Tag: fiction

Queen of the Monkey Women

Queen of the Monkey Women ~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp

(Published in Ear Hustler Magazine)

I’ve lived in the same small, dreary town my entire life. You’ll hear me use the word “dreary” a lot in describing my life. I graduated from high school three years ago. After high school I tried taking some college classes, but I hated them and stopped going. I work in an insurance office, where all day long I sit at a desk, hold a pencil in my hand with a frown of concentration on my face, and try to give the impression that I’m working. Trying to appear that you’re working is probably harder than actually working, but you get better at it with practice.

I live with my parents. My mother is depressed and takes a lot of pills. My father is gone most of the time, and when he’s at home he’s usually sleeping or hiding out in the basement or back yard to avoid my mother. He’s probably cheating on her and, if it was anybody other than my father, I would probably say he has every right.

Since it’s Saturday night I want to go downtown and see a movie. I call my friend Vernon Pinkston, who I’ve known since second grade. When I hear his voice, I remember that the last time I saw him we hadn’t parted on the best of terms. We had an argument about—what?—I don’t remember.

“Who is this?” Vernon asks.

“Sabu, the Elephant Boy,” I say. I think he’ll laugh but he doesn’t.

“I don’t know anybody by that name,” he says.

I know he knows who I am but is just playing with me. “It’s Warren Peace,” I say.

“What do you want, Warren?” he asks. “I’m busy.”

“Queen of the Monkey Women is playing at the Regency tonight. Do you want to go? It’ll be fun.”

“No,” he says.

“Why not?”

“I told you. I’m busy.”

“Busy doing what?”

“I’m having some friends over.”

“What friends?” I ask, trying to sound like I don’t care.

“You don’t know them. They’re from work.”

Since Vernon works in the produce section of a food market, I can only imagine what his evening with his “friends” will be like. They’ll probably sit around and talk about sorting cabbages.

“Well, okay, I’ll ask somebody else then,” I say, and he hangs up without saying anything else.

I’m getting the distinct impression that Vernon doesn’t like me very much. If truth be told, I don’t like him, either. He was always a fat loser.  His mother was old when she had him and that’s why Vernon is the way he is. He was still wetting his pants in high school. Ever since I’ve known him, he’s walked around with a bewildered look on his face.

I don’t want to go to the movies alone. Since it’s Saturday night, there’ll be a lot of young kids there, screaming and throwing popcorn. I consider just staying at home and getting into bed and reading, but I did that last night and the night before. I get dressed and put on my coat and shoes and leave the house without really knowing where I’m going.

I stop at the corner market and buy a pack of cigarettes and some gum and head downtown. It’s mid-October and the wind is cold; I put my hands in my pockets to try to keep them warm.

I haven’t eaten since morning so I stop at Willy Fong’s place for a plate of chop suey. I sit at a tiny table toward the back against the wall, and when the waiter comes out he doesn’t look real. He’s a grown man but he’s tiny—maybe three-quarters size—dressed in traditional Chinese garb that’s almost like silk pajamas. He looks like a doll. The only thing missing is the pigtail.

After I tell the doll what I want to eat, he leans down toward me and says in a confidential tone, “You want see girls in back?”

I look at him, not sure if I heard him right. “No,” I say, embarrassed.

“You want see boys in back?”

“No!”

He bows and smiles and walks away. I wonder what the girls and boys are doing in back while they’re waiting for somebody to want to see them, and then I light a cigarette. In a few minutes my chop suey arrives.

The pot of tea the waiter brings me tastes better than the chop suey and I drink all of it. I push the food around on my plate. I think it has some shrimp in it. I’m allergic to shell fish and just the thought of it makes me want to throw up. I pick the shrimp out and push it to one side of the plate. I take my time and when I’m finished I smoke another cigarette and pay my tab and go back out into the night.

Down the street is the Rio Rita Roller Rink, always a lively place. I haven’t been there since high school. I buy my ticket and go inside. The place is crowded and noisy, as I knew it would be on a Saturday night. The people who aren’t skating are talking and laughing and having a good time.

I go to the counter where they have the skates and show the man my ticket. When he asks me what size skate I want, I realize it’s Mr. Elmo, my old history teacher from high school. He recognizes me as he hands me the skates and smiles.

“How are you, Warren?” he says.

“You work here?” I asked, genuinely surprised.

“I own the place,” he says.

I check my shoes and my coat and sit down and put the skates on and take a couple of turns around the floor to loosen up. The recorded organ music sounds good. They’re playing March of the Wooden Soldiers, a corny old tune but good to skate to. After that it’s American Patrol and then That Old Black Magic.

I spot a girl I knew in high school named Mimi Boynton. She looks like she’s gained fifty pounds at least. Her hair looks like it’s been whacked off with a machete and she’s wearing ugly red capri pants and a white sweatshirt. I know she sees me and recognizes me. She says something to the girl she’s with and the girl turns and looks at me and they both laugh. At what, I wonder?

When I sit down for a minute to take a breather and tighten the laces on my skates, Mimi Boynton comes and stands beside me. I grimace at the effort of bending over and look up at her.

“Hello, Warren,” she says. “Remember me?”

“Sure,” I say. “High school.”

“On the next couples promenade, would you skate with me?” she asks.

“No, no,” I say. “I’m with some people. They’re waiting for me over by the concession stand.”

“Oh, I see,” she says, embarrassed.

She stands there looking at me for a minute as though she expects me to say something else, and then she says, “Well, it was nice seeing you again,” and turns around and goes back to where her girlfriend is waiting for her.

“Yeah, you too,” I say, but I don’t think she hears me.

I skate for about an hour, until the place starts to give me a headache, and then I decide to leave and go someplace else. When I turn my skates back in, I want to ask Mr. Elmo to give me a job (anything has to be better than working in an insurance office), but he’s busy and I don’t get a chance to speak to him. I tell myself I’ll call him on Monday and then I leave the place.

Outside, traffic is stopped for a red light and somebody hollers at me from a car window, but I ignore it and keep walking. I walk down the street a couple of blocks and cross the street to a little bar I remember being in once before. I’m thirsty from all the skating and decide to go in and buy myself a beer.

The bar seems dark and quiet after the roller rink. The juke box is playing, but it’s not very loud so people can talk and be heard. I sit at the bar and tell the bartender I want a beer. He looks at me skeptically and I think he’s going to give me some trouble, but he serves me anyway. I don’t like the taste of beer very much, but I drink the first one down fast and order another one.

After I’ve started on my second beer, I light a cigarette and look around. The place is not very crowded for a Saturday night. Three or four drunks sit hunched over the bar and a few people sit at the small tables, talking intimately. I hear a woman complaining drunkenly to the bartender about her drink, but the man she’s with quiets her down and they soon leave.

In a little while somebody comes in and sits on the stool to my right. When I turn my head slightly to catch a glimpse, I see it’s a middle-aged woman wearing a black dress and a black hat with a see-through veil that covers her eyes and nose. Oddly enough, there’s a cluster of red cherries on the hat and that’s what you look at first thing because it stands out on the black. She orders a drink and puts a cigarette in her mouth but she can’t seem to find a match, so she turns to me.

“You got a light, hon?” she asks.

I give her my matches and she lights her cigarette and gives me back the matches and smiles. I consider getting up and leaving, but I don’t.

“Could I buy you a drink?” she asks.

I hold up my beer that’s still about half-full and say, “Just leaving.”

“Well, what do you think about me?” she says. “I just came from an undertaker’s conference. Don’t I look the part?”

I look at her and shrug my shoulders. I don’t care what she is.

“You’re not an embalmer, are you?” she asks.

“No,” I say.

“You look like you might be an embalmer. I know the type.”

“Well, I’m not.”

“I want to open my own funeral home but I don’t have the capital. I’m looking for an embalmer with money to go partners with me.”

When I don’t say anything, she says, “What do you do? Do you go to school somewhere?”

“I work in an office, but I’m not going to be there much longer.”

“Oh,” she says.

That seems to end the conversation, so I start to get up to leave.

“Are you sure I can’t buy you a drink?” she asks.

“No,” I say. “I have to get home.”

She looks at me and narrows her eyes as if she’s looking at me from a long way off. “Got a wife at home waiting for you?” she asks.

“No.”

“Girlfriend?”

“I live with my parents.”

“Oh,” she says knowingly. “So it’s like that, is it?

I don’t like her tone. “Like what?” I ask.

“Even though you’re a grown man, they still treat you like a baby.”

“It isn’t that way at all,” I say. “I’ve been roller skating and I’m tired. I still have to walk home.”

“How about if we go for a drive along the river?” she asks. “It’s a lovely night and there’s a full moon.”

“No,” I say. “Not for me.”

“There’s a full moon for everybody,” she says, and I can see she’s already drunk.

“Well, good night,” I say, standing up.

“Wait a minute,” she says, putting her hand on my arm. “I’d really like you to stay a little longer. I need somebody to talk to. These other people here are duds. They’re all drunk.”

I sit back down and she says to the bartender, “Bring this young gentleman here another drink. He’s going to stay and talk to me.”

She lights another cigarette and seems for the moment to forget I’m there. After a minute or so, she turns and looks at me as if she’s seeing me for the first time and says, “I think you’re kind of cute in spite of what everybody else says.”

“I think you need to go home and sleep it off,” I say.

“Did I tell you I’m very lonely? You probably can’t tell by looking at me, but I’ve been married three times.”

The bartender sets the drink on the bar in front of me and I take a sip, even though I don’t want it.

“Men are such bastards,” she says, “but of course you are one so you already know.”

I don’t say anything but put my hands on the bar and look straight ahead.

“I’ve offended you,” she says.

“It doesn’t matter,” I say. “Nothing you say matters to me.”

“You’re sweet,” she says.

“I’m not what you think I am,” I say. “You’ve got me all wrong.”

“Now, don’t go jumping to conclusions,” she says. “Just relax and have another drink.”

I light a cigarette and then she puts her cigarette out and takes a fresh one and wants to light the fresh one from mine.

“I like you,” she says, “and you ought to be very flattered because there aren’t many people I like.”

“You don’t even know me,” I say.

“That’s true, but I can tell a lot about you just from the way you move and from the way you shift your eyes about.”

“You can’t tell anything about me,” I say. “And I don’t care whether you like me or not. How do you know I’m not a psychopathic killer?”

“Because you’re not,” she says.

“Well, I could be,” I say.

She laughs and pats me on the arm indulgently the way you would a small child.

“I’ve really got to be going,” I say.

“Past your bedtime, is it?” she asks.

“If you must know,” I say, “it is.”

“I’ve got a bottle of Kentucky bonded bourbon in my car. We can have a party.”

“No,” I say. “I hate bourbon.”

“Finish your drink and we’ll go for that drive.”

“I’m not what you think I am,” I say. “I’m not anybody you want to know.”

I don’t know why I leave with her, but I do. I suppose you could say it’s because nobody has asked me to do anything with them for a long time and I just wasn’t ready to go home.

When we get outside, she hands me the keys to her car, an ancient Cadillac the color of brown eggs parked down the street from the bar.

“You drive,” she says.

“Where to?” I ask.

“I’ll tell you.”

We get into the car and I start it and pull away from the curb as she makes herself cozy on the seat beside me. She takes off her hat with the veil and the cherries and throws it in the back seat and takes her bottle of bourbon out of the glove compartment and uncaps it and takes a drink and offers me the bottle, which I refuse.

