SHORT STORIES!

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

 I'LL HAVE NO PART OF IT

Sean raised his heavy, flute-sided beer mug, took a long, savoring drink: he came up for air, tilted his head back, let the blessed relief slide down his throat.

Sheriff Linn Keller accepted his mug from Mr. Baxter, looked at Sean, slid his bottom jaw out a little, the way he did when he was considering something.

"There's somethin' on yer mind," Sean said quietly. "I know tha' look."

Linn nodded slowly.

" 'Twas before your time," Linn said quietly. "You recall that well we filled in out back?"

"Aye," Sean replied.

Linn looked down at his beer, stared hard into its amber depths.

"Do you know why we filled it in?"

"I thought ye'd gone daft," Sean admitted, "fillin' in a perfectly guid well."

Linn took a tentative taste of his beer, set it down, picked up the nearby bar towel and wiped the foam off his handlebar.

Another man -- tall, lean, tanned, bald save for a ring of hair around the back of his head -- came through the front door.

Linn lifted his chin: "Mr. Baxter, another, if you please."

Mr. Baxter raised an eyebrow, then looked to the side, smiled: he drew another beer, dashed the foam off with his foam knife, wiped the excess off the outside, set it on the polished mahogany bar top, its handle toward the tonsured Abbot.

Three men raised their mugs, three men drank.

Sean and Linn shared a knowing look as the Abbot lowered his mug, sighed with pleasure.

"St. Bridgid be praised," he murmured, "I needed that!"

Three men turned their backs to the bar, three men leaned back against its solid presence, three men rested an elbow on burnished mahogany and regarded the interior of the Silver Jewel.

Abbot William looked over: "Sheriff, you're not drinking coffee?"

"Of a morning."

The Abbot waited: he knew Linn did nothing without reason, and he was right.

"Abbot," Linn said, "I was drinking enough of the stuff I was gettin' dried out."

"Oh?"
Linn looked at the big red-headed Irishman beside him. 

"Sean, who'd you tell me that patron saint of beer making was?"

"Saint Gambrinus," Mr. Baxter prompted. "Or King Gambrinus."
"He got promoted," the Abbot said quietly, with a conspiratorial wink: Linn chuckled a little, for it was a rare thing for the Abbot to let slip his humor in public.

"Saint Arnold it was," Sean declared, hoisting his mug, "for he stopped the Plague by having the people drink beer instead of watter!"

"St. Bridgid," the Abbot added quietly, "dunked her crucifix in a bathtub and turned the contents to good beer, when her people begged her for beer."

"That's why I filled in that damned well," Linn said quietly. "We had cholera and that well was the source."

"There's a well out back ..."

"I had the Daine boys witch me a new well. Water runs underground like a river, only slower. The one comin' off Graveyard Hill carried corruption with it and tainted the old well. This one -- that new one we pump out of -- why, it's pure as angel tears."

Sean fixed his old friend with a knowing look.

"Ye're changin' th' subject."

"Yeah."

Linn's eyes narrowed a little, he pressed his lips together, considered.

"Sean," he said, "I was drinkin' me too much coffee."

"An' ye are a thrifty man, so ye said watter is cheaper."

Linn snorted, then chuckled.

"No," he admitted, looked down into his mug, tilted it up, drank deeply: he downed the second half of his mug, turned, set it gently on the bar, lifted his chin.

Mr. Baxter took the mug, refilled it, wiped it down, set it back, handle toward the Sheriff's shoulder blades.

"Y'see, or so 'twas Doc told me, drinkin' all that coffee instead of drinkin' beer like God intended" -- he looked at the Abbot, then at Sean -- "well, hell, ain't he got a patron saint for the stuff?"

Sean looked over Linn's head -- no mean feat, Linn was regarded a tall man, but Sean had him by a couple fingers' elevation -- "He's right, y'know," and the Abbot nodded at the Irish fire chief's pronouncement.

"Anyhow."  Linn turned, picked up his mug, leaned back against the bar again -- "I got tired of havin' them damned kidney stones."

Sean grimaced, looked away; the Abbot crossed himself, laid an understanding hand on the Sheriff's shoulder.

"How bad?" he asked quietly.

Linn looked at him, chuckled:  "My hired man come around the barn and there I was a-layin' on the ground wallerin' like a worm on a fish hook."

Sean made a strangled sound, his expression somewhere between sympathy and distress: he'd seen men being cut apart from the inside by the damned stones, and though he'd never suffered them himself, he'd watched his father kick the arm off a well made sofa while in the throes of internal agony.

"M' hired man looked at me," Linn continued, "and he said, 'Mistuh Kelluh, you gots to quit eatin' dem gre-e-e-azy po'k chops."

The Abbot's hand tightened on the Sheriff's shoulder, and Sean added his own grip to the lean lawman's other shoulder: three men were silent, but three men were laughing, inwardly, the way men will when they are in public and they don't want to laugh at a fellow's misfortune -- but they are sharing his self-deprecating amusement.

"So," Linn said finally, "the Temperance Movement be damned, once I started workin' on beer instead of all that coffee, why, I've had neither cholera nor those damned stones!"

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

HOT POTATO

I saw the train approach the trestle.

The tracks lay at a down grade toward the trestle, which meant the engine would not be barking her exhaust -- matter of fact, she could run so quiet as to surprise a man, especially if he was paying no attention, and the boy on the trestle, wasn't.

Since that time, platforms were installed so anyone on the trestle when a train approached, would have somewhere to stand and not get killed.

Before that, there was nothing.

When the boy realized there was a train a-comin', he was too far from the end to run from it: he laid down beside the rail, realized that wouldn't save him, I'm headed that way fast as my horse would run, but I'd not be in time --

The boy hugged a crosstie, swung his legs over, dangled while that train sailed on a-past: I got up to the edge of the drop-off, and soon as the caboose passed, I legged it across that trestle.

I remember how scared he looked, hangin' there, death gripped around attair tie.

I knew the square corners had to be diggin' into his arms.

He seen me comin' and he just hung on.

I got to him and laid down with my chest over the rail and I recht down and grabbed me a good tight handful of his coat and realized that wouldn't work so I set one boot over the rail, I bent over with my other leg stuck out behint me and I recht over and taken two hands full of wadded up coat right behind his shoulders and I hauled back and he let go of that cross tie and by golly up he popped like a cork and we went over backwards and him on top of me and we just laid there, and I recall hearin' the train chuffin' away from us in the distance.

He wasn't terribly old, I don't reckon he was ... hell, he was young as my own child.

I looked at him and he looked at me and I grinned.

Couldn't help it.

When I recht over and grabbed the back of his coat I couldn't help but see just how far down it was, and damned if I was goin' to let him fall, and now we was laid acrost them dirty old creosote ties with him on top of me and I asked, "You hurt?"

He swallowed, blinked, shook his head.

"No, sir."

"I'm kind of surprised," I admitted.

"Sir?"

I laughed and hugged him and then I let go and said, "My hat didn't even fall off!"

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

PLEASE PASS THE SALT

The knife blade felt like a slender little burn as it sliced across Dana's throat.

It didn't cut deep, it barely broke the skin, just enough to bleed, just enough to burn.

Just enough to detonate a compact, blond haired keg of dynamite into absolute fury.

No traffic stop is routine.

Dana approached the vehicle with due caution, she stepped back, asked the driver to step out.

The passenger stepped out as well.

This was just enough to break her watchfulness, just enough for the driver to come up with a knife, just enough to slice a dumb cop's throat like he'd done before.

It almost worked.

Dana's move was faster than the eye could follow, and nearly too fast for her cruiser cam to capture: the driver was headed for the ground, his elbow was bent the wrong direction, and Dana's plastic pistol was pointed at the passenger as she skipped backward, stopped.

The other two in the vehicle decided -- given this dumb cop's speed and effectiveness -- their best bet for seeing sunrise the next day, was to hold very still and do a whole lot of nothing at all.

 

Victoria Keller bent, gripped the grey-vinyl-coated tumbling pad, dragged it over so its hook and loop edge laid over its fellow: she smoothed it down to make sure the pads would not shift during use, unfolded another from the stack, set it into position.

She'd been training with the Valkyries, and today was training day.

Angela recommended she wear jogging pants, and she did -- "it helps prevent floor burn from those mats" -- she stopped, straightened, looked at the portable stairs at the edge of the mats, looked at her big sister.

Their instructor was a dark-haired woman, compact, solid, motherly, quick to laugh, and one of the most effective hand-to-hand fighters Angela ever got her butt kicked by.

Victoria watched as Angela laughed and embraced the smiling woman in the white karate ghi, as they chattered happily, then turned toward the big-eyed little girl watching them with a solemn expression.

Each bowed formally to the other.

"Victoria," Angela asked, "do you remember we practiced quite a bit of tumbling?"

Victoria nodded.

"Do you remember how much better you are than I am?"

Victoria nodded, then giggled.

"We're going to add to what you've learned."

Victoria nodded again.

 

Dana had backup in less than three minutes.

During that time she invited the exiting passenger to put his hands on the trunk of the car, feet back and spread 'em, and do exactly nothing else.

Faced with the prospect of a calm, self-assured, uniformed Sheriff's deputy (who just happened to have a double handful of frontier justice looking at him), the passenger saw the wisdom of following instructions: when backup arrived, they found two sets of hands pressed against the car's back glass, the deputy at low ready, with a clear line of fire to any of the involved occupants.

There was also the matter of the deputy's having her boot firmly on the driver's extended wrist.

The other wrist was connected to an arm that was still bent the wrong way, and the driver was not moving, probably because moving hurt more than holding very still.

 

Marnie watched, nodding as she did.

Her husband watched his pale eyed wife's approval -- he had no idea what she was watching, but it was evident to his practiced eye that she liked what she saw.

A wife's perceptions run deeper than the five human senses: she felt her husband's eyes on her, tapped the screen to freeze the image, gave Dr. John Greenlees Jr an innocent look.

"I can tell you like it," Dr. John said quietly, and she heard the smile behind his words: like his father, he practiced a solemn expression, but his wife saw through him like window glass.

"John," she said, rising, "I have a baby sister who shows promise."

"Promise?" Dr. Greenlees echoed, raising an eyebrow: Marnie ran her arms around his neck, drew his head down, kissed him, gave him a smoldering look.

"My dear Doctor," she whispered, "I desire you."

The good physician did not need to be invited a second time.

Marnie's tablet, abandoned on the desk, began playing again.

No one was looking at it.

Had there been, they would have seen a little girl with her pigtails tucked into the neck of her sweatshirt, a little girl standing on the third of three steps, a little girl who was pushed, hard -- she landed, tumbled, came up, hands open and bladed and ready for a fight, a little girl who was threatened with a rubber practice knife, a little girl who seized the wrist, twisted, using leverage to break the simulated elbow.

As much as her big sister might've approved of her little sister's performance, Marnie found herself otherwise occupied.

Most agreeably occupied.

 

Dana Keller stripped her bloodied blouse.

It wasn't terribly bloodied, but she would have to soak it in saltwater to get the stain out, mostly from the collar.

Methodically, systematically, she divested her uniform shirt of badge, name tag, the contents of the pockets: she shoved the shirt into a stainless-steel dishpan half filled with cold water, looked up as the dispatcher came in with a blue-and-white, metal cased first-aid kit.

Dana looked up at Sharon, looked at the shelf behind her, at the box of salt they kept in the ladies' locker room for the purpose.

"Can I help you clean up your neck?" Sharon asked.

"Let me set this to soak," Dana sighed. "Please pass the salt."

 

 

 

Edited April 11 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

OBSOLETE

 

Dana swept her skirt under her, sat with her usual feminine grace: she planted one elbow on the table, bent her wrist, rested her chin on it, stared off into the distance and gave a long, quiet sigh.

I'd just brewed a fresh pot of coffee, and the silent, morning kitchen smelled really good.

Half of it went into two sizable mugs: I set one in front of my little girl and I set one at my place.

Milk was already on the table: Dana added some to hers, slid the jug over to me, I added some to mine and set it away, then I came back, pulled out the chair and parked my carcass.

Silence filled the kitchen.

Now most folks are not comfortable with the quiet.

Me, I cherish it.

My best friends are the ones I can sit with, and neither of us says a word, and both of us are perfectly comfortable with that arrangement.

Dana had that gift.

Silence lasts only so long, though, and it was me that spoke first.

“The detective bureau called to say thank you.”

Dana raised an eyebrow, sipped delicately, closed her eyes, bathing her face in the rising steam from her fragrant mug.

She still wore a long, flesh colored bandage stuck over the cut.

“How’s the neck?”

She didn’t open her eyes as she replied, “I’ll have a puckered scar like Frankenstein’s monster.”

She lowered her mug, looked at me, smiled.

“I’m kidding, Daddy,” she whispered: her bent wrist came to her mouth, and she turned a little red and giggled the way she did when she was a little girl, pulling a good one on the Grand Old Man.

“Stitches,” I echoed.

Dana blinked and tried to look really innocent.

“A big ugly long puckered scar, and I’ll bet you used to sing opera!”

She couldn’t contain her laughter: she set her coffee down, she leaned her head back, then dropped her chin to her chest: she bit her lip, then she bit the back of her bent wrist, then she gave up entirely and laughed aloud, and I laughed with her.

“Daddy,” she sighed, “how do you keep such a good poker face?”

I folded my arms, set my elbows on the table, lowered my head a little and looked at her, and it almost felt the way it did when she was a little girl and we’d be playing the Tom Fool at the kitchen table.

“I work the room,” I said, “I play to my audience. Here, the pressure’s off, it’s just us, and you know me” – I thrust my arm straight in the air – “it’s over the boots, save the watch!”

Dana laughed and clapped her hands with all the delight of the little girl she used to be.

“You’ve got a pretty good poker face yourself, darlin’,” I murmured. “I’ve seen you at work.”

“Thank you,” she whispered, and dropped her eyes, and once again I had one of those How did she grow up so fast? moments.

“You said the detective bureau called.”

“They have warrants on all four fellows in your traffic stop.”

“I wondered why they beat feet over here so fast.”

“They have the prior claim. They understand that Chicken Wing is charged with assault on a law enforcement officer, weapon specification, plus the drug and weapons specifications on the others.”

“They didn’t waste any time turning on each other.”

“Probably figured if they couldn’t take you, they were sunk. By the way, you handled yourself very well indeed.”

“Video was that good?”

“It was that good.”

“Even the body cam?”

“That was best of all, darlin’. It caught the sound of that elbow breaking in living color.” I stopped, frowned. “Color. Sound. Whatever.”

“I used the same … I reacted …”

Dana blinked, remembering.

“That’s how I learned to do it, as a Valkyrie.”

“That’s why the Valkyries still train.”

“That’s why I still train with them,” she said, her voice quiet, her eyes very serious.

“How’s Victoria coming along with her training?”

Dana planted her right elbow firmly on the tabletop, dropped her face in her palm, fumbled for the coffee mug with her left hand:  “Oh Gawd,” she mumbled into her hand, then lifted her face and looked at her Daddy with an expression that bordered on panic.

“She’s nothing but muscle, Daddy! X-ray her and you’ll find whalebone and whipcord! She’s fast, she’s ruthless, she’s brutal! – Angela wants to take her off-world to train with Marnie’s golem.”

“Golem,” I said slowly. “Not familiar.”

I had no idea what a golem was.

From the context, I imagined a robotic training aid.

If Marnie and Victoria both were training with one, if it was a robot, that meant Victoria was bringing energies to bear that would have caused genuine harm to a human opponent.

“Think of a programmable sparring droid.”

“I … see.”

“Daddy.”  Dana laid gentle fingertips on the back of my hand. “You remember how we train to take out an elbow, to grab and leverage our weight against the joint and break it?”

“I remember.”

“You can overcome lesser strength and lesser body mass with speed, at least to a degree. Victoria has that speed. Marnie has her working with the pistol, too.”

I opened my mouth and Dana put her fingertip to my lips.

“Daddy,” she said quietly, “remember, you told me women learn better from women. I know you taught us, but we’re teaching now.”

I reached up and took my daughter’s hand, carefully, frowning a little as I considered what I’d just been told.

“So I’m being replaced,” I said quietly.

“Daddy … no.”

“I’m old, I’m obsolete, I’m being tossed aside on the trash pile of uselessness, doooooooommmmmm!” I said in a sepulchral voice, rolling my eyes to emphasize my silliness:  I leaned back, fingertips dramatically at my breast, I threw my head back and lamented to the ceiling, “Wounded!  Wounded, I say! I am no longer useful in this world! Cruel Death, take me now!” – then I looked at Dana and blinked and asked innocently, “Did I make a big enough arse of myself?”

Dana surged out of her chair, dropped into my lap, hugged me and laid her head over against my collarbone, giggling the way she did as a little girl, when we were being silly together.

She gave a great, gusting sigh, relaxed into me, and I held her, there in the quiet of the kitchen, and for a moment, I was her Daddy, and she was my little girl, and that suited me just fine.

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

YOU WANT A WAR? FIGHT IT YOURSELF!

 

Three riders burst from the enemy's ranks.

The middle rider, on a shining-gold stallion, carried a white flag, snapping in the wind of his passing, its turned hardwood staff socketed in his right stirrup.

On his left, a great, shining-black mare with fuzzy feet, ridden by a woman in a fashionable gown with a split skirt: on her right, a woman all in white, her winged cap pinned to her shining, braided hair, reminiscent of the wings on a Valkyrie's burnished war-helm.

Three horses, running with a desperate speed, toward the opposite side of the field, where another enemy waited, drawn up in war-ranks: steel glittered in precise rows, uniforms were immaculate, men stood, regarding the impressive array a quarter mile distant with a mixture of admiration, hatred, eagerness and dread.

Wars are fought for the very best of reasons, or the very worst, or for no reason at all; when political maneuvering, when speeches of persuasion became bombast and accusation, when insults were traded, when hotter heads prevailed, men marched forth to do death to the other men who also marched forth.

Three riders made for the center of the lines, where flags stood side-by-side in close order, marking the commanders' position: somewhere not far from the center, a rifle fired, then another.

Commands were shouted: no more shots followed.

The riders slowed, stopped.

"WHO COMMANDS HERE!" a pale eyed man demanded.

Nobody moved; no reply was made.

"I COME UNDER A FLAG OF TRUCE, AND SOMEONE TRIED TO MURDER MY SISTER!" Jacob shouted, the cords standing out in his neck: his stallion reared a little.

There was movement.

An older man with a neatly-trimmed beard and an immaculate uniform marched up between the ranks.

"I command," he said.

Jacob reached over, snatched the conical projectile from the force field that saved his sister's life.

"Here," Jacob said, tossing the slug underhand: "I return you the bullet fired at an approaching flag of truce. Stand you responsible for this act?"

The commander did not like it, not one bit, but neither did he hesitate.

"Yes," he said. "I stand responsible for my men."

"Then you, sir, are worthy to lead your men, for only a man who stands good for his peoples' actions is worthy of that leadership."

"I was not aware that Madam Ambassador was involved in negotiations."

"She's not," Jacob said shortly. "We're here because your government -- and theirs -- failed utterly in their duty. We're here to keep good men from slaughter."

"We have our orders."

"So do they, but they're holding action at our request."

