Literary Fictions

 

The Drinking Song
~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~

(This short story was published in The Literary Hatchet.)

Lloyd Stott had a lead on a three-day job in a cemetery. When he called to inquire about the job, he was told to take the bus to a certain address to speak to the man doing the hiring. He took the bus, all right, but he got lost and became so confused he ended up in a place that couldn’t have been the right place. It was a neighborhood of beautiful houses with attached garages; spacious, well-kept lawns and overarching shade trees. It was a neighborhood that might have made a confused hobo believe for a moment he was in heaven.

He walked around for a while, garnering hostile stares. Anybody who saw him would know he was in the wrong place. And what would he do if someone called the police? He’d have to explain what he was doing there, and anything he said would not be believed.

He was going to knock at the back door of one of the houses and ask for directions when he saw a police car a block away coming toward him. When he turned in the other direction, he saw another police car. Somebody must have already called the police and reported a stray hobo in the neighborhood, ready to wreak unspeakable carnage! Even though he wasn’t doing anything wrong, they could nab  him for vagrancy and trespassing, just when he was only trying to get a job and get himself straightened out.

Across the way was a huge brick house with a spacious, park-like lawn—lots of trees and bushes. All he had to do was hide himself in the bushes for a half-hour or so, by which time the police would be gone, and then he could go back to where he came from and resume his career of racking balls at the pool hall.

Certain he hadn’t been seen, he ran into the yard and was looking for a good place to hide when a medium-sized dog, a black cocker spaniel, spied him and ran toward him barking. He was afraid of barking dogs, especially the ones that might possibly rip off a leg. He had heard that cocker spaniels were particularly vicious.

Heart pounding, he ran around the house away from the dog, hoping the dog would become distracted and not follow. Good boy! Good dog!

On the other side of the house were stairs to the basement. Down the stairs were a door and some trash barrels. Taking the steps two at a time, he crouched behind the barrels, hoping the dog would become bored with his attack-the-hobo game and go home.

The door beside which he was crouching had a window with a curtain. There were no sounds coming from beyond the door and the window was dark. Did that mean nobody was home? No, it probably meant that nobody was in the basement. The people who lived in the house were all upstairs.

Not thinking any particular thought, he stood up from his crouching position behind the trash barrels and put his hand on the door knob and turned it. The door wasn’t locked. He inserted his head as far as he dared. He saw a large, comfortable room with a television, a couch and some overstuffed chairs, a table for playing cards, some weight-lifting equipment, a bookcase with some books, a couple of lamps, a record player and some vinyl records. What a setup! Whoever lived here must be a movie star or a prince or something like that, he thought.

What caught his attention more than anything else, though, was a bar on the far wall. He never knew anybody before who had a full-sized bar in their basement. He approached the bar as quiet as a mouse, as grandma used to say, listening all the time for sounds from above.

Behind the bar on glass shelves were all shapes, sizes, and colors of bottles, as beautiful as any work of art. There were wines, liqueurs, vodka, tequila, rye whiskey, scotch, bourbon and other bottles with labels he couldn’t read because they were in foreign languages. He picked up a bottle of vodka, unscrewed the cap and took a generous swallow. He couldn’t resist. Then he had another drink of vodka and one of scotch. It was all of the best quality. No rot-gut stuff like they sell in his neighborhood.

He sat on the big couch, the bottle of vodka in one hand and the bottle of scotch in the other, and took a few more drinks, alternating between bottles. He thought: Man, this is living! I could get used to this shit!

Soon he was asleep. That’s the effect liquor had on him.

He awoke with a start, not knowing where he was. Neither did he know how long he had been asleep, but it had probably been too long. He remembered then that he was in the house of a stranger and he hadn’t been invited in, either. Technically he broke in, but he didn’t really have to break anything to get inside. It was so easy.

He should leave, but he hadn’t heard a sound from upstairs the whole time he had been in the house. What could it mean? It might mean that nobody was home. Might he go into the kitchen and grab something to eat before milord and milady came home? He hadn’t had anything to eat all day, and it was never a good idea to consume large amounts of alcohol on an empty stomach.

Realizing he was still holding liquor bottles in both hands, he set them on the bar and went quietly up the stairs, holding on to the wall. If there was anybody at home and they confronted him, he should be able to run out the way he came in before they called the police. Always a good idea to have an escape plan in mind.

At the top of the stairs was a hallway and then the kitchen. The kitchen was dark and quiet, orderly and neat. The refrigerator hummed quietly. He took a few steps and stood still, listening for any sounds coming from any of the other rooms. Hearing nothing, he proceeded.

Beyond the kitchen was the dining room and then a living room. Blinds were closed and curtains drawn. The air felt stale and uncirculated. Nobody was home, plain and simple. He could take as much time as he wanted and explore the entire house, but there was always a chance that whoever lived there would be coming back at any moment. He had to be constantly on guard for footsteps or voices.

And then he saw the note on the kitchen counter that liberated him:

Dear Geta, We’ll be back on the twenty-fifth. On the twenty-fourth, come in early to vacuum and dust, collect the mail, newspapers, etc. Make the house presentable. You know how I like everything perfect! Ha-ha! I do hope everything has been all right while we’ve been away and that nobody has broken in and made off with all our valuables! See you on the twenty-fifth. I hope you’ve made good use of your free time, as we discussed. Yours sincerely, Mrs. Penelope Poindexter.

So, he had the house to himself until the twenty-fourth! That gave him four days. He could have a good rest, get himself clean, eat whatever food was there, drink the liquor, sleep in a comfortable bed. When the people who lived in the house returned and saw that somebody had been staying there, they’d call the police, of course, but by then he’d be long gone. They’d agonize over it, have a locksmith come and change the locks, upbraid the maid for not securing the basement door, and then, in time, forget it ever happened. No real harm done.

First things first, though: the bathroom. What a luxury to sit on the toilet and do one’s business with nobody else around and then just flush the effluvia away as if it never existed. Surely one of life’s greatest pleasures!

Later he would have a bath, but first some food. He went to the refrigerator and opened the door. The shelves were mostly bare: a jar of pickles, some mustard, a couple of shriveled onions, a part bottle of wine. He reached for the pickles and the wine and sat down at the kitchen table and drank wine and ate pickles, digging them out of the jar with his filthy fingers, until he believed he would be sick. Then he put the pickles and the wine back in the refrigerator where he found them and opened the freezer, in which he found, among other things, a full carton of mint chocolate chip ice cream. Finding a spoon easily enough, he began eating the ice cream greedily right out of the carton. Nothing in his life ever tasted so good.

He was sick then, but he made it into the bathroom before he made a mess on the floor. What a pleasure just to be sick in such a spacious, clean bathroom! The lucky ones don’t know how lucky they are, he thought, as he rinsed out his mouth afterwards, regarding his frightening face in the mirror above the sink.

Standing in front of the mirror, he stripped off his clothes, not failing to notice the awful smell emanating from his body. After he had taken everything off, he didn’t want to see himself. He got into the tub and filled it with scalding water.

The hot bath was the closest he had ever come to bliss on earth. After scrubbing every inch of himself, he let out the dirty water and started over, but this time he reclined in the tub and took a long, luxurious soak, making it last as long as he dared.

Emerging from the tub, he dried himself all over with a beautiful pink towel and when he was finished, he felt like a different person in a different skin. He regarded his old clothes in a pile on the floor with distaste. He’d rather go unclothed than to put them on again. He didn’t know what to do with them so he kicked them out of the way where he wouldn’t have to look at them.