She has me drive outside of town, to an old country road that I haven’t been on since I was a child. The road is hilly and curvy and I have to pay close attention to keep the car on the road. After I’ve driven a few miles, she tells me to turn off to the left. I hesitate at first because it seems there’s nothing there, but after I turn off I see there’s another road downhill that seems to go off nowhere into the woods.

“Where does this road lead to?” I ask.

“You’ll see,” she says, taking a swig of the bourbon.

“I don’t like it here,” I say.

We come to an old cemetery and she tells me to slow down and turn off the road. I do as she says and stop just short of an old wrought iron gate, part of which is missing.

“This is the place,” she says.

“Why are we here?” I ask, turning off the engine.

“I love this spot,” she says. “It’s the perfect place to think.”

“We probably aren’t supposed to be here,” I say, looking over my left shoulder.

“Come with me,” she says.

She takes a blanket out of the back seat and heads into the cemetery. She seems to be able to see where she’s going, so I just follow her. She goes far in, where some of the old grave markers are taller than our heads. When she comes to a little clearing cut off from view of anybody who might be on the road, she spreads the blanket on the ground and lays down on it, leaving plenty of room for me beside her.

“It’s so restful here,” she says. “There’s no noise. Only the sounds of nature.” She points up into the trees where a brisk wind is rustling the leaves.

I stand looking off into the distance, thinking I see movement. Something or somebody is watching us, but it’s so dark that I can’t be sure of anything. The full moon seems to have gone behind a cloud, or maybe it’s the trees.

“What’s the matter?” she asks. “Why are you standing there like a statue?”

“I’m sick,” I say.

I bend over and vomit on the ground near her feet on the blanket. I didn’t drink enough to be sick. I didn’t touch the bourbon. I’m sure it’s the shrimp from Willy Fong’s chop suey.

“I need to go home,” I say. “I’m sick and I’m not what you think I am and I didn’t want to come here in the first place.”

I turn my back on her and take a few steps away because I’m going to vomit again and I don’t want her looking at me. After I’ve vomited for the second time and am recovering a little bit, I turn to her but she’s gone. While I had my back turned she had picked up her blanket and left.

I almost panic at being left alone in such a dark and unfamiliar place and I start running in the direction of her car, thinking I can catch her before she drives away, but I run headlong into a grave stone and fall on the ground and hurt my knee. As I pull myself up and see that my pants are torn and my knee is bleeding. I hear the Cadillac start and then I see the headlights moving through the trees fifty yards away. As she drives off, I realize I don’t know where I am but—worse than that—I don’t know what I’m doing there.

Copyright © 2012 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

My Mother is Away

My Mother is Away ~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp 

Opal Ring awoke at seven o’clock with the sunlight streaming through the window and the birds singing their happy song. She rolled out of bed feeling good for a reason that for the moment escaped her and then it came to her: her mother was gone for the day, taking care of some business, and she had the house to herself. She had always liked being alone and it was going to be a good day.

She went downstairs to the kitchen and smoked a cigarette while she brewed the coffee. She fixed herself some toast and eggs. When she sat down at the table to eat was when she saw him out the window.

He was of medium height, thin and broad-shouldered, dressed in white painters’ overalls. His dark hair shone in the sunlight as he leaned back and reached above his head; his arm moved back and forth rhythmically as he applied the paint to the old wood of the garage.

She was transfixed. She had to speak to him, to see the face that went with the part of him she could see. Wearing only her kimono with nothing underneath and her tattered house slippers, she went outside and down the slope of the back yard.

“Yoo-hoo!” she said. “I saw you out the kitchen window and I wanted to come out and say hello.”

“Hello,” he said. He looked at her once, quickly, and then looked away.

“I didn’t know you were going to be here today. I guess my mother forgot to tell me.”

He took a piece of paper out of his pocket, unfolded it and handed it to her. She looked at the paper and nodded her head. “This is the place, all right,” she said, handing the paper back.

He said nothing, so she looked closely at him. He looked even better up close than he did from inside the house. Clean-looking and maybe a little older than she at first thought.

“I don’t think I’ve seen you around before,” she said. “Are you new in town?”

“Nope.”

“If you do a good job on the garage, maybe my mother will have you paint the whole house.”

He looked up the slope of the yard to the house. “Doesn’t look like it needs it,” he said.

“Do you have a cigarette?”

“No,” he said. “It’s bad for you.”

“Well, I’m not supposed to smoke, either, but I do anyway when my mother isn’t around. It’s not as if I’m a child or anything but she doesn’t like to see me smoking and she nags me about it.”

“I’m supposed to have this job done by the time my brother picks me up. If I don’t get it done today, I’ll have to come back tomorrow and my brother won’t like it.” He took a handkerchief out of his pocket with his left hand and wiped his face without stopping the brush in his right hand.

“Well, don’t let me keep you from your work, then.”

She watched him paint for a minute more. She was going to go back into the house, as there seemed nothing left to say, but she didn’t very often have the chance to talk to someone and wasn’t ready to give up just yet.

“Would you like a drink of water?” she asked.

“Brought my own,” he said, pointing to a bottle underneath the tree.

“Don’t you ever take a break?”

“Not when I don’t need to.”

“What will you do when you get finished painting this garage?”

“There’ll be another job somewhere else, I guess. My brother lines up the jobs. If it’s a small job like this one, he mostly leaves me to do it while he works on something else.”

“I don’t have a job,” she said. “I had a job once but it was just temporary. I was a phantom shopper. Do you know what a phantom shopper is?”

“No, I guess I don’t.”

“It’s sort of a department store spy. If they catch you spying, they’ll break both your legs. Another time I worked for a cleaning service, but I had to quit that job because the chemicals we used to clean with made me break out all over. The doctor said I had an allergic reaction. Have you been painting long?”

“About two years.”

“Are you planning on doing that all the rest of your life?”

“I haven’t thought about it. I hope not.”

“One of these days I’ll get me a job that lasts,” she said. “I wouldn’t mind doing what you do, but I guess there aren’t any women that do that, are there?”

“I haven’t heard of any.”

“I think I’d like a job on TV,” she said. “I’d either like to be soap opera actress or a news reporter. If I can’t get a job on TV, then I’d like to work behind a counter in a department store or be a super market checker. I’d be good at that.”

“Uh-huh.”

She sat down on the ground and put her knees up, forgetting for the moment that she wasn’t wearing any underwear. “Did I tell you my mother is gone for the day? I like it when she’s gone. We get on each other’s nerves. She’s always watching me to make sure I don’t do something she doesn’t like. She still thinks of me as eight years old. Are you married?”

“No.”

“I’m not married either. I’ll probably get married one day but for now I like being single. Do you have a girlfriend?”

“I don’t think it’s polite to ask a complete stranger personal questions.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything by it. I just like to know about people, is all. Some people call it friendly and others call it nosy.”

He put down the brush and wiped his hands with a rag. “Look,” he said, “if my brother comes back and sees I haven’t finished the job, he’ll be mad.”

She laughed. “Don’t worry so much. What’s your brother going to do, kill you? Is he some kind of a monster?”

“He’ll think I’ve been wasting my time. He’ll think I’ve been talking when I should have been painting.”

“Tell him to ask me! I know you’ve been working yourself silly without stopping for one second. I’ve got eyes in my head. I can see.”

“I can’t work as well when I have distractions.”

“Do you mean me? Just go on and paint and pretend I’m not here. I don’t keep you from working, do I?”

“Oh, no!” he said.

“You make me tired just by watching you,” she said. “I guess I’m not much for working. My mother says I’m lazy. Well, if I’m lazy, she’s lazy too. She doesn’t do any more work than I do. I do all the housework and most of the laundry and most of the cooking. Do you like to cook?”

“I can cook when I have to, but I don’t like it.”

“Do you have a large family?”

“No.”

“I don’t either. My mother and I are all that’s left of our family. My mother is all I have and I’m all she has. Sad to say. I don’t even have many friends. When I was in high school I had friends but that’s been years ago. The friends I had then have all drifted away. Some of them got married and some moved away. One or two of them are even in jail.” She laughed. “I wouldn’t like to be in jail, would you? If they were going to lock me up for thirty years for a crime I committed, I think I would just prefer the death penalty, wouldn’t you?”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“They just do the lethal injection thing now. I hear about that all the time on TV. It probably doesn’t even hurt. I’m pretty sure it’s a painless death. They used to cut people’s heads off or shoot them in the heart but they had to stop doing that. People were complaining.”

“Yeah.”

“Are you sure you wouldn’t like to take a little break for a while? Aren’t you tired.”

“No.”

“You must be hungry. Would you like a sandwich or something? You can come into the kitchen and sit at the table and I’ll make you a tuna salad sandwich.”

“No, I’m not hungry and I’m not tired.”

“Well, if you want to take a break, let me know.”

“You’ll be the first to know.”

“I know you’re going to go away soon and I won’t ever see you again. I know you think I’m a terrible pest with all this talking. I don’t know what’s the matter with me today. You just seem like a sympathetic person that I can talk to.”

“Nobody ever talks to me when I’m working,” he said, “unless they’re complaining about something. They just want the job done and all they’re interested in is what it looks like after it’s finished. They never think about the person doing the work.”

“I hope you do come back tomorrow, but if you do my mother will be here then.”

“Will she complain?”

“Probably.”

“I’ll try to finish up today.”

“I have one tiny favor to ask of you before you go,” she said.

“I’m not going yet,” he said.

“I know, but before you do go.”

“What is it?”

“I have this old trunk upstairs in my bedroom. The lock has been busted for a long time. The key won’t turn in the lock. There are some important papers in it that I need to get out. I’ve had a feeling ever since I first laid eyes on you that you would know how to get that old trunk opened, but I hated to bother you.”

“Can’t you bring the trunk out here?”

“It’s too big to carry downstairs.”

He stopped painting, put the brush down, and wiped his hands on the legs of his overalls. “All right,” he said. “I’ll take a little break and look at the trunk.”

She took him into the house, through the house to the stairs and up the stairs. At the doorway to her bedroom, she paused and turned and faced him.

“The room is a mess,” she said.

He shrugged. She pushed the door open and motioned for him to go in ahead of her. She went in after him and closed the door.

She felt a little lightheaded having him in her bedroom. If she didn’t watch herself, she would do and say something stupid that would make him want to run away. She liked him very much but she was going to have to be careful when and how she let him know.

“The trunk is over here,” she said.

Pushing some clothes and clutter out of the way, she went to the far side of the room and opened the door to an enormous closet that was like another small room. “Please come in,” she said. “Here’s the trunk.”

She turned on the light and pushed an old feather boa and a moth-eaten fox stole to the floor that were on top of the trunk. He knelt down in front of the trunk and tried turning the key, first one way and then the other. He asked her for a hammer and a screwdriver and when she went downstairs to get them and brought them back he inserted the screwdriver into the lock and tapped lightly with the hammer until the lock, as if by saying the magic words, opened.

She squealed and clapped her hands together like a girl of eight. “I knew you could do it!” she said. She wanted to pat him on the back but was afraid somehow of touching him.

“It’s an old lock,” he said. “Needed some loosening up.”

“I want to give you something,” she said.

She had a bag of five-dollar gold pieces that she had had since she was a little girl. She had given away a few of them over the years to special friends. She was looking through the dresser drawer for the little wooden box the gold pieces were in when she heard a sound and turned around. Her mother had pushed the door open and was standing in the doorway.

“What’s going on here?” her mother said. “Who is this man?”

“He’s nobody,” she said. “He’s the man painting the garage.”

“What is he doing in your bedroom?”

“We were talking and I asked him if he would take a look at the lock on my trunk.”

“Since when was there anything wrong with the lock on your trunk? That was just an excuse to get him up here, wasn’t it?”