"I cannot violate my orders."

Jacob nodded, lifted a hand, spoke quietly to his bent wrist.

"Gentlemen, if I might call your attention yonder."

Jacob turned in his saddle, thrust out his left arm.

A black ellipse appeared in the distance, then the sudden drone of six-bladed propellors turned by engines commanding nearly five thousand horsepower apiece.

This world had yet to achieve powered flight.

The very first aircraft on this entire planet blasted out of the horizontal Iris, four Allison engines singing in high powered harmony.

Men stared as a C130 came screaming across the plain at an altitude of less than twelve feet.

Parachutes bloomed behind the aircraft, something dragged out of the lowered ramp, the Herky Bird lifted its green-painted nose, climbed, sunlight bright on the tops of its wings, just before it sliced into another horizontal iris, disappeared.

Something dark green and blocky, something with a rearing, winged horse painted on the side,

something riding a landing skid, slid to a stop: there was the sound of explosions, straps flew away, a stocky, angular tank revved its engine, clattered off the landing skid and across the sod.

The tank came abreast of the horsemen, at a point directly between the command left, the command right.

"If spilling blood is your goal," Jacob said quietly, "then let us help."

The tank's turret swung about, a brief, bright lance seared through the air, and three flagstaff tops fell and hit the ground, then the turret swung hard about and sliced the tops off three of the opposing force's flagstaffs.

"If it's casualties you want, we can pile up men's carcasses like cordwood."

Something long and silver appeared from nowhere, with the concussion of suddenly displaced air: the needle nosed ship rotated, pointed its nose at the ground.

Bright hell erupted from its smallest energy cannon as the ship coasted easily for a hundred yards, steam and dirt erupting in a blazing fountain from its progress: men squinted, turned their heads away, raising a hand against the heat they felt even at this distance: the Hellbore switched off, the Interceptor rotated back to horizontal, disappeared in another clap of sound as air slammed in to fill the ship-shaped void.

"You might want to send a delegation to take a look," Jacob suggested. "That ditch is four feet wide and about two hundred yards deep. This machine" -- he thrust an arm toward the idling tank -- "commands the same energies. As you can tell from the way we clipped the tops from your flagpoles, we can operate these like a surgeon's scalpel, from a very great distance."

"What do you hope to achieve here?"

Ambassador Marnie Keller crossed her wrists on her saddlehorn, tilted her head a little, the way a woman will.

"Time, sir," she said. "We're buying time. All that just transpired has been transmitted to your respective governments. If blood is the price you demand, we're prepared to slice the head off every man here, and we can do that in ten seconds or less."

Marnie lifted a gloved hand, palm-up, her fingers delicately curled: "If I may call your attention to the hover-cameras. Your respective governments are watching these proceedings. If you would be kind enough to wait" -- Marnie smiled -- "we are arranging to bring your government's representatives here."

"You're what?"

There was a double-clap this time: the blocky, olive-drab tank was gone, replaced by a boxy, chisel-nosed Ambassadorial shuttle, and beside it, another Iris.

Grey-uniformed men poured out, carried long crates, opened them: poles were raised, stakes driven, a conical cap raised, secured: there were tables, chairs, then the lean young men marched back through the Iris and were gone.

A small group of men emerged from the diplomatic shuttle.

"Gentlemen, you will excuse me. I beg you not to take any hostile action until we've finished."

Three riders turned their mounts, cantered across the flat, grassy plain: lean-waisted men in grey uniforms, unnoticed until now, brought up large viewscreens for the commanders, on both sides.

Men watched as leaders they recognized, argued with one another: angry gestures, raised words, and finally an Ambassador in a tailored gown rose, gestured.

The tables were seized, removed:  the Ambassador lunged for one man, seized his necktie; a pale eyed man grabbed the other, and they were dragged to the center of the field, protesting, stumbling.

Jacob released his high ranking prisoner's necktie: Marnie's grip replaced his, and she jerked two Presidents closer -- hard.

"Gentlemen," she said quietly, her voice carrying ice and granite, "I give you this last chance for accord. Is there no other choice but war?"

"No," one shouted, "none!" -- Marnie turned to look at the other, whose florid face was as angry as his opponent's:  "None whatsoever!"

"Then, gentlemen," Marnie said quietly, "you'll fight the war right here, right now, between the two of you"

"What?"

"Outrageous!"

"I don't recognize --"

Marnie backhanded the man hard:  "Damn you, sir," she snapped, "you stand before me a COWARD!"

"SEE HERE!"

Marnie slapped him again, her hand so swift he never saw it coming.

"BLADES!" she snapped.

A young man in a grey uniform stepped forward with a long wooden case, opened its lid.

Marnie reached in, removed two Damascus blades.

"These," she said, "are my personal Schlagers."  She spun them easily, wove a web of shining steel before her:  she stopped, thrust them at two Presidents, hilt-first.

"Here. You're at war. There's the enemy. You want blood?  SHED YOUR OWN!"

Ambassador Marnie Keller dropped back, slashed down with a gloved hand:  "LAY ON!"

Two men stared, shocked, at these honed implements of death in their uncertain grip.

"WELL WHATTAYA WAITIN' FOR!  YOU WANT A WAR, YOU'VE GOT ONE! THE ENEMY FACES YOU, HAVE AT IT!"

Neither man moved.

Two politicians, used to bottom polishing, used to speechmaking, used to deals and compromise, suddenly faced the sickening realization that his life could end on the other's steel.

Marnie waited.

"You're not going to kill one another?" she asked quietly.

Neither man spoke.

"It's not so easy when it's your life, is it?"

Her voice did not accuse: her words were spoken gently, almost compassionately.

"Gentlemen, how would your wife feel if she were told you'd been killed on the field of combat, that you lay dead, your life's blood soaked into the ground?"

Two Presidents looked at the blade in their hand.

"Gentlemen, you're here because of politics, not necessity. Neither of your nations committed a warlike act against the other. You don't want to kill good men over politics. What say we sit down and talk about this?"

 

Dr. John Greenlees rose as the door to the Infirmary whisked open.

"You look like hell."

"Yeah, God loves you too."

"Supper's ready."

"Oh, bless you," Marnie squeaked as she fell into her husband: she buried her face in his shoulder, hugged him, groaned the way she did when she was bone-deep tired.

She raised her head, fatigue in her expression and exhaustion in her voice.

"John, do you remember I told my Daddy he needed a vacation?"

Dr. John Greenlees nodded, his arms still firm around his wife.

"Now it's my turn."

"Whatever you need, dearest, we will make it happen."

"Mama!" a happy little voice declared, and a little boy in knee pants pattered happily toward her.

Ambassador Marnie Keller bent, shedding title and responsibility, and became what she most loved being: she snatched young John from the floor, laughing as young arms embraced her, as masculine arms embraced them both.

Marnie was a wife and a mother now, and she was happy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited April 12 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

RIGHT BETWEEN THE EYES

"But Mama, he did!"

A mother smiled indulgently, pressed the gravy ladle down into her little boy's pile of mashed potatoes, deposited the fragrant, steaming gravy with her usual precision.

"Of course, dear. Eat your vegetables."

"But Mama --"

"Eat."

A dejected little boy planted an elbow on the tablecloth, leaned his head against his knuckles, his bottom lip pooched out in disappointment.

He'd tried to tell her.

He'd tried to let his Mama know that he, Johnny Hettix, he alone of all his chums, had gained the favor of a man of legend, that he'd stood shivering in the high, treeless tundra with the Great Man's coat wrapped around him, staring through a heavy glass filter at what was a common wonder, made uncommon by his companion.

He'd tried to tell her, and she didn't believe him.

Disappointed, he stuck his fork obediently into his bacon-and-beans.

 

"I understand you caused trouble today," Marnie said quietly.

Sheriff Jacob Keller laughed.  "I'm good at that, Sis," he grinned -- supper was always better with good company, and Ruth delighted in Marnie's mealtime company -- "which trouble are you referring to?"

"The one that made the Inter-System."

Jacob chuckled. "Which one, Sis?"

Marnie lowered her head, glared at him over a set of nonexistent spectacles, then shook her head.

"Sis," Jacob declared, spreading his hands the way his pale eyed Pa used to when stretching a tale, "when I got that hand written note from a little boy on Tortuga, hey! I couldn't disappoint him, now, could I?"

Marnie smiled.

The note was sent by that planet's post to the Embassy, it was scanned, analyzed, forwarded: Marnie herself had handled it, as it was written in a child's scrawl, it was vetted as having come from a little boy, and once it hit Marnie's hands, it was passed along to Sheriff Jacob Keller, Firelands, Mars -- a feat that was little short of impossible, owing to the sheer volume of mail addressed to that now-famous horseman.

The Inter-System was seen by the Central Confederate as a grand way of keeping the Confederacy unified.

Each of the Confederate states was its own entity, and free to tell the rest of the Confederacy to go pound sand: there were those worlds which had been Confederate, and were now independent; some maintained a relationship with the Confederacy, and a very few, did not: the Central Confederate wished to maintain its union, and one way to do this, was a unified communication system, of which the nightly news was a part.

It was not difficult at all for news of a living legend, a horseman, a mounted lawman, to be broadcast through the Inter-System, and so when an adoring little boy hand wrote a request to this famous individual, this request was passed along, unopened, intact.

Jacob's eyes were the first to read words carefully written, in pencil, on a young schoolboy's lined page.

Jacob smiled a little as he read it, for he knew what it was to be a little boy, and he knew what it was to be infatuated with a hero, and Jacob felt a laugh bubbling up inside him as he read, as he thought, as he consulted.

Much had been made of a solar eclipse, back on Earth.

Jacob knew such phenomena were regular on Tortuga, that they occurred four times a year, and that one was coming up in three days.

Jacob Keller read the note his sister handed him; twenty-four hours later, with the Diplomat's help, he rode a shining-gold stallion through an Iris, onto a planet, and asked a little boy in knee pants and sandals if he'd like to watch an Eclipse with him.

It wouldn't have mattered if Jacob had asked if the boy would like to watch paint dry.

 

The mother tilted her head, regarded her son's disappointment.

"Dear," she sighed, "I appreciate that you wrote the Sheriff a note, but he is a very busy man."

"But Mama," he whined, "he really did come and take me to see the Eclipse!"

There was a knock at the door.

The mother looked up, startled, then rose:  she went to the door, opened it.

She stood in the doorway, frozen, as a legend on a shining Palomino, someone she'd seen on the Inter-System, swung down, swept off his Stetson.

"Ma'am," a legend said in a gentle voice, his grin broad and boyish under a curled handlebar mustache, "I thought young John might like to have this."

He handed her a yellow envelope -- it was big, but slim -- she stared, looked him down and looked him up.

It was him.

Boots and gunbelt and watch-chain across his black vest, a six point star on the lapel of his coat: he turned, thrust a polished boot into a doghouse stirrup, swung easily aboard his tall stallion, touched his hat-brim:

"Mrs. Hettix," he said in a deep and gentle voice, and turned, rode down their hand laid brick walkway to the street: she watched as he turned, disappeared behind the privacy bushes, and was gone.

Mrs. Hettix went back inside, closed her front door, stared at the envelope she held.

"Johnny," she called, her voice quavering a little. "I think you should see this."

 

The Inter-System did not cover a genuine Western Sheriff arriving at a widow's little house in a small town on one of the Confederacy's most distant planets.

It did not show a widow and her son placing an envelope flat on the table, nor did it show the round red wax seal at the end of a string, dangling from under the envelope's sealed flap, a round seal with a rose impressed into it: the string was pulled, cleanly tearing the flap free, and the mother reached in, extracted a single, large sheet of paper, then turned the envelope over and caught a dark, smooth-edged rectangle of heavy glass as it slid out into her waiting palm.

"That's what I used, Mama," Johnny declared, delighted, jumping up and down the way an excited little boy will.

Mother and son examined the single page: it was heavy paper with an eggshell finish, and hand-drawn, her little boy, in perfect detail.

Johnny stood, the heavy glass held up, a delighted look on his face.

Behind him, down on one knee, a man in a black suit, a man with a curled mustache and a big grin, his coat wrapped around the little boy -- shorts and sandals are chilly attire, that far north in the Tundra -- the man's Stetson was on the little boy's head, tilted back as the child looked through dark glass at the celestial wonder, and behind them both, a Palomino, saddled, snuffing curiously at this little fellow's shoulder blades.

The picture was matted and framed and hung in a place of honor in the household, proof that a little boy's imagination was not imagination after all, and back on Mars, when an Ambassador asked a Sheriff about it, he showed her a photo he'd taken of the drawing he'd made and allowed as yes, he'd been causing trouble again.

Ambassador Marnie Keller delivered her Ambassadorial speech in her usual succinct manner.

She said "Show-off!" and smacked him with a precisely-tossed sweet roll.

Right between the eyes.

Edited April 13 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

"MARNIE DID!"

"You could run in sneakers," Michael suggested.

Victoria shook her head stubbornly. "You could!" she countered.

"Nope," he grinned, puffing out his chest: "Jacob didn't!"

"Marnie didn't either!"

Michael blinked, considered.

"You're right."

Pale eyed twins pulled on thick socks, carefully smoothed out the wrinkles, dusted the inside of their boots with genuine GI foot powder.

Their boots were new, well polished, carefully fitted, never worn.

Michael and Victoria intended most sincerely that the same could not be said upon their return.

"Whatcha takin'?" Jacob asked.

"Bond," Victoria said, pitching her young voice comically low: "Jane Bond."

Michael nodded his approval.

He and Victoria dry-fired in their stone-walled basement every evening.

Victoria showed an affinity for one of her Daddy's James Bond guns, a Walther PPK/S.

Her Daddy had two of them, and Victoria had been putting mileage on them both.

She dry-fired with the .32, and she live-fired with the .22 rimfire: Michael stuck with a brace of single action rimfires, and dry-fired with plastic snap caps.

By his own admission, he beat the plastic snap cap rims to death, but replacements were affordable.

Tonight he and his ten year old twin sister unlocked the gun cabinet, removed their engraved Winchesters, shrugged into vests and hung earplugs around their necks.

Two shadows jumped happily off the front porch, set out on a two-track jeep trail they'd traveled many times.

 

The evening wind was cool on the Sheriff's face.

He'd had a long day, he'd had a day he'd as soon forget: as soon as the Judge ruled on two particular cases, he could dismiss those matters from his mind, file them with the other reports in steel cabinets and in computer hard drives.

Until then, he was content to assume what he called "Undignified Positions" -- with a 20 pound kettlebell in each hand.

The Sheriff drove himself mercilessly.

He always did, after a day like today.

He waited for a pair of runners, moving at a steady cadence, approaching on the long upgrade: he disciplined his breathing, set down a little less than half a hundred pounds of cast iron.

The steel plates were hung, freshly coated with the cheapest white spray paint he could find: they almost glowed in the evening's dusk, four white plates arranged in a square, a red-edged plate -- the stop plate -- in the center.

Linn's youngest two children ran up to him, un-slung their Winchesters, stacked them in the holders placed for that use: Linn pressed the timer's button, held it near his little girl's left-hand French braid, just under her Stetson's brim.

BEEEP --

Victoria drew, fired five times -- the stainless Walther spat five times -- she pulled back into administrative position, just like her Daddy taught her, and as she dropped the mag and slid in a fresh, as she thumbed the half empty hopper in a vest pocket and holstered, Michael drew his left hand revolver and fired, five rounds, five hits, at the same speed his twin sis ran her shiny self shucker.

This time Linn held the timer near his youngest son's hat brim --

BEEEP --

Michael drew his right-hand revolver, five shots, five hits -- his fifth shot was Victoria's start signal -- Michael punched out empties, reloaded, holstered, did the same for his other revolver, as Victoria thumbed fresh rounds into both her magazines.

She looked up at the Sheriff with big and innocent eyes.

"Did I do good, Daddy?" she asked in a sweet little girl's voice, and Linn laughed, nodded.

"You did good, Princess," he affirmed, his approving hand on Michael's shoulder: "So did you."

"Thank you, sir."

Michael looked at Victoria as they both picked up their Winchesters, slung them over a shoulder: they turned, resumed their run.

Linn could have run with them -- he commonly did -- but he knew tonight they were testing themselves, pushing themselves, trying their steel against the standard set by their older sis, their older brother.

Linn worked his shoulders, squatted, picked up the kettlebells.

He'd run enough for one day.

It was time for some Soviet style exercise.

 

 

Edited April 14 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

RESCUE SWIMMER

The ocean was dark, blood-warm, the waters were almost calm: starlight reflected from the oily wavelets, shimmering with the swimmer's emergence.

Victoria looked around, startled --

She shouldn't be here --

Something could get her --

Something almost did --

She pulled deep inside herself, shelling herself with a carapace of crystallized fear, fragile, delicate, like a wall of sugar --

Your dreams are your own, she heard -- a whisper, a voice, calm, confident.

Her Daddy's voice.

Victoria remembered what it was to turn, to see the rock snake lower its coffin-shaped head, broad as two of her Daddy's hands at full spread -- she remembered its nose-down posture, she knew it was about to open its mouth and expose its fangs, it was about to slap down on her leg, bite --

You have the choice, she remembered.

Your dreams are your own.

In the Kingdom of Dreams, you -- only you -- command.

Victoria blinked, remembering how she'd directed her dreams in the past.

A child does not think in words, but rather in an incredibly series of impulses: the realization that her Daddy was right, that she'd directed her dreams in the past, filled her with an instant delight, a feeling of anticipation.

She waved her hand and the glittering, crystal sugar-wall dissolved.

Victoria giggled as she breathed the darkness, as something with a coffin shaped head swam toward her.

A pretty little pale-eyed girl-child with French braids and tight-laced boots, bent forward, opened her jaw, directed a conical stream of shattering destruction at the attacking rock-snake:  her belly was tight, her hands fisted, she tasted what it was to hate, and the taste lit a fire in her soul.

The rock-snake shattered, fell like a long string of black gravel into the limitless depths.

Victoria had never felt the Rage.

She'd never known what it was to be filled with a dark strength, with the realization that she could absolutely, utterly, DESTROY!

The realization scared her.

Her Daddy swam up beside her, all big strong and protective, weapon in hand.

"Daddy, what's that?" Victoria asked uncertainly.

Linn looked at the three-foot dowel he held -- shining black, gleaming, with a spray of bright-red feathers on the end.

"This?" he laughed. "This is in case those rascally rock snakes come back!"

"But Daddy," Angela protested, then she took a quick breath as something black and sinuous twisted toward them.

Linn reached out with the feathery-stick, tickled the rock snake.

It stopped.

It laughed.

It giggled, it shrieked with laughter, it twisted itself up into a black, tangled knot and disappeared in a little cloudy *poof* and it was gone.

"Daddy," Victoria asked uncertainly, "am I dreaming?"

Linn turned -- he was swimming, fully dressed, but completely dry -- "Yes, Princess, you are."

"Butbutbut," she protested, "what are you doing in my dream?"

Linn took his little girl's hand, placed it on his breastbone.

"Feel the Rage," he whispered, and she did: she felt a scaly monster, great and powerful, ready to lash out and destroy, to shatter, to level mountains with a slash of his scaly tail, to lay waste to cities with a breath of liquid fire --

Victoria blinked, surprised.