With the pink towel around his middle, he went into the bedroom at the end of the hallway to find something to wear. The men’s clothes he found in the closet weren’t right for him, too big and boxy; they swallowed him up. Since he was a small man, only five feet and four inches, he found the lady’s attire more to his liking.

Ever since he was a little tyke, he liked to dress in women’s clothes. His mother indulged him in this peculiarity, while his father beat him with a belt to discourage any feminizing ways. When his father went to prison for a twenty-year stretch, he was free to be either male or female, according to his mood.

Now he was getting on in years (over forty) and his indulgent mother was dead. He had found precious little opportunity in the last ten years or so to dress as a woman. Now, though, God had landed him in this rich person’s house for a few days where no one could see him and he could do as he pleased. Thank you, God!

The note he found in the kitchen told him that the lady who lived in the house was one Mrs. Penelope Poindexter. As he dressed himself in her clothes, (including frilly undergarments), he began to think of himself as the one, the only, Mrs. Penelope Poindexter.

What could be more comfortable after a bath than slipping into a silk Japanese lounging kimono with a  motif of red poppies, topped with a cascading, curly wig from the shelf in the closet? A prolonged examination of his mirrored image reminded him that his previous state of drunkenness had worn off in the act of bathing, and he knew that no good would come from being sober.

He had never considered himself an alcoholic, but he had known other alcoholics, including his father and two of his brothers, and what he had in common with all of them was that he couldn’t leave the stuff alone. Remaining drunk all the time was the only way he could live. When he was sober, he had to face the hard reality of his life: despicable, distasteful, insupportable. My life has become insupportable, he remembered hearing someone say. It might have been a line from a movie.

He drank a bottle of Jamaican rum and a bottle of tequila (small bottles) and then he tried on a cocktail dress of madame’s from the closet. He didn’t think the cocktail dress was quite right for him somehow, so he took it off and threw it on the floor and replaced it with a tea-length dress in a floral print. An auburn wig from madame’s wig collection set off the dress perfectly, calling for more ice cream. He ate the rest of the carton of mint chocolate chip and then he threw up again, barely making it into the bathroom.

As he finished each bottle, he lined all up all the empties on the table in the kitchen like a row of toy soldiers. It made a pretty picture and served as a visual reminder of just how much liquor he had consumed and how much more he had to go: there were still lots of bottles left in the basement.

He tried on some more of madame’s lovely clothes and then, realizing it was two in the morning—where does time go?—he carried the bottle of gin into the master bedroom and passed out on the king-sized bed.

When he awoke in the morning to the sound of birds singing, he didn’t know where he was, but he knew it was someplace good. He had a terrible headache but was able to stumble into the bathroom, where he found a bottle of aspirin in the medicine cabinet. After taking two aspirin without water, he fainted on the tile floor, where he lay unconscious for several hours.

So, in this way, Lloyd Stott passed his four days in the home of an unwittingly generous benefactor: modeling all of madame’s clothes from the closet (discarding them in a heap on the floor in the bedroom when he took them off), drinking all the liquor from the bar in the basement, eating all the food in the kitchen. How lucky he was that the liquor and the food lasted just as long as he wanted them to! And madame had just enough clothes that he didn’t have to model any of them more than once.

For his last night in the house—and he felt a little sad that he couldn’t stay longer—he wore madame’s shimmering, white, floor-length evening gown. And not only that, he saved one last bottle of his favorite rye whiskey. He would have a little going-away party. A party for one.

The maid would be in early the next morning, so he planned on being out well in advance of that time. He would doze until five or so and then get up and vamoose like a scared little rabbit while the world still slept.

He had a wonderful time his last night, drinking straight from the bottle, dancing with an imaginary partner to music from the radio, remembering some good times he had when he was younger before he gave up his life to drinking. When he was twenty-three he was married for a time and became a father. He had traveled and seen the world. He had seen New York City and the Gulf of Mexico and Niagara Falls.

At midnight he retired to the master bedroom, taking the bottle of rye whiskey with him. There was still a little left in the bottle and he wanted to finish it off before he left in the morning. Before going to sleep, he thanked God, again, for the four happy days in the wonderful house.

It was to be his last night on earth. He would not live to see another day. His heart, his stomach and his intestinal tract were overburdened by the huge amounts of liquor he had consumed. His heart stopped pumping and he died in his sleep; he didn’t know or feel anything.

When the maid, Geta, came in at nine o’clock in the morning, she saw the bottles lined up on the table in the kitchen and she knew something was wrong. Then she went into the master bedroom and saw the contents of the closet turned out on the floor and the strange figure in the bed wearing Mrs. Poindexter’s evening gown. It gave Geta quite a fright because she thought it was Mrs. Poindexter herself. Her hands shook as she went to the phone and called the police.

Copyright © 2023 by Allen Kopp

 

Fallen Angel
~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~

In 1948, Alonzo Goldsmith and Isabelle Bird were married in a modest service in a small country church. He was twenty and she was nineteen. Neither of them knew anything of the world.

In less than a year, they brought forth a baby, a boy they named Timothy. The next year, they had a girl, named Peggy. Alonzo knew that, with two babies in less than two years of marriage, life was always going to be a struggle for him. Ten months after Peggy was born came Jesse, a stolid, dark-haired boy. When Jesse was barely walking, there came another girl; this one they named Storm. With two boys and two girls in less than five years or marriage, Alonzo declared there would be no more. One more would upset the balance.

Alonzo was never blessed with intellectual curiosity or an abundance of learning. He had to make a living for himself and his brood of children the best way he knew how. He got a job on an assembly line in a shoe factory. He stayed for thirteen years until, one day, he was told he didn’t need to come back; the factory was closing its doors.

After his time in the factory, he painted houses, worked in a lead mine, drove a school bus, worked as a janitor in a church, clerked in a hardware store, did cleanup work in a cemetery, and even for a while worked as a trash collector. No work was beneath him as long as it paid the honest dollar.

The growing-up years of his quartet of children passed in a kind of blur. They were starting kindergarten and then, before Alonzo knew it, he was putting on his blue suit and going to their high school graduations. Peggy and Storm were both out of the house and married by the time they were twenty and started having babies of their own.

Timothy, never much interested in the girls, moved to Alaska with a couple of his friends and got a job there. He sent greeting cards to Alonzo and Isabelle on Christmas and birthdays, but he would never come back home, he said, not even for a visit. He was happy in Alaska and didn’t want to be reminded of his growing-up years.

As a child growing up, Jesse was unlike any other. He was stubborn and uncooperative. He refused to sit still in school. He was a bully with his classmates. He defaced the walls. He pulled fire extinguishers down from the wall to watch them spray. Several times he ran away from school and was found wandering the streets. His name came to by synonymous with misdeeds.

At home, if anybody ever crossed him, he picked up the nearest object and threw it. He broke windows, dishes and mirrors, not to mention all his toys. He played cruel tricks on his sisters, putting a dead skunk in their closet or taking their clothes and books out into the back yard and setting fire to them. He called his mother vile names and painted obscenities on the wall of his room in his own blood.

His high school years were tumultuous. He cheated on tests, stole money, engaged in fistfights, threatened to kill a teacher for correcting him in class, slashed the tires on a school bus. At night, he went out drinking, sometimes not getting home in time to go to school the next morning. He shoplifted cigarettes and small food items. He had been barred from every drug store in town because he roamed their aisles and pilfered drugs.