“No!”

“I’ll go,” he said.

“Yes, that’s right. You go. And if you ever come messing around my daughter again, I’ll have you arrested.”

She stood aside to let him pass. As he was going down the stairs, she hollered out after him, “And I’m going to have you fired for this! Don’t think I won’t!”

“You have to ruin everything, don’t you?” Opal said.

“So I was right!” her mother said. “You were about to take him to bed, weren’t you?”

“Of course not! I was going to give him something out of my dresser drawer.”

“What?”

“That’s none of your business!”

She tried to go out of the room but her mother grabbed by the arm and spun her around and started slapping her in the face and then pummeling her with her fists. She gave the kimono a wrenching pull and it came away with a loud ripping sound in one tattered piece. When she saw that Opal was naked underneath the kimono, she believed her suspicions were confirmed. She hit Opal in the face with her fist with all her might. Opal fell back, glancing off the bed to the floor. She hit her head in such a way on the night stand that she was knocked unconscious.

When she awoke she thought it was morning until she realized she was lying on the floor naked and then it all came back to her. She got up and put on a bathrobe and went to the window and looked out into the back yard. The garage looked the same as it always did except that it was half painted and would remain that way. He would never come back and finish it after what her mother said to him. She knew she would never see him again. And she hadn’t even thought to ask his name.

Copyright © 2012 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

Collector of Souvenirs

 

Collector of Souvenirs ~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp 

Winter was going to hit hard. The woman had been preparing for weeks. The root cellar and larder were full to overflowing with everything she would need until spring. Firewood was stacked to the ceiling. She wouldn’t have to set foot outside the house unless of her own choosing.

She didn’t mind being alone, even if her solitude lasted for months, and she would have plenty to do to pass the time. She had her books, her sewing and her music. She was mastering some difficult pieces for piano that she had never had the concentration for before. She planned on making some dresses and fancy goods that she would sell in her cousin’s shop in the village in the spring to earn some money. When she grew tired of these pursuits, she would nap and look out at the winter landscape, or else daydream and jot down notes for a book she had been planning to write since she was twelve years old.

On Thursday, the first day of December, the snow began to fall. At first it fell lightly but after a while it was like a curtain of gauze. It accumulated very fast, rendering the scene out the window all but unrecognizable. There was not a sound to be heard except the wind blowing the snow around the little house and rattling the bare branches on the trees. Far off in the valley the houses looked like playthings on a blanket of cotton with the thin streams of smoke coming from their chimneys. It reminded her of a beautiful scene she had once seen in a store window at Christmastime of a miniature village with a tiny electric train going in and out of tunnels in the mountain.

In late afternoon on the second day of snowfall, she had just taken some bread out of the oven when she heard a scraping sound at the back door. She thought it was her cat wanting to be let in, but he was asleep in his box in the corner. When she went to the door and opened it a little to see who or what was there, she saw a man standing there, bent over from the waist as if to catch his breath.

“Are you lost?” she asked, not thinking for a moment to be alarmed. She would allow him to come in and sit at the table and warm himself and she would help to set him on the right course.

When the man looked at her in the half-dark, she almost, but not quite, recognized him. It couldn’t be who she thought it was. That person was dead and deserved to be so.

“They’re after me,” he said.

“Who is?” she asked, but instead of answering he burst through the door, pushing her back against the wall.

“Just a minute,” she said. “You’ve got the wrong house!”

“Don’t you recognize me?” he asked, taking off his hat and letting her see his face in the light.

“It’s not…”

“Yes, it is I,” he said. “It’s Michael.”

“No,” she said.

“Give me something to eat. I’m starving.”

She moved around to the other side of the table away from him. She saw her cat scuttle off into the next room, afraid of a stranger being admitted to the house.

“All right,” she said, trying to think. “I’ll feed you but then you’ll have to leave.”

He laughed and pulled out a chair from the table and sat down and began to take off his boots. “You’re not going to get rid of me that easily, my pet.”

“You can’t stay here.”

“Why not? We’re man and wife.”

“They told me you were dead.”

“A man thought to be dead can get away with so much more than a man known to be alive.”

“You can’t stay here. I have someone coming.”

“Who?”

“My aunt and uncle are coming. And my cousin. My aunt and my cousin are coming tomorrow to spend a few days with me.”

“In this weather? I don’t believe you. Nobody is coming here and you know it.” He took hold of her arm by the wrist and twisted it a little. “After I’ve eaten we’ll have a good long lie-in.”

“You can stay the night. I’ll make a pallet for you on the floor near the fire, but in the morning you have to leave.”

“You don’t seem to be hearing me,” he said, grinning up at her. “I’m going to hide out here for a while. What wife wouldn’t offer refuge to her husband?”

“We’re no longer man and wife. The marriage is invalid.”

“Not according to my book of rules, it’s not.”

She set the steaming plate of food in front of him. “I have a little money in the house. You can have it as long as you promise me I won’t ever see you again.”

He laughed as he began eating. “I don’t think your pin money would do me a lot of good right now.”

“Why do you want to torment me?”

“I’m your husband. Isn’t that what husbands do?”

“I despise you. I was happy when your father came and told me you were dead. It meant I was free of you.”

“You always knew how to be cruel, didn’t you?”

“If you don’t leave, I’m going to put on my boots and walk down the mountain to the village. I know people there. I’ll be back in no time at all with three or four men carrying shotguns.”

“You’d never make it. The snow is too deep but even if it wasn’t you wouldn’t be able to see two feet in front of you. You’d freeze to death and they wouldn’t find your body until spring.”

She sat down at the table across from him. “All right,” she said. “Suppose you stay here for a few days. A week or two. What then?”

“After the snow settles, I’m going to send word to some friends to join me here.”

“What friends?”

“You don’t know them.”

“After that, what then?”

“Well, we wait here—all winter if need be—until the little spot of trouble we’re in dies down.”

“What kind of trouble?”

“Now, that’s not a fair question without knowing the circumstances. All will be revealed in time.”

“What if I said I don’t want any part of this? What if I said this is my house and you and your friends are not welcome here?”

“Then, I’m afraid your husband would be bound to overrule you.” He took a small gun out of his pocket and set it on the table in front of him. “I’m sure you’ll come around to my way of thinking after you’ve had time to get over the shock of seeing me again.”

She stood up and walked around the table to stand behind him, putting her hand on his shoulder. He slumped in the chair as if melting under her touch.

“I never stopped thinking of you,” he said. “There were so many times I wanted to let you know I was alive and would be coming back to you.”

“What would you have done if I had married again?”

“I guess I would have had to kill him,” he said with a small laugh.

“You’re tired, now, dear,” she said. “You just need to rest.”

“Yes, we’ll talk more in the morning.”

“No one knows you’re here?” she asked. “No one at all?”

“Not a living soul on God’s green earth,” he said. “We’re safe and it’s so good to be home.”

She picked up a small, razor-sharp knife that she kept handy to cut up poultry and game and plunged it into his neck a couple of inches below his ear. Blood gushed like a fountain from the severed artery in his neck. He fell off the chair onto the floor, writhing in pain and rage. He tried to speak but only made gurgling sounds. She stood back several feet and watched him as he reached feebly for the table as if to try to pull himself up. After a couple of minutes he bled to death.

She fed his body into the fire. How he sputtered and crackled as the fire consumed him! How quickly and easily he burned! She had to smile to herself as she imagined the particles of him going out the chimney in smoke, spreading out into the frigid winter night.

When the fire cooled and she saw there were fragments of bone among the ashes, she ground them into a fine dust with a mortar and pestle that had belonged to her father. She poured the dust into a glass jar with a lid and placed the jar on a shelf, alongside her glass pig from a county fair she had attended when she was fifteen years old and other souvenirs that she kept from significant events in her life.

Copyright © 2012 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

Good Night, Sunny


Good Night, Sunny ~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp

(Published in ISFN Anthology #1)

My wife, Pseudophia, had become increasingly unable to function. She stayed in her darkened room all the time, lying in bed and staring at the wall screen. If I ever shut it off, she became horribly agitated. At times she projected herself into what was happening in the pictures and if it was turned off she believed she was dead. The only two things in her life that had any meaning for her anymore were the drugs she was addicted to for her illness and the wall screen.

I needed help with taking care of Pseudophia and managing the cooking and household chores, so I took a two-year option on a female domestic robot. When the two years are up, I will either own the robot outright or I can send her back to where she came from. I considered getting a combination domestic model and pleasure model, but I settled for the domestic model only.

After the robot had been with us for about two weeks, I went into the kitchen one evening when she was washing the dinner dishes.

“That was a wonderful dinner, Sunny,” I said, coming up behind her and taking her by surprise.

She turned and smiled at me. “So glad you liked it, sir.”

“How do you like being with us?” I asked.

“I like it fine, sir,” she said. “This is my first assignment.”

I couldn’t help noticing, as she reached above her head to put the plates away, that she looked the same as she had looked in the morning; her blue-and-white check dress appeared freshly laundered and she hadn’t a hair out of place.

“You look so real,” I said. “I can hardly believe you’re a robot.”

“We prefer the term ‘human simulant’,” she said.

“Of course. When I was growing up, I was afraid of the domestic robots. I thought they were monsters. They didn’t look human then. We had one that seemed to be about eight feet tall. Any time it came near me, I ran and hid.”

“Robot technology has come a long way since then, sir,” she said.

“Do you mind if I touch your cheek?”

“If you wish, sir.”

She held still as I ran the tips of my fingers along her cheek, down to her chin.

“You feel warm,” I said. “Human.”

“My body temperature is ninety-eight point six degrees, sir.”

“Just like a living person.”

“Just as you say, sir.”

“Would you like to go for a little walk around the lake with me after you’re finished with the dishes?” I asked. “There’s a full moon tonight.”

“Now, you know I can’t do that, sir.” she said. “If I don’t get my full eight hours recharging my energy supply, I won’t be able to perform effectively tomorrow.”

“Of course,” I said. I turned away and began rearranging the fruit in the bowl on the table.

“I sense that you’re lonely, sir,” she said.

“No, it’s not that. I just wanted to talk to you about my wife.”

“What about your wife, sir?”

“What do you think about her condition? Do you think the situation is hopeless?”

I forgot for the moment that robots don’t think but only reflect the thoughts of the humans they live among.

“It’s not for me to say, sir,” she said. “Surely you’ve consulted with doctors. What do they say?”

“They say she has a rare degenerative disease that will become progressively worse until she dies.”

“I’m very sorry to hear that, sir. She’s so young and I can tell by looking at her that she was very beautiful before she became ill.”

“She used to be an excellent knife-thrower and she could walk up and down stairs on her hands. She had musical ability, too; she played show tunes on the musical saw.”

“You’re fortunate to have those memories of her, sir.”

I picked up an apple from the bowl and took a bite of it because I was feeling uncomfortable talking about Pseudophia the way she used to be and I didn’t know what else to do.

“Why don’t you go sit in your comfortable recline chair and I’ll bring you a drink that will relax you and help you to sleep?” Sunny said with a sympathetic smile.

I went into the other room and made myself comfortable, and in a few minutes she brought me a little glass of green liquid.

“What is it?” I asked as I took the glass from her.

“Just something I learned to make in school,” she said. “I don’t think you would have ever heard of it.”

I took a tiny taste of the green liquid and I immediately felt a warming sensation throughout my entire body.

“It tastes good,” I said.

“I was sure you would like it, sir,” she said.

She turned on some soothing music and straightened some objects on the desk and turned off all the lights in the room except for one and turned and faced me with her hands clasped in front of her.