"It doesn't ... you keep it ... butbutbutDaddy --"

"How do I control it?" Linn laughed.  "It's my Rage. Mine, no one else's, just as yours is your own.

"If I let it run free, it will rule me, and I will become that monster."

Linn curled a gentle Daddy-finger under his little girl's under-jaw, looked at her with almost a sad expression.

"If I did that, Victoria, I would cause great harm, and I would disappoint many people."

He brushed a wisp of silk-fine hair from her forehead and whispered, "I do not ever want to see that disappointment in your eyes, Princess!"

"Butbutbut --"

Victoria bit her bottom lip uncertainly.

"The Rage felt good, didn't it?"

She nodded.

"You felt strong."

She nodded again.

"We are each responsible, Victoria. We are responsible for our choices and for our actions. When that rock snake came at you, you chose to stop it. If it bit you, it would kill you, so you were justified in killing it."

"You didn't kill it, Daddy," Victoria protested. "You tickled it."

Linn nodded, then laughed, winked, gestured her closer: Victoria floated closer to her Daddy, suspended in limitless warm dark waters.

"If I make them so silly they realize how ridiculous they really are, they poof! -- disappear, and they're gone!"

Behind him, Victoria saw shadows of monsters, terrible creatures of fear and terror, slobbering as they lurched toward him: suddenly they wore silly hats, red clown noses, pink ballerina tutu skirts -- faintly, in the distance, their menacing howls became oogah-horns or silly barnyard sounds.

The Monsters of Terror turned, shoulders slumped, defeated: they dragged themselves off into the distance, the very image of dejection, their menace made harmless, turned into silliness.

Linn's hand floated up under his little girl's: they barely touched, and they were at the range, standing in front of a block of ballistic gel.

Victoria heard the timer -- BEEEP -- her hand went to her waist, gripped a bigger pistol than she was used to -- she raised it, caught the flash-sight-picture, her finger came straight back the way she'd practiced --

The block of clear gel blew apart, flew off the table, wobbling, half its mass gone.

Victoria's eyes were big as she saw the result of her shot.

A hum of an electric motor, the clatter of sprocket-driven chain, a ballistic dummy rotated into position.

BEEEP --

Victoria watched, fascinated, as the bullet she just fired devastated its way through the semi-transparent, anatomically-correct, simulacrum.

Victoria heard her Daddy's thoughts as the bullet traveled, as the shock wave expanded, as she truly realized the extent of destruction she'd just brought to a lifeless exemplar.

"Darlin', we can cause great harm if we let our emotions rule us. This is why we must rule them."

Victoria's eyes snapped open in the quiet and the darkness of her bedroom.

She blinked, looked around, not moving her head at first: small fingers gripped her bedcovers, and she realized she was under her own roof, in her own bed.

Victoria giggled, rolled up on her side, curled up a little, and just that fast, was asleep again.

Across the hall, Shelly felt her husband laugh in his sleep: his hand found hers, gripped gently, the way he always did.

"Something funny?" she murmured, and Linn rolled over on his side.

She felt his silent laughter, heard the smile in his voice.

"I dreamed I was a rescue swimmer."

 

 

 

 

 

Edited April 14 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

THE SOUND OF A PISTOL SHOT

Sheriff Willamina Keller was no stranger to Man Splaining.

She was also no stranger to stress, nor to working with eager young men who'd just been through something that was not only unexpected, but somewhat more than startling.

Sheriff Willamina Keller was a mother, she was a wife, she was a Marine: when she took a troubled-looking young man by the arm and steered him across the street, those who witnessed the moment had no way of knowing whether this meant well for the young man, or whether it boded some more serious outcome.

As she intercepted him in front of Digger's funeral parlor -- it wasn't called that nowadays, of course, it had been run by a man profanely nicknamed Digger back when the town was very young, thus the colloquial term of the day -- but as she'd sized him up, as she'd apparently taken custody of him, and she was steering his course, it was evident that the Sheriff was in charge, the Sheriff had something definite in mind.

One of the morning regulars saw them coming up the steps to the Silver Jewel: he gripped the polished brass door handle, hauled the heavy, ornate-frosted-glass-paneled door open for them.

Willamina looked very directly at him and murmured a polite, "Thank you," and she smiled, the way a woman will when she is treated in a gentlemanly fashion.

The Sheriff, and a young man in a shirt and tie, sat down at a table in the far corner of the room: Willamina smoothed her skirt under her, sat with all the feminine grace of the Queen upon her throne, smiled as the hash slinger came back to inquire after their order.

"Coffee, please," Willamina smiled, "and a plate of garbage, I'm hungry!"

The waitress looked at the young man, who was staring a hole in the salt shaker, his expression that of a man who'd seen things he wished he never had.

"Bacon and eggs, over easy," he mumbled, "and rye toast."

Willamina waited until they had coffee.

"Francis, you look like you just survived your first firefight."

Francis looked up at the Sheriff with the eyes of a genuinely troubled young man.

Willamina sipped her coffee, nodded her approval.

"Now that's a good brew," she said quietly, then tilted her head like an interested mother.

"Out with it, now. What happened?"

"I quit," Francis said, his voice flat.

Willamina nodded.  "I've walked off the job myself. What happened?"

Frances stared at the Sheriff with troubled eyes.

He wasn't seeing a good looking woman in a tailored blue suit dress.

He was looking at a nightmare.

 

He'd been sent to a nursing home to pick up a deceased for the local funeral parlor.

The call came in at oh too early in the morning, and it was a good distance away: he took the company credit card, he took the out-of-town coach, and as usual, he wore a shirt and tie, pressed slacks and shined shoes.

"I got there," he said quietly, "and we got the deceased over on my cot. I sheeted him and belted him down, I covered him with the funeral home blanket and got him loaded and secured."

Willamina forked up another tumbling payload of garbage -- it was a heaping plate full of everthing edible: hashed and well browned taters, fried onions, peppers, sausage, cubed and fried chicken, it was different every day, it was always good, and it looked like garbage.

"The deceased," Francis said quietly as bacon and eggs lowered into place in front of him, "slept sitting up for the past twenty years."

"Chronic lunger," Willamina murmured, and the young man nodded.

"Eat your eggs before they get cold."

Francis blinked, realized he had a plate in front of him: he picked up his fork, cut some egg free, stabbed it, chewed.

"It was out in the flat country, about two in the morning. Thunder storm. When I'm driving at night I make a circle with my eyes -- instruments, speedometer, rearview and back to the windshield -- I'd just looked up in the rearview when lightning hit the median a quarter mile ahead of me."

His fork lowered to the table, forgotten, as he looked at the mirror in the memory.

"There was the sound of a pistol shot, Sheriff. The body sat up and broke the chest strap and it groaned, and I'm glad there was nobody next to me in the passing lane!"

Willamina nodded. "If he slept sitting up for twenty years, his abdominals would have shortened. Lactic acid builds up when the blood stops flowing, the belly tightens --"

She looked very frankly at her breakfast companion, she reached across the table, laid her hand over his:  "Francis, did you have any trouble staying awake for the rest of the trip?"

Her words were gently spoken, and they were not at all what he expected to hear:  he blinked, he laughed a little, he reached for the pepper shaker and sprinkled some black flakes over his eggs.

"No, ma'am," he chuckled. "I did not have any trouble whatsoever staying awake!"

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

THE MAN IN THE MIRROR

"Sir?"

"Yes, Jacob?"

"Thank you."

The Sheriff inclined his head.

"You're welcome," he said with a solemn gravity.

Silence for several long moments.

Linn could tell there was something on his son's mind, and he knew the best way to bring it out was to say a whole lot of nothing, and he was right.

"Sir, I don't ... I never knew my sire."

Linn nodded again, once, his face carefully solemn.

"You've conducted yourself as a gentleman, sir."

Linn worked hard to cultivate a poker face.

It almost worked this time.

"Thank you," he said at length.

Jacob frowned, looked away, uncertain, then looked back.

"Sir ... you've never hit me."

Linn raised an eyebrow, brought his chair down on all four legs, leaned forward, clearly ... well, either interested, or surprised.

He nodded again, slowly, his palms sandpapering themselves together with an equal deliberation.

"Jacob," he finally said, "my Pa would hit me."

"Yes, sir?"

"Time and again, he was not justified, or he was way too ... harsh."

"Yes, sir?"

"It took me a lot of years to realize it, Jacob, but I finally figured I could either keep holdin' all those ag'in him, or I could make some use of 'em."

It was Jacob's turn to be surprised.

"Sir?"

"Jacob" -- Linn's jaw thrust out, he frowned, looked off to the side, rubbed his hands together again -- "Jacob, I can either whip my own back with those memories, or I can learn from 'em."

"Learn from them, sir?"

Linn looked at his son, one eyebrow tented up.

"Jacob, you recall when your Mama's lamp got broke?"

Jacob looked uncomfortable, shifted in his seat.

"Yes, sir."

"Do you recall how you felt when it happened?"

"I do, sir."

"Do you recall how it happened?"

"I do, sir."

"You'll recall the maid opened a window, and when you opened the hallway door, a gust hit the house and blew the lamp right off the table."

Jacob nodded carefully. "I did, sir, and it did."

"Now."  Linn raised a finger. "You had no intent to break the lamp."

"No, sir."

"You did nothing intentionally to break it."

"No, sir."

"All you did was open the door."

"Yes, sir."

"Do you recall I wasn't happy the lamp was broke?"

"I recall, sir."

"Do you recall what I said?"

"You didn't say a thing, sir, and that terrified me."

"I know it did. I saw the look on your face."

Linn looked closely at his son's face, chose his words carefully.

"Do you recall what I did?"

"You asked me what happened, sir."

"Do you recall your answer."

"I do, sir. I said I opened the door to the parlor and the lamp blew off the table."

"Now Jacob, if I'd belted you -- would that have been right?"

"No, sir."

"Exactly right."  Linn winked on eye shut, dropped a bent forefinger at his son. 

"Jacob, I'm not the brightest candle in the chandelier, but I'm not entirely stupid" -- he grinned, that there-and-gone grin that meant he was poking fun at himself -- "but I learned what not to do, from havin' it done to me."

"Yes, sir."

"Jacob, when someone does us wrong, we can cherish that hurt and pack it around with us for the rest of our life, or we can learn from it and toss the hurt aside." 

Linn frowned, then smiled a little.

"I had a schoolteacher -- a real witch, damn her! -- she laid me across the shoulder blades with a little wooden paddle she favored. She died a year later of the apoplexy. She'd been a genuine sweetheart the year before, but for whatever reason, she just turned into a waspish old harridan.

"I hated that woman, Jacob. I hated her with a deep purple passion, and I don't reckon there were more than two mourners at her funeral, other'n the parson and the gravedigger. Do you know how I laid that memory to rest?"

Jacob shook his head, slowly, his eyes never leaving his father's.

"Promise not to tell anyone," Linn said in a quiet and confidential voice, "but I donated her a beer."

"Sir?"

Linn winked, nodded.

"Sir, you poured a beer over her grave?"

Linn smiled quietly.

"Almost," he admitted. "I run it through my kidneys first. Haven't give her a minute's thought since."

Linn could see the smile at the corners of Jacob's eyes.

"Everyone I talked to that was in school that year remembers her for the witch she'd become.

Doc allowed as maybe she had the apoplexy for some time, for she wasn't that mean the year before, she just ... turned ... of a sudden, and he said he'd known folks with a light case t' change, and never for the better."

"I see, sir."

"I had my Pa so high on a pedestal it's a wonder he didn't get nosebleed. He made mistakes, yes, and he hurt me, yes, and there were times when it was not justified, but I looked in the mirror and realized my feet were made of the same clay as his, and that was a terrible day."

Linn was quiet for a long moment, looking off to Jacob's left, looking at memories only he could see.

"A son builds his universe on the ashlar that is his father," Linn said quietly, "and I did, and the day I realized my feet are made of the same clay as the Grand Old Man's, why, that was the day the very universe trembled."

"Yes, sir."

"The mirror was my friend, Jacob. I looked at it and saw a man that was just as prone to err as my Pa, and I've never forgotten that."

"Yes, sir."

Jacob was quiet for a long moment: he looked down the hallway that run between the cells, looked back.

"You really run a beer through your kidneys for her?"

Linn nodded slowly, then smiled quietly.

"Don't get any ideas."

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited April 15 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

THE MOTHER’S WISH

 

The human body is an amazing machine.

It can do incredibly fine work, unbelievably precise work: in motion, dance can enchant the eye; in seduction, it can enchant and beguile the hardest of hearts; at labor, fantastic edifices can be constructed, swift races run, watery depths plumbed.

The running of a race, however, can be negatively impacted by a hard-swung wine-bottle, delivered precisely across the bridge of the nose, and when the impact of a wine-bottle serves to redirect the runner into a door-frame, one might consider the race to be both lost, and over, especially when the runner’s fore-head bounces off the steel door-frame briskly enough to cause the front of the store to vibrate, and the runner to fall to the tile floor, unconscious.

 

A father knelt between two parked cars, held his shivering son.

“You’re safe now,” the father whispered, his arms strong, reassuring: the boy nodded, swallowed.

“There are cameras inside. We’ll get the recordings.”

The eleven-year-old boy nodded.

“Where’s your sister?”

“She’s with Mama.”

A pale eyed man raised his phone tapped the screen, spoke.

“Shelly? Heads up. Someone just tried to snatch Michael.”

 

Lean young men in Confederate grey consulted scanners, spoke quietly into their comm-links.

“I’ve got three vehicles at idle.”

Pause.

“All three tagged with trackers. One is a cargo van, suspicious.”

“Seize it.”

Outside, a windowless green van disappeared.

 

“Sir?”

“Yes, Michael?”

“I don’t want Mama to dress me anymore.”

“She does like to do that, doesn’t she?”

“Yes, sir.”

Michael paused, chewed on his bottom lip.

“Sir, honor my father and mother, but if she wants me to wear shorts and sneakers again, I’m going to tell her no, but I’ll need your help.”

“I’ll speak to her.”

“Thank you, sir.”

The jurisdictional law enforcement accompanied the bleeding, bell-rung, would-be kidnapper to the hospital, and just before the ambulance carrying said soul arrived, a dozen lean young men in black suits filed in through the ambulance doors and quietly informed the charge nurse that a wanted felon was being brought in, and that security would be maintained.

It was clearly not a request.

When the ambulance cot was brought in, young men in black suits fell in behind, followed it to the treatment room, and quietly informed both physician, nurses and hospital security, that the hospital’s authority was now overridden.

The appearance of short, black, businesslike shotguns – and a quiet word to the patient, whose screaming protestations earned him a hard-driven gun butt to the belly – confirmed his suspicions that he’d made a very, absolutely, extremely poor, victim selection.

 

“Sir,” Michael said, “when I was grabbed, I responded as I have been trained.”

Linn nodded.

“He grabbed me from behind.”

“Go on.”

“He got his hand around my mouth and neck.”

Linn nodded again.

“I bit him, hard, I stomped the arch of his foot and I pulled two knives.”

Michael saw the gleam of approval in his father’s pale eyes.

“Icepick grip right, I stabbed his leg behind me. Upright blade left, up into his gut. I hit his leg again and second stab went into his arm. He let go and I ran.”

“There is honor in running,” Linn said seriously. “Running saved his life.”

“I ran to the front of the store, sir. I knew you were outside and about to come in.”

“I knew something was wrong, Michael. I saw that Jack Doe running after you, and I beerbottled him across the face.”  Linn smiled, just a little.  “Well, winebottled.”

“Yes, sir.”

“He hit the doorframe and cold cocked himself. Remind me to get my cuffs back from the jurisdictional.”

“Yes, sir.”

Linn consulted his phone.

“Your mother and sister are picked up, they’re safe.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Your thoughts.”

“Sir, I don’t like wearing sneakers, the heel is too soft. If I’d been wearing my boots I might have broken his arch when I stomped him.”

Linn nodded. “I agree, Michael. I will see to it.”

 

Linn came into the firehouse through the back door.

If he came in the front door, he strode boldly in, called cheerfully to whoever was in sight, happily profaned the Chief and shook hands all around.

If he was here for a quiet word with his wife, he came in the back door.

The Sheriff came in the back door.

He and Shelly withdrew to the far side of the squad, sat on a waxed, polished, slick-varnished bench under a row of cupboards marked SQUAD SUPPLIES.

“The Jack Doe that tried to snatch Michael.”

Shelly shifted uncomfortably.

“He’s dead.”

She blinked, surprised.

“He tried to escape his hospital room. He grabbed a nurse as a hostage, snatched the pen from her hand, put it to the nurse’s neck and was shot for his troubles.”

“I see.”

“Michael’s testimony will not be required.”

Shelly nodded.

“It seems that a suspicious van was found. It contained items and materials that are associated with kidnap and human trafficking.”

Shelly paled a few degrees.

“The testimony of the van’s occupants was also damning. The Jurisdictional passed all this along to the Federal boys.”

“And Michael?”

“He’s using this as a training aid.”

Shelly hung her head, a defeated look on her face.

“All I wanted was a normal family,” she whispered.

Linn put his arm around his wife’s shoulders, hugged her into him.

“Here’s a Marine Corps white paper for you, darlin’,” he murmured. “Nobody has a normal family.” 

He smiled gently.

“Nobody. Every family is screwed up, every family is dysfunctional, every family is a hot mess, and there are no exceptions to the rule.”  He kissed the corner of her forehead. “All we can do is the best we can. You’re doing that.”

“Am I?”

Linn slid a little away from her, took her by the shoulders, turned her to face him, his face serious.

“Mrs. Keller,” he said, and his voice was the one he used when he brooked no disagreement, “our daughters are Ladies, because of what they see in you. Marnie gave me hell because I set the bar so damned high for what to look for in a husband, because of the way I treat, you. Do you know why you wanted Michael to wear shorts and sneakers the day he was grabbed?”

Shelly looked at him with vulnerable eyes: her walls were shattered, her shields destroyed, and Linn knew that he had to choose his words carefully, for a woman’s heart is easily bruised.

“Darlin’, you wanted him to be a Normal Little Boy. You wanted him to feel safe and you wanted him to be comfortable.”

Linn’s voice was lower now: he spoke slowly, emphasizing each word.

“You, did, nothing, wrong!”

He drew his wife into him, held her, sighed.

“Darlin’, do you know he’s alive because of you?”

Shelly shook her head, leaned into her husband, laid her head over on his shoulder.

“Shelly, he’s watched you bust your ever-lovin’ butt on a squad run. He’s seen you run a code, he’s seen you attack a wrecked car like a personal enemy so you could wiggle in like Sneaky Snake to get to the wounded. He’s seen you don’t have any give-up a’tall, and that’s what he called on when he needed that strength.”

Shelly lifted her head, looked at her husband with big, luminous eyes as he caressed her cheek with a bent forefinger.

“Mrs. Keller,” he whispered, “you are a fine and shining example of what a wife and mother should be.”

He felt his wife flinch as the howler went off.

“Firelands Emergency Squad, car-bicycle accident, main and fourth, time out one-twenty-one.”

Shelly snatched up her short-tailed helmet, dunked it on her head and pulled the chin strap tight.