Finally, he graduated from high school. He had the lowest scholastic record in his class and the highest number of days missed, but still he was allowed to graduate. The entire family attended his graduation and were happy for him. The next day he attempted suicide by slashing his wrists. He spent four months in the state mental hospital, after which he was said to be cured of whatever had been wrong with him and sent home.

His mother knew he was an aberration. Something that happens in the world. For every good in the world, there is a bad something or other. He was no more responsible for his actions than a wild animal in the forest. She loved him as much as she loved her other children, if not more. He was her fallen angel. He would come to a bad end, she knew. She could only hope for a merciful one.

After his stay in the mental hospital, he got a job as an apprentice meat cutter for minimum wage. In the evenings, he would come home wearing his white apron covered with blood, in which he seemed to take pride. Sometimes he brandished a meat cleaver in his mother’s or his father’s face, but they could ignore these things as long as he was going to work every day and staying at home in the evenings and watching television and napping in the recliner.

He began dating a checker named Maureen in the supermarket where he worked. In a few weeks, they announced they were going to be married. Maureen was going to have a baby, but she hoped nobody would notice until after the wedding. They rented a small house a few blocks from the supermarket where they both worked and, seven months after they were married, Maureen gave birth to a son, Matthew.

In the year after Matthew’s birth, Jesse began going around with other women, sometimes women he picked up on the street. He stole money from Maureen’s purse and began staying out all night, sometimes being gone for two or three days at a time. When Maureen confronted him over the loss of the rent money, he hit her in the head with a bottle and tried to strangle her. As he held her down on the floor, she slashed him across the face with a piece of glass and got away. After that, she filed for divorce, quit her job and took Matthew and went back to her childhood home to live with her widowed mother.

Alonzo was now in his mid-sixties and, after forty-five years, he had to give up working. He had a heart murmur, a fatty liver, arthritis, asthma, and deteriorating disks in his spine. Every movement for him was painful. He and Isabelle, sitting at the kitchen table, figured they could get by on what little money they had, since they only had themselves to take care of and didn’t need anything in the way of luxuries.

Just when Alonzo was looking forward to a serene old age, fatherhood was once again thrust upon him. Jesse lost his job, his home and his wife, and had no place to lay his head. Alonzo and Isabelle had to give him one more chance. They allowed him to move into his old room, but only if he could be the kind of responsible adult they expected him to be. If he engaged in any more of his destructive behavior, he would have to find another place to stay.

Jesse found a job as counter man in an auto parts store. He went to work every day and straight home afterwards and didn’t go out again at night. After a month of this good behavior he was stretched to the limit of his endurance and reverted to his old ways. He stole Alonzo’s pain medication and took grocery money from his mother’s purse. He stayed out all night and slept all day, forfeiting his new job. He was dirty and sloppy and his mother had to pick up after him the same way she did when he was a child. When she tried to speak to him, he called her a meddling old bitch and threatened to kill her.

When he broke a glass in the kitchen and sliced Isabelle’s arm with it, Alonzo told him he had to get out before the end of the day. His mother and father could no longer be responsible for him and he was going to have to make his own way in the world.

He got his things together, but before he left he had a few choice words to impart. They had always been against him, he said; they had hurt him and held him back by not loving him enough. They hadn’t seen the last of him, though. He’d be back and when they saw him coming they’d better say their prayers.

The next day they changed the locks on the doors and Alonzo bought two handguns, one for him and one for Isabelle. They took lessons on gun safety and made sure they kept plenty of ammunition in the house.

Two weeks after Jesse left, Isabelle was alone in the house when she heard a car out front. When she looked out the window, she saw Jesse getting out of the car with a shotgun. She heard him try to open the door and, when he found that his old key wouldn’t work, he began shouting and swearing.

“Go on now, son!” she called to him. “We don’t want any more trouble with you!”

“Let me in!” he yelled.

“No! If you don’t go away and leave us alone, I’ll call the sheriff! I swear I will!”

He banged and kicked at the door and when she still didn’t open it, he broke the glass out with the butt of his shotgun and reached through and undid the lock.

When he came through the door, she was ready for him. She believed that when he saw her pointing a gun at him, he would desist, but still he advanced on her, pointing his gun at her middle. She would never forget the look of hatred on his face.

She believed in that moment without a doubt that he would kill her and then kill Alonzo when he came into the house. Without thinking about what she was doing, almost by reflex, she leveled her gun at him and, from eight feet away, pulled the trigger. One bullet was all it took. He fell dead at her feet.

She called the police and told them calmly what happened. Ten minutes later, Alonzo came home. The story was in the newspapers and on television: Rural Woman Kills Mentally Ill Son in Self-Defense. No Charges Filed.

Alonzo and Isabelle had Jesse’s body cremated. There was no religious service. People heard about it and were disappointed there would be no funeral for them to go to. How could a mother kill her own son, they asked. Well, he was going to kill her. It was one or the other. What do you know about that? It takes all kinds.

Copyright © 2023 by Allen Kopp

The New Ricky Ricardo
~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~

Ethel let herself in at the kitchen door and helped herself to a cup of coffee. She sat down at the table and began nibbling at the bacon that was left over from breakfast. When Lucy came in from the other room, she took one look at Ethel and began crying.

“What’s wrong, honey?” Ethel asked.

“Oh, Ethel, it’s just awful!” Lucy sobbed.

“What happened?”

“I’ve just been frantic since two this morning! I don’t know what to do!”

“You and Ricky have another fight?”

“I don’t know what’s got into him lately.”  

“Well, pour yourself some coffee and sit down and tell me all about it.”

“Oh, Ethel, I hate to tell you what I’ve done!”

“It can’t be all that bad!”

“This time it is!”

“I’ll help you get it straightened out, whatever it is. What are best friends for?”

“Oh, Ethel, I don’t know how to tell you this!”

“Just say it. You’ll feel better.”

“I’ve killed Ricky!”

“What?”

“I said I’ve killed Ricky Ricardo. My husband. The famous bug-eyed Cuban bandleader known and loved by millions.”

“Oh, Lucy! You didn’t! I’m speechless!”

“I know! It’s terrible!”

“Are you sure he’s dead?”

“He’s dead, all right. He’s been dead since two this morning.”

“Well, get yourself calmed down and tell me all about it.”

“Well, he came home from the club about one-thirty and I noticed right away that he was acting sort of funny. He wouldn’t look me in the eye.”

“Oh, honey, that’s a very bad sign!” Ethel said, spraying crumbs out between her teeth.  

“He took off his clothes and laid them on the chair next to the bed and went into the bathroom. I heard the water running, so I figured he was taking a bath. I gathered up his clothes for the laundry and you’ll never guess what I found!”

“What?”

“There was lipstick on the front of his shirt and, not only that, it reeked of perfume!”

“That doesn’t necessarily mean anything, honey! How do you know he didn’t just brush up against one of the chorus girls from the club?”

“Oh, he brushed up against her all right, and did a lot more than that, too!”

“Oh, honey! Now don’t start jumping to conclusions!”

“That isn’t all. When he came out of the bathroom in his bathrobe, I asked him if he had a pleasant evening at the club and he yelled at me.”

“Yelled at you? That doesn’t sound like Ricky!”

“He called me a meddling old bitch and said he was sick and tired of my nagging at him all the time.”

“Oh, Lucy! What did you do then?”