“If there’s nothing else you require, sir, I believe I’ll retire for the evening,” she said.

“Of course,” I said. “Good night, Sunny.”

“Good night, sir.”

I drank all the liquid in the glass and dozed for a while, listening to the music that was, I believe, a string quartet by Schubert. After a few minutes I stood up and, instead of going up the stairs to my own bedroom as I had planned to do, I went into Pseudophia’s room and closed the door quietly.

Black-and-white images flickered on the wall screen, affording just enough light in the room for me to see Pseudophia sprawled on her back on the bed. She was a terrible sight with her mouth open and her hair in wild disarray. Her eyes were wild and staring but unfocused, so I knew she didn’t see me and she knew nothing. It was becoming almost impossible for me to remember the person she had been.

I picked a pillow up from the bed and, without thinking about what I was about to do, put it over her face and leaned on it with both hands. She offered very little resistance—only a slight reflexive movement of the arms and legs—and soon I knew she was dead. When I pulled the pillow away from her face, she looked no different—the only difference was that she wasn’t breathing.

I awoke at about nine o’clock the next morning to the smell of food cooking. Feeling a stab of hunger, I got out of bed and put on my bathrobe and went downstairs.

Sunny was pouring a cup of tea for me when I went into the kitchen and sat down at the table and picked up the morning paper.

“Breakfast is nearly ready,” she said as she placed the cup of tea at my elbow with a smile.

I unfolded the paper, took a drink of the scalding tea and watched Sunny as she walked across the room. She looked radiant in a yellow pinafore with a white blouse and a yellow ribbon in her white-blonde hair. I couldn’t help noticing that her lips were very red and her cheeks looked flushed.

“You look like a ray of sunshine this morning,” I said as she set a plate of food before me.

“You’re too kind,” she said with a becoming blush.

“Did you have a good rest?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said. “Most restful. I was up early this morning, though. The undertaker’s assistants came and took away poor Pseudophia’s body before daylight.”

“I didn’t hear anything,” I said.

“I didn’t want to wake you. I took care of everything. They wanted your signature on a release form, but I signed your name for you. The man said he thought that would be all right. I hope I did the right thing.”

“Of course,” I said.

“If you have everything you need for the moment, sir, I’ll just go upstairs and tidy up.”

“There’s just one thing,” I said.

“What is it?” she asked.

“What was in that drink you gave me last night?”

“Nothing special, sir. Just a drink.”

“That will be all for now,” I said with a grateful nod of my head.

“And if I may say so, sir?” she said as she turned to go out of the room.

“Yes?”

“I think your life is going to be very happy and very bright from now on.”

I heard her footsteps on the stairs as I picked up the fork and began eating my breakfast.

Copyright © 2012 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

Eating for Two

 

Eating for Two ~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp

Carla picked up one of her lesser teddy bears and examined it carefully, front and back. It was pink with little red overalls and white snout, ears and feet. Its eyes were open wide in delighted greeting and its mouth formed a little cupid’s bow, as if delivering a kiss to the world. She shook it vigorously for dust and put it in a pillow case and left for school.

All morning long, everywhere she went, in class after class, people were talking about one thing above all others: Marlene Bowen, just turned sixteen, was dropping out of school because she was going to have a baby. Most of the speculation centered on who the father was, which had not yet been revealed. Carla pretended she wasn’t interested and contributed nothing to the discourse, but she was as titillated by the subject as anybody else.

At lunch she was sitting at a table by herself, wishing it was time to go home, when Jeddah Godric sat down across from her. She had known Jeddah since first grade and had never liked her very much. She had an annoying manner and a funny smell like a closed-up basement.

“Have you seen her today?” Jeddah asked, eyes glinting with excitement.

“Seen who?” Carla asked.

“Marlene Bowen.”

“No, why should I?”

“Today is her last day in school. She won’t ever be back.”

“How do you know she won’t be back? She can come back after she has the baby.”

“I heard she won’t be back because she’s getting married.”

“Who is she going to marry?”

“The father of the baby, silly. It could be the janitor or the football coach. Maybe even the algebra teacher. There’s reason to suspect.”

“It isn’t any of them,” Carla said.

“Do you know something I don’t know?” Jeddah asked, specks of food spraying out her mouth.

Carla shrugged as if she might know something but wasn’t telling.

She was about to leave and go to her fifth period science class to go over some notes before a test, when there was a stir at the entrance to the lunch room. People stepped out the way to let somebody through and a hush came over those already seated.

“Oh, my god!” Jeddah said, turning all the way around to gawk. “It’s her!”

Marlene Bowen had just come into the lunch room alone. Everybody was looking at her but she didn’t look back. She picked up a tray and started moving down the line, not taking her eyes off the food behind the glass. She had a little smile on her lips that seemed frozen on, as though part of a pose.

“How can she be so brazen?” Jeddah said. “How can she hold up her head?”

When Marlene sat down at a table, a couple of boys at the other end got up and left quickly, as though they might be contaminated by being near her. Marlene leaned forward over her tray and began stuffing food into her mouth. She was hungry, eating for two as she was.

The afternoon dragged on exactly like all the afternoons that had come before it. Finally the bell rang to go home. Carla put her books away in her locker and took the teddy bear in the pillow case and went down to the first floor and waited near the door. In a little while she saw Marlene Bowen coming toward her.

“Hi, Marlene,” she said cheerily, as if they were old friends.

Marlene stopped and raised her eyes and looked at Carla. “Oh, hello,” she said.

“Where are you going?” Carla asked.

“I’m going home. Where do you think?”

“I have something I want to give you.”

“What is it? Do I know you?”

“We’ve never met but I feel like I already know you.”

“Oh.”

Marlene started to brush past Carla, as if to bring the conversation to an end, but Carla stood between her and the door.

“I just wanted to give you this,” Carla said. She took the teddy bear out of the pillow case and held it out.

Marlene eyed the bear and huffed with impatience. “Is this some kind of a joke?”

“No, it’s just something I wanted to give you. A little present because today is your last day in school.”

“Why would I want that stupid thing?” Marlene said. She grabbed the bear out of Carla’s hand and threw it in the direction of the trash can and went out the door.

The bear hit the wall and missed going into the can. Carla picked it up and ran out the door after Marlene.

“I didn’t mean anything by it,” she called to Marlene. “I just wanted you to have it for your baby.”

Marlene turned around and faced Carla. “Today has been the worst day of my life,” she said. “Everybody is laughing at me. I thought I could keep it a secret but when I said I had to quit school, I had to give a reason. When one person found out, then everybody knew. The people in this school are cruel and hateful and I hope they all rot in hell!”

“Do you want a boy or a girl?” Carla asked. “What are you going to name it?”

“You’re the only person who has been nice to me all day,” Marlene said, crying. “I’m sorry I was so rude.” She grabbed the bear from Carla and, holding it to her breast, ran off very fast. Carla watched her down the street until she was out of sight.

When she started to walk away, she saw a shiny object on the sidewalk where Marlene had been standing. She bent over and picked it up, seeing it was a little locket worn around the neck, the kind of locket to keep a person’s picture in. She opened the locket with her thumbnail and saw the face of someone she recognized, a person that anybody in the school would know. It was the face of the new, bowtie-wearing English teacher, Mr. Truex, just out of college. That must mean that Mr. Truex was the father of Marlene’s baby. What else could it mean? He would probably lose his job over impregnating Marlene and might even go to jail since she was legally a minor. It had the potential of the being the scandal of the year.

That evening at the dinner table, Carla said to her mother, “I know a girl at school who’s going to have a baby. They say she doesn’t know who the father is, but I think she does know.”

“How awful!” Carla’s mother said. “What is this world coming to?”

“I gave her a teddy bear.”

“Why in the world would you do that?”

“Today was her last day. I wanted to do something for her.”

“I don’t want you to be seen talking to a girl like that. Do you understand me? You’re not to have anything to do with her.”

“Why do you say a ‘girl like that’? You don’t know anything about her.”

The phone rang and Carla’s mother got up to answer it, ending the conversation. Carla looked at her father but he stood up and went out the back door, suddenly remembering something that required his attention in the garage.

Left alone at the table, Carla took the locket out of her pocket and ran her fingers over it. She opened it and looked at the picture inside, as she had done a dozen times since finding it. Mr. Truex was so handsome and it was so romantic that he and Marlene Bowen were having a child together.

She would wait a few days before she let Marlene know she knew her secret. It must be worth something. Maybe it would open the door to friendship. She could see herself standing by Marlene during the difficult days ahead when everybody else, even her family, abandoned her. For the first time in her life she knew the power of a secret knowledge. She planned on finding a way to use it to her advantage.

Copyright © 2012 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

Camp Bonhomie

 

Camp Bonhomie ~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp 

August put the strap of his duffle bag over his shoulder and looked around the room as if seeing it for the last time. His eyes lingered fondly over the books, the closet that held his clothes, the door to the bathroom, the writing desk, the bed that (he realized now) was the best and most comfortable bed in the world. He wouldn’t be back for two weeks and two weeks is a long time when you’re going someplace you don’t want to go. He was already homesick and he hadn’t even left yet.

He had been going to take the bus but his father agreed as a kind of concession to drive him the hundred miles to camp. He was silent the entire way, staring grimly out the window. When he saw a sign that said they had only ten miles to go, his mouth went dry and he felt a sick feeling in his stomach.

“You’re going to have such a good time,” his father said, as if reading his mind.

“I don’t want to do this,” August said. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

“You’re not going to be sick,” his father said. “ You’re going to be fine. Look, we all have to do things we don’t want to do. That’s the way life is. Sometimes those things we don’t want to do can turn out to be very good for us.”

“Mother wouldn’t have made me go.”

“Your doctor had to pull some strings to get you accepted. Not everybody can get into this camp.”

“I wish I had been one of the ones that couldn’t get in.”

“He believes it’s the best thing for you at this point in your development.”

“He’s an idiot. I’d like to see him spend two weeks away from home in a strange place with a bunch of strangers he doesn’t care to know.”

“Give it a chance, August. Please, for my sake.”

“How do you know I won’t run away when nobody’s looking.  Hitchhike back home?”

“Is that what you’re planning on doing?”

“No, I’m just saying ‘what if’.”

“I don’t want you hitchhiking. You’re only thirteen years old. You don’t know what the world is like yet.”

“I have a pretty good idea.”

“I don’t want to find you in a ditch with your throat cut and God only knows what else.”

“It might turn out to be a good thing.”

When they came to the camp, his father pulled off the highway and went up an enormous hill where the trees were so thick they kept out the sunlight. He turned in at a gate marked “welcome” at the top of the hill and drove around a winding drive to a low, rustic building where new arrivals were supposed to check in. He parked the car and turned off the engine.

“That’s all right,” August said. “You don’t have to wait. You can just drop me off.”

“No,” his father said. “This is your first time away from home. I want to see where you’ll be staying. I want to talk to the person in charge.”

They went inside. His father waited patiently while August stood in line to sign in. When he had his room assignment, his father insisted on going to the room with him and seeing it. He wanted to have a picture in his head to take back home, he said, of the place where August would be staying.

Each cabin had four rooms with four boys to a room. August was in room two of cabin eight. The three other boys who would be staying in the room with him had already arrived, so August had to take the bed that was left over. He didn’t mind because it was the bed that was the farthest from the others. He threw his bag down and turned to his father.

“You can go now,” he said.

“You’ll be all right?” his father asked. “You like the room?”

“Does it matter?”

“Aren’t you going to say good-bye to me before I go?”

“Good-bye.”

