swiped the screen and raised the implement.

SITREP? she read on its screen.

HOSTILES, she tapped.

INJURED?

NO

NEED LOCATION SENSOR INTERFERENCE

CAN YOU SEE FIRE

Marnie looked at the still figure face-down on the sand: he would be waking up and when he woke, there would be hell to pay, but it bought her time.

Her phone's screen showed the words YES SEARCHING

She looked ahead, knowing the departing pair would miss their companion and return.

She did not have much time.

She lifted what was left of her skirts, sprinted for the brushpile.

The knife, so recently put to persuasion, pointed stiffly at the little pile of tinder she'd carefully gathered:  the precious flint was in a pocket, then between her thumb-and-forefinger: Marnie struck the knife's spine on a long angle, showering sparks, raining fires on the tinder.

She dropped flint and steel, picked up the tinder, cupped it in her hands, blew gently:  smoke, coals, then flame:  she placed it, nested it with small sticks and the last of the tinder: the brushpile was dry, dry, who knows how many years it had been since the waters that piled it up like this: Marnie wiped the knife's blade, sheathed it, pocketed the flint, drew her .357.

The fire would be a rescue beacon for the Confederacy, but its smoke would be a summoning finger for those who sought to capture her:  Marnie stood a little, looking around, ran out to the groaning man, snatched up his rifle.

He raised his head, shook it, pushed against the sand, came up on all fours, until Marnie drew back and drove the rifle's butt into the back of his head and put him back down on the ground.

No hair trigger, she thought, didn't go off when I clobbered him.

Is there a safety?

The rifle was smooth -- no lever, charging handle, nothing familiar -- 

I'll have one shot.

Fire, hot and hungry, spread fast: smoke rose, desert-dry wood hissed, sizzled, crackled, a column of thin blue smoke rose almost straight up --

Marnie shouldered the rifle --

Two figures ran toward her, yelling.

A pale eye settled as a sunburnt cheek pressed down on the rifle's comb.

Marnie saw two men stop, raise their rifles --

She put the front sight on the left hand attacker's chest --

The trigger was smooth under her finger --

Something shining seared into existence just ahead of her, something long and slender with the blackened twin bells of a pair of reaction engines pointing at her:  Marnie's finger came off the trigger, she felt air displace again, on her left, then her right:  the sky overhead was bisected by something fast moving and silver, slicing through atmosphere above.

Marnie heard running feet behind her.

Something told her the cavalry just arrived.

 

Marnie gripped the wineglass by its delicate stem: she spun the shining purple liquid gently, sniffed its bouquet, took an experimental sip.

"You should try some of Uncle Will's Finest," she said casually as she regarded the delicate, blown-glass payload.  "This is a very good vintage."

"We're glad you like it," came the cautious reply.  

The Confederate Ambassador sat beside Marnie, immaculate in his grey uniform with scarlet piping trim: his voice was quiet, deep, reassuring: he'd admitted to Marnie in private that he'd always had a deep, fatherly voice, but he'd practiced sounding reassuring.

"We will dispense with the usual accusations and histrionics that come with shooting down a diplomatic shuttle," he began, "let's just set that one aside for now."  He looked at the half-dozen men seated uncomfortably on their side of the table.  "We understand that your ancestors, like ours, were taken from their homes and deposited here."

Nods, agreement: these representatives of a half-dozen continents were obviously treading cautiously, in the presence of these representatives of a very obviously unbeatable firepower.

"You are not alone."

He looked at Marnie.

"Gentlemen," she said, "I represent the first colony Earth established on the planet Mars. My colleague represents the Confederacy" -- she saw a widening of the eyes, a dilation of the pupils, at her use of the term -- "which, like yourselves, descended from Southrons abducted by aliens as a disposable mercenary force. The Confederacy overthrew their alien abductors, reverse engineered their technology, and now occupy thirteen star systems."

Marnie smiled gently, feeling the sunburnt skin over her cheekbones pulling a little as she did.

"Our Martian colonies are much like yourselves. We're fiercely independent, we have to fare for ourselves, but we've benefitted greatly from our alliance with the Confederacy. Now" -- she smiled, just a little, her fingertips gently on the shining tabletop -- "my father tried to teach me at a tender age that, 'Hurry Up is Brother to Mess It Up!' --"  her smile became broad and genuine as she remembered Linn's quiet words -- "and y'know, it's amazing how often I proved me dear Pappy right!"

Marnie's frankness and her unexpected humor had the desired effect.

The planetary representatives' reserve did not collapse entirely, but it was the icebreaker they needed to relax a little, and to begin talks with an obviously powerful Confederacy they honestly never even knew existed.

 

The Firelands Sheriff's Office had a number of items on display.

Beside the formal portrait of Sheriff Marnie Keller was a framed trophy from her days as Ambassador.

A knife, in a glass front frame, and mounted beside it, a thick shard of flint.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

CHARGE!

"JACOB!"

The voices were not quiet: the name was shouted, joyfully, and with all the enthusiastic energy of the very young: Jacob Keller went to one knee and spread his arms as the twins SLAMMED into him, as Angela stopped short, jumping on her toes, her eyes big, looking more like the little girl she'd been than the young woman she'd become: two mountain Mastiffs, one snowdrift-white, the other sinner's-heart black, romped happily into the fray, yow-wow-wow'ing their deep-chested greeting, their tails threatening to knock over the hall tree or the nearest mountain, should either hazard within their power-swinging arcs.

Jacob's Stetson fell off at a generally rearward vector: his head thrown back, eyes slitted, he had a grin on his face that would illuminate a coal mine: the good strong laughter of a young man in the green strength of youth filled the kitchen as Shelly lay gentle hands on her husband's shoulders.

Linn reached up and laid a hand on his wife's fingers, and she felt her husband's happiness radiating from him.

Jacob was home, and all was well.

 

Linn waited in his study.

Jacob took one twin over each shoulder, bearing his giggling payload up the stairs, followed by his Mama: she expected him to toss each twin into their respective bunk like a sack of taters off a tired man's shoulder, but he didn't:  he carefully set each down on the edge of the bed, waiting for his Mama to turn the covers down before he did:  to each he whispered a promise to tell them of his time back East, where he'd been on loan to another department: this was only partly a lie, but necessary, for the twins were not privy to their family's close connection to the Firelands colony.

Angela waited outside her bedroom door, big-eyed and almost ghostly in her floor length, white flannel nightgown: Jacob stopped square in front of her, took her hands in his.

"You've grown," he said softly, and Angela heard her Daddy's voice come out of her big brother's mouth:  she swallowed nervously, chewed on her bottom lip, looked up with what he judged to be reluctance.

It was adoration, but like most men, Jacob was not all that good at reading women.

"I've taken my nursing boards," she said hesitantly.

"And?"  Jacob's hands tightened gently, his eyes unblinking, pale, his attention absolutely on his little sis.

"I'll know tomorrow," she whispered.

"And you can't sleep."

Jacob hugged his sis to him, smelled her soap-and-water-and-lilac-and-sun-dried sheets smell:  he hugged her tight, tighter, straightened:  he lifted his little sis's bare feet free of the floor, held her, felt her warm, real, alive, alive!

Linn looked up as Jacob came downstairs, silent in sock feet.

Jacob gripped a chair, drew it up close so he and his parents could speak quietly.