“I asked him if he had been seeing another woman and he broke down and began crying. He said he had been seeing a chorus girl named Delores for about two years and he couldn’t go on any longer with the deception. He and Delores are in love, he said, and he wanted me to divorce him so he could marry her!”

“Oh, Lucy! I can hardly believe it! I never would have suspected it in a million years!”

“I know! He’s been very good at concealing it, hasn’t he? The louse!”

“What did you do then?”

“Well, we began arguing, saying nasty things to each other. I called him a two-timing pig and he called me a henna-haired harridan. We became more and more angry. When he twisted my arm and tried to slap me in the face, I took a knife and stabbed him in the neck. It was a clear-cut case of self-defense.”

“Oh, Lucy! The neck?”

“I severed the jugular vein in one stroke!”

“Oh, honey! Wasn’t there an awful lot of blood?”

“There was, but I got it all cleaned up.”

“And where is he now?”

“He’s on the floor next to the bed. I have him wrapped up in two leak-proof sheets. There’s not a trace of blood left.”

“Oh, Lucy! I’m afraid you’re in for a lot of trouble!”

“I know! I’ve just been frantic trying to figure out what to do!”

“I think you should call the police and turn yourself in. Tell them Ricky came at you and you were only defending yourself. With a good lawyer, you might get off with a light sentence or maybe no sentence at all.”

“Oh, Ethel! I’ve thought about it from every angle! I want to call the police but I’m afraid they’ll be mean to me. They’re all men, aren’t they? Of course, they’ll take Ricky’s side and make me out to be the villain!”

“Oh, Lucy! What will people think when Ricky doesn’t show up at the club? You’ll have to tell them something!”

“I have a plan all worked out. I think it’ll work, but I’m going to need you and Fred to help me.”

“Oh, no! You’re not getting me mixed up in this!”

“Ethel, I thought you were my best friend!”

“I am, but I’m certainly not going to spend the next thirty years of my life in Sing-Sing in the name of friendship!”

“Oh, don’t be silly! Nobody’s going to jail!”

“But it’s murder, honey! It’s serious!”

“If you and Fred will just do what I say, everything will be all right.”

“Just how far do you think Fred and I are willing to go to help you after you’ve killed your husband?”

Ethel called Fred to come up to Ricky and Lucy’s apartment and, when they had him comfortably seated on the couch with a bottle of soda in his hand, he looked suspiciously from one to the other.

“What have you two dizzy dames got cooked up?” he asked.

“Are you going to tell him, or shall I?” Ethel asked.

“There’s no easy way to say it,” Lucy said. 

“For heaven’s sake, just say it!” he said.

“Ricky and I had a terrible fight last night.”

“Yeah, what of it?”

“Well, I…”

“She severed Ricky’s jugular vein with a knife and killed him!” Ethel blurted.

“She what?”

“In the heat of the moment, I killed Ricky, Fred,” Lucy said. “That wasn’t really my intention, but it just happened.”

“Have you called the police?”

“Well, no, Fred. You see, I don’t think that’s necessary as long as you and Ethel help me.”

“Help you do what?”

“The furnace in the basement is really hot this time of year. I mean, there’s a big door and a big fire burning inside.”

“Oh, no! I’m not going to put Ricky’s body in the furnace!”

“With all three of us, it’ll be so easy!”

“No, I’m not getting mixed up in a crazy scheme like that! Do you think I want to spend my golden years behind bars?”

“If we do it right, Fred, nobody will ever know.”

“What do you say when people come looking for Ricky?”

“Well, I’ve thought of that, too. I’ll wait twenty-four hours and then I’ll file a missing persons report. After that it’ll be easy to make it seem that he’s run off.”

“He was cheating on her, Fred!” Ethel said.

“What?”

“Yeah, he had a girlfriend named Delores.”

“If we’re lucky,” Lucy said, “we can get the police to believe that tramp Delores had something to do with his disappearance.”

“No less than she deserves!” Ethel said.

“So Ricky was stepping out!” Fred said. “The old dog!”

“I just might kill him myself if Lucy hadn’t already done it,” Ethel said.

“Well, that sort of puts things in a different light, doesn’t it?” Fred said.

“Now are you willing to help me?” Lucy asked.

“On one condition.”

“What’s that?”

“You give me one-third interest in the club.”

“Fred! I can’t give you one-third interest in the club! I don’t own the club!”

“Freddy, for once in your life do something to help somebody else without calculating what you can get out of it,” Ethel said.

“Well, it was just a thought,” he said. “You can’t blame me for trying.”

“So, you’ll help me, then?” Lucy asked.

“Looks like I don’t have much choice.”

In the middle of the night, with everybody in the building asleep, the three of them loaded Ricky’s stiff body into a large trashcan on wheels and took it down to the basement on the elevator. Fred wheeled the trashcan up to the door of the furnace; he and Ethel hefted Ricky’s body out of the can and into the furnace while Lucy stood by and chewed her nails.

“How long do you think it’ll take to burn the bones and teeth and everything?” Lucy asked.

“We’ll give it until this time tomorrow,” Fred said. “I’ll come down every couple of hours and stoke the fire.”

Lucy called the police at the appropriate time and told them Ricky had disappeared, apparently run off. He had been despondent lately over money, she said, had even mentioned suicide, and there was another woman involved. The next day, all the newspapers ran the story: Bug-Eyed Cuban Bandleader Disappears—Foul Play Not Ruled Out.

Lucy began receiving condolences from friends and business associates of Ricky’s. The phone rang day and night and Ethel stayed with Lucy to keep newspaper reporters from bothering her with silly questions. Lucy’s mother saw the news on television and called Lucy long-distance from Jamestown, New York, imploring her to “come home.”

After weeks, the case was unresolved. Police could offer no clues. They concluded that Ricky had indeed run off. There were reports of witnesses seeing him board a plane for South America on the night he disappeared. At least two people claimed to have seen him on an ocean liner bound for Greece. Others claimed to have spotted him in other locations, including a racetrack in Kansas City and a brothel in Augusta, Georgia.

The club held auditions to find a replacement band leader for Ricky. One in particular, a man named Mickey Richards, stood out because he was so much like Ricky, not only in the way he looked, but in the way he sang, talked, and walked.

Mickey Richards was hired and took over as bandleader at the Copacabana. Lucy watched him with interest and was amazed at how much like Ricky he was. The management of the club even persuaded him to change his name to Ricky Ricardo. Out in front, the theatre-type marquee proclaimed: He’s Back! He Was Never Really Gone in the First Place!”

The club was more successful than ever before, with patrons being turned away every night. People soon forgot that the real Ricky had ever left because there was a new Ricky in their midst, and this one was even better than the original.  

For her part, Lucy missed Ricky terribly and was sorry she had killed him. She cried herself to sleep at night, wishing she might undo what she had done. She began making little overtures to the new Ricky, inviting him to the apartment for dinner or to a Broadway opening. A couple of times she left anonymous love notes in his dressing room at the club. She imagined that the new Ricky would fill the void left by the departure of the old Ricky and that everything would be as it was before, in the old days before he grew tired of her and fell in love with that floozy Delores.  

Alas, it was not to be. The new Ricky differed from the old Ricky in one very important respect: He didn’t like bottle redheads and in fact didn’t like women at all. Lucy toyed with the idea of killing him, too, but she was afraid she wouldn’t get away with it a second time. She would talk to Fred and Ethel and ask them what they thought about it.  