“Won’t you miss me?”

“Probably not as much as you think I should.”

His father put his hands on his shoulders, patted him twice, and then left him alone in the room. Out the window August saw him talking to one of the counselors, a thin young man dressed all in white. His father had his back to the window but August could see the face of the counselor as it went from jolly to seriously attentive. He knew his father was telling him August’s history of emotional problems and how they had all been trying to get August to open up to others and emerge from his self-imposed isolation before it was too late.

After his father drove away, August lay down on the bed, not knowing exactly what he was supposed to do. In a little while his three roommates came in and August stood up. They introduced themselves and shook hands like little men. Two of them, Ricky and Eddie, were younger than August and had a callow, frightened look. The third was half-a-head taller and a year or two older. His name was Randall. He had a self-confident swagger that August found intimidating. If August had trouble with any of them, it would be with Randall.

“There’s something I think I should tell you about myself,” August said, when the others had stopped talking and he had a chance to speak.

“What’s that?” Randall asked.

“I don’t want to be here and I want to be left alone. If you don’t mess with me, we’ll be fine, but if you’re thinking about playing any little tricks on me like putting a snake in my bed or dipping my toothbrush in the toilet, I have to tell you I’m not right in the head and I can snap. I have a big knife and I don’t mind using it.”

Ricky and Eddie sat side by side on the bed looking at him, trying to figure out what he was saying. Ricky smiled but Eddie looked scared.

“I don’t believe you have a knife,” Randall said with a sneer. “Let me see it.”

“Oh, you don’t want to see it,” August said.

“You’re not supposed to have weapons here.”

“Well, nobody needs to know about it. Just knowing it exists ought to be enough.”

“Maybe Captain Jack should know about it too,” Randall said.

“Who’s Captain Jack?”

“He’s the head counselor,” Eddie said.

“He doesn’t need to know about it,” August said. “It’s just for the four of us to know.”

Ricky and Eddie nodded their heads and smiled as if a mystery had been cleared up.

“Big man,” Randall said. “Big, crazy man.”

At dinner in the cafeteria, he imagined that people were looking at him oddly, whispering about him and avoiding being near him, so he figured that Randall must have told people what he said about having a knife. After dinner he went back to the room and lay on his back on the bed with his hands across his chest. Eddie and Ricky came in and asked him if he wanted to go for a walk to see the lake, but he said he was sick from the terrible food and he couldn’t get up off the bed.

That night he couldn’t sleep because the bed was hard and narrow, he was hot, and the chirring of the insects kept him awake. He was still awake around two in the morning when a thunderstorm moved through and nearly tore the roof off the cabin, which the others didn’t seem to notice.

Breakfast was at seven-thirty. After breakfast everybody was required to attend an orientation meeting in the assembly hall, at which the rules of the camp were explained. At the end of the meeting, each camper was given a schedule of events and activities. Failure to follow the schedule resulted in demerits. A certain number of demerits resulted in expulsion from the camp. August glanced briefly at his schedule and crumpled it up. Just like school, he thought, only worse. At school he at least got to go home at the end of the day.

His first scheduled activity was a demonstration of wood carving. He was trying to figure out where he was supposed to go when the young counselor he had seen talking to his father approached him.

“Are you August Gilpin?” the counselor asked, not unlike a police officer serving a summons.

“Who wants to know?”

“Don’t get cute with me. I know who you are.”

“If you know, then why are you asking?”

“Captain Jack wants to see you in his office right away in the administration building.”

“What for?”

“We don’t tolerate any shit here from you city kids, even the crazy ones. You’re about to find that out.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” August said. “I haven’t done anything.”

“They’re waiting for you, little man.”

“Let them wait. I don’t care. They can go to hell.”

He looked over his shoulder to see if anybody was watching him and then he left camp. He didn’t go out the front gate and down the road but instead went around by the lake and into the woods. He found a path through the thick trees and heavy foliage on the other side of the lake but he didn’t know where it led. It led away from camp and that was the important thing.

He followed the path for a long way and then he came to a converging path going in another direction. He was tired of going the same way so he took the new path. It seemed to hold promise in a vague way that he didn’t understand. Maybe the path would lead him to what he was looking for, but he didn’t know yet what that was.

After a while the path ended, or turned back on itself, but he didn’t mind. He kept going because the pathless foliage was not as thick as it had been or the trees as forbidding. It was easy walking for as far as he could see.

Coming to a high hill with some large rocks, he sat down to rest. From that vantage point he could see a long way, perhaps miles. He saw some houses and a road, so he knew he wasn’t hopelessly lost in the woods. On the road he saw a few cars and large trucks on their way to the city. He would hitch a ride with one of the truck drivers. He would tell him he was hiking in the woods with friends and got separated from them, became lost on his own, and wanted only to get back home and let everybody know he was all right.

The road was farther away than it appeared. He was sweating when he reached it, out of breath and thirsty. He began walking in the direction he believed was home. Cars whizzed past him going very fast. He didn’t know how he was ever going to get anybody to stop.

He had walked maybe a quarter-mile or so with his back to oncoming traffic, when a big car, an old white Cadillac, slowed, passed him and pulled off onto the shoulder ahead of him. He didn’t understand at first if somebody was offering him a ride or if it was something else.

The driver rolled down the window and motioned for August to come to him. August saw it was an older man, much older than his father.

“Where you headed?” the man asked him.

“I’m not really sure,” August said.

“You look like you’re pretty well done in. Get in and we’ll give you a ride.”

He reached behind him and pulled the latch on the back door, opening it partway. August grabbed onto the door and got in. He saw right away that there was a woman in the car with the man.

“This is my wife, Nellie Fritchie,” the man said.

“How do you do?” the woman said. She turned around and faced August but he knew she couldn’t see him because she was blind. Her eyes rolled around in her head like loose marbles and her eyelids fluttered. Her face was very wrinkled and she wore a blond wig that seemed too young for her and lots of lipstick.

“And my name is Johnny Fritchie,” the man said.

“Hello,” August said.

“And what might your name be?”

“Carl Heinrich,” he said. It was the first name that came to him, the name of an older boy he knew from school.

“And how old are you, Carl?”

“Thirteen.”

“That’s pretty young to be walking along the highway in this part of the United States alone, Carl. Are you sure you’re not in some kind of trouble?”

“No, I’m not.”

“I’m not even going to ask you where you live, Carl, because I don’t think you’d tell me the truth. Would you like to know where we live?”

“Where?”

“We live hundreds and hundreds of miles from here in the state of Maine. Have you ever been to Maine, Carl?”

“No.”

“Would you like to see Maine?”

“I guess so.”

“We have a big house on the coast of Maine with more room than the two of us need. Would you like to come and be our guest for a while, Carl? For as long as you want, really. You don’t have to answer me right this minute, Carl. Just sit there and think about it. I admire a man who takes his time to make decisions.”

August lay down on the broad seat and put his legs up. He turned over on his side with his face toward the seat back. The leather smelled good and felt cool against his face. He felt perfectly relaxed and at ease for the first time in a long time. As he drifted off to sleep, he felt the tires underneath him turning, turning, putting miles between himself and everything he wanted to leave behind.

Copyright © 2012 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

See a Show, Smoke a Lucky

See a Show, Smoke a Lucky ~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp 

Miss Bobbie Bouchard lived in an air-conditioned apartment on the fifteenth floor in an apartment building in the city. When her mother went into the hospital for an extended stay during the summer, she sent Bobbie to stay with her aunt and uncle on their farm a hundred miles from the city. Bobbie rode all that way on the bus by herself, feeling very grown-up and wishing she had bought along a pack of cigarettes to smoke on the way. When the bus stopped midway through the trip for a rest stop at a little café, she went inside and sat at a booth by herself and ordered a tuna salad sandwich and a Coke just like a seasoned traveler.

Uncle Floyd and Aunt Bernice had two children of their own, cousins of Bobbie Bouchard. Bobbie liked them well enough, even though they were younger than she was and they seemed awfully naïve. There was a girl named Freda, who was fourteen, and a twelve-year-old boy named Floyd Junior, who was just called Junior. Neither of them had ever gone to a show, smoked a cigarette or kept a secret from their mother. The only family secret was that Junior occasionally wet the bed, still, at his age. The doctor said it was an adolescent phase and that Junior would eventually stop doing it. In the meantime he advised Aunt Bernice to buy a rubber sheet.

Bobbie was just as naïve about the farm as Freda and Junior were about the way things were done in the city. She thought chickens were strange, exotic creatures and a pig was a kind of dog that might bite her if she got too close. She could hardly believe that you could go all day on the farm and not see any people or cars and hear nothing except the wind in the trees and the sounds the farm animals made. At night the crickets kept her awake, but after three or four nights she didn’t notice them as much.

When Bobbie saw in the newspaper that there was a show in the town of Delford, about ten miles from the farm, and that they had a two o’clock matinee on Saturday, she asked Aunt Bernice if she and Freda and Junior might go. Wanting Bobbie to have as much fun as possible during her stay on the farm, Aunt Bernice agreed.

Saturday was the day that Aunt Bernice had to see her doctor in the city for her female trouble; Uncle Floyd would be driving her in his pickup truck. They left at nine o’clock in the morning and wouldn’t be back until evening. Before she left, Aunt Bernice gave Bobbie a wad of bills from her egg money and put her in charge of the trip to Delford to see the show, since she was the oldest. She was to watch out for Freda and Junior and make sure they were careful and that nothing bad happened to them.

After breakfast and after Uncle Floyd and Aunt Bernice had left, Bobbie and Freda were still sitting at the kitchen table. Bobbie was telling Freda a funny story about a family of midgets that lived in her apartment building in the city. There was a write-up about them in the newspaper. They had tiny furniture made especially for them, a tiny bed, table, sofa and chairs just a little bit larger than doll furniture. They had a special-made door on their apartment, with the knob and the lock about knee-high to a normal-sized person.

Bobbie stopped mid-sentence and looked appraisingly at Freda. “You have hardly any eyebrows at all,” she said.

“What?” Freda asked. She had difficulty making the transition from midgets to eyebrows that fast.

“Hold on a minute!” Bobbie said.

She ran into the bedroom she shared with Freda and when she came back she was carrying a makeup kit. She unzipped it and took out an eyebrow pencil and gently penciled in where Freda’s eyebrows would be if she had any.

“You look just like Joan Crawford!” she said when she was finished, handing Freda a mirror.

“Like who?” Freda asked.

When Bobbie saw the effect of a little eyebrow pencil, she wasn’t going to stop there. She endowed on Freda’s face a full complement of makeup, including rouge, lipstick, mascara and eye shadow. Not too much but just the right amount; if she had learned anything at all in the city, it was how to apply makeup. Freda had never worn makeup before and was amazed at the way it made her look. When she looked at herself in the mirror, she saw a much older, more sophisticated girl looking back at her.

“Mother would die if she saw me like this,” she said.

“You look great!” Bobbie said. “Your hair ruins it, though.”

She seemed to have a solution for everything. She just happened to have a curly blond wig in her suitcase. She went to the bedroom and brought it back to the kitchen and put it on Freda’s head, covering up her own lank, colorless hair with it, tugging it until it was in place and pushing the stray strands underneath.

“There!” she said, handing Freda the mirror. “Now you look like somebody.”

“That’s not me,” Freda said.

Junior came into the kitchen with his hair slicked back, wearing his favorite blue plaid shirt. When he saw Freda, he said, “Who are you supposed to be?”

“Doesn’t she look glamorous?” Bobbie said.

“Daddy is going to kill her!”

“He’ll never know about it,” Bobbie said.