He knew Linn kept no secrets from his wife; Shelly had long ago proven herself capable of keeping secrets -- a necessary skill, as the Confederacy was as yet unknown to Earth.

Jacob hunched forward, elbows on his knees.

"Mama," he said, "thank you."

Shelly blinked, looked at her husband, at their son.

"Forrrrr ...?" she asked, spreading her hands.

"Mama," Jacob explained, "Marnie is in every way" -- he hesitated, then raised his hand like an Italian, fingers curled, his thumb touching his middle finger -- "a Lady!" -- he lowered his hand and grinned.

"Mama, there's only one place she could've learned that, and I'm lookin' at her.

"Thank you for caring enough about being a Lady, to model that behavior for her to learn."

Jacob looked at his father.

"Sir, Marnie is at once Sheriff, and Ambassador from Firelands."  He looked away, frowned, looked back.

"Sir, do you remember ... you recall we used to go through the Journals, and you'd read to me about Sarah Lynne McKenna?"

Linn nodded, slowly, thoughtfully.

"You took me to Denver once and showed me a portrait in their ... tunnels, the dungeons, whatever they call 'em. There was a photograph of their Detective Bureau, and Sarah was right there among them."

"I remember."

"I was kind of young and I was kind of confused when I saw it."

"You thought it was your Gammaw."

"I did, sir, and I grew up watching Gammaw raisin' her own brand of Hell when it was needed, and Marnie is just like her."  

Jacob frowned a little.

"Apparently, sir, she is as much a hell raiser as Ambassador as she is as Sheriff."

Linn frowned a little, turned his head, as if to bring a good ear to bear.

"Some of the Confederate worlds are still quite young. Several of 'em are ... they're still in the pioneer stage, like Firelands was when Old Pale Eyes was Sheriff."

Linn's left eyebrow raised a little: he, too, was hunched over, his elbows on his knees, the very mirror of his son's posture -- which brought a quiet smile to Shelly's face, carefully hidden behind her cupped hand over her mouth.

"There's something else, sir."

Linn nodded.

"Now -- Marnie was shot -- she's fine, Mama -- but she went back to that world and she went in with a shotgun and a .357 and she just plainly cleaned house. Kicked the door and went in killin' and gave it to understand that she'd not tolerate any such bad manners, and she wrote that in blood so everyone understood what she meant.  She was Ambassador when she was shot, and she come back completely healed in less than a week."  He looked up at his Mama.  "Confederate medicine."

Shelly leaned forward in her own chair, her hand still over her mouth.

"Sir, what's a-troublin' me ... on one of those worlds there's an old account of a woman bein' arrested, tried and hanged as a spy.

"She picked the lock on her handcuffs and clumb the hangman's noose, she shucked her neck freee and danced along the top of the hangin' beam and then dove off the end like she was divin' into a pond and she just disappeared."

Jacob took a long breath.

"Sir, that was not Marnie, and it happened years before she launched for Mars. Either it was Gammaw dressed like a dance hall girl, or it was Sarah McKenna, and I'm thinkin' it was Sarah."

Linn's eyes narrowed a little, he frowned, he leaned a little more toward his son.

"Sir, I don't pretend to understand what little I know, but I got me a notion 'twas not an accident the Confederacy picked Marnie."

"Do you suspect," Linn said slowly, "she is in danger?"

"I considered that, sir.  No, I do not believe she is in danger."  He hesitated, looked up at his father, then his mother.

"I do know they have a squad of Valkyries -- that's what they call 'em -- women who pilot their fighters. Almost called 'em fighter jets, they're rockets."

Linn nodded, once, slowly.

"Sir, they control -- they call 'em Interceptors -- they don't have throttle and rudder pedals and a stick."

Jacob took a long breath.

"Sir, their minds control the ships. They become the ship and the ship becomes them and ... sir, the only minds capable of operating those Interceptors are of our blood."

"What?"

Jacob nodded. "One way or another, every one of the Valkyries is related to us. Gracie Maxwell I knew was an in-law or an out-law or a shirt tail cousin, but ... sir, what if they found out Sarah had that talent all those years ago and they followed the bloodline and --"

Jacob shook his head.

"Or maybe it's ... might be I'm just paranoid, sir."

"Paranoia has kept me alive," Linn said flatly. "Nothing wrong with being suspicious or paranoid either one."  

Sheriff Linn Keller looked very directly at his son.

"We're lawmen, Jacob. We look under the words to see what's there. We're constantly looking for patterns and motive."

"Yes, sir."

"Meanwhile, I'm tired. I'm headed for bed. Tomorrow we'll make sure you're seen about town, we'll noise it about you were on loan to another department, you've been doing investigation and undercover work for another county. We'll say little and imply the hell out of it and let imagination and rumor send you here there and yonder."

Jacob grinned.

"Yes, sir."

"That way when you go back, it'll be assumed you're on another extended loan."

"Yes, sir."

Linn stood, as did his son: two lean waisted, broad shouldered lawmen looked one another in the eye.

"Sir?"

"Yes, Jacob?"

"I reckon I'd like to tell Uncle Will that Marnie is making good use of his Smith and that good lookin' gunrig he gave her."

Linn grinned, nodded.  

"He'd like that."

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

BLIND DRUNK

It was rare for the Chief of Police to pursue his baser drives.

He gave careful thought to his action.

He spoke with his first assistant chief, who was entirely sympathetic with the concept that a man can absorb only so much, in their profession, and then he has to discharge the built-up unpleasantness that weighed his soul.

The assistant Chief of Police recommended a particular brothel, known to both men: it was clean, as were the girls; a man's tastes could be accommodated, though they be less than routine, and they had a goodly supply of liquor.

The Chief was very inclined to partake of these vices, to purge his soul.

He'd seen many things in his lifetime, he'd known the horrors that men do to one another, he'd seen war and he'd seen violence and he'd seen the lawless and their terrible works, but what he'd seen this night fair to blasted reason from his mind, and he felt the need to get good and drunk, at the very least.

Women, drink, more women, more drink: perhaps, he thought, I might forget, or at least get to where I don't care anymore.

The Chief put on his Derby hat, looked in the mirror, adjusted his hat and his necktie: he picked up his gold-headed cane, nodded gravely to his second-in-command, and instructed his secretary to have a cab brought up.

 

A pale eyed woman pressed the tip of her sleeve-knife painfully against the soft underside of the Chief's jaw.

"Captain," she said quietly, "tell the Chief what is pressing into his ribs."

Men stared, shocked: on the Chief's orders, two of them tried to seize this woman, to bind this woman, to beat her and humble her and show her she was merely female, suitable for a man's bed or his arm and little more.

The Chief's conscience stung at the accusation that his son was caitiff, that it was the pale eyed Sarah Rosenthal that stayed behind and made sure all were evacuated from the building, that she and she alone was able to get the Professor and herself out when the stairway burnt out and escape by normal means became impossible.

The disgrace of his son's cowardice burned in the Chief's heart, even moreso since this pale eyed Black Agent proved instrumental in taking down criminals he hadn't been able to touch.

At the very least, he intended to have his men beat some humility into her; he wished he might take a horsewhip to her.

That didn't happen.

The woman seemed to have a crystal ball, she seemed a panther in skirts: when one seized her shawl with intent to wrap it across her face, just before the other gut punched her, she spun, her moves faster than the eye could record: one man fell, yelling, his knee broken, the other jerked his hand back, clutched the bleeding limb to his breast, shocked at the bright scarlet stream of arterial blood.