Copyright © 2023 by Allen Kopp

Somebody Somewhere
~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~

(This short story has been published in The Literary Hatchet.)

I was standing at the window. Inside it was still winter but outside it was spring. The sky was blue, trees and flowers were budding, the sun was shining and birds were singing. Miss Deloite, the woman with the delightful hanging mole on her upper lip, came up behind me. I heard her shoes squeaking on the floor and then smelled her particular sharp smell.

“You shouldn’t be wandering the halls,” she said.

I ignored her but as she walked away I turned and stuck out the tip of my tongue at her and she turned into a puff of blue smoke. You can’t know how satisfying it is to turn an annoying woman into a puff of blue smoke.

I went back to the room that I had come to identify as my own and lay on my back on the bed and looked up at the ceiling. I knew there was something wrong with me but I couldn’t remember what it was. I couldn’t even remember what place I was in. Oh, well. If it mattered at one time, it didn’t matter much any more.

I heard somebody coming and picked up a magazine and opened it and pretended to be reading. I wanted to look busy so nobody would ask me questions or try to engage me in conversation.

It was Theo, all dressed in white as usual. If I saw him in any other color, I wouldn’t recognize him.

“Where’s Miss Deloite?” he asked. “She said she was coming in here to help you with your bath.”

“I’m perfectly capable of taking a bath on my own without any female assistance,” I said, not looking up from the page.

I should probably have told him I just turned her into a puff of smoke but I would have to let him figure it out on his own. He should feel lucky that I didn’t do the same to him.

I crossed my ankles and wished I had a cigarette, and in came Louie from next door. He was wearing a lady’s red kimono with colorful dragons. I didn’t like Louie and I let him know it.

“What makes you think you can just barge into my room any time you feel like it, Louie? I’m supposed to be taking a bath.”

“I already took mine.”

“I’m so happy for you.”

“Do you have any candy?”

“If I did, I wouldn’t give it to you.”

“That’s not very nice.”

“Shouldn’t you be having your nails done or something?”

“I’m going to tell Miss Deloite you were snotty to me,” Louie said.

“You’ll be telling it to a puff of blue smoke.”

“What?”

Before Louie could annoy me any further, I raised my eyebrows and turned him into a little spider. I laughed as I watched him run on his touchingly small legs across the floor to the wall. He crawled up the wall to the ceiling and looked at me.

“You’re a medical phenomenon,” I said.

I was thinking about taking a nap, for lack of anything better to do, when Theo came back, bearing clean towels.

“Since Miss Deloite is temporarily not to be found,” he said, “I’m going to help you with your bath.”

“I already told you I don’t need help with a bath,” I said.

“Stand up now and take off your clothes, or I’ll do it for you.”

“I don’t want to take off my clothes for you any more than I do for Miss Deloite.”

“Do you want me to go get Stan and Sylvia?”

“Oh, please! Not Stan and Sylvia! I can’t tell them apart. Oh, I remember now. Sylvia’s the one with the mustache, isn’t she?”

“Cut the comedy now. Stand up.”

“Theo, I don’t like your tone of voice!” I said. “It’s not a polite way to speak to a man who isn’t well.”

He came at me with the intention of pulling me off the bed by my arm, but before he knew what was happening I raised my index finger at him and turned him into a blue jay.

Now, I had always thought the blue jay a most attractive bird, even though people said he was mean and liked to eat carrion.

Theo flapped his blue wings a couple of times and flew up to the ceiling and ate the tiny spider Louie in one gulp. Louie didn’t even have time to try to get away.

“Good bird!” I said.

He flew around the room a couple of times, bumping painfully into the walls until I stood up and opened the window for him. He didn’t have to be coaxed to fly out and then away over the treetops.

“Be well!” I called to him.

I lay down again. I did not want to take a bath and would be just as obstinate about it as I needed to be. I still believed the decision to take a bath should be mine alone. Crazy though I may be, I must have some rights left!

Before I had time to draw another breath, Nurse LaPeezy was upon me with my meds. I eyed the pills suspiciously.

“What if I don’t want to take that stuff?” I said.

“Doctor’s orders,” she said.

“So you’re saying I don’t have a choice?”

“I could call Stan and Sylvia if you like.”

“Oh, no! Not that!”

She handed me a cup of water and I pretended to take the pills. I put them in my mouth and swallowed but I held them under my tongue. When she bent over to pick something up off the floor, I spit them into my fist. The hand is quicker than the eye.

As Nurse LaPeezy was leaving I felt a strong dislike for her. I flicked the little finger on my right hand at her and she turned into a mouse. Realizing she was a mouse, she scurried across the floor the way mice do and disappeared into a conveniently placed mouse hole in the corner. I envied her because I knew she’d find her way to the kitchen where she’d have plenty to eat and find lots of other mice to keep her company. How sweet the life of a mouse must be! Much better than that of a nurse.

The next time somebody came in to help me take a bath, I was going to tell them I had already taken it while everybody was occupied elsewhere. I wanted them to know I had been taking a bath on my own since I was three years old and didn’t need help from anybody.

I was almost asleep when a slight change in the air currents around the bed made me open my eyes. Dr. Felix had come in silently and was standing at the foot of the bed looking at me.

“Sorry to wake you,” he said.

Dr. Felix wore glasses and looked like the movie actor Franchot Tone. His hands were folded in front of him. I looked at his hairy wrists and his expensive wrist watch so I wouldn’t have to look at his face.

“If you don’t mind, doctor,” I said. “I don’t really feel like talking to you today.”

“Anything wrong in particular?” he asked.

“No. It’s just that I’m here and I don’t know where here is.”

“Here is where you need to be at the moment.”

“I must have a home somewhere, even if I can’t remember it. I want to go home.”

“Everybody feels that way sometimes.”

“That’s comforting.”

“I’m going to increase your antidepressant medication again.”

“You doctors think drugs are the answer to everything, don’t you?”

“You’re spending far too much time alone. That’s not good. I’m going to assign you to some group activities.”

I groaned and closed my eyes. “Don’t trouble yourself,” I said. “I won’t be here that long.”

“Are you planning on going someplace?”

“Well, you never know,” I said.

He chuckled in his knowing way and turned to go. As he started to put his hand on the door to open it, I blew out a little puff of air in his direction and turned him into a cockroach. He ran under the door and out into the hallway. One of the nurses would see him and scream and step on him and then take a Kleenex out of the pocket of her uniform and pick him up and throw him in the trash can. How fitting is that for Dr. Felix?

Before anybody else had a chance to come in and annoy me further, I dressed in some clothes I had been hiding in the bottom of the closet. It was a uniform the maintenance men wore that I had stolen one day when I was exploring in the basement. In the uniform and with the brown cap pulled low over my eyes, nobody would recognize me. Also hidden away in the closet I had some ninety dollars and a pack of cigarettes, which I stuffed into the pants of the uniform.

I took a good look at myself in the mirror over the sink. I looked as much like a maintenance man as the real one did. Cautiously I went out into the hallway. Everything was quiet and nothing out of the ordinary. I made my way down the stairs to the main entrance.

The receptionist at the front desk looked up from the magazine she was reading and then looked away. I knew she didn’t know who I was. If she had known, she would have been screaming for help.

I walked out the door into the bright cool air and down the steps, wanting to run but not running because I didn’t want to draw attention to myself. I followed the concrete walk to the driveway and along the edge of the driveway a quarter-mile or so to the main gate. I saw nobody and nobody saw me.