“And you’d better not tell him!” Freda said. “If you do, I’ll tell him and mama about how you skipped Sunday school.”

“I didn’t skip Sunday school,” he said. “I just didn’t go.”

“I hope I don’t see anybody at the show who knows me,” Freda said. “They’re bound to tell on me.”

“You look so different nobody would ever know who you are,” Bobbie said with a laugh.

They walked half-a-mile up the highway to the crossroads to catch the bus to Delford. Bobbie carried a big patent leather handbag that contained the money to ride on the bus and see the show, along with a headscarf, cough drops, lipstick and some other things she might need. She still had not been able to come by any cigarettes since she had been on the farm, though. Freda felt funny at first in the wig and makeup, but after a while when she realized people weren’t staring at her she felt more comfortable.

The bus ride to Delford, at about fifteen minutes, was all too short for Bobbie Bouchard. After being on the farm for several days, she was happy to be moving again and to see people. There were hardly any people on the bus and they were very quiet, absorbed in their own thoughts. Nobody paid any attention to Bobbie, Freda and Junior. Junior sat in a seat by himself and looked out the window at the passing scenery as if he had never seen it before. Bobbie talked the whole time about motion pictures she had seen and about her favorite motion picture actors and actresses. She found it very nearly incredible that Freda and Junior had gone their entire lives and hadn’t seen a motion picture. She felt sorry for them and didn’t know how they could have stood such a life.

The bus let them out at a little gas station on the edge of the Delford downtown business district. It was an easy walk to get to the show and the stores that lined the two streets, Main Street and First Street. Bobbie told Freda and Junior to wait for her for a minute while she went into the gas station. They thought she needed to use the restroom, but when she came out they saw that she had bought a pack of Lucky Strike cigarettes, with a complementary book of matches, which she ostentatiously placed inside the patent leather handbag.

Bobbie was a little disappointed that the movie that was playing was a western—she much preferred musicals or love stories—but she was willing to see the western for Freda and Junior’s sake and not complain about it. If she had been in the city, she would have had four or five movies to choose from. In a little town like Delford, though, when a western was playing, a western is what you saw.

There was lots of action in the movie, lots of riding and shooting. When the characters in the movie, mostly men, weren’t sitting around in the saloon talking and drinking beer while they played poker around a big table, they were riding horses through the desert or getting into fights or shooting at each other from behind big rocks. The sheriff of the town had a red-haired girlfriend with big breasts who was always crying and begging him to take her away and marry her. She had a brother with a big scar on the side of his face that gave him a lopsided grin. He was a cattle rustler and a murderer and the mortal enemy of the sheriff. The red-haired, big-breasted woman was torn between her love for the two men, one her brother and the other her sweetheart. In the end there was the inevitable showdown between them, the struggle between good and bad.

When the show was over, they still had plenty of time before their bus back to the farm, so they went to the Idle Hour Café across from the courthouse. They sat at a booth next to a window. After an elderly waitress in a black-and-white uniform came and took their order, Bobbie opened her purse and took out her cigarettes and lit one as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

“Did you like the show?” she asked Junior.

“I liked it fine,” he said. He never seemed to have too much to say about anything. “Can we go again sometime?”

“I don’t think your mother would like it if she knew you were smoking,” Freda said, looking over her shoulder to make sure nobody was looking.

“She’s not here, though, is she?” Bobbie said. “Would you like to try one?”

“No.”

“I’d like to try one,” Junior said.

“You’re twelve years old,” Freda said.

“Go ahead and take a puff,” Bobbie said. “Nobody’s looking.”

“Only if Freda does it first,” he said. “Then she can’t tell on me if I do it.”

“I’m not going to do it,” Freda said.

“Then I won’t either,” Junior said.

Bobbie placed the cigarette on the ash tray and slid it across the table to Freda. “Nobody’s looking,” she said.

“Go ahead,” Junior said.

Freda picked up the cigarette and took a small puff and blew the smoke out as quickly as she took it in.

“It doesn’t count if you don’t inhale,” Bobbie said.

Bobbie took the cigarette back from Freda and showed how to take the smoke into the mouth and draw it down into the lungs before letting it out. Freda tried doing what Bobbie had done but started coughing.

“It tastes terrible,” she said, “and it burns my throat.”

“You get used to it after a while,” Bobbie said.

“Now let me try,” Junior said.

He took a couple of preliminary puffs before making a show of trying to inhale.

“I don’t think you did it right,” Freda said.

“Close enough for twelve,” Bobbie said.

“Can they put you in jail for smoking?” Junior asked.

“Smoking is silly,” Freda said. “I don’t know why anybody wants to do it.”

“It’s very sophisticated,” Bobbie said. “All the best people do it.”

While they were eating, an older gentleman with a big belly and a toupee stepped up to the table and snapped Freda’s picture with a camera he had hanging around his neck. “Pardon me,” he said. “I wonder if I might have a word with you.”

Freda looked at him, bewildered. She thought it had something to do with the cigarette. “Yes?” she said. She put down her hamburger and wiped her fingers. She half-expected to be handcuffed and led away.

“I couldn’t help noticing you sitting there in front of that window. Your face stands out above all the others.”

“What?” she asked. “I was just sitting here.”

“The way the light shines through the window behind your head, I think you would photograph very well.”

“I, uh—“

“What are you talking about, mister?” Bobbie asked. “You’re scaring the poor girl.” She had learned how to deal with his type in the city.

“May I?” the man asked, stepping closer to Freda. He put his finger under her chin and lifted her face. “You have a very interesting physiognomy,” he said.

In the excitement of riding on the bus, seeing the show and eating in a restaurant, Freda had forgotten she looked like somebody completely different from who she was. “I, uh, this is not me,” she said.

“I’m a casting director for a motion picture production company,” he said, handing her his card. “We’re shooting a picture locally and want to hire some non-professional actors for some of the smaller speaking parts. I think you might be right for one of the parts.”

“A part in a movie?” Bobbie asked.

“Well, perhaps,” he said. “That is, if she’s available and interested.”

“I, uh, I don’t know,” Freda said.

“Are you a minor?”

“What?”

“He’s asking you your age, dumbbell,” Bobbie said.

“I’m fourteen,” Freda said.

The man took a step back. “You look older than that,” he said. “You look about sixteen or seventeen.”

“That’s what I’ve been telling her,” Bobbie said.

“No matter,” he said. “Since you are a minor, have your parent or guardian call us at the number on that card and we’ll arrange a time for you to come in and talk to us.”

“She sure will, mister!” Bobbie said. “And thanks.”

The man tipped his hat and walked away.

“What just happened?” Junior asked.

“Imagine that,” Bobbie said. “A part in a movie!” She didn’t know whether to be jealous or terribly happy for Freda, so she was both.

Freda laughed. “They wouldn’t want me if they knew what I really look like underneath.”

“Don’t be silly,” Bobbie said. “They don’t care about underneath. They care about what they can see.”

“It’s just about the silliest thing that’s ever happened to me,” Freda said, flushing with embarrassment.

“I told you you looked great and you didn’t believe me.”

“Are they going to make you a movie star?” Junior asked.

“It’s too ridiculous,” Freda said.

“You’ll call, won’t you?” Bobbie asked. “Just as soon as you get home?”

“No,” Freda said. “I can’t call. It’s not me they want. It’s somebody who doesn’t even exist.”

“Have Aunt Bernice call.”

“I can’t have her know about this. She’d just about die.”

“So does that mean you’re not going to call?”

Bobbie considered calling herself and saying she was the girl the man saw in the restaurant, but she didn’t know if she would be able to pull it off. He would know as soon as he saw her that she was somebody else, the “other girl” who didn’t even rate a second look.

When they left the Idle Hour Café, they still had more than an hour before their bus, so they walked around, looking in store windows. Bobbie smoked on the street and tried to get Freda and Junior to light up, but they refused. They had smoked once already and that was enough. All the fun had gone out of it.

Bobbie tried repeatedly to talk Freda into calling the number on the card, but Freda wanted no part of it and she refused to let Bobbie call on her behalf and pretend to be Aunt Bernice. She wanted to forget all about it, she said, but, above all, she wanted to keep Uncle Floyd and Aunt Bernice from ever knowing about it. She made Junior promise not to ever mention it. If he should forget and let it slip, she would tell them he had smoked. Never mind that she had smoked, too.

Bobbie believed that Freda was passing up the chance to be a big star, maybe even bigger than Linda Darnell, Rita Hayworth, or Susan Hayward. She believed a chance like that only comes along once in a lifetime. A part of her, deep down, though, was glad. She wouldn’t have to go through life seeing Freda a movie star while she herself was something less. She believed that things always work out for the best.

A few days later, Bobbie received a call from her mother. She was going home from the hospital and she wanted Bobbie to come home and help take care of her while she recuperated from an operation. Bobbie hated the thought of being cooped up at home taking care of her mother, but she promised to come back to the farm as soon as she could. For the next trip, she would think of all kinds of fun things for the three of them to do. She had some secret pictures she would bring along next time to show them.

Copyright © 2012 by Allen Kopp 

by allen0997

Never Marry

Never Marry ~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp 

Mrs. Shockley had been a widow for many years. Just when she was thought to be past such things, she began “keeping company” with an old man named Wallace Timpkins, who worked as a janitor at the grade school. Nobody was more chagrined at Mrs. Shockley’s recent flowering than her forty-year-old unmarried daughter, Edith. She watched in disbelief as her mother and Wallace sat on the couch on the evenings when he came for dinner, whispering and grappling together like a couple of adolescents. Edith was embarrassed for her mother. She knew that she, of all people, had to rescue her from the spell that Wallace seemed to have cast over her.

When Wallace Timpkins proposed marriage to Mrs. Shockley and she told him she needed a few days to think about it, Edith knew the situation was spiraling out of her control. Having dinner together and sitting on the couch afterwards was one thing, but talk of marriage seemed to be taking it a step too far. She had hoped her mother would come to her senses about Wallace but, if she married him, it would be too late; she would be stuck with him for as long as she lived and where would that leave Edith? She had no intention of being put out of her home.

One rainy Saturday morning when Edith had washed Mrs. Shockley’s hair at the kitchen sink and was putting it up in rollers at the table, she broached the rather sensitive topic of a union with Wallace.

“You wouldn’t really marry him, would you?” she asked.

“I don’t know why not,” Mrs. Shockley said. “He’s free and I’m free. We’re both of age.”

“Yes, but why would you even want to marry him?”

“Why does anybody get married?”

“I know why he wants to marry you.”

“Why?”

“He needs a cook, laundress and housekeeper and he can’t afford to hire one.”

“What a terrible thing to say!”

“How do you know he isn’t already married?”

“His wife died. He told me all about it.”

“How did she die?”

“She was hit by a train.”

“How do you know he didn’t push her?”

Mrs. Shockley sputtered with laughter and turned around so she could see Edith’s face. “Why would he do that?”

“So he would be free to marry you.”

“Oh! This conversation is getting out of hand!”

“You know nothing about him.”

“I know enough.”

“How long as he worked at the school?”

“Six years.”

“Where was he before that? Has he ever been in prison?”

“Why don’t you ask him yourself? He’s coming over tonight for dinner.”

With that revelation, Edith went upstairs to her room and locked herself in, refusing to finish rolling up her mother’s hair. Let her do it herself for once and see how she likes it, she thought.

For the rest of the morning and most of the afternoon, Edith remained in her room. She didn’t come down for lunch but instead sampled generously from a box of chocolate candy she kept in her dresser drawer. After that she took a long nap, waking up to a pounding headache and the smell of cooking food. She went downstairs silently and set the dining room table for three.