“Showtime!”

Linn stood back, stayed the hell out of the way as the squad was unplugged, as his wife and her father jumped in, as the door chuckled up, as Firelands Squad One rolled on an accident call.

Fitz came strolling over as the bay door came shivering down, walking with the rolling gait of a salt water sailor.

“Now there,” he said softly, looking at the closing door, “is a wife to be proud of.”

Linn rested his hand on his old friend’s shoulder, nodded.

“Yes,” he agreed.  “Yes, she is.”

 

Edited April 17 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

INVESTIGATION

Emma Cooper's smile was quick, bright, genuine as she greeted the Sheriff, as she took his hands, as she declared her delight in the achievements of his son Jacob, who'd only just started going to their little one-room school: she happily recounted the precision of his work, his unwavering attention, how he'd quietly, unobtrusively, helped two other students puzzle out the arcane mystery of sums and subtractions, how he was helping two others memorize multiplication tables and the names of the Presidents.

"He is a quiet student, Sheriff," she said in a motherly voice, patting his hand as she did: he recognized her gesture as an unconscious reflection of her naturally maternal nature, otherwise he would never have allowed another man's wife to behave in such a way -- especially in public.

As Emma Cooper was expressing her delight, Jacob was busy driving his fists in a quick one-two-three into another student's guts: he spun, kicked a second attacker's knee from behind, faded away from a punch and let it sail past his left ear before he grabbed a double handful of galluses and vest and threw the third tormentor over his extended leg.

He stomped a belly, grabbed the collar of one who decided he'd had enough, seized th seat of said soul's paints, hauled him off the ground and drove him down atop his fellows.

"Just lay there," Jacob said quietly.

They didn't.

As each got up, Jacob put them down, hard: there would be cracked ribs and bruised muscles in the morning: when they stopped trying to get up, Jacob addressed them in a quiet voice.

"You three," he said evenly, "started pickin' on me from the minute I walked into that schoolhouse. I want to know why."

A rustle of skirts behind him, he never turned around.

"Hello, Sarah."

Sarah Lynne McKenna was two fingers shy of Jacob's height, and the same age, or near to it: she leaned casually against Jacob, as if leaning against a tree or a fencepost, with her arms crossed and one foot crossed daintily over the other.

"What'cha doin', little brother?"

Jacob looked at her.

"I'm investigating, little sister!"

Sarah drew back, lifted a fist, waved it threateningly.

"Who are you calling little, little brother?"

Jacob looked at the three, rolled up on their sides, curled up some, trying hard not to groan: he hooked a thumb toward Sarah and said, "See what I have to put up with? My Pa's the Sheriff and she beats up on me every whipstitch, I can't get by with nothin'! Now how about it? How come you three pick on me every chance you get?"

Sullen expressions; they looked away, came painfully upright, looked at one another.

"Tell you what," Jacob said. "My Pa will give any man one chance. You've had yours. Give me any more grief and I'll drive you through the floor of that schoolhouse like a fencepost."

"I prefer a frying pan," Sarah offered, "but Jacob just uses his fists."  She gave them a wide-eyed, innocent expression as she added, "He's done it before!"

Jacob looked at the three, turned, walked away: Sarah took his arm, minced along beside him until they were well out of earshot.

"You were investigating?" she asked.

Jacob looked sourly at her, nodded.

"Did you find the answer to your question?"

"No."

"I know why."

Jacob stopped.

Sarah turned and looked very directly at her pale eyed half brother.

"It's because you're quiet," she said. "They don't know what to make of you."

"So they broke my slate, stole my chalk, tripped me and slapped me across the back when Miz Emma wasn't looking."

"They don't know how else to make you react."

Jacob turned, looked back, looked back at Sarah.

"They know now."

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

FROM HERE TO BREAKFAST

“Fitz?”

My heart dropped to about my boot tops.

I knew what I was seeing, my mouth was dry, my hand clamped down on the Fire Chief’s shoulder.

He turned suddenly, the way he did when he was aggravated at being interrupted, then he saw what I was seeing.

The truck was over on its side, it was afire, the smoke coming off it was a dirty yellow and getting thicker, and my wife was on top of the laid-over cab, just muscling the door open.

“PULL BACK!” Fitz yelled – it was little short of a full-voiced scream, then he grabbed his talkie, raised it, squeezed hard.

“DROP HOSES AND PULL BACK, GET SOME DISTANCE, SHE’S GONNA BLOW, GET A QUARTER MILE BACK, NOW!”

I turned, thrust a boot in Outlaw’s stirrup.

I didn’t bounce and boost into the saddle like I usually did.

I drove into the hurricane deck and Outlaw spun under me and the spirit of the century-dead Cannonball must have gone rip-roarin’ out of the grave and into his living soul because we launched toward that burning wreck like a ball out of a Napoleon field gun.

I’m screaming like a madman, I’m screaming “SHELLLEEEEE!” and she’s already in the cab and I’m thinking Easiest way in is the windshield, bust the corner and rip it free and there was a hiss and that old ugly yaller smoke started out almost like a jet and I’m a-comin’ up beside the laid-over road tractor and I see the windshield peel away and someone is kickin’ it free from the inside and Midnight he comes around and we’re off the pavement and throwin’ clods as he was diggin’ in and we launched toward Shelly and she’d got a man around under the arms and I recht down and grabbed her and someone else was there and got the driver and I hauled my wife up across the saddlehorn and I’m yelling “GO GO GO GO GO!” and Midnight he lays his ears back and punched his nose out and we’re bustin’ a hole in the wind and I reckon my Guardian Angel was streaming along behind me like a gauzy kite-tail and a madman between my ears is screaming SHE’S GONNA BLOW GET SOME DISTANCE DISTANCE DISTANCE and something kicked Midnight and me in the backside and the both of us flew forward and he’s trying to keep his legs under him and we went over a fence and ‘twas to no effort of my horse that we went, we just kind of got booted over the bobwarr and he landed and we landed and I rolled over and I had a death grip around my wife and I heard her grunt and I heard me grunt and we come to a stop and I let go and just laid there and the wind was plumb knocked clear out of me –

I couldn’t hear –

I blinked, confused, looked up at the sky, the clouds –

Shelly –

I fought to get some wind in me.

Damned if I was going to die a-layin’ there so I rolled over and Midnight, he was layin’ over on his side and not movin’ and Shelly was dead still.

Dear God I’ve killed ‘em both!

Midnight’s hind hoof twitched and then he grunted and r’ared up his head and I got a little more wind in me and retcht out and I grabbed Shelly’s hand.

She brought up her other hand, rubbed her forehead and she had this funny puzzled look about her and then she looked at me and I’m still tryin’ to breathe and she looks all concerned and I rolled over and fought up to knees and elbows and I taken as much of a breath as I could and that warn’t much and then I stood up on my knees and so did Shelly and Outlaw, he’s workin’ his pins under him too and I got my feet down ag’in the ground and stood up and Shelly she come up with me and we looked around and I staggered over to Outlaw and ten thousand field crickets were singing in the hot August sun and every last one of ‘em takin’ up residence inside my skull and Outlaw he got to his hooves and I leaned ag’in him and got an arm over his neck and I sagged some and then we walked over to Shelly and I got my arm around her and we walked back towards what was left of that truck.

I squinted.

It felt like my eyes were full of dirt.

I pulled out a bedsheet handkerchief and wiped my eyes.

I was dizzy as hell.

I had one arm over Outlaw’s neck and one around my wife, for she didn’t feel none too steady neither.

I handed my white hankie it to Shelly.

Movement, left --

Who in the hell is that?

When I turned my head to the left, the earth took a hard list to starboard underfoot and then went down hard by the bow.

Had I not an arm over Outlaw’s neck, I’d have hit the ground for sure.

I reckon that’s the truck’s driver yonder up by the ridge line but how in the hell did he get that far away that fast?

The boxy red rescue truck was coming around the crater, around the wreckage, stopped.

 I saw fire coats and the men that wore them, pouring quickly out of every door on that machine.

One raised an arm toward us, pointed.

Men ran toward us.

I pushed Shelly toward them, I got a boot into the near stirrup, I swung up.

Outlaw turned under me and we headed for the driver.

I squinted some and could have sworn there was another mounted rider, someone else on a black horse.

A big black horse.

I looked again and all I saw was the truck’s driver.

 

It took a while for the red ringing in my ears to subside.

Me and the driver both was talkin’ at one another in a loud voice, I found out later he was hard of hearin’ to start with so he was used to it.

He allowed as he got his bell rung when his truck blew a tire and bit the ditch and come to grief, and he was wonderin’ why he was standin’ up inside the cab of his truck and why was it over on its side when this blond haired keg of dynamite ripped his door open overhead and jumped in with him, she took him in a bear hug and brought up both her feet and kicked the windshield at its edge – she kicked it twice, both feet at the same time – she taken a two hand grip on him and spun him around and slammed him into the glass and busted it out and then he said he got grabbed by someone on a big black horse, and next thing he knew something went BOOM and the world shivered underfoot and he was near to a quarter of a mile away, up on the ridge overlookin’ the explosion, and no idea how he'd got there.

We walked back, and it took a while.

He walked on my left, and my right arm was hung over Outlaw’s neck.

That-there hard of hearin’ truck driver walked considerably better than I did.

Outlaw wasn’t doin’ terribly good neither.

I recall bein’ grabbed and laid down on something padded and I looked up at a black handlebar mustache with a man attached to it, and I said “Shelly?” and I recall a man’s hand laid over on mine and I read his lips, he said “She’s fine,” and I had to close my eyes and reach down to grab the side rails on that aluminum ambulance cot to keep it from spinnin’ around underneath of me.

That’s the last I recalled until I woke up and reckoned I was in a hospital bed.

I recall there was a young flock of lovely ladies around me, all of ‘em in pin striped dresses and winged nurses’ caps.

I felt a gentle, cool hand on my forehead, a thumb pullin’ my eyelid up and there was a bright light shinin’ in my one eye.

I twitched my head away, blinked, frowned, looked up.

“Angela,” I whispered.

She laid the backs of her fingers against my cheek, across my forehead, like Mama used to when I wasn’t well.

“How do you feel?” she asked in a professional voice.

“Shelly,” I whispered dryly.

Angela leaned over, tilted her head to look very directly at me.

“Look at me, Sheriff,” she said quietly. 

I looked at her.

“Shelly,” I repeated as fear tried to claim my stomach.

“She’s fine,” Angela said in that quiet voice of hers.

I frowned, blinked.

“I can hear.”

Angela looked up, smiled, patted my hand.

“Story at eleven,” she said. “Get some rest.”

Something cold and hard pressed against the side of my neck, there was a hiss, and I didn’t wake up until the next morning.

 

I woke up, looked around.

A tent-folded card was on the hospital bed’s sidetable.

Get a shower and get dressed, I read in a familiar hand.

Your wife requests your presence at breakfast.

Debrief afterward.

I raised an eyebrow, set the card back on the sidetable.

I laid there for a minute, gathering my memories, looking at what I recalled happening, then I sat up, stood.

A shower, a shave, and I felt a new man: my clothes were clean, folded on the bedside chair and hanging up, even to my pocket watch, my Stetson and my gunbelt and boots.

I came out of the hospital room fully dressed, my hat in my hand, looked around.

One of the pretty young girls I remembered from – last night? Yesterday? – hell, it might’ve been a week ago or more – looked up and smiled.

“I beg your pardon,” I said gently, for wherever I was, it was no hospital I’d ever seen, and that made me a guest, and a guest’s duty is to be polite – “I am expected for breakfast?”

“Yes, Sheriff,” she said, and damned if she didn’t come up and claim hold of my arm like she owned me. “This way please.”

I can’t say I was displeased.

The attentions of a lovely young lady are guaranteed to warm the heart of an older man.

We walked down a shining, spotless hall, turned: a set of stainless steel doors opened.

We went either up or down, I’m not sure which, but curiosity was working on me.

“Would you know,” I asked carefully, “about my horse?”

She inclined her head slightly, smiled quietly, then turned and looked up at me.

“I understand,” she said carefully, “he is not only well, he is being outrageously spoiled!”

I smiled, nodded.

“Thank you,” I said quietly, and the doors opened, and of a sudden I had a double armful of wife, and I can’t say I was at all displeased.

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

FROM BREAKFAST TO DEBRIEF

 

I saw that little girl’s eyebrows raise a little.

When Shelly jumped into my arms, why, I hugged her like I always do, and I hoisted her a little like I always do, and I give a little shake like I always do, and her spine gave kind of a rippling pop like it does when I haven’t stretched out her back for a while.

Shelly slacked her grip and leaned back enough to look at me.

“You idiot,” she smiled, “you damned fool, you stupid hard headed contrary –”

I picked her up again and put my mouth on hers.

I had no idea who-all might be watching.

I genuinely did not care.

 

Breakfast was good.

We ate with a good appetite, and as I finished my coffee, Angela gestured for a podium to be set on the table at the front of the room.

“The debrief will begin,” she said:  “Sheriff, could you come up and give us your recollection of events, please.”

I winked at Shelly: she looked at me and said “Please, Linn, don’t be so long winded!”

“Does yas knows me or what?” I asked in a nasal drawl.

I placed my Stetson beside the wooden tabletop podium.

“Sheriff Linn Keller, Firelands County,” I said, lifting my chin: “My wife, Paramedic Shelly Keller, Firelands Fire Department.”

Heads turned; Shelly colored delicately and she shot me a complex look that I think meant she loved being introduced but she was ready to clobber me for making all those people look at her like she was something special.

“Nurse Angela instructed that I should tell you what I remember.”

I looked at my daughter.

Angela folded her arms and lowered her head a little, looking at me through her lashes, just like her Mama was prone to do in such moments.

“I remember, just now, eating a loaf of bread toasted up and buttered, a dozen eggs fried up, a pound of bacon fried crispy, a big plate of fried taters and two pots of coffee for breakfast.” 

I looked at Angela with my very best Innocent Expression and added, “It isn’t wise to eat too much on an empty stomach.”

Angela began patting her foot like a schoolmarm and I looked at the rest of the assemblage: the men were grinning, or hiding their smiles behind casually-raised hands.

I looked back.

My voice and my face were now serious.

“We responded to a reported tractor trailer wreck. Upon arrival we observed it was on fire, unknown cargo. The fire department responded, with the paramedic squad.

“I observed a particular color and texture of smoke that told me a nitrate based fertilizer was not only burning, it was close to detonating.

“The Fire Chief realized we were in too dangerous a situation, we were too close, he ordered all hands to drop their hoses and pull back, fast.”

I swallowed as I looked at the memory of my wife atop that laid-over truck’s cab.

“My wife was making entry to evacuate the driver. My concern was to get her away from there. To that end I jumped on my horse and we rode for the front of the cab.

“My wife was coming through the windshield with the driver.

“Another rider was there and grabbed the driver, I grabbed my wife and we proceeded to get some distance, at least until a giant kicked us all in the backside and I ended up flat on my back with every bit of wind knocked out of me, every locust in three states singing in my ears, and I wondered why in two hells I was just a-layin’ there on the damp ground.

“Rescue arrived and took charge of my wife. I got in the saddle and headed for the ridgeline a quarter mile distant, where I’d seen the driver and the other rider’s horse. By the time I got there, the other horse was gone. The driver and I walked back.”

I chuckled, just a little.

“I will admit the driver was walking considerably better than I was. If I didn’t have an arm over my Outlaw-horse’s neck, I’d have been eating dirt, for all the way back the deck assumed a distinct series of maneuvers – roll, pitch and yaw, all three.”

A dignified older man raised a hand: “Sheriff,” asked he, “how would you rate your hearing?”

I considered for a moment.

“Sir” – I looked very directly at him – “Doctor?”

“Doctor will do.”

“Thank you, Doctor.  I seem to have no more locusts singing in my ears. I would say my hearing acuity is better than I remember.”

Another hand.

“Yes, sir.”

“Sheriff, how would you rate your sense of balance?”

I could not help but laugh, just a little.

“Doctor, is it?” – a nod – “thank you, sir.”

I squared my shoulders, laughed.

“I am most pleased to report the deck underfoot neither rolls, pitches, nor yaws, and that is quite honestly a great comfort!”

“Sheriff, have you questions for us?”

“I have.” 

I looked at my darlin’ daughter, sitting back beside my wife, doing her best to look professional, competent and innocent, not necessarily in that order.

“First, please forgive my bluntness, but where exactly am I; how did I get here; what has been done to me; but first and most importantly, is my wife entirely well?”

Shelly lowered her head, her face positively aflame.

I raised an eyebrow to my daughter, looked at men and women alike, assembled and paying very close attention to me.

“Sheriff, perhaps you’d like to sit down, this may take a while.”

I picked up my Stetson, walked back to Shelly: Angela rose and followed discreetly, sat beside Shelly.

I looked over as Angela leaned forward a little.

“You might know this as an M&M,” she almost whispered. “Mortality and Morbidity. It’s where cases are discussed, frankly and without accusation.”

I raised an eyebrow, nodded, then turned my attention to the dignified older man behind the podium.

More coffee appeared: Shelly passed, as did Angela, but like Fitz told me once, “The Navy runs on coffee, and so do I!”

I sipped hot, fragrant coffee, smiled a little – Angela must’ve told them I like vanilla and honey in mine, I thought, and made a mental note to thank both the cook and my daughter for that kindness.

“Sheriff, you are in the Millersburg Hospital. I feel safe in saying we are the premier treatment facility for this quadrant of the galaxy. You were transported here courtesy your daughter” – the Doctor nodded to Angela, who inclined her head a little in acknowledgement – “I understand she arranged for your and your wife’s transfer from your local Firelands facility, back on Earth.”

I nodded, my eyes never leaving his: I wanted it evident I was listening carefully to the man’s words.

The doctor then described matters which were quite honestly well above my understanding.

On the one hand, Mama was a nurse, my daughter is a nurse, my wife is a paramedic, and I am not entirely unintelligent.

On the other hand, when a clinical discussion of repair of inner ear cilia goes into far greater and technical depths than I’d ever known existed, all I could do was sit and listen and hope that eventually he’d say something that would make sense to my admittedly limited education in the Materia Medica.

That wasn’t bad enough.

I’d heard Shelly and Angela professionally discuss something called “shock lung” in context of IEDs or other overpressure events.

Apparently mine were and it damn near killed the both of us, they admitted they honestly had no idea why or how I was able to mount up, ride a quarter of a mile, walk a quarter of a mile back with the driver and not just up and die, let alone live long enough to get to our local hospital and then get transferred out.

The Doctor yielded the floor to another specialist, who discussed retinal damage due to concussion and acceleration-deceleration injuries, and how these injuries were treated:  damn near every word of that work, done to both Shelly and myself, went sailin’ over my head, and I am not the least bit ashamed to admit to it.

Once another couple of fellows spoke, and by then I was feeling completely outclassed and absolutely at sea, Angela rose and adjusted a little near-transparent boom mic I hadn’t noticed, apparently some kind of an earpiece apparatus.

“The Sheriff and his wife are alive,” she said bluntly, “because he was wearing a belt plate. Unfortunately it did malfunction, it did result in their being hit by the pressure wave and injured, but it worked well enough to keep them alive until we could treat them. The original belt unit is being examined to see why it was not working as it should have; if there is a flaw, we wish to disseminate this information, system-wide.”