The Chief's hand drove into his coat pocket, reaching for the handle of the revolver he kept there, but the sharp little heel of a woman's shoe found his open hand -- his right thumb was not broken, but it did ache with the change of weather for the rest of his life -- and he found, to his stunned surprise, this woman stood before him, her eyes the color of a glacier's heart, cold, so cold he could feel her chill -- he'd ought to feel her animal warmth, so close was her face to his, but he felt a cold breath as if a snow-capped mountain sighed with resignation at his failure.

He stood with something blunt, hard, pressed into his ribs, with the point of a knife under his jaw, with an utter and absolute lack of kindness before his eyes, and he knew with no doubt at all that he probably made the very last mistake of his entire lifetime.

"Chief," she said coldly, "I am not the one who called your son caitiff. I am the one who got the Professor and myself to safety, I am the one who alarmed the other occupants and got them out before the stairs burned away. Your son is alive because of my timely warning."

Her voice was quiet.

There was no need for her to raise it.

"You want to hurt someone, and I understand that. Someone calumniated your good name by calling your son a terrible name.

"You made a mistake, and your men just paid the price."

Neither the knife's needle tip, nor the broad, blunt muzzle of Sarah's .44 Bulldog revolver, slacked their pressure against the man's living flesh.

"I will give any man one chance, and you just had yours. If you ever -- ever! -- send your men against me, you will be sending them to their death, and then I will come after you."

Her smile was not pleasant as she added, "You remember how Dobson, Davidson and Ellis died."

The Chief remembered, because he'd signed the reports himself:  Dobson was shot from ambush, a rifle ball taking him through the back of the head; Davidson was caught by the neck by a cleverly-dropped lariat, and hoist off his feet with a cleverly constructed counterweight, which held him ten feet off the muddy alleyway as he kicked and strangled to death.

Ellis was found with a knife driven hilt-deep through his right eye, the straight, tapered blade protruding just enough, to pin him to the side of a building: one blow of a heavy hammer ensured he would remain pinned, upright, even in death: three criminals, known to the Chief, three men with orders to kill a certain pale eyed detective, three men the Chief knew about and carefully, deliberately, intentionally, kept the information from the Black Agent, in hopes they would succeed.

Sarah stepped back, quickly: none there were sure quite how she did it, but her knife disappeared, a quick move toward her skirt and the revolver was out of sight as well.

Sarah looked around, looked at the other two men present.

"What happened here," she declared, "goes no further. Tonight will not be spoken of. Is that understood?"

 

The police chief looked at the unremarkable front door to an unremarkable building.

He knew this was probably the best brothel in town, disguised to look so ordinary as to gather not a second glance.

He walked with an exaggerated casualness to the little alley beside the building, then down the alley, to the back door:  up the three steps, knock.

The door was opened.

The Chief accepted a drink, another: he sought solace in sin, in debauchery, in drink: perhaps he'd hoped the morning after agonies would be self punishment enough for the humiliation he'd brought on himself, or that, perhaps, by wenching and washing his tonsils with alcohol, he might even forget the whole distasteful affair.

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

STEAM BOILER

 

Sheriff Linn Keller gripped the ax, looked at the chunk on the splittin' stump.

The ax head swung in a tight, fast arc: he hit the chunk hard, but the grain was twisty and had a knot in the middle, and it didn't cleave in two.

Linn picked up ax, chunk and all, sidestepped a little, eyes busy: even here, splitting wood, he was watchful.

It was a habit he'd acquired early in life, a habit honed in That Damned War, a habit that kept him alive in the years that followed, both before and after he hung a lawman's tin star off his carcass.

A pretty, blue-eyed daughter watched her pale-eyed Daddy as he swung ax and chunk both, hard: Angela knew her Daddy and she knew his moods, and she knew that the Rage inside him was alive, that it was slashing back and forth in his belly like an angry snake: she saw the power he put into his swing, and she shivered a little, for she'd seen the man's temper.

Oh, he didn't know she saw him, but she had: Linn took pains to present a quiet and controlled face to his young, especially, but the young have a way of observing those moments the parent doesn't really want seen.

The friction-trapped chunk fairly exploded apart when the Sheriff's swing blasted it hard against the splittin' stump, and Angela remembered her Daddy swinging a recalcitrant piece of machinery and busting its cast iron housing against a convenient rock: she was watching from around a corner, her hands almost caressing the weathered wood of the shed, she was peeking around with just one eye: she'd been watching her Daddy, she saw his movements becoming tighter, shorter, more vigorous, and she knew this was the result of his temper mounting: her blue eyes widened as she saw her Daddy raise the offending device, as she heard his jaw-clenched snarl "by GOD! I will NOT have machinery work AGAINST ME!" -- Angela watched her father's temper detonate as he SLAMMED the malfunctioning cornsheller hard enough to shatter it, sending grey-edged shards and rust-browned gears flying.

Angela crouched, looked around: still bent over, she slipped silently away, leaving her father to his labors.

The Sheriff had no need to split their wood, of course: it was something the man chose to do, just as he could hire men to harvest his crop, but he chose to swing a scythe himself, chose to stand the handle on his boot toe while he stroked the edge with long, precise strokes of the long, slender scythe stone.

Angela Keller lifted her skirts and ran, ran back to the house:  she stopped, closed her eyes, shivered.

Angela loved her Daddy, and she knew her Daddy was warm and strong and protective, his hands were never raised in anger against her or any of her brothers or sisters, and she'd seen nothing but gentleness when he and her Mama were together: his temper spoke of his strength, and it spoke of the Beast he'd spoken of.

Once.

Once only.

Angela was sitting beside Jacob, when Jacob was discussing his own temper with his father: it honestly surprised Angela that Jacob said, "Sir, I fear my temper," and her Daddy said frankly, "Jacob, I fear mine too," and the two very matter-of-factly discussed moments when their Rage overtook them, when the monster they rode seized the figurative bit between its teeth and ran away with them: Angela studied her brothers, and she studied her Daddy, and she studied the men that she saw, and she knew the changes that come over a man with his temper.

Angela saw both her Daddy and Jacob laying hands on the lawbreakers, saw them subdue hard men who did not wish to be subdued: Angela knew this was to keep her, and everyone else, safe, and this was a comfort to her, to know these lean-waisted men contained such potent energies for her benefit, and for the benefit of all they guarded, family or not.

Angela opened the door, found her mother just inside, waiting for her.

Angela opened her mouth, closed it, looked down, dropping her eyes the way she did when she was a little girl and she'd been caught at something she shouldn't have been doing.

Esther tilted her head a little to the side:  gentle fingers laid under Angela's chin lifted, raising the pretty young woman's face.

"Your father," Esther said gently, "is just returned from a difficult time."

"Yes, Mama," Angela said dutifully.

"What is it, dear?"

Angela looked at her Mama, somewhere between uncertainty and distress.

"Mama," she almost whispered, "he's so quiet but he's so angry!"

Esther embraced her daughter, rubbed her back, held her, smiled a little.

"Your father," Esther said gently, "is a very strong man. He takes that strength and he directs it."

"But Mama," Angela whispered, her eyes wide and serious, "what happens when he does not direct it?"