Wallace arrived just as dinner was ready. He seemed, Edith thought, to have a sixth sense where food was concerned. As she brought the chicken in from the kitchen and set it in the middle of the table and Wallace pulled out her chair for her to sit down, she thought: the dinner is already ruined for me. Mrs. Shockley was giggling like a schoolgirl and Wallace had only been there for five minutes.

Edith sat and nibbled at her food (what appetite she had was gone), looking coldly at her mother and Wallace. Mrs. Shockley spread some butter on a roll and held it up to Wallace; when he took a bite of it, the butter rolled down his chin. He began laughing to himself and when Mrs. Shockley asked what was so funny, he leaned over and whispered something in her ear, which caused her to erupt into a fit of laughter. When Wallace’s left hand wasn’t engaged in stuffing food into his maw, it was usually someplace or other on Mrs. Shockley’s body. Edith thought she was going to be sick. She needed to say something to remind them that she was also in the room.

“Being a janitor at a school must be terribly exciting,” she said, with an archness that Wallace and her mother both missed.

“What was that?” he asked, taking his eyes off Mrs. Shockley to look directly at Edith.

“I said it must be so exciting to be a janitor.”

“No, it’s not exciting,” he said. “It’s a living, that’s about all I can say. There are the good days and the bad days.”

“How long do you intend to be a janitor?” Edith asked.

“Until I retire, I guess.”

“And when might that be?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“Why all the questions?” Mrs. Shockley asked.

“I don’t know,” Edith said. “I guess I’m just trying to get better acquainted.”

“Yes, that’s a good idea,” Wallace said, “since we’re all going to be living in the same house together.”

“Why do you say that?” Edith asked.

“I haven’t told her yet, dear,” Mrs. Shockley said.

“Told me what?” Edith asked.

“I’ve accepted Wallace’s proposal of marriage. We’re going to be married in about six weeks, when school is out.”

Edith wasn’t even mildly surprised. She had been expecting the news. “This is rather sudden, isn’t it?” she asked.

“We decided the time is right,” Wallace said. “We neither one of us are getting any younger.”

“Do you think it’s wise for two people of your age to get married?” Edith asked.

“You’re beginning to sound rude,” Mrs. Shockley said, reaching over and taking Wallace’s hand in hers. “I was hoping you would be happy for us.”

“I am happy for you,” Edith said. “I just think there are some practical considerations that must be taken into account.”

“Like what?” Mrs. Shockley asked.

“Where are you going to live?”

“Wallace is going to move in with us, dear,” Mrs. Shockley said. “He lives in a rented place. We own our home.”

“I see,” Edith said. “And where does that leave me?”

“Why, what do you mean?”

“Where am I supposed to live?”

“You’ll live here with us, of course.”

“Why would I want to do that?”

“This has always been your home. I never thought of having it any other way.”

“I see,” Edith said, tears forming in her eyes. “While the two of you are mooning around, giggling and pawing at each other in a nauseating fashion, I’ll be doing all the housework, all the cooking, cleaning, washing and sewing. I’m to be relegated to the role of unpaid servant, is that right?”

“Well, of course not!” Mrs. Shockley said. “What a ridiculous notion!”

“I think she just needs some time to get used to the idea,” Wallace said. “It’s a bit of a shock for her.”

“I just might be getting married myself,” Edith said defiantly.

“Who would marry you?” Mrs. Shockley said with a laugh.

“Do you realize how insulting that is?” Edith asked. “As if nobody in the world would ever want to marry me!”

“I didn’t mean it that way,” Mrs. Shockley said. “It’s just that we’ve already gotten so used to the idea that you will never marry. It seems your time has come and gone.”

“Oh!” Edith said. “So that’s what you think of me, is it?”

“I think we just need to calm down and take a deep breath and watch what we say,” Wallace said.

“You don’t need to be giving me orders in my own house!” Edith said.

“There’s no need to be so touchy about everything!” Mrs. Shockley said.

“Let’s talk about something more pleasant,” Wallace said, “and talk about the marriage stuff later. There’s no hurry.”

“My mother and I own this house,” Edith said. “If she dies, the house belongs to me. If she marries you, does that mean you own the house?”

“We haven’t thought about anything like that,” Mrs. Shockley said.

“We can work out those details later,” Wallace said. “Let’s not spoil this lovely dinner.”

They sat in silence for a few moments, with Edith snuffling back tears. When it was time to serve the dessert, Mrs. Shockley started to get up to go into the kitchen.

“You just stay put,” Edith said, “and keep Mr. Timpkins company. I’ll get the dessert and make the coffee.”

“All right, dear,” Mrs. Shockley said.

Edith went into the kitchen and squeezed the tears out of her eyes. She took the banana cream pie out of the ice box where it was chilling and sliced three big pieces. While she was waiting for the coffee to brew, she took the flashlight out of the drawer and went quietly down the basement steps.

She went to the far corner of the basement—shining the light in the murk—behind the furnace and past the hot water heater, to the little shelf where her father used to keep paint cans. Now the shelf was empty except for a box of rat pellets that her mother had bought when she mistakenly believed she saw a rat under the basement steps. She shook two of the pellets into her hand and went back upstairs.

The pellets were hard like stale cookies. She crumbled them up with a butter knife and, after she had poured three cups of coffee, dissolved the rat pellets into one of the cups. She put the three slices of pie and three cups of coffee on a tray—the cup with the rat pellets in it separated from the other two—and took them into the dining room.

Her mother was talking about a murder case she had been reading about in the paper and Wallace was, as usual, hanging on her every word. After Edith set the coffee and pie in front of Wallace, she resumed her seat and watched him closely after he began taking small bites of the pie and sipping the coffee. She didn’t know how many pellets it would take to kill him but, if he was going to die, she hoped he would not die until later, until after he had gone home. Maybe the small amount she had used would only make him sick. Maybe it would have no effect at all.

When they were finished eating, Mrs. Shockley began clearing the table, but Edith told her to take Wallace into the living room and have a nice “visit” with him while she washed all the dishes herself and put everything away. Mrs. Shockley readily complied, believing that Edith was over the “unpleasantness” that had occurred earlier.

While Edith was in the kitchen, she could hear her mother and Wallace talking and laughing in the front room. He played the piano while she sang in her quivery soprano. After a while she heard nothing, so she was sure they were locked in an intimate embrace on the couch. In that way did all their evenings conclude.

She went upstairs to her room and read for a while and then readied herself for bed. She was aware when Wallace Timpkins left to go home about eleven-thirty. She heard her mother come upstairs a short time after that and go into her bedroom and shut the door.

She slept well and soundly and was awakened at dawn by the ringing of a bell. It took her a few seconds to realize the ringing was the phone in the hallway, halfway between her room and her mother’s room.

After several rings, her mother opened her door and come out into the hallway to answer the phone. Edith listened carefully to the voice of her mother as it went from a barely audible murmur to a gasp and a cry of distress. She turned over on her side and covered up her head. When her mother came into her room to tell her the news, she would pretend to be asleep and would not be smiling.

Copyright © 2012 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

The Midnight Hideaway

The Midnight Hideaway ~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp 

The phone rang several rings before Tully was awake. He had been dreaming about when he was seven years old and saw a fat woman in a blue flowered dress having an epileptic seizure on the street; she lay on her back and twitched and moaned like a ghost but the thing that scared him the most was the foaming at the mouth. He was still having nightmares.

He picked up the receiver without turning on the light and almost dropped it. He could still see the woman’s face, the twitching. “Hello,” he said. “Tully here.”

“Tully, is that you?” a man’s voice said.

“I just said it was,” he said. He managed to look at the clock and see that it was nearly two in the morning.

“Got a job for you.”

“Who is this?”

“Wellington.”

“Couldn’t it have waited until morning?”

“Manners says it’s urgent. You know how he is.”

“Don’t you ever sleep like a normal person?”

“Yeah, I sleep sometimes.”

“Well, what is it then? I want to go back to sleep and see how my nightmare turns out.“

“You’re not going to like this job, I’m afraid. It’s the sort of thing you hate.”

“Just tell me what it is without the editorial comment.”

“They want you to kill a guy.”

He felt a contraction in his chest. “I’m listening,” he said.

“His name is Sidney Keen. He’s twenty-three years old. I’m going to send you over a couple of pictures.”

“Anything else I need to know?”

“He works at the Paradise movie theatre downtown and gets off work around midnight. He sometimes goes to a bar on his way home and stays there a couple of hours. Should be easy for you to pick off.”

“Who wants him dead and why?”

“You know we’re not supposed to ask.”

“When am I supposed to do this dirty deed?”

“Tomorrow night. You know the drill.”

“Okay.”

“Call me when it’s finished. And no slip-ups this time!”

Tully was still awake a couple of hours later when the runner slipped the envelope under his door. He got out of bed, turned on the light, opened the envelope and studied the pictures of the person he was supposed to kill. The first was of a young man in a tuxedo with a blonde in a black dress on his arm, all smiles, off to the country club dance. The other picture was of the same young man dressed in a baseball uniform with a big smile, standing at home plate swinging a bat; obviously just a pose because the uniform was too clean to be real and the young man’s hair too perfectly combed. He was a kid like a million others, not ugly and not pretty. No distinguishing characteristics but a good face with a strong chin and a straight nose.

Tully had killed anonymously before, but not often, and he hated doing it. Each time he had to tell himself there was nothing personal in it; he hoped somehow to convey that sentiment in the last few seconds, without words, to the person he was killing.

He stayed at home all day the next day; went out about seven o’clock in the evening and bought a newspaper. After checking the time of the last show at the Paradise theatre, he had a steak at his favorite restaurant and after that still had plenty of time to go to a hotel bar not far from the theatre and have a couple drinks to give him courage.

Ten minutes before the last show started, he walked to the Paradise and stood in line and bought a ticket. As soon as he entered the theatre lobby, he saw Sidney Keen, smiling at people as he took their tickets. There could be no mistake it was him: the same face as the one in the pictures, the same lock of dark hair falling forward on the forehead.

“Good evening, sir,” Sidney said to Tully as he tore his ticket in half.

“Show any good tonight?” Tully asked just to have something to say.

“Everybody’s crazy about it,” Sidney said. “I’ve seen it three times myself.”

“Must be good, then,” Tully said as he moved on.

About half the seats were filled; a fairly large crowd for the late show. Tully took a seat on the aisle in the shadows close to the back and took off his hat and rested it on his knee.

The picture was about a group of misfits pulling off a jewelry heist. They were naïve enough, or dumb enough, to believe they were going to succeed. The main character, who was the head of the gang, was going to go straight after he made the one final haul that would allow him to get away from all the things in the world he hated, such as women who wear too much lipstick and people who mistreat animals.

When the picture was over, Tully stood up, put on his hat and filed out with the others. He stood out in front of the theatre and smoked a cigarette and waited. In a few minutes the marquee went dark and the ushers and other people who worked in the theatre came out and, saying their good nights, went their separate ways.

Sidney separated himself from the others, took a few steps and stopped to light a cigarette. Then he walked briskly off into the night, trailing a stream of smoke. Tully waited until Sidney was about fifty yards away and then began following him.

The street after midnight was deserted, so Tully could have popped Sidney in the back right then and there without being seen, gone home and gone to bed and reported the next morning that all went well. It was too easy, though—he couldn’t quite bring himself to do it. Killing an unarmed, unsuspecting man that way just seemed too dishonorable. There had to be a better way, one that would let him sleep nights and live the rest of his days in relative peace.