She looked over at me, her expression solemn.

“You should each be wearing one, not just the Sheriff,” she said quietly. “To that end, you are each wearing a new, tested unit, and should you be in another explosion, it will muffle both sound, and will cushion the overpressure and acceleration waves. If you are touching another person, if you are touching another living creature, the protective field will safeguard them as well, and that brings us to Outlaw.”

Angela lifted her chin; the front of the room, where I’d stood and where other speakers had just vacated, became a grassy pasture.

Red barns with white trim appeared in the background, white-painted fences ... it looked like a scene I'd seen in Kentucky, many years ago.

Outlaw was surrounded by at least a dozen children, all about Michael and Victoria’s age, and Outlaw was quite obviously enjoying a currying.

He always was an attention hound, he always did love being fooled with, and between being fed little dainties off flat palms – the only thing I recognized was an apple, halved and offered up – and multiple carefully-applied curry-combs, why, I reckon he must have felt like equine royalty.

“The veterinary corps is not here to deliver their report,” Angela continued, “but bottom line, Outlaw was seriously injured but is now healthy, and he should have no memory of the event – which I’m sure you’ll forgive the lengthy veterinary presentation that memory block alone would generate.”

I nodded but said nothing.

“Sheriff, if you’d like to bring your coffee, you and your wife will be given a final examination, and a written back-to-work authorization.”

I frowned at my coffee mug, looked up at Angela.

“How long have I been here?” I asked.

“One week,” she said crisply. “You were between your wife and the blast. You took the worst of it.”

Shelly’s hand found mine, under the table.

“Are there any further questions or comments?”

 

Shelly and I come down from Outlaw-horse’s back and I tossed his reins over the hitch rail.

The firehouse door near to exploded out and the entire Irish Brigade came charging out at the top of their lungs: we were seized, glad-handed, back-pounded, bear hugged, and somewhere in all that confusion, I managed to ask Fitz if anyone else had been hurt when she went boom, and he said no and it’s about time I got back to work, and I was a good-for-nothing layabout and seven kinds of a scoundrel for scaring them like that and he’d even gone to the expense of having his good suit cleaned for he was sure he’d be pallbearer at my funeral, and I allowed as it does a man good to smell like Moth Balls in church, and I am not the least bit ashamed to admit that we seized one another and crushed one another in a long, tight bear hug.

 

 

 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

YOU DAMNED TIN PLATED KNIGHT IN SHINING ARMOR

 

I came through my own front door like I always did.

I hung my Stetson on its peg the way I always did, hooked my boots off and left them in the boot tray and came sock foot into the kitchen, like I always did.

Shelly turned, looked at me, waited: I came silently over to her, gathered her gently, almost carefully into my arms – she joked in moments of confidence that “My husband holds me like I’m a delicate porcelain teacup!” – Shelly brought her arms up, shoved my embracing arms away.

Her fingers ran down my shirt front, freeing the buttons:  her expression was serious, she gripped the tabs on my vest, ripped them away, looked up at me as I murmured, “Now, dear? What will the children think?”

“I need to check something,” she snapped.  “Strip to the waist!”

I did.

I pulled my shirt tail loose, hung my uniform shirt over the back of a chair, then the body armor; I brought off my T-shirt and Shelly gripped my shoulders, turned me a little to get the most light on my chest.

She took my elbow, lifted my arm, turned me, studying my ribs:  she was clearly looking for something, though I had absolutely no idea what:  she turned me a little, then did the same for my left side:  she finally turned me clear around, examined my back, turned me again, snatched up my T-shirt, shoved it into my hands.

“Get dressed,” she snapped. “You’re buying tonight!”

I long ago came to the conclusion, or perhaps the realization, that women are contradictory, confounding and confusing creatures, and no man – especially not I! – would ever figure them out, and so, when faced with the unexpected (like tonight), I took what I’d found to be the wisest course, and did as I was told.

Shelly folded her arms, turned away from me: she went to the sink, viciously scrubbed at a platter, rinsed it and carefully placed the heavy, older-than-she-was oval ceramic in the drain rack, pulled the stopper, emptied the sink and rinsed it, her moves deliberate, controlled, almost … angry.

I dressed, wordlessly; I came up behind my wife, gripped her shoulders, lightly, gently, looked at her barely-visible reflection in the window over the sink.

“Darlin’,” I said in as gentle a voice I could, “is there –”

Shelly whirled, thrust herself against me, her jaw thrust aggressively forward, her arms suddenly stiff against her side:  she honestly glared at me, then twisted away and stomped off toward the front door.

I raised an eyebrow.

I had absolutely no idea a’tall what I could possibly have done to upset the woman.

Reckon I’ll find out eventually.

Not a word passed between us as we drove to the Silver Jewel, as we went inside; not a syllable escaped Shelly’s clenched teeth until she told the evening waitress that she’d reserved the back room.

I brought my hand up, unobtrusively turned on my body cam.

Whatever was about to happen, was apparently serious, and if something unexpected was about to happen, I’d want to be able to document everything that was said.

Shelly ordered the special, and coffee, for us both, waited until we were alone in the back room.

She gave me a long and penetrating look, her expression almost unreadable.

“Darlin’,” I said gently, knowing my choice of a first word would be like tossing a pebble in a still pond, “what’s going on?”

Shelly’s jaw was set:  she looked away, she looked back, she opened her mouth to say something when the door opened and the hash slinger in the pink-and-white checker-print dress came in with coffee and salads.

I watched the door shut behind the waitress, looked at my wife again.

“Shelly?”

Shelly leaned forward, the inside of her wrists against the edge of the cloth-covered tabletop.

“I talked with Angela,” she said.

“And?”

Shelly’s eyes ranged upward, then to the side, and she blinked rapidly as she did: she looked back, bit her bottom lip.

“Linn, you nearly died.”

I raised an eyebrow.

“They re-grew and replaced your left lung entirely.”

She swallowed, looked to the side, looked back.

“The right lung… they replaced half.

“You had surgery to both your retinas and while they were in there, they took out the cataracts that run in your family.”

“I see,” I murmured.

Shelly ignored my remark.

“They worked on your brain to take care of concussion damage.”

My wife honestly glared at me.

“I don’t see how anything could damage that thick skull of yours.”

She stopped, took a breath, closed her eyes and pressed her lips together, then continued.

“They rebuilt your entire right inner ear, including new enervation, replacement cilia, they had to completely regrow and replace the semicircular canals that let you keep your balance. You have two new eardrums. Angela said they enlarged the arterioles in both inner ears so you would not suffer that lifelong tinnitus anymore.”

Shelly closed her eyes, clenched her jaw in frustration as she heard the door open again: that cute little hash slinger (is it my imagination, or do waitresses, doctors and State Troopers get younger every year?) brought our supper.

I automatically salted my mashed potatoes – taters always need salt! – and threw some pepper on taters and gravy just for general principles.

I picked up my fork, looked at Shelly.

She was staring at me, staring with an intensity I hadn’t seen for some long time.

I set my fork down.

One tear came a-rollin’ down her cheek.

“Mr. Keller,” she hissed, “you glorious, heroic, self-sacrificing, tin-plated idiot, do you realize you nearly died?”

I looked my wife right square in the eye and said flatly, “Mrs. Keller, I was not going to let you die. I figured to bust the corner of the windshield and rip it free and get you out of there, peacefully or otherwise.”

“Or die trying?” she squeaked, her bottom lip quivering like a little girl.

I come out of my chair and reached for her: I took her under the arms and honestly picked her up out of her seat just as the water works started, and I held her, and held her tight, the way I used to hold our children if they were hurt, or scared, or terribly upset, and needed to feel safe while they rained out their sorrows on my shirt front.

Once her rainstorm passed, I laid my cheek against hers and whispered, “Why did you strip me in the kitchen?”

“There are no scars,” she whispered. “They did all that surgery and there are no scars!”

I kissed her forehead: the door opened, the waitress stopped, took a look, pulled back, closed the door, and I made a mental note to thank her for that discreet withdrawal.

“Darlin’,” I murmured, “do you recall I told you Michael saw there was no give-up in you?”

She sniffed, nodded.

“You jumped in that dumped-over crackerbox for the same reason I come after you. You weren’t going to let someone die on your watch.”

She nodded again.

I tightened my arms around her and whispered fiercely, “Mrs. Keller, you are the reason I draw breath in the morning and the reason I come home at night. You are why I don’t cash my paycheck at the beer joint. You are the reason I don’t open a house of ill repute and make a million dollars” –

She pulled her face back, looked up at me, and I looked down at her.

“Darlin’,” I said, “I knew what I was ridin’ into when I come after you, and I knew I would likely get killed, but if I’d done nothing and you had been killed, I couldn’t live with that.”

“Michael and Victoria don’t need a folded flag and a picture. They need their father.”

“I could say the same about their needing a mother.”

“You damned tin-plated knight in shining armor!”

“Flattery,” I said solemnly, “will get you everywhere.”

Shelly started to cry again, and then she hauled off and kicked me in the shins.

Hard.

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

IF YOU’RE INTERESTED

 

Mr. Baxter waited until the Hard Hand of Doom descended on two boys’ shoulders.

“You boys,” the Sheriff said quietly, “oughtn’t try that.”

The two were caught, and fairly so: they’d tried cutting up barbershop trimmin’s short and with paste and subterfuge, tried fabricating some facial hair in an effort to patronize the bar.

“Now was I to run you boys in,” the Sheriff continued quietly, “I’d have to turn you over to your Pa’s custody. How do you reckon he’d like hearin’ you were expected in court for a case you’d not win?”

Two boys felt all hope drain out of their very marrow.

“Tell you what.”

Two boys dared not breathe, let alone move.

“I might let you both go if you’d do somethin’ for me.”

Two pale, sweating boys with hair stuck to their faces, assented.

“I might need a favor sometime. ‘Ginst I do, I’ll let ye know. Deal?”

Two boys nodded; their dual “Yes, sir’s” hovered in the air behind them as they fled down the hallway, past Daisy’s kitchen and out the back door.

Sheriff William Keller looked up at Mr. Baxter, grinned that contagious grin this young Mr. Baxter remembered seeing on William’s pa’s face, back when William’s father Jacob was still Sheriff.

“Boys,” Mr. Baxter sighed, shaking his head and polishing the bar. “Don’t they realize drink’s been outlawed?”

“God help us,” William muttered. “Prohibition will be the ruin of us all!”

“Tell your wife I do admire her piano playin’,” Mr. Baxter called as the Sheriff strolled to the front of the saloon, and out the front doors:  he nodded to a pair of well dressed strangers:  “Gentlemen.”

Mr. Baxter looked up as the pair came in, looked around, looked pointedly at the nearly empty shelves behind the bar.

“What do you have for two thirsty travelers?” one asked.

Mr. Baxter considered these two strangers in suits and Fedoras, two men who were obviously more at home in the big city than clear out here.

Mr. Baxter looked left, looked right, leaned closer and said quietly, “I rigged up a little pump to run good cold wellwater in a tub.”

“Oh?”

He winked. “Been cooling a couple bottles, if you’re interested.”

The two strangers looked at one another, looked at the pomaded barkeep.

“Sounds like just what we want.”

Mr. Baxter reached under the bar, picked up a bottle – it was an old-fashioned, heavy-glass bottle, with a wire bail and cork arrangement – he brought down a tall glass, another: they heard a *pop* and the hissing gurgle of something carbonated being decanted.

Mr. Baxter straightened, placed two brimming glasses on the gleaming mahogany bar.

Two men looked at one another, picked up their glass, took a drink.

They both recoiled, surprised.

“Sarsaparilla!” one exclaimed, as the other swallowed, coughed, grimaced.

“Good and cold, too,” Mr. Baxter nodded. “Nothing but the best for men of your quality!”

“I was hoping for a beer,” came the disappointed response.

“Wouldn’t we all,” Mr. Baxter sighed.

The Silver Jewel was barely making expenses with the restaurant trade, thanks to the railroad and the nearby mines; Mr. Baxter waited until the pair were gone, until after he dropped their coin in the till and muttered, “Damned dry dicks!”

“Revenue agents?” William asked, and Mr. Baxter jumped: “Jehosophat, Sheriff, don’t sneak up on a man like that!”

William grinned again: “Yeah, but I’m good at it!”

“Yeah, they were Revenuers, all right. Thought they’d found me out until they took a good cold slug of genuine high powered Sarsaparilla!”

“Did they say where they were headed next?”

“Nope. Didn’t see which way they went, either.”

“They headed on toward Carbon Hill.” 

Sheriff William Keller paused, leaned across the bar a little and said quietly, “I let Carbon know, too!”

 

Michael Keller stood in his Pa’s study and took a long, thoughtful look at a pair of framed portraits.

Both were of truly beautiful women.

He knew one was his Gammaw: she wore her usual tailored suit dress and heels, she was standing in her office, under the framed revolver Michael remembered hanging there, when he’d visit his Pa in that selfsame office.

He looked at the portrait beside, that of another genuinely beautiful woman.

This one wore a floor length gown, her hair was elaborately atop her head instead of Marine-short like his Gammaw.

Michael knew this was the legendary Sarah Lynne McKenna, the justly famous Black Agent.

Like most children that grow up looking at something every day and every day, he took the two portraits for granted: he looked at them, but didn’t really see them, and as sometimes happens, he stood and studied one, then the other, and genuinely saw them, probably for the first time.

He’d honestly never appreciated just how identical the two of them were.

He compared them to his mental image of Marnie.

He felt the edge of his Pa’s desk.

Michael carefully orbited, backwards, around the rim of his Pa’s solid old desk, found the high, padded back of his Pa’s chair, drew it out, sat.

His pale eyes never left the two portraits.

Michael frowned, considered, applied all the young knowledge he had on the subject, and came up dry.

A quiet voice behind his right shoulder said “If you think too hard, your hair will catch fire.”

“Hi, Marnie.”

Michael smelled sunshine and lilac water and felt a familiar hand grip his young shoulder.

“Your father is working on a puzzle.”

“He’ll figure it out,” Michael said proudly.

“I know he will. He always does.”

“You’re puzzling over something too.”

“Marnie, are you a ghost?”

Feminine laughter, light, delicate, hands gripped his shoulders, massaged him through his heavy denim vest: “Does this feel like a ghost?”

“Marnie, how come you and Gammaw and Sarah all look alike enough to be clones?”

The hands stopped massaging, gripped him gently instead.

“I don’t know, Michael. God’s honest truth, I don’t know.”

“The Parson said reincarnation’s not real.”

“He might be right.”

“Then how come there’s so many examples of it?”

“That,” came the soft-voice reply, close up behind his ear, “is for wiser heads than my own.”

“Pa and Jacob and Old Pale Eyes, and there’s a couple more –”

“I know. Remarkable, isn’t it?”

“Pa said someone with a big black horse got that trucker out of there just before the thing blew up on ‘em. He doesn’t know who it was and that’s eatin’ at him.”

“Your father doesn’t like puzzles.”

“No.”  Michael frowned.

“Sometimes a puzzle can’t be solved.”

“Don’t tell Pa.  He’ll hammer at it until he does.”

He heard the familiar, feminine sigh behind him.

“Your father sounds so very much like Papa.”

Michael frowned, surprised, turned.

He was alone.

“Marnie!” he exclaimed, annoyed, then movement at the corner of his vision: he turned, looked out the window, saw a pale eyed woman in a McKenna gown astride a truly huge horse, smiling at him as she walked her horse past the pane.

Michael was out of his father’s high back office chair like a shot: he scrambled for the front door, yanked it open –

Nothing –

He drew back, shut the door, went to the window, looked again, then returned to his father’s padded, high back office chair, sat.

He looked at the portraits again, looked out the window, looked back.

“Pa,” he said aloud, “isn’t the only one that doesn’t like puzzles!”

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

BOOKMARK

"William."

"Yes, sir?"

"William, would you read tonight, please."

"Yes, sir."

"The place is marked."

"Yes, sir."

William took his father's Bible, turned a little and sat, so as to get the best light across the page.

William looked up at his father.

"Second Kings, sir?"

Jacob closed his eyes, rocking a little, the youngest curled up on his lap, cuddled into his shirt front:  he nodded, just a little, his arms protectively around a blanket wrapped infant, and William wished he had one of those camera things he'd heard about, for this moment -- where his Pa had that quiet smile -- was something he wished to remember forever.

William opened the Book, looked at the bookmark.

It was grey wool, and quite old: rectangular, neatly hemmed at the edges, and in the center, what looked like a bullet hole.

He'd seen it a thousand time and more -- at least, his eyes beheld it -- but he never really saw it.

He looked up at his Pa and saw Jacob's eyes were on him, those knowing eyes of a father who remembered what it was to be young.

"There is a question in your eyes," Jacob said quietly.

"Yes, sir."

Annette smiled a little, rocking as she sewed: there were always repairs to be made, and though the hired girl did an outstanding job, Annette worked hard to keep a proper household for her husband, for her family: she had a sock on a darning egg and was busy weaving a repair across the hole.

Her fingers knew the work; she looked up at her son, at her husband, with the knowing eyes of a wife, of a mother, who knew that Second Kings was going to be somewhat delayed.

"That used to be part of a blanket that belonged to your Granddad," Jacob explained, his voice gentle, reassuring, for the infant he held was asleep, or near to it.

"Sir?"

Jacob smiled, just a little, as he rocked, slowly, thoughtfully.

"Pa was headed West. He'd been in that damned War, he'd been a lawman back East, he'd got the Fiddle Foot" -- Jacob looked at his wife, who smiled indulgently: her brother had the Fiddle Foot, and never stayed in one place more than a couple of months -- "when he finally told a dirty little Kansas town he'd not be cheated out of his pay, he knocked the Dog Stuffing out of Mayor and Council, he took his wages from the Mayor's wallet -- I think there was the small matter of having smacked the man across the back of the head with a chair or something of the kind --"  Jacob managed to look innocent as he described the event -- "your Granddad always did have a way of getting his ideas, understood."

William smiled, then grinned.  

"Yes, sir," he agreed, "he still does!"

"You mean the horse trough thing?" Jacob chuckled. "I reckon he give that young fellow a bath so he'd not get so hot under the collar as to set his hair afire!"

"Yes, sir."

"Now about that blanket."

"Yes, sir?"

"That good old blanket ..."

Jacob's voice trailed off and he got a distant look about him, as if he was looking at a memory, and William waited, knowing his Pa was likely looking at something through his own father's eyes.

"Pa had damn little when he come West. I don't recall if he'd found gold in that streambed yet or not. I do know he was asleep under that same blanket when some fellow snuck up and tried to steal his Sam-horse."

William frowned a little.

Horse theft was a serious matter, and he'd seen men hung for the crime.

"Your Grampa fetched up his Navy colt and fired one shot."

"Yes, sir?"

"Trouble was, 'twas under the blanket yet when he fired."

"Yes, sir?"

"He did not miss, William, but he was distressed that he'd set his blanket afire."

"Sir?"

"Oh, it didn't catch fire, wool doesn't burn easy at all, but that much smoke under a wool blanket would likely look like 'twas a-smolder somethin' fierce!"