I turned right at the gate out of the place, which seemed to me a better choice than going left, and began walking briskly. I walked for many blocks and saw nothing that looked familiar. I might have been in a foreign country or on another planet, for all I knew. Still, it felt good to be free and on my own.

Checking my pocket to make sure the ninety dollars was still there, I remembered the cigarettes and how long it had been since I had one. I lit one up and as I walked I puffed out a cloud of smoke behind me.

I stopped at a bar that looked inviting and had a beer and a hamburger and after that I kept walking deep into the city. It was a big city but I didn’t know what the name of it was and I didn’t know if I had ever been there before. I saw many people but they seemed to not see me, which altogether suited me.

After what seemed like hours of walking, I felt tired but pleasantly so, and I felt good about the distance I had put between myself and the place I had left behind. When I came to a faded old hotel with a sign that said Clean Rooms and Cheap, I decided that getting a room was the most logical thing I could do.

The desk clerk signed me in without asking for identification or money in advance. He gave me a key to a room on the tenth floor and I went up in a smelly elevator that must have been a hundred years old.

The room was clean, as advertised, and pleasant. There were two windows, a bed, desk, dresser with a large mirror, chair, closet and tiny bathroom. I liked the feeling of being up high. I opened the window a couple of inches to feel the air and to hear the traffic noises from the street, which at that distance I found soothing. After checking the door to make sure it was locked, I lay down on the bed and fell into a deep and restful sleep.

I spent two days and nights in the room, sleeping a lot during the day and walking around the city at night. Nobody ever approached me or bothered me or seemed to find my behavior in any way out of the ordinary. I couldn’t remember ever feeling so free and unencumbered.

More than anything I wanted to go home, but I didn’t know how that was ever going to be possible. I knew very little about myself, except for insignificant details like enjoying smoking and preferring tea instead of coffee. I could remember nothing of my past life. Where had I come from? Where was I going?

Did I come from a small town or a city like this one? Did I grow up in an apartment in the city or in a house in the wide-open spaces with a big yard and a view of the mountains? Wasn’t it likely that somebody was waiting for me somewhere, wondering if I was alive or dead or if I would ever come home again? A mother? A wife? A lover? A son or daughter? Whoever he or she was, I could feel them and I knew they could feel me.

When the people from the hospital I had just left realized I was gone, I knew they would come looking for me. I had done some very bad things, including turning my doctor into a bug and a nurse into a mouse, which I have already told you about. They would lock me up now and I would never go free again.

On my third day in my little hotel room high up, I had the window open as high as it would go to let in the warm breezes. At any one time, there were as many as five pigeons on the ledge outside the window. They cooed and danced and seemed happy. When I got close to them, they weren’t at all afraid of me. If I had had something to feed them, they would have eaten right out of my hand.

I sat on the bed, looking at myself in the round mirror on the dresser. Wait a minute, I thought. I don’t have to go back to that place or any other place like it. I can do to myself what I did to the others.

I pointed at my reflection in the mirror and turned myself into a pigeon. I flapped my wings on the bed to try them out. From the bed I jumped to the floor and then to the window ledge. There were three pigeons already there to greet me. They knew I was somebody they had never seen before, so they were curious about where I had come from. After introductions were made, they were all eager to show me around the city. They were extraordinarily accepting of me, even though I was a stranger. How happy I was to be welcomed by them. How fortunate to have made such delightful friends so fast.

Copyright © 2023 by Allen Kopp

 

Twenty-Minute Rest Stop
~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~

(This short story has been published in The Literary Hatchet.)

Paul Penlow waited two hours for the bus and when it came he was the first to board. He took a seat in the back next to the window and watched the other passengers as they boarded and took their seats. When about half the seats were taken, the big-bellied driver got on, took a quick look behind him, and roared off the narrow parking lot onto the highway.

In the next small town, the bus stopped to take on more passengers. Three nearly identical old ladies with white hair boarded, moved slowly down the aisle, and surrounded Paul Penlow where he sat. Two sat in the seat in front of him and the other one took the aisle seat to his left.

He could have stood the intrusion of the trio into “his” space, but what he could not tolerate was the smell of their perfume. He would become ill if had to breathe it all the way to where he was going. He considered standing up and moving to another seat (there were plenty) but instead he opened the window a couple of inches and let the wind blow in his face.

“Do you mind, kiddo?” the old woman beside him said. “This is not a good day to be blown away.”

“I could move to another seat,” he said.

“Oh, please don’t do that! I want you to stay right where you are!”

“You could move to another seat.”

“Yes, but why would I do that? I just sat down and this is where I want to be.”

“I have asthma,” he said. “I need the window open to help me breathe.”

“Well, in that case let’s compromise. You keep the window open one inch instead of two and I’ll put on my headscarf.”

She took a lavender headscarf out of her purse, put in on her head and tied it under her chin.

“That’s better,” she said.

“Are you three sisters?” Paul asked.

They all three laughed the same musical laugh.

“Not only are we sisters but we’re triplets! It’s quite rare. I’ll bet you’ve never met any triplets before, have you?”

“No, I haven’t.”

“We were all born within one hour of each other on October the tenth. I won’t tell you what year because then you’d know how old we are! I’m Peg and these are my sisters Dot and Lou.”

“I’m Paul,” he said.

Dot and Lou turned around in their seats so they could shake his hand.

“We travel a lot, the three of us,” Peg said. “You meet some interesting people when you travel. Any time we take a bus trip, we always try to find a nice young person to sit with. It doesn’t matter if it’s a he or a she. If you strike up an interesting conversation with your seatmate, it makes the trip that much more enjoyable.”

Dot and Lou stayed turned around so they could join in the conversation.

“Everybody has a story,” Dot said, “and most of the stories are more interesting than you could ever imagine.”

“I have a story,” Paul said. “I’m going home. I haven’t been home for three years. I’ll bet you’d never guess where I’ve been.”

“At sea?” Lou asked.

“No. Guess again.”

“In jail?”

“No, but you’re getting warm.”

“I know where you’ve been,” Peg said. “You’ve been in a mental hospital.”

“That’s right! How did you know?”

“Oh, I know things about people.”

“She’s been doing it all her life,” Dot said. “She looks at people and knows things about them that nobody else knows.”

“What else do you know about me?” he asked.

“Well, let’s see,” Peg said. “You killed somebody but you didn’t mean to.”

“Why, that’s uncanny!” he said.

“Who did you kill?” Lou asked. “Was it your wife?”

“No, I never had a wife. It was my father.”

“Why did you kill him?” Peg asked.

“I had a mental disorder. I thought he was somebody other than who he was. I was afraid of him. I thought he was going to kill my mother and me, so I killed him first.”

“Who did you think he was?” Dot asked.

“I thought he was a demon like you see in a horror movie. The demon had killed the man who was really my father and taken over his body. He was just waiting until the time was right to kill me too.”

“Did the demon have horns?” Peg asked.

“Yes, horns, and eyes that glowed like coals.”

“How did you kill him? Did you shoot him?”

“No, I strangled him with a length of rope. It was so easy! I was so strong!”

“So what happened after that?” Lou asked.

“My mother found him dead in his bed the next morning with the rope still around his neck. She called the police. When they came, they knew right away I had done it, but of course I denied it.”

“Oh, that’s a sad story!” Peg said.

“Those are the best kind!” Dot said.