Esther clasped her hands in her apron and considered for a long moment.

"My dear," she said in a mother's gentle voice, "do you remember when you asked about the steam shooting up from the steam engine, how it just hissed and didn't whistle?"

Angela nodded, blinked, remembering the morning when she was yet a ltitle girl, when she was convinced The Lady Eshter was a living creature, sentient and intelligent and powerful: she remembered the plume of steam, pure-white, driving straight upward, bright and sunlit against the rocky mountainside behind.

"Your father explained that you were seeing a safety valve's release, so the boiler would not explode."

Esther saw her daughter's eyes soften, the memory gentling her expression: Angela remembered what it was to be a little child, with her Daddy squatting behind her, one arm around her, holding her warm and strong and protectively as he pointed at the brightly-painted Baldwin engine and explained that hissing finger of pure-white steam driving skyward from the top of the boiler came from something called a Pop Off Valve, and that it was popping off so she wouldn't blow up from overpressure.

"So Daddy splits wood so he won't explode?" Angela asked, and Esther smiled, just a little, for though Angela was a beautiful young woman, in this moment she sounded so very much like the wondering child she'd been.

Esther's smile was answer enough.

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

A DRAWING

Two Keller men loafed against the corral fence, their arms crossed on the top board, one burnished boot set up on the bottom board.

Pale eyes regarded the stallion pacing around the interior, restless, fiery, wanting nothing more than to be bucked out and run.

"How was back East?" Joseph asked quietly.

"Different," Jacob admitted, uncertain whether Joseph was kept in the dark as were the younger ones.

He looked at his younger brother.

"I hear tell Mama's expectin' again."

Joseph smiled, just a little, and Jacob could see his Mama's gentleness, and his Pa's pride, in the sibling expression.

"She's goin' to have to quit bearin' children sometime," Jacob said quietly.

"You know Pa," Joseph said, almost in a resigned voice. "When he was our age he allowed as he wanted to raise horses and children, and his girlfriend asked him how many, and he said at least a dozen."

Two brothers looked at one another and grinned, imagining their pale eyed Pa at their age.

"She said "Children?" and he said "Horses!" the two chorused, for it was an old and well known tale, simply because their Pa had been their age, and it was hard for them to imagine the Grand Old Man as young as they.

"You know what Fitz said about him."

"The same thing Sean Finnegan said about Old Pale Eyes."

Two brothers looked at one another again, united by their common bond of having studied Old Pale Eyes' Journals as sincerely as they studied Scripture.

"He wants his own regiment."

"Reckon so."

"Can you imagine a regiment of all of us, with Marnie ridin' in the lead?"

Joseph shook his head.  "She'd have to wear plate armor."

"You're thinkin' Saint Joan of Arc, in polished sliver plate."

"That's exactly what I'm thinkin'."

"Ridin' a big black Frisian."

"With white wings."

Joseph felt his brother come to a full stop -- not a bad trick, as he was standing stock still when he did -- Jacob looked at his brother and said, very slowly, "Now what's that about a big black horse with big white wings?"

Joseph looked at his brother and said "You don't know" -- a statement, not a question.

Jacob held his counsel, remembering what he'd been told, back on Mars.

"I think you should see something I found," Joseph said.  

Two pale eyed Keller men strode purposefully for the solid built old house.

 

Marnie Keller woke from a sound sleep.

The house was silent; she listened, waited, one hand slipping down beside the bed, gripping the handle of a pistol in a mattress holster.

She came to full wakefulness -- she was not afraid, there was no adrenaline response -- but something brought her awake --

A shift, somehow: she was suddenly in limitless space, alone --

Marnie looked around, realizing she was weightless --

It's time, she heard, and the voice was her own: a padded vest and drawers sailed in from nowhere, she raised her arms, she was wearing a padded jerkin and drawers, then thick socks, boots: shining steel carapace-pieces converged on her -- breastplate, greaves, arming-cap and helm, a lance came in reach and she seized it, ran her eyes its length, saw the tip blaze silver and sharp --

She saw herself, armored, as a saddle came up under her, as she thrust shining steel overboots into the stirrups, as she straddled a truly huge, shining-black Frisian mare.

A mare with huge, snowy white wings.

She saw herself, as if she stood in front of herself: she saw a warrior-maiden, all in shining, silver, burnished plate armor, wearing an archaic Grecian helm of the same shining silver, a lance couched in her right stirrup, upright: behind her, ranks, rows, legions of pale eyed men, of pale eyed women: she saw bows, recurved, strung, ready, she saw quivers of arrows, bristling and belted and ready: swords she saw, and shields, rifles and bayonets, and lances rising in sharpened waves: a mighty army, warriors all, and all with pale eyes.

All of them.

The sun rose, quickly: they were in a massive, flat plain, a plain where it seemed all the armies of the world could maneuver, and Marnie knew where she was.

She knew what she faced, what they faced, and her heart sang for joy.

The black Frisian mare reared, screamed, windmilling steelshod hooves, a challenge to the enemy before them:

Come, and taste my steel!

Marnie turned her mare to face her troops -- to face Grecian maidens, nocking arrows, ready to sprint ahead and lay down a murderous fire -- she faced grim-faced women in mob caps, bearing muskets stolen from the British occupiers, as these women affixed long, shining bayonets; she saw men break open double barrel shotguns, dunk in brass rounds, as others shucked the fore-end of pump shotguns, and feed one final round into the magazine: one, in the tin hat and uniform of the First World War, cycled the bolt of his Springfield rifle, reached down to ease the loops off the hammers of his copper plated Colts.

Marnie's eyes swept her troops and she raised her lance in salute, then she turned the dancing war-horse, saw two shadows slip between the ranks, trot up beside her:  on her right, the size of a young bear, shining black, fangs bared, fur rippling the length of his spine; another, white as driven snow, ghostly in the long shadow that still covered her:  her fur, as well, rose down her spine and across her shoulders, her gums a shocking pink against white fur and fangs.

It was not far to the enemy, it was not far to their sure deaths: they were outnumbered, they knew here was their last battle, here is where every one of them would die, and they rejoiced.

Marnie turned her dancing war-horse, lowered her lance: she leaned forward, weight on the balls of her feet, she couched the lance under her arm: behind her, every pale eyed warrior leaned forward into a run, every throat roared defiance:  Marnie locked her heels in her mare's barrel and leaned over her neck, screaming her challenge.

Marnie woke, her unvoiced screams echoing in her ears, feeling the Frisian surging beneath her, feeling war-wind running desert-dry fingers under her helm, the weight of the lance as she leveled it against the fast-nearing enemy, as she heard hooves punishing dry ground and boots running behind her and war and screams and gunfire and explosions and steel against steel shattered the morning's quiet --

She released her grip on the mattress-holstered pistol, swung bare feet over the edge of her bed: she leaned her face into her hands, shaking, remembering, knowing she'd just seen her death.

Hers, and the deaths of those she led.

Marnie looked over at her sleeping sister, grateful that Angela slept like the dead:  she slipped out of bed, eggshell paper caressed her grasping fingers as she positioned it on her drawing-table, reached for the pencils, the charcoals.

A click, and she turned on the light she used for drawing, looked guiltily over at her sleeping sister, rolled up on her side and facing away.

Marnie closed her eyes, remembering, then reached for a particular pencil she favored for the initial layout.