"Don't get any ideas," Annette cautioned her son as she saw an idea dance across his young eyes.

"No ma'am," William replied, his ears reddening, which told the perceptive Annette that their son did indeed have thoughts of replicating the event as an experiment, to see just how smokey such a blanket would look.

"That blanket got kind of thin and worn with time," Jacob continued, rocking slowly, gently, the weight of their sleeping infant warm and reassuring on his front, in his arms. "It got cut apart and re-used, re-sewn -- you recall how your Mama split that worn bedsheet and sewed the sides together to form the new center."

"Yes, sir."

"Your Granddad is a thrifty man, William. He wastes nothing. He's known privation and he's known a slim pocketbook. He's still that way. I reckon if he was rich as them steel barons back East, he'd be just as thrifty."

"Yes, sir."

"That bookmark" -- Jacob nodded toward the open Book -- "is about all that's left of that blanket. That, and an oiled gunrag I keep in my office."

William grinned, slowly, broadly, for he remembered using that selfsame oily rag for that very purpose.

William considered the bookmark, frowned a little, looked up at his Pa.

"Sir, is there a significance to tonight's reading?"

"There is, William."

Jacob looked at his wife, who gave him a warning look.

"You see, not long after your Mama and I took up house keepin' -- you probably don't remember, but you were ringbearer at our weddin', and your little sister was flower girl --"

"JACOB!" Annette hissed, shocked.  

"Well, maybe that ain't quite what happened," Jacob said innocently. "No, y'see, shortly after we taken up housekeepin' an bein' man and wife, I asked her why I ought to be doin' dishes, y'see."

Jacob gave his wife an innocent look as she hefted the darning egg, clearly debating whether she could bounce it off his skull without hitting their sleeping child.

"Your Mama is an educated woman, and she knows her Scripture. She quoted me from Second Kings when I asked why I'd ought to be doin' them supper dishes, and she quoted from the Book. You'll find it right there directly, that part where God says He will wipe Jerusalem like a man washes a bowl, wipes it out with a rag and turns it over."

Annette resumed her darning, rocking as she did: something went *pop!* in their cast iron stove, and William paged forward a little, scanning, stopped, smiled.

"William, if that old book mark passes itself on to your hands, remember where it came from."

"Yes, sir."

"And remember that God said men-folk can warsh dishes too."

William grinned, chuckled quietly. 

"Yes, sir."

He looked at the open page, began to read.

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

A MOUNTAIN, A BLANKET, A SKY

Two hands found one another: one larger and callused, the other smaller, softer.

Two souls merged with this simple joining of the hands.

"Mr. Keller?" Esther whispered.

"Yes, Mrs. Keller?" Linn whispered back.

"Mr. Keller, you are an old romantic, you know that."

Sheriff Linn Keller smiled a little, just a little, the softening of his expression hidden beneath his waxed handlebar mustache and the nighttime darkness.

"Specially for you," he whispered back, and felt her quick squeeze in reply.

Overhead, instead of a night-dark bedroom ceiling, they beheld the blazing glory of the Universe itself.

The moon was only just set; the stars, relieved of its silvery glare, blazed defiance, each competing with its neighbor for prominence.

Pale eyes automatically picked out the Dipper, the North Star; he looked for that red star he'd seen now and again, and couldn't find it ... but with this many stars in view, it would be pretty hard to find anyhow.

"Mr. Keller?"

"Dearest?"

Esther smiled, tightened her hand again: her husband was a man of short temper and mighty strength, he'd picked men up by the neck and pinned them against the side of a building just to get their attention, and he was known to donate miscreants to the nearest horse trough on occasion, and the thought of such a hard man's lips positively caressing her with the word "Dearest" send a wickedly delicious shiver through her.

"Mr. Keller, what does it all mean?"

Linn lay on the blanket he'd spread for himself: he'd brought up a rolled tick for his wife's recumbence, that, and another heavy blanket: he'd planned this night's outing because he remembered a night, back East, when he and his new bride lay together and stared up at the starry-decked firmament, and honestly marveled at this glorious, almost wasteful beauty, spread out for their joy and delight.

"Mrs. Keller, what does all what mean?"

"This," Esther whispered, staring childlike at the shining glory overhead. 

Linn considered the night sky, turned his head slightly, regarded its expanse, contemplated its depth.

"I reckon," he said quietly, "God Almighty wants us to be happy."

He rolled up on his side, laid his arm carefully across his wife's belly.

"That's why He lays such beauty before us, so we can see the joy of Creation, and take that joy in each other."

"Mr. Keller," Esther whispered, laying her hand on his, "are you suggesting that you have improper thoughts now that we are alone?"

Esther shivered, stifled a giggle as her husband nuzzled under her jaw with his mustache, kissed the fragrant softness of her neck, just under her earlobe.

"Mrs. Keller," he whispered, lifting his head and placing his lips gently on hers, "whatever gave you such an idea?"

Conversation was suspended for a significant length of time afterward; a huge, black guardian and a shining-gold stallion were the only witnesses: disinterested in such human activities, they returned to their observation of the surrounding night.

 

Marnie Keller lay on her back on a field-blanket, its insulated layers separated by a two-fingers-thick force field that served as an efficient cushion against the cold Martian sands beneath.

She lay flat on her back, looking up at the incredible, star-blazing sky, made all the more brilliant by the absolutely BLACK of their background.

She'd consulted the Valkyries' observations, compared relative velocities and projected trajectories, and she and her husband slipped away from their cozy quarters to come out here, onto the nighttime surface, to spread their blankets and lay side by side, holding hands, their personal protective fields merging: when they held hands, no energy barrier separated them as it otherwise would have.

"What are we looking for?" John asked quietly: his voice did not go through the usual transmission protocol, but was rather air conducted.

Marnie smiled just a little.

"I have a surprise for you," she whispered.

Dr. John Greenlees Jr rolled up on his side, laid his hand carefully splay-fingered, on his wife's belly.

"Marnie," he whispered, "is there something you want to tell me?"

Marnie giggled, laid her hand on his, pressed affectionately.

"No, Doctor," she sighed, "in spite of your best efforts here of late, I am not with child again."  

She turned and smiled lasciviously at her husband.

"At least not yet, you naughty boy!"

John gave his wife a long look, smiled just a little, then rolled back over on his back, his hand finding hers.

"I never get tired of this," Marnie sighed.

"Almost nobody comes out to see the stars anymore."

"Damn shame -- look!"

A silver streak blazed through the thin Martian atmosphere.

"Be damned," John swore softly. "I didn't know they'd --"

Two more blazing silver slashes lacerated the sky above them.

"Just watch," Marnie breathed, and suddenly a half-dozen, in close proximity to one another, as if a young squadron of silvery knives were trying to slice open the thin envelope of Martian atmosphere.

"Marnie," John asked, his voice quietly serious, "are we in danger?"

Marnie lifted her free arm, consulted a small panel on the back of her wrist, tapped the screen, sat up.

"Yes we are," she said briskly. "Inside!"

Husband and wife seized their insulating field-blankets, rolled over onto their knees, pushed up to their feet, sprinted awkwardly for the airlock: they usually lived and worked in one-and-a-quarter Earth gravities to keep their bodies in shape, to keep their bones from decalcifying, to prevent the agonies of kidney stones that was the consequence of calcium leaching out of the bones and into the blood (not to mention the concomitant cardiac conduction problems it caused!) -- and their adrenalized sprint, Mars-normal gravity, was awkward, stumbling and almost comical.

They flattened themselves against the airlock door as Marnie slapped her palm against the Open Sesame button, they nearly fell at the door's immediate response: outside, they saw three small geysers of sandy dust as meteors hit the ground, not far from where they'd lain, watching the show overhead.

Marnie Keller hugged her husband, let her field blanket hit the floor: it rolled up automatically, waited patiently for someone to step on it or trip over it, as it usually did:  John tossed his atop his wife's, and the two tight-rolled survival tools lay side by side as husband and wife hugged each other and laughed.

John kissed his wife, picked her up, hoist her to eye level: like his father, John Jr was tall and lean, and Marnie giggled, for her big strong Daddy used to pick her up when she was a little girl, and he'd draw her in close and twiddle his handlebar mustache against her nose, and she'd giggle.

"John," Marnie smiled, her pale eyes level with his hazel orbs, "have you ever thought of growing a mustache?" 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

GET OUTTA HERE NOW

The Sheriff was not a trusting man.

He’d been lied to often enough and badly enough that he trusted very few individuals: those of his inner circle were trusted implicitly and without hesitation, but those who were not part of that inner circle … weren’t.

When word came to him that three men with lready stained reputations wished him harm, he considered the information was probably correct … though it could be just hot air, bluster, bragging, the way men will in careless moments.

When two of those men came riding toward him, the Sheriff looked at the lay of the land, gigged his stallion in the ribs, ran on ahead to where he’d have the advantage of terrain.

The pair saw him and reacted, and the three ended up a mile or so distant, playing cat-and-mouse with each other, until one disappeared and the Sheriff had no idea where he was.

His stallion stood, sleepy-looking as was his habit: the Sheriff knew his golden Palomino was anything but drowsy, and when an ear swung to the right, horse and rider both spun and surged forward.

“DON’T!” the Sheriff yelled as his left hand Colt came to full cock.

One of the men he was after had his rifle in hand, and halfway raised: the stallion’s head started to move.

Linn never remembered drawing his right hand revolver, only that his left hand Colt fired, his stallion spun under him and he fired a second round from the engraved, gold-inlaid, left-hand Colt.

Part of his mind, sitting well behind his eyes, stood on the quarterdeck of a sailing-ship, wearing a Captain’s hat and watching the enemy’s ship: he heard his own voice, distant and faint, “Fire as they come to bear!” – and his left-hand Colt did just that as his stallion completed his surging turn.

Linn gigged his stallion into a gallop, he dropped into a gully, stopped, turned.

They’ll expect me to ride downhill, under cover, he thought.

Yonder’s where they’ll expect me to come up.

He turned the Palomino’s head upstream, walked him quickly, then gigged him into a jump and he was back up on the flat, a revolver in each hand, ready –

One horse stood looking at him, ears swinging, the other was a quarter mile distant and still moving.

Two men lay on the ground, face down.

Linn holstered his unfired, right-hand revolver, kicked out the fired hulls and reloaded the other: he holstered, walked his stallion over to the watching horse, looked down.

As there was a bloody hole out the back of the man’s head, he concluded there was little threat to be had from this one, and walked Rey del Sol over to the other unmoving form.

The saddled gelding followed him, apparently anxious for the company.

Linn swung down.

Don’t see any holes out his back.

“You alive?” he asked uncharitably.

The other outlaw made no reply.

The Sheriff squatted, picked up the dropped pistol.

“Be damned,” he muttered as he checked the loads, then sniffed the muzzle: “You got a shot off!”

Part of his mind reminded him his earlobe was stinging just a little.

He reached up, brushed it with the back of his finger, and it came away wet and red.

Well, hell, he thought, I’m gettin’ my coat bloody!

He grabbed the outlaw, rolled him over, ready for an arm to punch up, ready for a close-held pistol to come to bear –

The Sheriff grunted.

The man’s life was soaked out into the sandy ground.

One hole in, no holes out.

He looked up, looked around, squinting a little against the sun’s glaring brightness.

He put two fingers to his lips, whistled, a high, shimmering note, the kind that carried well in the thin, high air.

He reached into a pocket and drew out a plug of molasses twist tobacker and shaved off several generous curls, bribed the dead outlaw’s horse into coming closer: once he had hands on its reins, the horse followed docilely.

His whistle brought the departing equine’s head up: the Sheriff saw it coming back toward him, as he’d hoped it would.

 

“Daddy,” Angela said, her big blue eyes wide and innocent, “did you get hurt?”

Linn smiled at his little girl, squatted.

“No, Princess, why would you ask that?”

“Your ear’s bloody.”

“Yeah, I kinda scraped it on something.”

“Ow,” Angela grimaced sympathetically, then turned and looked at two carcasses bent over their saddles.

She looked at her pale eyed Daddy and said skeptically, “Daddy, are you sure you’re not hurt?”

Linn’s voice was gentle as he nodded.

“I’m sure, Princess.”

Five year old Angela Keller drew herself up to her full frilly frocked height and shook her little pink Mommy-finger at her Daddy and scolded, “Daddy, if you gets hurted real bad an’ killed, I’ll never speak to you again!”

Hard men remain hard men when they are faced with danger, with enemies, with confrontation.

Hard men will not infrequently melt like butter on a hot skillet when a pretty little girl shakes her little pink Mommy-finger and admonishes her Daddy in a high, sincere, little-girl voice: Sheriff Linn Keller laughed quietly, went to one knee, wrapped his little girl in a big comforting Daddy-hug and murmured gently in her little pink ear, “I’ll keep that in mind, Princess,” then she felt him change and he released her, leaned back.

The Sheriff rose, his eyes hard and his voice matched his eyes.

“Get out of here, now,” he said, his voice low, urgent.

Angela was Daddy’s Little Girl.

Angela was a blue-eyed child of the Kentucky mountains, orphaned in a train wreck.

Angela had been Linn and Esther’s daughter for just over one year, and in that one year, as children often do, she was a highly observant, extremely attentive, sponge.

Angela knew her Daddy’s voice and her Daddy’s hands and she knew when her Daddy said to scoot, it was time to scoot! – and she did.

Her Daddy stood and her Daddy’s coat was open and Angela twisted between her Daddy and the front of the Sheriff’s office, she ran a-scamper to the end of the boardwalk and jumped, landed flat footed and ducked to the right.

She was halfway down the alley before she realized she’d just heard two gunshots, sudden, shocking, slapping at her as they echoed down the alley between Digger’s funeral parlor and the Sheriff’s log fortress.

Angela kept running, turned right again, skidded a little as she came to her Daddy’s little bitty stable behind the Sheriff’s office.

Angela stopped, looked down the alley.

A man was just falling off his horse – limp, boneless, he fell and hit the ground like a sack of sawdust and just laid there, his foot falling from the stirrup as his horse danced sideways, eyes walling.

Angela ran to the mouth of the alley, looked around, then she strutted out in the middle of the street, her little pink hand extended:  “Come here, horsie,” she cooed in her little-girl’s voice:  “ ’Mere, horsie.”

The horse’s nostrils were flared, its ears laid back, but at the approach of this little frilly creature with a gentle voice, the horse stretched its neck, snuffing loudly at the little pink hand.

Angela giggled and gathered the reins in her hands, reached up and stroked the horsie’s damp pink nose, chattering quietly to it the way a fearless little girl will do.

Angela was enamored with the snuffy horsie, so much so that she honestly did not see running men, curious onlookers: it wasn’t until she heard the clatter of Digger’s dead wagon that she looked up and realized the fellow who fell from the horsie was picked up from behind her, and loaded into the dead wagon.

Angela looked up, all bright eyes and white teeth, smiled as Esther dipped her knees, gripped her daughter’s shoulders with motherly hands, regarded her with wide, frightened eyes.

“Hi, Mommy,” Angela laughed. “I founded me a horsie!”

An empty brass hull fell to the boardwalk.

The Sheriff did not hear it hit through the red ringing in his ears, but he felt the impact of the brass rim hitting the weathered, warped, dusty board through his bootsole.

He replaced the fired round and holstered his engraved Colt.

He looked at  his wife and at his little girl, and he was flat forevermore grateful that when he told her to get out of here ... she did.

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

MEANWHILE, IN THE BACK STAIRWAY

 

Sarah Lynne McKenna gripped Jacob Keller's hand, turned her head, looked at him.

"He doesn't realize we're both his woods colts, you know."

"I know."

"Mama suspects. I think your Mama does too."

"Reckon so."

"Mama implied he found a family Bible, but she stopped talking when she saw I was looking at her and listening closely."

"That's where you get it."

"Get what?"

Jacob grinned.

"Little Sis," he said quietly, for the back stairway was hushed, and the softest voice was plainly heard, "your Mama can listen to someone talking and she can just fade into the wall and not be seen!"

Sarah swatted at his shoulder: "Who you calling little sis, little brother?"

Jacob let it pass: they knew early that they were the get of that pale eyed lawman, even if he didn't seem to realize it; there was doubt as to Jacob's actual age, and of Sarah's, though Bonnie implied that Sarah's birthday would be found out.

"Sarah, when you're with people, you have the gift of disappearing," Jacob said, his voice suddenly serious. "That's a gift and that's how to find things out, just listen and don't be noticed."

"I know."

Her hand tightened on his.

"I'm glad you're here, Jacob."

"So am I."  She felt him take a deep breath, saw him turn his head and grin.

"It feels good to have family."

Sarah's hand tightened in his.

"Yes," she agreed.  "Yes, it does."

Sarah's eyes drifted down to the landing, rested on a varnished wood panel.

"I used to hide in there," she said softly.

Jacob looked at her, looked at the several wood panels, all varnished, all identical.

"The Silver Jewel wasn't ... respectable then."

Jacob nodded.

"Mama was ... upstairs ... and when my Daddy came in he'd get drunk and beat the working girls. If he wasn't hurting me he was ignoring me, and they ... the girls ... they would bath me and patch my dress and fix my hair and put a ribbon in it ... they said I was the only sunshine in their lives."

Sarah's voice was haunted, her eyes distant and filled with ghosts.

Jacob ran his arm around his half-sister's shoulders, pulled her close: she laid her head over on his shoulder, shivered.

"I'm glad you're here, Jacob."

"I am too."

Sarah sighed.

"Jacob?"

"Hm?"

"Angela was asking me why bad men wanted to do bad things to her Daddy."

Jacob turned his head toward her a little, listening closely.

"She didn't want to talk about it with her Mama so she talked with me."

"Pa said it is" -- he hesitated, lifted his chin, pale eyes searching the opposite wall for the right words -- "a mark of significant trust," he quoted with a smile, looked back at Sarah -- "for a little child to confide in us."

Sarah smiled -- it was a soul-deep smile, the kind that shines from within -- "Jacob," she whispered, "you sound just like him!"

Jacob shrugged. "Can't imagine why."

"What did you tell her?"

"When she asked me why bad men wanted to do bad things to her Daddy?"

Sarah took a long breath, sighed it out: she looked sadly at Jacob.

"I told her that ... when you put someone in prison, they don't forget you, and their families do not forget you, and their partners do not forget you."

Jacob raised an eyebrow, nodded.

"What did she say?"

"She looked surprised -- like the thought honestly never occurred to her -- she said 'Oh,' and that seemed to satisfy her."

Jacob nodded, chewed on his bottom lip.

"Jacob, what is she like? At home, as a sister?"

Jacob smiled, just a little.

"It's like living with a glowing sunflower," he almost whispered. "She's never still, she's always smiling, she'll run up and give me a big hug, or she'll be talking nonstop to The Bear Killer while they're walking ..."

Sarah saw the memories shine inside him, and she smiled to see them.

"I'm glad you have her."

"Me too."

Silence, then: "Jacob, what's this I hear about a man killed with an ax?"

Jacob was quiet for a long moment, his jaw slid out as he considered -- just like his father! Sarah thought.

"You said something about not bein' forgot when you send someone to prison."

Sarah nodded, her eyes big.

"I heard a fellow talkin' quiet, how he figured to backshoot Pa.