“They were going to lock me up in the penitentiary for the rest of my life, but psychiatrists examined me and said I had a textbook mental illness. I didn’t kill my father because I hated him or because he was mean to me or anything like that. I killed him, I believed, to save myself. They put me in a hospital for the dangerously insane. Now, after three years, they’re letting me go home. They say I’m cured. If you want to know the truth, I think they wanted my room to give to somebody else.”

“Are you cured?” Lou asked.

“No, I don’t think so. Not entirely, anyway. Do you know what I’m going to do when I get home?”

“No. What?”

“We live on a farm. Out back is an old barn. When I was little I liked to play in the barn to get away from my family and be alone. The barn has a hayloft and strong rafters. I’m going to climb up into the hayloft, tie a rope to one of the rafters with the other end around my neck, and jump off.”

“You’re going to kill yourself?”

“That’s right. I’ve been thinking about it for three years. It’s the only reason I’m going back home. There’s no other reason, really.”

“I won’t tell you you shouldn’t do it,” Peg said. “I’m sure you already know that.”

“I made up my mind a long time ago.”

“Well, if that’s what you want,” Peg said, “you’re a grown-up person.”

“C’est la vie!” Lou said.

“The world will go on without you,” Dot said.

“I sure would like to see my mother’s face when she finds me hanging there.”

“Won’t it be awfully upsetting for her?” Peg asked.

“I think she’ll be glad. She never really liked me.”

At the next twenty-minute rest stop, he got off the bus, while the triplet sisters stayed in their seats. He had to stand in line outside the door to the men’s room and when he was finished there, he had to stand in line to buy a Coke out of a vending machine.

He bought four Cokes. He thought the triplet sisters would appreciate a cold drink on a warm day. He had always been thoughtful that way; generous, you might say.

He had a little trouble carrying four Cokes in two hands, but he couldn’t keep from smiling as he re-boarded the bus. He stopped in the aisle, though, Cokes in hands, when he saw the triplet sisters were no longer there. He thought for a minute he was on the wrong bus, but, no, it was the same driver and the same passengers. It was the same bus, all right.

He drank all four Cokes and when he was finished he stowed the empty bottles under the seat. When he got home, he wouldn’t be hungry and wouldn’t need to eat before going to bed. His stomach was full of Coca-Cola.

His mother sure would be surprised he was home after all this time. He had been going to call her and tell her he was coming, but he somehow forgot.

Copyright © 2023 by Allen Kopp

Birth of the Dodo
~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~

I was ill but I recovered. When I awoke, I was in a place I had never been before and found myself purchasing a house. A large house it was, many-windowed, a hundred yards or so up the hill from a river. The river, with its protruding rocks and swift current, provided a scenic background to the setting.

I didn’t remember choosing the house out of other houses but, here I was, turning over a fat envelope full of cash to the owner and seller of the house, a woman named Mrs. Goldoni. She had platinum blond hair like a Hollywood starlet and a thin, lipless mouth. Her face was shriveled like a Mayan mummy and, due to an arthritic condition (she said), she didn’t always walk upright, but parallel to the floor like an insect, which is to say a cockroach or cricket. I’m not sure how many legs she had, but I’d say at least six.

As soon as the house was transferred over to me, I thought Mrs. Goldoni, the bug woman, would clear out and leave me to it, but she seemed reluctant to leave. Her husband was dead, she said, and her many children scattered to the four winds.

“I don’t have any place else to go,” she said pitifully.

“Why did you sell your house then?” I asked.

I agreed to keep her on as housekeeper, at least until one of her innumerable daughters could arrange to take her in. I pictured her children and I wondered what form they had taken, if they were insects like their mother or something else entirely. I was probably better off not knowing.

The day after I moved in, I was in one of the upstairs rooms putting things away, when I stopped what I was doing and looked out the window at the river. I heard Mrs. Goldoni’s rapid, tapping little footsteps come up behind me and I turned and spoke to her.

“What is the name of that river?” I asked.

“What river, sir?”

“There’s only one river out there, Mrs. Goldoni!”

“It’s the River Ishcabob, sir.”

“Ishcabob? I haven’t ever seen it on a map. Does it ever flood?”

“Oh, no, sir!” she said. “I’ve never heard of it flooding. Why ever would it flood?”

“Where I come from, rivers sometimes flood and cause a lot of trouble and damage.”

“Well, rivers may flood, but I’ve never known the River Ishcabob to flood.”

While I was watching the river, I saw a person, a man, floating along on the current. I could distinctly see his face and head and his struggling, flailing arms. In a few seconds there was  another man and then another one.

“Oh, I my Lord!” I said. “Somebody has fallen into the river and is being swept away on the current! Not just one but three! I saw three different men! They were naked and they were struggling to keep their heads above the water. We should try to get them some help for them before they drown!”

“Oh, bless my soul, sir!” Mrs. Goldoni said. “It’s nothing to be alarmed about. It happens all the time.”

“What does?”

“People in the river. Those are the Transgressors.”

“The what?”

 “You have to understand. Some poor souls are brought to the river.”

“What do you mean, brought to the river?”

“Is that the telephone phone ringing?” she asked.

“We don’t have a phone,” I said.

Mrs. Goldoni dropped to her tiny feet and skittered out of the room. I was left with the distinct impression she was evading my question.

“What kind of arthritis makes you grow extra legs and walk like a bug?” I asked, but of course she was gone and didn’t hear me.

While I was eating lunch, I noticed a small crowd of people standing in the doorway looking at me.

“Who are those people?” I asked Mrs. Goldoni, who was serving.

“Oh, they’re always here,” she said. “They won’t bother you.”

“Now, look here!” I said. “My privacy is important to me. I don’t want lots of strange people hanging around.”

“You usually have to be here a lot longer before you see them.”

“Who are they?”

“Don’t worry yourself about them, sir. After a while you’ll forget they’re here.”

“I still want to know who they are and why they’re here!”

“They’re always here,” she said. “We just don’t always see them!”

“Tell them to leave!”

After lunch I took a walk down the hill. It was the first time I had seen the river up close. I stood for a while close to the edge and looked down at its churning, blue-green depths. It was beautiful and mesmerizing but also frightening in a way because I had the feeling it (the river) had a will of its own and would suck me under if it could. I didn’t relish the thought of drowning—which I certainly would do if I ever fell in—or of being in uncontrollable water over my head. I suppose I had always had a fear of water. I would stay as far back from the river as I could.

While I was walking back up the hill, I noticed movement over to my left and turned and looked in that direction. What I saw was a clown dressed in a billowing red suit with a tremendous ruffled collar and enormous shoes. I was going to say something to the clown or at least wish him a good morning, but he was juggling a series of balls so fast while walking that they (the balls) were only a blur. He was the best juggler I had ever seen.

When I got back home, Mrs. Goldoni met me at the door. She was entertaining her good friend in the kitchen, Baby Estelle. Baby Estelle was not a baby but was instead a tiny, doll-like woman with flaming red hair and a twinkling smile. She curtsied and smiled demurely.

“Would you like to see me dance?” Baby Estelle asked.

“Um, I guess so,” I said.

She stood up and in the space between the table and the kitchen sink twisted and turned, jumped and dived, sashayed and pirouetted with absolute abandon. In five minutes she was out of breath and so completed her performance with an elaborate bow to the floor.

Mrs. Goldoni applauded enthusiastically. “Isn’t she a wonderful dancer?” she said. “I just don’t know how she does it!”

“I haven’t ever seen anything like that before,” I said.

“I was trained at the Sore Bone Academy,” Baby Estelle said.