Colored graphite and half-burnt wood whispered their secrets to the paper.

 

Joseph stood beside his brother as they regarded the drawing.

It was beautifully and precisely executed: the Frisian shone with life, she was caught running, ears laid back, forehooves off the ground; beside her, The Bear Killer on one side, Snowdrift on the other -- but in echelon behind them, more of their kind: some with a white blaze down the chest, others more wolflike in color, or in their faces: here, a warrior-maiden in sandals and the light, brief tunic of a Grecian priestess, raising a half-drawn bow, the arrow nocked:  there, unmistakable, another Joseph Keller, in his World War 1 uniform, bayonet mounted Springfield in hand: there was no mistaking the Colts at his belt.

They found themselves in the picture, and they found their father, and they found more of their kind.

"There's the Black Agent," Joseph murmured, "that must be Old Pale Eyes ... is that Esther? The one on the paint?"

"Wouldn't surprise me," Jacob replied.

The two studied the drawing for a very long time.

"Why do you think she drew it?"

"Marnie does nothing without purpose."

"Sounds like something Gammaw said."

"It does."

Silence grew long between them.

"Most everyone here is dead."

"I know."

"We're right there with them."

"Yep."

"You've got Uncle Pete's Garand."

"And you've got Pa's 94 Winchester."

Two pale eyed brothers nodded a little.

"Was I to go to war ... I'd be comfortable with a Winchester."

"I've seen you compete with that rifle," Jacob agreed. "You're just pretty damned good."

"If they're all dead when this happens, does that mean all this happens after we're dead too?"

Joseph stared at the picture, then looked up at Jacob.

"How long do you reckon we have?"

Jacob considered, his jaw thrusting out like his Pa did when the Sheriff was considering an important question.

"I reckon," he said slowly, "this could happen any time."

"If it's prophecy."

Jacob nodded slowly in agreement. "Might be she just drew a nightmare. Or she just ... drew."

"It's beautifully done."

"It is."

"Reckon we could ask her."

Joseph looked at his big brother, his face solemn.

"You feel like runnin' an assault course?"

"Of a sudden," Joseph replied, "yes, I do."

"I'll get Uncle Pete's Garand."

"I'll fetch my Winchester."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited August 4, 2023 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

A YOUNG MAN'S LAUGH

Laughter is not a common visitor to a cemetery.

Jacob Keller ho'd his Apple-horse, swung down, dropped the reins: Apple began snuffing around for something edible, and Jacob considered momentarily that he was grateful his pale eyed Pa knee-trained his saddle stock: grazing has to be easier without a bit in.

Jacob looked at the gravestone with the oval portraits, with the six point Sheriff's star below one portrait, the FBI seal under the other: grandmother and grandfather slept here, he never knew his Granddad, but he remembered his Gammaw very well indeed.

He looked at the oval portrait, remembered when the photograph was taken: he removed his Stetson, went to one knee, traced gentle fingertips over the laser engraving.

"Gammaw," he said softly, "thank you."

Jacob came up off his knee, rolled back onto his bony backside, crossed his legs in pious imitation of the legendary Big Chief Mug Wump, who according to his pale eyed Pa, would set on a log with his Mug on one side and his Wump on the other.

Jacob pulled a small spiral bound notebook from his vest pocket, flipped open the cover, paged through it, stopped, smiled.

"Gammaw," he said aloud, "thank you for the trouble you took with ancestry research." 

He looked up at the portrait, as if expecting it to come to life, to smile, to look at him and speak to him.

He looked at his Gammaw's image for a long moment, then back to the notebook, to the neat, black-ink print, an account he'd written in regular, orderly, very legible script.

It was an account of a generation before is Gammaw's pale eyed Pa, an account of a man with a shirt sleeve plumb full of arm, a man who knew the smell of crude oil, green, rich, fresh from the earth, a man who dressed tools by heating the drill-face red hot and then beating it out to gauge with a sixteen pound oil field sledge with the handle sawed off at the halfway point and swung one handed.

If you can swing a short handled, sixteen pound hammer day in and day out, Jacob considered silently, you'll get a pretty damned good set of arms on you!

Jacob's eyes danced across his own handwriting, an account Marnie resurrected:  Gammaw started the ancestry research, and Marnie continued it, and now Angela was neck deep in bringing their past to life in their several imaginations.

 

Freeman Keller was tooldresser on his uncle's drilling rig.

They drilled in the second oil well in Perry County, which of course was never marked with a historical plaque: nobody remembers the second of anything, only the first, but that did not matter, this early in Keller Brothers and Company's history.

Granddad slept in a little cave dug out from under the steam boiler: it was on a grade, it was dry, it was warmed with the boiler's heat: drilling went on night and day, spudding a thousand to twelve hundred foot hole through Perry County dirt until they cut through rock, through the Big Salt and the Little Salt strata, through the coal seams and finally into the Berea strata, where they slowed down, where they knew roughly how deep the sandstone layer was.

They watched the pummies -- the churned up material bailed from the drill hole -- when they hit the dark streak at the bottom of the strata, she shout went up, "We hit the pay!"

The pay, or Pay Sand, a dark streak at the bottom of the Berea, was no more than a couple inches thick -- sometimes as much as a foot, in rare places -- crude oil flowed through the porous sandstone, very slowly, and it was a dice-roll whether they drilled into a little trickling creek of Zanesville Grade oil, or a medium sized stream of good green crude,, or a river of oil, or if they were lucky, they'd hit an absolute pond of the stuff: it was a maxim that oil flows like water, but it flows slow through the porous sandstone.

Like any young man -- Freeman Keller was but in his early twenties -- like any young man who worked hard for a living, Freeman had an appreciation for a cold beer a good meal, and the best mal to be had was Tony's Restaurant there in town.

Ann Wyscinski cooked there, and like any restaurant, when they had an exceptional cook they got good business.

Ann's cooking was superb, but her pies were her specialty: she was Polish and cooked accordingly.

When Tony set out a pie he'd cut it in two crossways, he'd turn it ninety degrees and cut it again, and if you ordered pie and coffee, you got a fourth of a pie and all the coffee you could drink, and that was generally a full meal for a hungry young man, even if you were eighteen years old and a walking appetite on two hollow legs.

Tony's place was popular with the businessmen in town, with railroaders especially ... and with young Freeman.

Jacob smiled, ever so slightly, as he sat cross legged on his Gammaw's grave, re-reading the story Angela discovered from family back East.

There was a miner's lunch bucket hung up behind the counter.

Coal miners, oilmen and railroaders would come in of a morning and have Ann pack their buckets, and if a man forgot his, the loaner was fetched off the spike nail on the wall behind the counter.

Freeman ate his meal, he paid for his meal, then he looked at Ann Wyscinski and said, "Woman, I'm tired of buyin' your cookin'.  Why don't you just marry me."

He stood.

He planted a callused hand on the counter, swung over the barrier, stood: he reached up and fetched that loaner bucket off its spike nail.

He looked at Ann and stuck out his arm.

She took his arm.

Tony about cried as he saw his best cook walk out the door on an oilman's arm.

 

Jacob looked up from the account, his eyes distant, seeing the moment play out in his imagination, and a pale eyed young man sitting cross legged on his beloved Gammaw's grave closed his notebook, leaned his head back, and laughed.

Edited August 4, 2023 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

"JUMP IN, MOM!"