"I followed him, watched him ... he tried two or three places and he settled on one, and a good place for bush whack it was."

"And you killed him."

"Damn right."  Jacob's eyes were a shade more pale now.

"He was layin' for my Pa.

"I didn't want to up and shoot him -- I could have, I could've blowed the eyeballs out of his skull from behind -- Pa said he kilt men durin' the War with an ax an' one was handy.

"I saw Pa comin' along and I faded back and eased attair broad ax out of its chunk and I waited.

"He fetched up his rifle and didn't have it fair to shoulder when I stepped up behint where he was down on one knee, and I clove him from crown to teeth.

"He never twitched.

"I taken his rifle and his proud-ofs, I unsaddled his horse and took his saddle bags."

"Won't they blame whoever owned the ax?"

"Place is abandoned. Nobody's been there for a year. I'm surprised that ax was still stuck in the chunk."

"Did you know the man?"

"Only that Pa sent him off to prison an' he'd made his brags he was gonna kill that pale eyed son of a sheepherder for sendin' him away."

" 'Son of a sheepherder?' " she quoted, shaking her head. "Jacob, if he's going to say that about our Papa, I'm glad you killed him!"

 

 

 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

FORTRESS FORD AND BATTLESHIP BUICK

 

Mitch didn't get out much, at least not like his peers.

He did quite a bit of traveling, most of it through an old-fashioned telegraph key.

Jacob Keller got him started in ham radio, right after the drunk driver took Mitch's legs: Mitch threw himself into learning Morse code and radio theory, antenna theory and propagation, he studied with a single minded focus: when he sat for his exams, he paid his money to take the Technician exam, then for no extra cost, he immediately took (and passed) the Extra and the Advanced as well.

When his set began an urgent set of tones, he drove his powered wheelchair over to his shack bench, frowned, reached for the key and sent a quick burst, then went to his window and picked up a set of binoculars.

He had a bay window that afforded him 270 degrees of view; as he was well up on the mountainside, he had a grand vista ahead of him, none of which he saw.

He turned the focus wheel, leaned forward, watched for several long moments, then backed his chair, turned it, gripped the key again and sent one word:

ALIVE

 

Angela's Gammaw still taught, in spite of her being dead for a lot of years now.

Angela's Gammaw videotaped a variety of presentations for the Academy, and Angela watched every last one of them, from early childhood to the present day.

Willamina could convey an idea fast, clearly, concisely, and did: she taught her troops that there is no such thing as routine patrol, and there is sure as hell no such thing as a routine traffic stop, and she set up a variety of realistic scenarios based on actual stops gone bad.

Angela called in a plate, pulled over a vehicle: she'd not come to a full stop behind the subject vehicle when the driver's door flew open, the driver came out, running toward her, shooting.

Angela dumped the shifter in Go Backwards gear and quite honestly mashed the throttle: her cruiser screamed backwards, the driver ran back into his car, he started to jackrabbit out of there, until Angela rammed his rear quarter panel, PIT-ing him, hard, when he was barely moving.

She backed up, yanked the shifter savagely into gear: the driver started moving again and Angela rammed him again, hard, just behind the driver's door, shoving him sideways and into the ditch.

She just honestly bulldozed him off the roadway and over on his side.

Angela backed again, made a quick sweep of her mirrors: she reached up, hit the release, shouldered her own door open and stepped out, using her engine block and front wheel for cover.

She jacked a round of genuine US Military 00 Buck into her Ithaca, dropped the barrel level, glared through the ghost ring peep, and waited.

Her tan cruiser's big block engine whispered mechanical secrets to itself, patiently waiting for the next demand upon its services; her red-and-blue LED bar, and the other pretty little lights Weenkeeng and Bleenkeeng fore, aft and on running boards and mirrors, were silent; Angela waited, knowing the other driver's only exit was through his driver's-side door, unless he kicked his windshield out -- which would give her well more than enough advance warning, to line up a killing shot if need be.

 

Michael and Victoria sat side by side at what used to be Jacob's ham radio desk.

It now belonged to the twins.

Victoria had the enlarged map on display; she'd placed rectangular markers to show the positions of Angela's cruiser, and as best they could estimate, location of the subject vehicle.

It was too far away for them to intervene, and they knew better than to interfere with a law enforcement matter, but both knew the moment Angela's windshield starburst with the first hostile gunshot, and both sprinted upstairs, to where the scanner patiently ran the bands, and their natural affinity for things electronic enabled them to play back radio traffic, and they heard Angela's professional voice -- she sounded different when she spoke professionally -- call in the plate number and location, then they heard the sound of bullet strikes, the squall of tires, the sound of the well-muffled engine's protest and Angela's clipped, "Shots fired, taking evasive, backup, NOW!"

Michael consulted another map, turned an antenna's directional control: a Yagi-Uda swung obediently in response to his safecracker's touch on the directional knob, then he gripped the straight key and tapped out a message to a set of ears he knew would be listening.

 

Mitch watched, shocked, as the tan Sheriff's cruiser rammed the vehicle, turning it: his mouth opened in surprise as he saw the cruiser, like a bull, lower its head and ram the stopped car in the side, pushing it off the roadway and into the ditch, where it rocked once and stayed.

He made a mental note to rig a relay so he could run a key from his chair, while here in his overwatch, and kicked himself for not thinking of it sooner.

He pulled back and sent Michael a one word reply, then rolled back into his bay window, glass glued to his eyes, watching.

 

Angela waited for backup, then took a ballistic shield, jumped the ditch, walked around the car and tapped on its underside.

"Anybody home?" she called.

The reply from within was less than kindly in nature.

"Tell you what," Angela called, and she smiled as she did:  "Roll down your window, throw out your gun and we'll get you out of there!"

The reply was to fire a half-dozen rounds through the bottom of the car.

"I thought you might say that," Angela muttered: she went to the back of the car, smacked the back glass with a glass breaker, dropped the pointy nosed hammerhead.

She pulled the pin on a tear dust grenade, drove its end into the roof of the car, then tossed the can inside.

A muted detonation, a cloud: blinded, unable to breathe, the driver fought his way out the back and through what used to be his rear window, where he was cheerfully dogpiled and cuffed.

Mitch waited until the rescue truck unspooled a compressed air line and blew the excess tear dust off the prisoner and out of his hair, then rolled back to his key and sent a brief reply to Michael.

Victoria's eyes met her twin's and they smiled a quiet smile of satisfaction as they heard the all-well, as they listened to Angela requesting a shots-fired team to help process the scene.

 

Michael and Victoria were as accustomed to watching their Gammaw's training videos as was their older sister.

They watched as their Gammaw's voice narrated the scene as a driver stepped out of a simulated stopped vehicle and charged the camera, firing paintballs as he came: splats of red blasted against the windshield and Willamina's voice said "Congratulations, you're dead. Now let's see how else we might handle this."

Pale eyed twins watched and listened as the stopped vehicle's driver's door flew open, as the driver emerged weapon in hand, as the camera's vehicle accelerated hard in reverse.

"Distance is your friend, and your vehicle provides some cover," Willamina's voice said. "Your vehicle gives you speed, mobility and protection. It runs faster than you can, it hits harder than you can. The vehicle itself is a weapon and can be used to counter deadly force."

The scene changed, melted, coalesced into an attractive woman with Marine-short hair and a tailored suit dress, behind a podium, in front of the now-blank projector screen behind her.

"Remember, boys and girls," she smiled, "when you are behind the wheel, on duty or off, you are driving Fortress Ford, and Battleship Buick!"

 

 

 

Edited April 25 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

YENTA, THE MATCHMAKER

Angela Keller sat with her white-stockinged knees carefully together, her hands very properly folded in the skirt of her white uniform skirt, her head tilted a little the way a woman will, when something interests her.

She was listening to the regular cadence of tones from the black-plastic-grilled speaker.

She knew it was Morse code -- beyond that, she had to wait for the twins' yellow-painted Number Two Lead pencils to quit their busy lines and curlicues, and their results ripped free of pads maintained for that purpose, and handed to her.

Angela smiled as she read this modern day transcript of a Morse code message, and part of her mind quietly appreciated that this scene had been played out more than a century before, when a man who'd worn Confederate grey, inclined a professional ear to a polished-brass sounder and interpreted a rapid series of clicks and clatters, letting the metallic racket run in his ears and out the Barlow-whittled tip of his stub of a pencil.

Angela read the regular print, looking from one page to another -- even their handwriting is almost identical! she thought -- she looked up at the twins and smiled that gentle smile of hers, then she rose, knelt, opened her arms.

Michael and Victoria happily embraced their big sis, delighted to have so obviously gained her approval.

 

Angela knocked at the door, then looked down and smiled:  she stepped back a little, bent slightly, looked at the round lens of a doorbell pushbutton.

"Mitch?" she called. "It's Angela. Permission to come aboard!"

There was a heavy, mechanical sound as the door was remotely unlocked, and Mitch's voice grinned from the rectangular doorbell, "Permission granted!"

Angela straightened, pushed open the door, stepped inside:  she carefully closed it behind her, smiled a little at the sound of heavy bolts driving home, securing the portal.

If I rode a wheelchair for a living, she thought, I'd have a fortress too!

She turned at the sound of hydraulics whining; a moment later, a panel opened and Mitch rolled toward her, grinning.

He extended a hand and Angela ignored it:  she bent, hugged him, giggled, and he hugged her back, laughing.

"You've lost weight!" she exclaimed, and he slapped his stumps and declared firmly, "The Alfred Hitchcock method! Lose weight fast, use a knife!" -- they both laughed, for it was an old joke between them: it started out as Angela's psychic slap-in-the-face to him when she was first taking care of him, right after he'd lost both legs from being hit by that drunk driver, and Mitch seized on the phrase as a survival tool.

Rotten humor, he'd told her later, was his salvation, and Angela agreed, for she'd seen that same particular tool used by the Combined Emergency Services more times than she could count.

They strolled and rolled into the kitchen:  "The Navy runs on coffee, and so do I!" Mitch said firmly, reaching up and turning a little carousel: "Individual packages, take-a you pick!"

Angela bent, studied the selection, chose what she thought was the strongest brew: the coffee maker already had water in the reservoir, and her big mug of steaming-hot wide-awake was quickly and fragrantly produced, Mitch's right behind it, and the two of them took their places at Mitch's kitchen table.

"Deborah's gone for the day," Mitch said as he slopped milk from the plastic jug into his big insulated travel mug with MITCH'S GAS TANK hand painted on the side.

"How's she getting along?"

Mitch set the jug down, looked very frankly at Angela.

"She is the best thing that ever happened to me," he said softly, then chuckled.

"I remember when we first met" -- he looked sharply at Angela, who regarded him with an innocent batting of her long, curled eyelashes over the glazed rim of her heavy white-ceramic mug -- "I'd not gotten ... the idea of not having legs anymore was just sinkin' in and it felt like an anchor pulling me to the bottom of the ocean."

"I remember," Angela murmured. "You were profoundly depressed."

"Yeah," Mitch said quietly, nodding, then took a sip of his steaming-fresh brew.

"Then this really good looking gal in a skirt comes into the room.

"Here I am, feeling all sorry for myself, I can't hardly look at her -- what woman wants half a man? -- she sat down and looked at me."

His voice softened a little.

"Angela, I honestly can't tell you just how surprised I was when she hiked that skirt up."

Angela hid her quiet smile behind her cup, gave him those big lovely eyes to show him she was listening and listening closely.

"She unbuckled her left leg, she pulled it off her stump, she took it overhead in both hands and heaved it across the room into my belly -- I caught it and I'm starin' at her like she just sprouted a third eye -- she pulls off her right leg and hauls off and heaves it across the room at me, she points that finger of hers at me and said, 'Now that I have your attention, you listen to me!' "

He took a long breath, sighed it out, smiled.

"That," he said softly, "was the beginning of my recovery. I have no idea why, but she stayed with me every step of the way.

"We've set the date. We're getting married. She's got your invitation made out and ready to send."

Angela set her mug down carefully, clapped her hands with delight, laughed.

"So she got your attention!" -- her voice was sunshine and merriment, and Mitch laughed with her and nodded.

"I understand you arranged for her visit," Mitch said quietly. "Thank you."

"A nurse is many things," Angela said quietly. "Some are more satisfying than others" -- she leaned forward, lowered her head a bit, smiled, spoke as one old friend to another -- "but the best part is becoming Yenta, the Matchmaker!"

"I was surprised when the twins asked if you could come by today."  Mitch shifted a little, pushed up on the arms of his chair, resettled himself on the gel doughnut under his backside. "I was watching your traffic stop a couple days ago."

Angela nodded. "That one," she admitted, "did not go quite the way I expected!"

"I thought you were hurt."

"No.  Just the windshield and some sheet metal."

Mitch set his big plastic travel mug down, leaned forward, looked intently, directly, into Angela's pale eyes.

"I don't have many friends anymore," Mitch said, his voice quiet, intense: "no man can afford to throw a friend away and I don't want to lose any more."  

Angela watched him frown, look away, swallow, look back, and she knew what he was saying was both spontaneous, and whole cloth.

"Angela, you be careful. You're the only one of you we've got."

"Angela, I mean it. I had a crush on you in school and" -- his teeth clicked together as he looked away again, as if he'd let something slip he didn't mean to.

"I shouldn't have said that," he muttered.

Angela reached across the table, gripped his hand.

"Mitch?" she almost whispered. "Thank you."

Mitch looked back, nodded, then grinned.

"The world has a shortage of good matchmakers," he grinned. "I don't want anything to happen to my favorite Yenta!"

 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

IN THE DIRT

Shelly took pride in what she did.

Shelly was a working fire paramedic, a wife, a mother: she was also very human, and at the moment, she sought to discharge the stresses of everyday life by cultivating the rosebed beside their church.

Shelly wore knee pads, she knelt on a thick foam pad, she wore gardening gloves, and she stabbed at good rich black dirt like she was driving a knife into an enemy.

She was also muttering as she did.

"What happened, sweets?" she heard beside her, and she smelled lilacs, and she brushed savagely at her cheek with the sleeve of her flannel shirt.

Shelly did not look over:  she leaned the heels of her hands into her thighs, closed her eyes took a long breath.

"I'm not being fair," Shelly said hoarsely.

"Oh?"

Shelly glared at the dirt she'd just twisted loose: she started working it with her gardening trowel again, carefully loosening the soil without harming the roots of the roses that grew perennially along the church.

"I made a mistake."

"Oh, dearie, we all make mistakes," the older woman's voice said reassuringly. 

Shelly swallowed hard.

"At least you didn't ask your son to try on a dress."

Shelly felt the other woman's silence, almost waves of disapproval beating at her:  she heard a little choking noise, then a sniff, a giggle: she did not dare look at her uninvited visitor, but from the side of her eye she did see the woman raise her wrist to her mouth to try and stop a giggle from escaping.

"Oh, dearie," Shelly heard, "if that's all you've done wrong --"

Shelly shook her head, took a long breath.

"I provoked my daughter," she whispered, her eyes stinging.  "She provoked me right back and I slapped her."

Silence again.

"I wish she'd slapped me in return."

"She didn't?"

"No."  Shelly took another long breath, wished she could curl up and sink into the earth and hide.

"I provoked her and she provoked me right back."

"What did she say?"

"My mother ... was a nurse, and she wanted me to become a nurse, and I didn't. 

"We had words and I stormed out of the house, and we were estranged for ... a time ... and then she died."

Shelly felt the other woman's hand, warm and reassuring, on her back.

"I just wanted a normal daughter," Shelly whispered, her throat tight. "That's all I wanted, but I wasn't a normal daughter and when Marnie threw it in my face that I wanted her to be a normal girl and my mother wanted me to be a nurse --"

The warm, motherly hand, flat on her shoulder blades, rubbed gently, then drew Shelly over into her.

The older woman spoke quietly, kindly, her voice and her presence reassuring and maternal.

"Children ... can be difficult," she whispered. "It's hard to let them make their own mistakes, but we have to."

Shelly nodded.  "Marnie ... made some good choices."  She smiled.  "I didn't want her to be a deputy."

"Is she doing well?"

"She's Sheriff in --" Shelly caught herself -- "she's Sheriff in her own jurisdiction."

"I seem to recall a remarkable young woman with pale eyes," Shelly heard. "She was quite effective, as I recall."

Shelly swallowed.

"I understand there's ... she's involved with the Diplomatic Corps."

"You must be very proud!" the woman whispered, her head bent intimately close, the way a woman will in such a moment.

"She'd never have done ... everything she has ... if she'd been the normal girl I wanted."

Shelly blinked, surprised.

She honestly never expected to utter what she'd felt for quite some time.

"My husband," the older woman said quietly -- her words were gently spoken, but the pride behind them showed through like a light behind a fog -- "my husband said something about opening his mouth and something fell out that surprised him."

Shelly nodded, then giggled.

"Now what's this about asking your son to try on a dress?"

"His sister ... I'd taken them to the City, shopping, and Victoria tried on just a darling little dress, and we were looking at another, and I wanted to compare them side by side -- Michael is her twin, and they are very nearly the same size --"

"I see."

"Michael folded his arms and he said 'No thank you, ma'am,' and when I insisted, he turned his back and walked away from me."

"Oh, dear," came the worried murmur in reply.

"I reached for him and he twisted away, and he was gone."

Shelly turned her gardening trowel and studied the dirt clinging to its paint-worn, green blade.

"Have you ever tried to catch a ten-year-old?"

She felt the older woman's mirth, felt her contagious laugh as it bubbled up from the lake of memories:  "I remember what it is to chase a naked little boy, running through the house, trailing laughter and soapsuds!"

Two women shared an understanding laugh.

"And what happened when you finally caught him?"

"He stayed in sight of me while we shopped," Shelly said quietly, "and he rejoined us as we left the Mall. I didn't say a word and neither did he."

"He hasn't ... said anything since?"

"No," Shelly said, her voice tight. "I though he might have complained to his father."

"A man's pride and a boy's pride are both easily offended."

"I shouldn't have told him to try it on."

Silence grew between the two.

"All right, I didn't ask him to try it on, I told him to try it on, and that's why --"

She sat back on her heels, took a long breath, blew it out, looked over at the older woman.

She was alone.

Shelly blinked, looked around, rose:  she turned, backed up a step, backed up another.

"Hello?" she called. "Is anyone there?"

 

Sheriff Linn Keller looked up, smiled as his wife came through his office door.

He rose, came around his desk, hugged his bride:  "Darlin', you timed it just right, my eyes are about crossed lookin' at paperwork!"

"Linn," Shelly said seriously, "I think I was talking to a ghost."

Linn stopped, looked very directly at his wife.

"Fill me in."

"Linn ... who planted the roses along the Church?"

Linn smiled, for local history was Old Home Week to him.

"Mama researched that pretty well. Old Pale Eyes had a beautiful wife -- Esther Wales, her maiden name -- she was red headed and green eyed, and she loved roses. She found some Canadian varieties that did well here, with the long winters and high altitude. I think she might've done some breeding to get the hardiest varieties, and they've been there ever since."  He looked at his wife, stroked her cheek gently with the back of a bent forefinger.

"What did you see, darlin'?"