“Isn’t that in Paris, France?” I asked.

“Of course not, silly!” Baby Estelle said. “It’s right here!”

“Right where?”

“Right under your nose,  Mr. Smarty Pants.”

I didn’t know what she was talking about, but I didn’t care to pursue it any further.

“And that’s not all!” Mrs. Goldoni gushed. “Baby Estelle’s husband is a clown!”

“I think I just saw him!” I said.

“Where?” Baby Estelle asked.

“I walked down to the river and as I was walking back up the hill I saw a clown dressed in red off in the distance. I was going to speak to him, but he was juggling balls and he didn’t even know I was there.”

“That’s him!” Baby Estelle said. “The very one! That’s the clown in question! That’s Mr. Winklebottom!”

“Mr. Winklebottom is so handsome!” Mrs. Goldoni said. “So distinguished!”

“You must come and see us perform some night!” Baby Estelle said.

“I look forward to it,” I said.

Baby Estelle curtsied again and danced her way out the door.

“Baby Estelle is such a doll!” Mrs. Goldoni said. “I just love her to pieces!”

“I’m going to take a little nap,” I said. “Call me when dinner is ready.”

A couple of nights later I was sleeping soundly when Mrs. Goldoni knocked on my door and woke me up.

“Sir!” she called. “Sir! Wake up! I thought you would want to know!”

“Know what?” I asked. “There’s not a fire, is there?”

“No, sir, there’s no fire. Your wife is giving birth!”

I jumped out of the bed and opened the door. I didn’t mind her seeing me only partially dressed after such an absurd statement.

“What did you say?”

“I said your wife is giving birth!”

“Very funny!” I said. “You know I don’t have a wife.”

“Come with me!”

I followed her into a part of the house I hadn’t seen before, down some stairs and into a dark corridor to a doorway. Standing around the doorway were several women I didn’t recognize. As Mrs. Goldoni and I approached the doorway, the women stood aside to let me enter.

The room was dark with only a couple of candles burning. There was a large, high bed, and in the middle of the bed was a human-sized female doll. The doll’s face was turned toward the candle. She had painted circles on each cheek. Her eyes were large and expressive and her eyelashes long and curved like spider’s legs.

“What is all this?” I asked. I still wasn’t happy about being woke up at such an hour.

“Why, don’t you recognize her, sir!” Mrs. Goldoni asked. “It’s your wife, Curlicue. She’s about to give birth.”

“How many times do I have to tell you I don’t have a wife? And even if I had a wife, I wouldn’t have a doll for a wife!”

“You don’t have to worry, sir. She’s in a good hands. All will be well.”

“I’ll wake up in a minute and discover I’m having a nightmare.”

“Why don’t you go back to bed, sir? I’ll call you as soon as the baby is safely delivered.”

“Call me for when breakfast is ready and, other than that, don’t call me at all!”

“Just as you wish, sir, but what shall we do about the baby?”

“Give it to Baby Estelle and Mr. Winklebottom! I’m sure they can make it part of their act!”

“Yes, sir, but I think you’ll change your mind when see you the little darling little thing!”

Despite my instructions to the contrary, Mrs. Goldoni came to my bedroom again at eight o’clock to tell me the news that Curlicue had been safely delivered of a baby at four o’clock in the morning.

“A baby what?” I asked.

“You’re going to want to see it, sir!”

I wasn’t dressed yet, but I pulled on my robe and followed Mrs. Goldoni again, down the same stairs and the same dark corridor to the same doorway to the same room where I had seen Curlicue lying in the middle of the big bed the night before.

Curlicue looked no different. She had the same half smile on her lips and the same dreamy, expressionless eyes of a doll.

“Very funny!” I said. “I don’t see a baby at all.”

With a pleased smiled, Mrs. Goldoni pulled out from under the covers a fully formed dodo bird. She held it up so I could get a good look at it. It gave out with a couple of pitiful peeps and flapped its flightless wings. I heard people behind me gasp in wonder.

“That can’t be a dodo bird!” I said. “They lived on the island of Madagascar and they’ve been extinct for hundreds of years!”

“It’s your very own son. Wouldn’t you like to hold him?”

Not waiting for an answer, Mrs. Goldoni thrust the dodo bird into my arms and I had no other choice but to hold him. He looked into my eyes and made little cooing sounds.

“Oh, he knows his daddy!” Mrs. Goldoni said. “Isn’t he the smartest boy? And already just as cute as a bug!”

While I was still holding the dodo bird, Mrs. Goldoni leaned over the bed and put her ear to Curlicue’s mouth.

“She’s wants to name him Sheridan and she wants to know if the name meets with your approval, sir.”

“I can’t think of a better name for a dodo bird,” I said. “Now, can I get some breakfast, please?”

By the time I was finished with breakfast, I was already thinking of the dodo bird as Sheridan, as a unique individual. Of course, I wasn’t his father—and I didn’t want anybody to entertain the notion that I was—but I felt a certain amount of pride and proprietary interest in him. I recognized the significance of having the rarest of rare birds in my possession: a bird that had been extinct for hundreds of years, a bird that no living person had ever laid eyes on, and it was in my very own house!

It occurred to me that nobody was going to believe that I had a real, living, extinct-no-longer dodo bird in my possession. People would think I was a dangerous lunatic if I tried to tell them. I had to have photographic proof! I wasn’t in possession of a workable camera at the moment, but I was a mile or so from the good-sized town of New Garland and was sure there would be a store there where I could buy one, no matter the cost.

I changed clothes and put on my walking shoes and told Mrs. Goldoni I was going to be gone for a while and not to await luncheon on my account. Then I set out walking. Still within sight of the house, I was passing the River Ischabob over to my left, intent on the long walk ahead of me, when I saw a sight in the middle of the river that stopped me in my tracks.

On one of the large rocks protruding from the water, Sheridan the dodo bird was perched at a perilous angle, struggling to keep from sliding into the raging water. How did he get out of the house and down to the river? Wasn’t anybody watching him? I couldn’t let him be swept away on the current!

I couldn’t swim a stroke but, without concern for my own safety, I started trying to make my way from one rock to another over to the rock where Sheridan was sitting. He looked at me pitifully and squawked and I knew he recognized and remembered me. He would come to me if only he wasn’t paralyzed by fear.

I was within five feet of Sheridan when he gave a couple of surprising hops away from me, until he was all the way across the river to the other side. He was safe, but I couldn’t say the same for myself.

It became impossible for me to hang onto my rock any longer and I found myself in the river, being carried away on the current like an insignificant piece of flotsam. I flailed my arms and legs, but I knew it was no use. As I was swept away, I clearly saw Mrs. Goldoni standing on the bank of the river looking at me, along with Baby Estelle and the juggling Mr. Winklebottom. Sitting in a wheelchair in front of Mrs. Goldoni was Curlicue the human-sized doll, her alarming eyes with their spiderly lashes turned in my direction. None of them did anything to help me.

The current carried me away and away. I had the sensation of drowning over and over until I could drown no more. All went dark and I was lost.

But I would wake again.

When next I came to myself, I was in a large cage and hundreds people, it seemed, were looking at me. I knew, somehow, that hundreds more were lined up outside waiting to look at me. To express my indignation, I squawked at a large woman in a disgusting hat and flapped my flightless wings. When I didn’t get the response I hoped for, I turned around backwards and tucked my head under my barely adequate wing and hid my face  the best I could.

Copyright © 2023 by Allen Kopp