Mike Hall pulled the cap off his stick pen, stuck the plastic pocket clip into the hole where a rocker switch used to be, pressed.

The passenger front window hummed down.

Sheriff Willamina Keller looked into the aging Thunder Chicken, looked at Mike, looked at his steering column.

"Miiike," she said, a warning note in her voice, "please tell me this is safe!"

Mike laughed, reached over, lifted the lock button.  "Jump in, Mom!" he grinned, sounding more like a son showing off a new acquisition than a motorist inviting the County Sheriff into his new ride.

Willamina did indeed jump in.

"I just got it," Mike said.  "You know that transport ambulance service that fellow is trying to start, out of Carbon Hill?"

Willamina nodded, considered that she'd never seen a set of Vise Grips used in lieu of a shifter: there was no key in the ignition, but the car was undeniably running.

"He needs an engine and he wants this one."

"What's she got?" Willamina asked, leaning a little closer, and Mike grinned even more broadly.

"Four hundred sixty rompin' stompin' cubic inches of four-barrel Ford go-power!" he declared proudly. "She's about worn out, I got her up to eighty and the front end started to float, I've got another Thunderbird I can scavenge for parts" -- he raised a knuckle, tapped the sagging headliner -- "and a roof. It used to have a vinyl roof."

"I saw it's bare metal and rust now," Willamina said uncertainly.  "What's going on with your ... pliers?"

Mike checked his mirror, gripped the locked pliers, pulled down: "The shift indicator doesn't work now," he admitted, "but you can tell when she's in D for Drag."

In spite of his wink and his youth, Mike eased out and accelerated gently, smoothly: there was no other traffic on the street at that particular moment.  "You're going back to your office?"

"I'm meeting Linn at the Silver Jewel."

"Roger that."  Mike's eyes were busy, his speed very moderate: the big block Ford was well muffled, and Willamina couldn't hear anything that might indicate a bad exhaust.

"I've only got one wheel with working brakes, by the way," he said casually as he eased them to a stop in front of the Sheriff's office.

"MIKE!" Willamina exclaimed, shocked: she wasn't sure if she was more dismayed by having only one of four wheels with a working brake, or that he admitted it to her.

"Oh, don't worry, Mom," Mike laughed, "it's only a mile to my place and I'm taking it nice and easy!"

Willamina laid a hand on Mike's arm, she gave him a long and motherly look.

"Mike," she said quietly, "please. You've just ... I don't ... Mike" -- she took a long breath, sighed it out, shook her head.

"Mike, you're the best hand with a wrench I know. You can do more with a worn out pair of slip joint pliers and a rounded screwdriver than I can with a full toolbox, and I'm pretty damned good."

"I know you are!"  Mike agreed firmly.  "You can change drum brakes and make it look easy!  How many girls can do that!"

"Mike I'm serious," Willamina said quietly.  "I ... only one brake?"

"Oh, it gets worse," Mike said, deviltry dancing in his eyes: "the ignition ... last winter when it hit 20 below it was too stiff to turn, so I put a crescent wrench on it and I figured to turn it or bust."

"It busted?"

"Sheared clear off."

Willamina frowned.  "How's it still running?"

Mike reached down to where the shroud used to mate the steering column to the dash: he gripped a flat piece of steel running from the steering wheel's hub, down through the dash and into the mystery on the other side of the firewall.

He gripped, pulled.

The engine shut off.

"Sheriff, I have the one most theft proof car in this county!" he announced, unsnapping the locking pliers from what Willamina saw was a broken stub of a socket where the original shifter used to live.

"This pot metal broke and the shifter ... I used it for something, I think a gate hinge, but there was enough to grab with the pliers so that's how I shift. If you don't know that, you can't make it go.  This" -- he reached under the seat, pulled out a six inch crescent wrench, placed it on the metal strip he'd pulled on to shut off the engine -- "drop this on that little wide place and push" -- he did.

The engine started after one brief yaw from the starter.

"Without the wrench, without the pliers, you ain't goin' nowhere!" he laughed. 

Willamina lowered her head, gave Mike a motherly look.

He picked up the pen's blue cap from where he'd set it on the dash, he pressed it down through a hole in the armrest where a chromed rocker switch used to live, pushed:  Willamina's window hummed back up.

"Promise me," Willamina said quietly, "you'll either restore this completely, or you'll sell the engine to Don Wolfe for one of his ambulances."

"He wants to trade me for a motorcycle."  Mike winked.  "Unless he crosses my palm with more shekels than he wants to, I'm keeping this baby! I've got plans for her!"

 

Linn saw his Mama climb out of a worse-for-wear '74 Thunderbird in front of the Sheriff's Office:  she waved as it pulled away, skipped across the street like a woman half her age.

Linn opened the Silver Jewel's door at her approach.

Willamina waited for Linn to release the door, then she turned to him and seized him in a tight, tight hug.

Linn hugged her back and she felt his silent laughter.

Willamina looked up at her pale eyed son and laughed.

"Thank you," she said quietly, "story at eleven, I'm hungry and you're buying!"

She took his arm and together they went the length of the tin-ceiling room, settling into the Lawman's Corner, and ordering the lunch special.

After coffee and cole slaw, Linn looked at his Mama: she'd been looking at him -- warmly, he thought, the way a mother will when she is particularly pleased.

"Do you remember," she said slowly, "when you and your Uncle Will were discussing first cars, and Will said your first one should be a junker you'd have to work on all the time?"

Linn blinked, considered, ate the last two spoonsful of cole slaw.

He nodded, swallowed.

"I recall, yes."

"And you remember your first car."

Linn smiled, nodded. 

"My brand new Jeep. Paid cash."

"Which got you some suspicious looks from the salesman," Willamina reminisced, "cash up front and a customer not yet in his twenties."

"And you walked in and asked if we were done, you were waiting for me to drive you home, and his chin about hit the floor.  Yes, I remember."

Willamina sighed.

"Linn, I am ever, ever so glad you had the good sense to go new."

Linn shrugged.  "You and Pa both said it saved you aggravation and breakdowns."

"Mike Hall gave me a ride.  Did you see it?"

Linn nodded, leaned back and smiled as the waitress brought the rest of their meals.

"It has brakes on one wheel only, you start it with a crescent wrench and his shifter is a pair of locking pliers, the vinyl roof is gone and he's convinced he can restore it!"

Linn picked up a French fry, took a small bite, chewed quickly to dissipate the heat.

"If anyone can do it," he said, "Mike's the man for the job!"

 

Two weeks later, they learned Mike ended up selling the engine to another buddy who used it in a dirt track racer: the bottom radiator hose blew and ruined the engine:  Willamina privately admitted her disappointment, as she was very much looking forward to visits to Mike's garage so she could appreciate the work it took to bring something like that ratty old '74 back to showroom condition.

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

TRUE TO THE BREED

Sheriff Willamina Keller slouched against the barn's door frame, arms crossed, head tilted a little to the side, the way she did when she was studying someone.

The someone she was studying was her son Linn.

Linn's face was wet with sweat, his T-shirt stuck to him: she heard a deep, savage growl that didn't at all fit her normally patient, normally tolerant, normally longsuffering son.

Linn spun, delivered a kick to the heavy bag: two punches, two more.

Linn's face was mostly white, with some patchy red mottles, and Willamina knew this was not entirely a good thing.