"I didn't see her," Shelly said. "She ... I was on my knee pads loosening the soil, she knelt down beside me and I never looked at her."

"O-kaaay."

"We talked and she ... Linn, she was such a comforting presence, and she smelled of lilacs and sunshine."

Linn tightened his arms around his wife, laid his cheek over on top of her head, and she felt him laughing silently as he held her.

"Esther it was," he whispered. "You were visited by Grandma Esther!"

He kissed his wife's forehead, caressed her hair.

"Did she say ... anything ... significant?"

Shelly giggled, cupped her hand over her mouth, looked at her husband with big and innocent eyes.

"We talked about little boys, and how they like to run through the house naked, dribbling soapsuds and giggles all over the floor!"

 

 

 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

SEE THE STUDENT, SEE THE TEACHER

Her hands shook badly enough she spilled coffee onto the tabletop.

I scooted my chair close, tore two sheets of paper towel free, wiped up the spill: I took the cup, I took her hand, I looked at her as her face crumpled and the tears started.

I am no less strong than any man, but when a woman turns on the water works, I get protective and I get fatherly, and I raised up a little and took her elbows and she came over at my pull and sat in my lap and turned from a slightly uncomfortable young woman to a scared little girl, terrified at a nightmare she could not wake from.

I held her, I rocked her, I waited:  this was too long coming, she'd held it in too long and I knew it would take some time for the flood to wash her dam away and cascade down the mountain and spend itself.

I knew this young woman.

I'd known her since she still had the warranty sticker pasted across her cute little shiny backside, when her parents packed her through the door of their house for the first time.

I'd shown her father the trick of using two clothespins for her to hold onto when she was learning to walk, and sure enough -- just like I'd done when I was learning to walk, or so Mama told me -- his little girl held onto those clothespins over her head and he did too, and halfway across the floor he let go and she went just a-struttin' across the floor, laughing, holding onto those clothes pins, until she realized ...

... he wasn't holding them anymore ...

... she made kind of a staggery turn-around and set down on her little diapered bottom and started to cry, and we all laughed, and directly she was walking just fine, to her Mama's dismay (and fatigue!)

I'd known this young woman as a Girl Scout, selling me a scandalous amount of Thin Mints (I think I still have some in the deep freeze) and I recall the time I rode to school with my own young and she came over all big eyed and enamored with my spotty Appaloosa stallion, and how she'd drawn me a childish crayon portrait of a stick figure Sheriff on a spotty horse, and I particularly remember she'd paid very close attention to drawing the hooves.

She rest of the horse was mostly spots and a big grin, but the hooves were striped and surprisingly accurate.

I remembered all this as I held her, as I rocked her, as she shivered and choked and finally let go of everything that she'd kept hid and dammed and bottled and contained.

It took a little while.

I held her, I had my arms around her, I had one hand behind her head, I soothed her and murmured to her the way I would a little child terrified of a nightmare, I let her spill everything out and be done with it, for my own lifetime and my own young both taught me that if you don't get it all out -- professionally, if you don't debrief, and personally, if you don't dump it -- it'll fester and it'll bust out when you don't want it to.

Now once her flood was cascaded on down the mountain, once she'd hit my soft spot as she snifffed and rubbed her face into my shoulder and mumbled miserably, "I miss my Daddy!" -- I'd been pallbearer at that fine man's funeral, and that miserable confession into my shirtfront just plainly run the sorrows through me -- I pulled out a bedsheet hankie and when she leaned her head back, I whispered "Close your eyes," and I blotted the wet off her face, and I dabbed under her nose and then just like my own little girls, I very gently pinched her nose with the hankie and said "Blow," and she did, and she reached up and took control of the snot rag and grimaced and managed a very unladylike (but very productive) honk.

I held her as long as she was comfortable being held; when she started to shift her weight, I eased my leg down a little and grimaced and muttered something about my leg goin' to sleep, and she apologized and we both stood and I held her very gently by the elbows and I said, "Don't ever apologize, darlin', for making an older man feel useful for a change!" -- and she laughed, and sniffed, and blotted her eyes again.

I gave her another minute and waited until she'd taken a few deep breaths, and then she sat down and so did I.

I hunched over and took her hands, gently, the way I did my own young, and I said softly, "You came here to tell me something."

She nodded, swallowed.

"I don't have my gun back."

"I know," I said softly. "Like as not it'll be a while yet."

"I may never get it back."

I nodded, slowly.

"Angela was right."

I smiled, just a little.

Angela was a Valkyrie: she'd been a cheerleader, she'd run with Willamina's Warriors -- matter of fact, just like Marnie, she took Mama's place as the chief hell-raiser, the singer of obscene running songs, the greatest butt-kicking, cadence-shouting, propper-up-of-exhausted-young-men, unofficial leader of the Firelands Football Team since Mama's days of organizing young men of the mountains.

Angela was a sweet girl, she was a pretty girl, she was a girly girl, and she was also fast and deadly with a variety of disciplines intended to Less-than-Gently Pacify Thy Neighbor: like her sister Marnie, she practiced with blades, with bludgeons, she practiced with shovels, rocks, tire tools, with any improvised device:  I watched her in a schoolroom simulation, drive a #2 lead pencil through an anatomical dummy's temporal bone, into its kidneys, into its carotid artery and its trachea and through its eye socket -- launching each time from the relaxed, crossed-leg posture of a high-school student at a school desk, while she was teaching school-invader countermeasures.

Angela was one of my favorite firearm instructors.

She taught in a dress and heels, just like her pale-eyed Gammaw, she presented as a very feminine figure, and she taught the ladies, because "Women learn better from women."

When Darlene came into my office and asked if she might talk to me, I didn't hesitate:  I had Sharon hold my calls, I drew coffee for both of us, I closed the conference door behind us and I sat down with her with my chair facing hers, and I did my level best to put her at ease.

I knew she'd been involved in a defensive shooting.

I knew she'd sent a deserving soul to Hell with a burst of .22 rimfires.

I'd heard a few rumors about the incident, but when Darlene came in -- after the trial, after she was no-billed, after a civil suit against her hit a brick wall and slid to the floor and died -- after all this, she needed to talk.

 

"I was going shopping," she said quietly, "we needed some things. I had a shopping list and traffic wasn't bad -- nobody was doing anything stupid, I didn't have any close calls -- and some fellow beside me rolled down his window and started screaming at me.

"I looked over and he pointed a gun at me.

"I was seat belted and sitting at a light with traffic all around me.

"I couldn't go anywhere.

"I was wearing ... I intended to go practice like Angela talked about."

I turned my head a little, my eyes never leaving hers: she'd reached for my hands, and I held hers gently and did my best to look more like a father than the chief lawman of the county.

"Angela said she would practice with a Walther PPK/S in .22 because if she could discipline herself well enough to score well with that short sight radius and those little bitty sights, she could do very well indeed with a good set of target sights and the longer radius of her target pistol."

I nodded, doing my best to keep a poker face:  I nodded because, not only was Angela right, she was teaching what I'd been practicing for years.

"Angela said when we are threatened" -- she stopped, swallowed -- "our mind locks onto the threat like targeting radar, and our eyes follow our mind and our hands follow our eyes, and mine did.

"I remember seeing the front sight.

"I'd painted it with the brightest red model paint I could find.

"Angela said we focus on the threat and I saw that bright red front sight and I set it right where I wanted that bullet to hit and I shot.

"I knew it was only a .22 so I shot several times. I had to break my passenger window and that's one bullet, and then I had to stop the threat."

I nodded, slowly, my hands were open, her fingers resting on mine: enough to give her fatherly comfort, not enough to make her feel trapped.

"I shot and nothing happened and I shot again and he flinched and I shot again and he drew back and I shot again and his head fell sideways and I stopped shooting and I just sat there and he was dead and I'd done it and I knew he was dead and I stopped shooting and I just sat there and it took forever for the police to get there --"

She took several quick breaths, she threw her head back as she did, then she looked at me and swallowed.

"They treated me like a monster in court."

"They usually do."

"They accused me of road rage and bullying and screaming threats at him and ... and a detective ... they tried to keep him off the stand and they had a separate hearing to allow him to testify and he was with a gang unit and he said another vehicle similar to mine was involved in a drive-by and he'd found whoever was in the car with the man who tried to shoot me."

She looked at me with big, scared eyes and whispered, "He was going to kill me, Sheriff. He thought I was somebody else."

I nodded, but said nothing: I've known that to happen, and it troubled me that it damn near happened to someone I knew.

"I was no-billed," she whispered. 

I nodded.  "Good," I said gently.

Her hands were shaking again.

"They wanted to put me in jail," she whispered.

I nodded.

"I don't know what would have happened if that detective hadn't insisted on testifying."

"Darlin'," I said gently, "you did all kind of things right!"

She blinked and looked at me with big and vulnerable eyes, and I knew I had to tread carefully.

Her walls were down and anything I said, for good or for ill, would drive straight into that tender young heart.

"Darlin', I read the forensics. Your first shot took out your window. Your second shot went through his trigger finger and up his wrist. That's the money shot. That told us he was pointing the gun at you -- that, and one of your bullets was found splattered against the bullet in his chamber."

She looked at me, confused, blinked a few times.

"Darlin', one of your first shots went right down the barrel of his gun!"

Her mouth dropped open, she looked to the side, blew out a breath, swallowed.

"Do you still have that car?"

She nodded.

"Is it paid for?"

She shook her head.

"Financed through our bank here in town?"

She nodded again.

"Darlin', listen to me. You're twice marked. You killed a gangsta and your car looks like another gangsta's car. I want you to get something different -- make, model, style, shape, color, change it up and get something else."

"I can't afford to --" she blurted.

I winked.

"I know a guy," I said. "Now let's get everything of yours out of that car. It's a rolling target and I don't want you killed."

She turned a little pale when I said that.

 

Two hours later -- it helps to be on really, really good terms with the banker -- we'd swung a wheelin' deal down at Honest John's Used Car Lot and Exhaust Repair.

We got Darlene's little white import cleaned out, John already had a buyer for it at an out-of-state dealership, and we got her into a midnight-metallic-blue Mercury with new tires, new brakes and a five year bumper to bumper warranty.

I had a quiet word with my buddy the banker; a day or two later, Darlene called me up, all excited, thanking me up one side and down the other: she didn't realize until she opened the envelope and read the contents twice, that her new-to-her car, considering her old car's trade-in value, Honest John's new-customer discount, the local-business bonus, phase of the moon, the Coriolus effect and two or three arcane formulae chanted over a bubbling cauldron of split-pea soup with ham hocks, that her vehicle was Paid in Full, fully insured, and a pleasure doing business.

Darlene did tell me her little stainless .22 Walther felt just mighty puny, and she'd like to replace it with something bigger.

I looked at Angela's portrait on my desk and smiled.

"Darlene," I said, "I just happen to know a guy ..."

 

Edited Monday at 01:37 PM by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

WAS HE?

Jacob Keller traced reverent fingertips over the tarnished brass.

It belonged to his Pa.

His Pa never talked much about it.

Jacob knew this was his Pa's war bag during that damned War, and that his Pa took off the US from the flap and replaced it with the Masonic square-and-compasses.

He considered that he wished he'd asked his Pa, while the man yet drew breath, but he never did, and now he would wonder forever.

Jacob knew several men who'd been in That Damned War.

He'd also known pretenders, braggarts, fakers.

That's the trouble with being a lawman.

You rub elbows with plenty of folks you'd never bring to your Mama's supper table.

Once, and once only, did he ask his Mama about it, and that, when they were alone, well distant from home, hearth and humanity.

"Mother," Jacob asked, his voice serious.

Esther smiled a little, that gentle, motherly smile of hers and tilted her head a little as she replied to her tall, handsome son.

"Yes, Jacob?"

"Mother, there is a story told."

His words were careful, precisely enunciated.

"There are many stories told, Jacob. Which one are you thinking of?"

"During that damned War, " he said quietly, "after a battle, a man loaded up with canteens and bandages and went out into the darkness."

Esther waited, listened to birds, listened to the carriage, listened to quiet, regular hoof-falls: Jacob was not in a hurry and neither was she, and their horse was at an easy walk, and with sun in their face and no pressing needs, the walking pace suited them fine.

"A sergeant told the man not to go out into the darkness, between the lines," Jacob continued after a moment.  "He told the Sergeant to go to blistering hell and went anyway.

"There wasn't much light, but there was enough: he used what bandages he had, he gave water to the wounded, and he kept at it until he was out of water.

"He came back and gathered up some more and went back out.

"I was told he paid no attention to the color of the uniform, that he tended blue and grey alike, he was near to the enemy lines and someone said 'Hold fire, damn ye,' and he said later it felt like someone walked on his grave to hear it."

Silence, for a time:  the sun was warm through his black coat-sleeves, springtime was starting to smell good.

Finally Esther said, softly, "I heard about that man, too."

She looked at Jacob.

"I heard tell he'd taken the US from the flap of his cartridge box and replaced it with the Square and Compasses."

"Yes, ma'am."

The dapple mare's tail slashed industriously, perhaps getting ready for summer's crop of flies.

"Ma'am, does that man ... the one who went with water and with bandages ... do we know his name?"

Esther's hand slipped around her son's arm and he felt her gloved hand squeeze him, gently, the way a mother will.

"I have heard the story, Jacob," Esther said softly, "and I bless the man who did a kindness in the midst of that terrible insanity!"

 

Jacob Keller traced his old man's fingers over the brass insignia.

He'd been a Mason for many years, as was his father before him, as were his own sons.

Annette, her hair white, her face lined, smiled at her husband as she held their youngest grandchild, as she and her daughter in law exchanged whispered confidences, the way mothers will in such a moment.

Jacob Keller set the ancient, cracked-leather warbag back on its shelf, under his father's sheathed Cavalry saber.

His own grandson asked him about that same story, not a week before.

Grandfather and grandson had looked at the tarnished brass device on the pouch's flap, and Jacob smiled at the youthful hopefulness in the lad's voice.

"Sir," he heard, the words reverently spoken:  "Sir, was he?"

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

YOU, SIR, ARE FULL OF IT!

Sheriff Linn Keller looked at a man who wished to make himself appear important.

"Sheriff!" the County Commissioner hailed him with a plastic smile. "I haven't seen you around! Where have you been hiding all this time?"

Sheriff Linn Keller stopped and regarded the man, as if considering whether to backhand him across the room, or whether to seize him by collar and crotch and drown him in the nearest spittoon, or whether to kick his backside up between his shoulder blades.

He did none of these things.

The direct approach, he reasoned, was the correct approach, and so he stepped forward, seized the man's shoulder and gripped his hand and declared loudly, "Now it's interesting you would ask me that, Johnny! I have been off-planet!"

"Off planet," Johnny Cook replied skeptically.

"We toured a number of worlds in the thirteen star system Confederacy," the Sheriff declared, "we rode horses with fangs and a thick unicorn horn, my ten year old son Michael was obliged to resort to his concealed pistol to shoot a rock snake and keep it from murdering his little sister."

"Rock snake."

The troublemaking politician's expression was skeptical.

"Oh, ya. Big as your leg, fangs six inches long, they inject a pint of venom with each fang. Twelve hours after a bite on a child Victoria's size, why, the entire nervous system dissolves. Terrible way to die, terrible."  The Sheriff shook his head sadly.

"Now after that -- you do know my daughter Marnie was promoted from Sheriff of the Second Martian Colony to Chief Ambassador to the thirteen-star-system Confederacy, and then to Deputy Confederate Ambassador-at-Large."  He winked confidentially and added, "With a significant raise in pay, I'll tell you!"

"Ambassador."

"Why, most recently, we were obliged to open an interdimensional portal and step out on a world two galaxies from here, or maybe it's three, I didn't really ask -- Marnie's diplomatic shuttle was shot down and the Valkyries heard her telepathic call for backup."

"Valkyries."

"Seven remarkable young women with a genetic aberration that allows them to pilot Starfighter spaceships using their minds alone. They used to use microneedles that went into their living brains, but now it's done by induction, so they don't have to shave their scalps anymore."

"Sheriff, I don't know what you're --"

Linn cut him off.

"Now Michael and Victoria -- the twins, our youngest two -- activated an interdimensional Iris and stepped out of my study and into the hallway of the most secure government building on the planet. It seems Marnie was dragged from the wreckage and she roused from her injuries in time to lay half a dozen men out cold and twice that number dead, and that with a six shot revolver and a Damascus blade Bowie. They tried to catch her and she holed up in a marble walled conference hall in that government building, she set the doors for security level three which is proof against a field howitzer, and they brought in an energy-cannon to tear the door down and kill her."

The Sheriff looked past the politician, looked at his son, who stood solemn and silent, listening to his father holding forth with an unaccustomed vigor.

"Michael cut loose with a Winchester rifle and dropped four right away.

"His twin sister Victoria pulled out a .32 automatic and took out their commanding officer and the chief gunner, then they deactivated the energy cannon and right about then, about a hundred twenty company-strength interstellar troopships landed and the Confederacy just plainly turned their badger loose on the capitol. Rounded up every last one of those crooked politicians, they did!"

Johnny Cook, petty politician, a man with an over inflated sense of his own importance, considered what he'd just been told: he blinked a few times, looked at the Sheriff's youngest daughter, standing beside her Daddy and regarding the world with big and innocent eyes; he saw her twin brother come up beside her, his face carefully neutral as he unbuttoned his coat and laid his hand flat on his belly.

"Energy cannon," Cook snorted. "Troop ships! Interstellar --"

His mouth closed, opened, closed again.

"Sheriff," he finally said, "if you went on vacation, why didn't you just say so!"

Johnny Cook pushed past the lean waisted lawman, muttering and shaking his head.

Michael looked up at his Pa, and so did Victoria.

A Sheriff in a black suit, a ten year old boy dressed like his father, and a pretty little girl in an old fashioned frock with frothy petticoats peeking out from under its ornate hem, made their way back to the Lawman's Corner.

The Sheriff ordered three cheeseburger platters and three chocolate milkshakes.

Michael waited until the hash slinger was well distant before leaning over the table a little and asking, "Sir, why did you tell him what we were doing?"

Linn winked, leaned confidentially toward his children, spoke quietly.

"Michael, do you remember when you saw me testify in Denver?"

"Yes, sir."

"Do you recall what I told that attorney when he was getting prickish with me?"

Michael grinned.

" 'Before you ask that question, be sure you're willing to receive the answer you really don't want to hear!' " Michael quoted.

Linn winked.  "Exactly!"

Victoria looked at her twin brother.

"Daddy told the truth," she said quietly.

Michael considered this, frowned.

"I thought we weren't supposed to say anything about any of that."

Linn's amusement was visible in his eyes, in the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes.

"I made the man look like a donkey," he said, "all I did was tell him the truth and he'll never believe it. I didn't lie, he didn't get any kind of an answer he wanted, and nobody will believe him if he utters word one of any of it!"

The waitress came gliding back, silent on thick soles, set down three milkshakes, then three platters.

"Anything else?" she chirped brightly: she looked around, batted her long, curled eyelashes, then she hesitated, looked at the Sheriff.

"Thank you for putting Johnny Cook in his place," she said quietly. "That old letch has been undressing me with his eyes since I was your daughter's age!" 

 

 

Edited 3 minutes ago by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103