She knew Linn had been lead on an investigation, and the investigation turned up some truly unpleasant occurrences.

She knew Linn was very quiet as he arrested the perpetrator of these truly horrible crimes.

She knew Linn was the one who found the two bodies, she knew Linn worked with the medical examiner and with Forensics to determine the nature of the injuries, the horrors, inflicted on two defenseless children.

Willamina knew from first hand experience how much grief and how much hate and how much loss and how much sorrow a badge packer soaks up, and she knew these had to be discharged, and she knew Linn was discharging every bit of sorrow and of rage, in the most effective way he could, short of barehand wrestling a grizzly bear.

Linn's hand crossed over his belly, seized the handle of an aluminum PR24 baton: it rang as it launched from the steel belt ring, and Willamina watched in honest admiration as Linn used the law-enforcement version of the Oriental tonfa to deliver killing-strength blows to the sawdust-filled, double-reinforced, heavy bag.

If he was aware of his mother's study, if he had any conscious realization that he was under the Sheriff's watchful eye, he gave no indication: his assault on the bag was fast, it was vicious, it was murderous, and when he was done, he'd punched the short end of the baton through two layers of canvas and one of ripstop material, the bag was hemorrhaging sawdust, he spun again and kicked it hard and it tore, slowly, sawdust dumping out and scattering as what was left of the bag swung and the bottom fell away.

Willamina remembered addressing a heavy bag in just such a way, more times than one, and for the very same reason.

Linn stood, glaring at what used to be a homemade heavy bag, then he slid the baton back into its ring, walked over to the little table, picked up a two gallon bucket of wellwater.

Linn turned his face up, poured two gallons of the cold refreshment over his face, his head, his soaking wet torso:  when he was done, he blew, shook his head, placed the bucket on the table with an exaggerated gentleness -- which, to the observant, silent mother, spoke powerfully as to the utter depths of her son's rage.

Linn picked up a towel, scrubbed his face dry, viciously, vigorously: he rubbed his hair, looked at his mother.

"Feel better?" she asked quietly.

"Nope," Linn admitted.  "Too much like work."

"You'd like to have done that to the guilty party."

"Yep."

"Would you feel better then?"

"Don't reckon I would."  

Linn paced across the barn, dropped his shoulder against the inside of the doorframe agains which his Mama's shoulder leaned as well.

"I was reading Old Pale Eyes' Journal this morning," Willamina said quietly.

"And?"

"He'd had a bad one as Sheriff. He went out to split wood."

"Did it help?"

"He used a sledgehammer."

Linn wiped at a stray trickle of cold and wet that ran from his hair down in front of his ear.

"That's different."

"He wrote he beat on that chunk of stovewood until it just fell apart, he was worn out, and it didn't help him either."

"Did he say if it helped him?"

"He recorded that it didn't."  Willamina still slouched against the door frame; her arms were still crossed; she turned around, planted her other shoulder against the ancient timber, just enough so she could see her son's face while she still faced outward.

"What do you do, Mama?"

"Me?"  Willamina gave her son her best Innocent Expression.  "I bake."

Linn nodded slowly.

"Does it help?"

"After something like you've just handled?  No," she admitted.  "But when I'm done, I have something edible."

Linn half-laughed, half-grunted.  "All I've got is sawdust to clean up."

"We've another half dozen sleeping bag covers in he basement."

"Yes, ma'am.  I'll cycle this sawdust into the next victim and get it hung up."

Willamina looked at her son, her expression approving.

"I was admiring your technique," she said softly. "Ever try a front snap kick to get distance before you draw and fire?"

"No ma'am."

"I've found it useful."

"Yes ma'am."

Willamina smiled.  "Remember how I taught you to palm-thrust a subject in the face to get distance?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"That, and the kick ... I got that from Old Pale Eyes' journals."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Tell you what."  Willamina pushed against the post with her shoulder, coming upright and looking around the way she did before moving:  "I've got some pie in there that wants eaten. Think you could help me out?"

Linn pushed away from the post, worked his arms, squared his shoulders back, smiled.

"Yes, ma'am," Linn replied quietly.  "I reckon I can."

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

TROMPETTE 

The fight ended before it started.

Men stared in confusion, women hid smiles behind gloved fingers: Firelands, as a whole, knew Sarah Lynne McKenna.

Not a single living soul could honestly deny they knew who she was, and what she was: she was special to everyone, though it could just as honestly be said she was someone different to each and every one.

When Sarah Lynne McKenna, a beautiful young woman in a ribbon-trimmed McKenna gown, came boiling out of the Silver Jewel Saloon, her beauty drew men's admiring gazes (and perhaps women's envy?) -- the sight of her gloved hands, clamped tight around work-toughened wrists, towing two men behind her like a pair of kites floating in her slipstream: her gait was rapid, hard little heels clattered loudly on the dry, warped steps, and she brought two men out into the street.

An Irish cavalry sergeant raised a dusty, gloved hand, and the column of cavalrymen halted: sweating cavalrymen eased their weight off their saddles, hid their grins as this lovely young lady just plainly dragged two men into the middle of the street.

Men followed from the Silver Jewel; loafers slouched against porch posts, idlers drifted into the street, and the trio was surrounded by curious, grinning humanity.

Conversation was suspended, in favor of observation, partly because this pretty  young woman turned from one man to the other, shaking a gloved finger in his face, ranting at the top of her voice, obviously scolding them severely over some infraction: at one point she rocked back on her back foot, gloved fists upraised like a boxer, then she whirled, pointed at one, pointed at the other, her words nonstop, rapid, sharp edged ... and nobody understood a single word she said.

Sarah Lynne McKenna was holding forth, at the top of her voice, in absolutely flawless French.

She stiff-armed the two apart, stomped through the encirclement of humanity, went storming up to the bugler: she relieved the man of his instrument, she brought it back into the circle:  she seized one man's hand, thrust the bugle into it: she grabbed the other, turned him around, put one hand between his shoulder blades and pushed, the other around his waist:  at the behest of this unintelligible, loud, powerful and very attractive young woman, the party of the second part stifled a grin and bent over a little.

Sarah turned to the other man inside the circle, her face almost scarlet:  she shook her finger, opened her mouth, shut her mouth, stomped to the left, whirled, stomped to the right, came back in front of him --

"YOU SAY YOU TROMPETTE HEEM!" she screamed.  "YOU DO!"

The man blinked, surprised, looked at the bugle, looked at the angry young woman in front of him, looked at the other fellow, who was looking around with a puzzled expression.

"YOU SAY YOU TROMPETTE! I GEEF YOU TROMPETTE! ZO!" -- Sarah snatched the bugle from his hand, aimed the bell at the bent over backside, blew a single, high, pure note.

"THERE! I TROMPETTE HEEM! YOU FIGHT DONE! YOU DRINK NOW!"

Two men, who but minutes before had been ready to square off and take the other's measure with knuckles and beer mugs, looked at one another, looked at the red-faced young woman, looked at the bugle in her hand:  an Irish Cavalry sergeant was grinning, a Cavalry bugler was chewing on his leather gauntlet to keep from laughing:  a beautiful young woman raised the bugle in one hand, a gloved palm in supplication beside it, shouldered through the laughing encirclement:  all sails set, she steered her course like a clipper-ship up the street to the bugler, handed him back the shining brass instrument, dropped a flawless cursy, and in a distinctly French accent, said loudly, "Thank you for the loan of your trompette."

Sarah Lynne McKenna lifted her skirts stomped for the boardwalk, climbed the three wooden steps; men drew back for her:  Sarah's chin lifted as she swept like a feminine bulldozer for the ornate, polished front door of the Silver Jewel Saloon.

She turned, plucked delicately at her thumb, one finger, another, until her glove was removed: she put two fingers to her lips, whistled a high, shrill note.

"FIGHT'S OVER, BOYS! DRINKS ARE ON ME!"

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

THE CHEAP AND EASY

Angela Keller frowned at the printed page, leaned forward, sunk her knuckles into her cheekbone.

Her long tall Daddy slid a bowl of ice cream in front of her.

"Here," he said quietly.  "Research goes better with ice cream."

"Do you know me or what," Angela replied, looking at her Daddy and smiling.

Linn took a long breath, picked up his spoon, poked at his own bowl of maple pecan deliciousness.

Angela shoved the book from her.  

"I don't get it," she complained.

Linn pulled the spoon from his mouth:  "Whuddon you get?" he mumbled through a mouthful.

"Sarah," Angela complained. 

"What did she do this time?" Linn asked.

"You know," Angela groaned.  "She put on this phony French accent and stopped two drunks from fighting by getting them more drunk!"

Linn raised an eyebrow.

"And I don't understand what she was saying."  Angela dabbed at the cherry half-sunk in rippling layers of whipped cream.

"What did she say?"  Linn turned, reached behind him, grabbed the chocolate syrup:  after a quick drizzle over his own dessert, he reached over and added a quick squiggle to Angela's.

"She said something about a trompette."  Angela taste-tested the whipped cream with chocolate sauce, nodded her approval, looked curiously at her Daddy.  "So what's a trompette?  A dainty little tromp?"

Linn swallowed quickly to avoid choking.

He turned his head, swallowed again:  Angela saw her Daddy's shoulders working -- she came out of her seat, alarmed, ready to run around the table, ready to Heimlich her choking Daddy --

Linn raised a palm, harrumphed.  "I'm fine," he said, looked at her, his ears reddening.  

Dad-deee!" Angela scolded, "don't do that to me!"

"Sorry about that, sweetheart."  Linn reached for his coffee, took a noisy slurp, set his mug down and dashed the droplets off his going-to-iron-grey handlebar mustache.

"Darlin'," Linn said, "Sarah was a wise woman."

"I know she was a Wise Woman," Angela snapped.  "She was a seer and she was a prophetess and she had precognition, prescience, she could teleport and three or four other long words I don't know what they mean either!"

Linn smiled -- politeness alone kept him from laughing -- he thrust his chin at the still-open volume.

"You're talking about the cavalry bugle incident?"

"You're confusing me!"

"Trust me, darlin', I can confuse any issue," Linn said confidently.  "Now do you realize what really happened?"

"I wasn't there, Daddy. Old Pale Eyes wrote about it but --"

Linn raised a finger.

"Sarah," he said in a Daddy's patient and reassuring voice, "knew the value of prevention."

Angela frowned, looked down, realized she'd forgotten about dessert, picked up her spoon, looked at her Daddy.

"Just like fire prevention. It's waaaay cheaper to prevent a fire than to roll that shiny red truck out of the firehouse."

"So you don't have to pay per man hour, per machine hour, per gallon of water pumped, wear on the hoses, replacement of damaged or lost equipment," Angela recited, having heard this lecture before.

"Exactly. Just like my Jeep gets phenomenal mileage when it never leaves the driveway."

Angela carefully sliced off some maple, worked her spoon to leverage out a frozen-in-place pecan.

"It still doesn't make sense," she complained.

"Ah, my dear Portnoy," Linn sighed.

"Who's Portnoy?"

"He's a Russian who complained a lot," Linn explained.  "Y'see, these two fellows got a load on and allowed as they'd have a good knock down drag out inside the Silver Jewel."

"Okay."

"Sarah knew the Silver Jewel was owned by Old Pale Eyes."

"And Old Pale Eyes was really her Daddy, so she didn't want her Daddy's Saloon torn up."

Linn winked, nodded once, took another taste of ice cream.

"I still don't understand."

"What did Sarah use to stop the fight?"

"Beer?"

Linn laughed, looked affectionately at his little girl.

"She used that as the reward afterward. No, she used humor.  I've used that myself."

"Huh?"

Angela's nose wrinkled up a little, the way it used to when she was but a little girl and she was puzzling over something she couldn't quite understand.

"She got 'em outside -- if you pack people in close together, they're more likely to fight.  Get 'em outside so they can spread out and they're much less likely."

Angela nodded, slowly, frowning a little.

"If it came to a fight it would be only two men instead of a general knock down drag out everybody is bustin' chairs and windows."

Angela took a drink of milk, blinked.

"I don't understand the trompe part."

"Do you remember last week when that fellow had a snoot full and allowed as he was going to take me on? The All-Night, when we stopped in for a pretzel?"

Angela's eyes widened and she nodded.

"Do you remember what he said?"

"He said he was going to hurt you."

"His exact words."

"He said he was going to tromp your butt."

"Bingo."  Linn winked, leaned his spoon forward like a conductor's baton. "So what did Sarah do?"

"She took a bugle and blew it ..."

Angela blinked rapidly, knowing the answer was almost in reach.

"What language was Sarah speaking?"

"French."

"And what is French for trumpet?"

"Ummm ..." Angela's eyes swung left as her thoughts turned to the family computer.

"Trompe," Linn said gently.

"So the one guy said ..."

"... he was going to tromp the other one.  Tromp, trompe.  Sarah used a very bad joke to stop a fight, and to make sure nobody's feelings were still ruffled, she bought beer for the house."

Angela frowned.  

"But Daddy ..."  

She turned her head a little, looked back, honestly puzzled.

"I thought too much beer made things worse."

"Your Gammaw used the same trick."

"She blew a bugle into someone's hip pockets?"

"No," Linn chuckled.  "One night out at the Spring Inn, she walked into a fight, she separated the two and if I hadn't seen it I wouldn't have believed it."

"What did she do, Daddy?"

"Do you remember those old Jimmy Cagney movies we were watching?"

"Oh, yeah, the 'Come Up and See Me Sometime' movies!"  Angela spun an imaginary fur and draped the nonexistent accessory over one shoulder.

"Bingo.  Your Gammaw grabbed the two men and looked at one and looked at the other and then she started talking like Jimmy Cagney, see, nyaa, nyaa, and how she wouldn't have youse mugs fightin', see, nyaa, nyaa, and then she put her hands on her hips and sashayed a couple steps and she said that very Come Up and See Me Sometime, and she got 'em laughing, and she bought beer for the house.  It cost her some coin, but it kept her from having to handle a barfight, it kept her and her people from having to wade into a good set of knuckles and pool cues and" -- Linn shrugged -- "well, Uncle Will put it pretty well when he said that a fight results in hurt faces and hurt feelin's and that's about all!"

"Oh," Angela said.

"Add up the cost, darlin', your Gammaw took the Cheap and Easy."

Angela dipped up some melting ice cream, took a bite, considered silently that this may have been the only time in recorded history that her quality-conscious Gammaw ever took the cheaper route on anything.