Sidney came to a small bar about three blocks from the theatre called The Midnight Hideaway and went inside. Tully waited about five minutes and then went in himself.

The place was smoky and dark, lit by blue lights that barely allowed people to see where they were going. There were a few drunks sitting at the bar, some couples sitting at tables. Canned jazz music played softly in the background, punctuated by low conversation and drunken female laughter.

Sidney had taken a seat at the bar. Tully sat in the seat two over from Sidney and lit a cigarette. When the bartender asked him what he wanted, he ordered a scotch and soda.

“You were following me from the theatre, weren’t you?” Sidney said, turning to his left to face Tully.

“What’s that?” Tully said. Playing innocent was easy.

“I said you were following me from the theatre.”

“No, not at all.” He downed his drink and the bartender served him again.

“Then why are you here?”

“Everybody’s got to be someplace.”

“How did you like the picture?”

“I was a little disappointed in the ending. I’m always hoping the crooks get away with it and live happily ever after.”

“They can’t do that. Have stories turn out that way, I mean. It’s against the code of morals and ethics. People who commit crimes have to be punished.”

“You seem to know a lot about it.”

“I’ve been in the motion picture business now for two years, first behind the candy counter and then as an usher.”

“Sounds like you’ve got a real career going for you.”

“No, I’m going to quit soon. I don’t have to work if I don’t want to. I’ve only been doing it this long to have someplace to go in the evenings to get out of the house.”

“Independently wealthy?”

“My father is in the final stages of heart disease. I’m the principal beneficiary of his will.”

“Why are you telling all this to a complete stranger?”

“I’m not sure. I think I felt some kind of connection with you the minute I first saw you in the lobby of the theatre. You were looking at me in a way I’ve never been looked at before.”

“Don’t get the wrong idea. I’m not that sort.”

“What sort is that?”

“If you don’t know, I’m not going to explain it to you.”

“No, it’s nothing like that. It’s on a higher plane than that.”

“I don’t know anything about planes. But I do you know you should be careful who you spill your guts to. The enemy is everywhere.”

“That’s an odd thing to say.”

“I’m an odd sort of a fellow, I guess.”

“I have this stepmother, though. She’d like to see me dead.”

“Why do you say that?”

“My father’s will stipulates that I get the bulk of his estate. I think it has something to do with guilt over the way he treated my mother. There’s this other woman, though, that he’s has been married to for about five years, my darling stepmother. While she’s mentioned in his will, she’s not sitting as pretty as I am. The only way she can get the whole caboodle is if I die.”

“If something happened to you, wouldn’t the stepmother be the first to be suspected?”

“Well, yes, but she’d make sure there was never a shred of evidence connecting her to my death. People could suspect all they wanted to, but it would never go any farther than that. If she could arrange it, she’d make it appear that I was killed randomly by a crazed escapee from an insane asylum or in an accident. A runaway bus that just happened to run up onto the sidewalk where I was walking and flattened me would be the answer to her prayers.”

“Maybe she’s not as bad as you think.”

“She’s ten times worse. She’s Satan’s doxy. She’d sell her own young to the highest bidder.”

“Why did your father marry her?”

“He was afraid of being alone. She was available.”

A drunk fell noisily to the floor, pulling a chair over with him. Everybody turned to see what the disturbance was. Sidney took advantage of the lull in conversation to stand up in preparation for leaving.

“It was a pleasure talking to you,” he said. “I hope I didn’t bore you too much with my problems.”

“No, it’s all right,” Tully said. “I wasn’t bored.”

“Could I give you a lift somewhere? I have my car.”

“No, thanks. I’ll get a cab.”

“You won’t be able to find a cab this late, I’m afraid.”

“All right. You can drop me off downtown.”

When they left the bar, Sidney told Tully to wait for him on the street corner while he went to get the car. Tully waited so long he believed Sidney wasn’t coming back, but finally he pulled up at the curb and stopped for Tully to get in.

Tully, sitting on the seat two feet away from Sidney, fingered the gun in his pocket. He thought about how easy it would be to shoot Sidney in the head and be done with it. He thought about the freshly laundered sheets on his bed and how good it would feel to get between them and shut out the world, to have his work behind him and have nothing to think about.

“Now, maybe you can tell me who you really are and why you were following me,” Sidney said.

“I already said I wasn’t following you.”

“What’s your racket?”

“I don’t have a racket.”

“Did she send you to kill me?”

“Of course not.”

“I knew you weren’t there to see the show. All we get for the late show are smooching couples and giggling adolescents. People like you have better things to do than come to a third-rate theatre late at night to see a second-rate feature. What’s your story?”

“I don’t have one.”

Sidney surprised him by pulling a gun out of his clothing and pointing it at him.

“Put the gun away,” Tully said with a little laugh. “You don’t need it.”

“I started carrying a gun when I realized my life was in danger.”

“Why don’t you go someplace far away where nobody knows you? Change your name if you have to. Then when your daddy dies you can collect your inheritance and give the evil stepmother the boot.”

“It’s not that easy. I need to stay around and keep an eye on things.”

“Why don’t you go to the police and tell them your stepmother is trying to have you killed?”

“I don’t have any proof. They would just say I’m imagining things.”

“Look, just drop me downtown and I’ll forget you threatened to shoot me.”

“You still haven’t told me who you are.”

“I’m nobody.”

“What brings a nobody like you to this part of the city this late at night?”

“I have trouble sleeping. I’m a roamer. I like to roam around and go places I’ve never been before. I stop at a bar I’ve never been to before and have a couple of drinks and then I go back home and go to sleep.”

“I don’t believe you. Why were you at the theatre tonight?”

“People usually go to a theatre to see a show.”

“That’s not why you were there. I could see it on your face. When you saw me, you recognized me. Have we met someplace before?”

“No.”

“Are you a friend of my stepmother’s?”

“Of course not.”

“If you don’t tell me, I’m going to shoot you in the leg.”

“Why don’t you just stop the car right here? I’ll get out and we’ll forget we ever had this conversation.”

“And then you’ll come back tomorrow night and finish the job?”

“You’ve been seeing too many movies, sonny.”

To Tully’s surprise, Sidney shot him in the thigh. Tully pulled his gun out from where he had it hidden against his chest and pointed it at Sidney.

“You little bastard!” he said. “I’m going to blow your head off!”

“I’m driving fifty miles an hour. If you shoot me, and, if you survive the crash, don’t you think you’d have some explaining to do?”

“Just pull over and I’ll kill you properly, the way I should have done when I had the chance.”

“Now we’re getting down to cases. You are a hired killer, aren’t you?”

“I’m an operative. I do what I’m told.”

“And that involves killing people you don’t know?”

“It beats working in a factory. I’m going to bleed to death if you don’t stop the car and let me out so I can see a doctor.”

“It’s a flesh wound. I could have shot you in the knee and you would have walked with a limp for the rest of your life.”

“What makes you so tough?”

“It’s a rotten, stinking world. You’re either tough or you’re dead.”

“You’re just a kid. That’s why I didn’t kill you as soon as you left the theatre. I felt bad about killing somebody who looks so young.”

“How much did my stepmother pay you to kill me?”

“I don’t know anything about that, or even if it was your stepmother. It could have been somebody else, maybe your boss at the theatre or a girl friend you’ve wronged. The higher-ups make the arrangements and then give the assignments to the operatives to carry out.”

“If you don’t kill me, they’ll send somebody else?”

“There’s always somebody else.”

“Just go ahead and kill me, then, but not in the car or on the street. I’ll get a room in a cheap hotel and lie down on the bed and you can plug me in the head and leave quietly afterwards. Just make it quick.”

Tully put his gun away. “Drop me off at the hospital. My leg hurts like hell and I’m bleeding all over your upholstery.”

“And you’ll come back tomorrow night and kill me?”

“I won’t but somebody will. If you want to go on living, you’ll take my advice. Don’t go back to the theatre or the bar. Go into hiding for the time being. Hire a couple of body guards. Somebody paid ten thousand dollars to have you killed. That’s all I can tell you. When that much money is involved, there’s determination to get the job done.”

“And what about you?”

“I’ll be fine after I get the bleeding stopped.”

After Tully had his leg wound treated, it was seven o’clock. He stopped by a diner and had breakfast and then went home. He hadn’t been home more than a few minutes when the expected call came.

“Everything go all right?” Wellington asked.

“Couldn’t have been easier,” Tully said.

“The subject was dispatched as we discussed?”

“You have nothing to worry about.”

“I’ll let Manners know.”

He figured he had at least a day or two before they discovered the truth. When they came looking for him, he would be so far away it would be as if he never existed.

Copyright © 2012 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

“Wet Saturday” by John Collier

John Collier (1901-1980)

Wet Saturday ~ A Classic British Short Story by John Collier

It was July. In the sprawling house they were imprisoned by the swish and the gurgle and all the hundred sounds of rain. They were in the drawing room, behind four tall and weeping windows, in a lake of damp and faded chintz.

This house, ill-kept and unprepossessing, was necessary to Mr. Princey, who detested his wife, his daughter, and his hulking son. His life was to walk through the village, touching his hat, not smiling. His cold pleasure was to recapture snapshot memories of the infinitely remote summers of this childhood — coming into the orangery and finding his lost wooden horse, the tunnel in the box hedge and the square light at the end of it. But now all this was threatened — his pride of position in the village, his passionate attachment to the house — and all because Millicent, his cloddish daughter Millicent, had done this shocking and incredibly stupid thing. Mr. Princey turned from her in revulsion and spoke to his wife.

“They’d send her to the lunatic asylum,” he said. “A criminal-lunatic asylum. We should have to move. It would be impossible.”

His daughter began to shake again. “I’ll kill myself,” she said.

“Be quiet,” said Mr. Princey. “We have very little time. No time for nonsense. I intend to deal with this.” He called to his son, who stood looking out the window. “George, come here. Listen, how far did you get with your medicine before they threw you out as hopeless?”

“You know as well as I do,” said George.

“Do you know enough — did they drive enough into your head for you to be able to guess what a competent doctor could tell about such a wound?”

“Well, it’s a — it’s a knock or blow.”

“If a tile fell from the roof? Or a piece of the coping?”

“Well, guv’nor, you see, it’s like this –“

“Is it possible?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Oh, because she hit him several times.”

“I can’t stand it,” said Mrs. Princey.

“You have got to stand it, my dear,” said her husband. “And keep that hysterical note out of your voice. It might be overheard. We are talking about the weather. If he fell down the well, George, striking his head several times?”

“I really don’t know, guv’nor.”

“He’d have to had to hit the sides several times in thirty or forty feet, and at the correct angles. No. I’m afraid not. We must go over it all again. Millicent.”

“No! No!”

“Millicent, we must go over it all again. Perhaps you have forgotten something. One tiny irrelevant detail may save or ruin us. Particularly you, Millicent. You don’t want to be put in an asylum, do you? Or be hanged? They might hang you, Millicent. You must stop that shaking. You must keep your voice quiet. We are talking of the weather. Now.”

“I can’t. I… I…”

“Be quiet, child. Be quiet.” He put his long, cold face very near to his daughter’s. He found himself horribly revolted by her. Her features were thick, her jaw heavy, her whole figure repellently powerful. “Answer me,” he said. “You were in the stable?”

“Yes.”

“One moment, though. Who knew you were in love with this wretched curate?”

“No one. I’ve never said a–“

“Don’t worry,” said George. “The whole god-damned village knows. They’ve been sniggering about it in the Plough for three years past.”

“Likely enough,” said Mr. Princey. “Likely enough. What filth! He made as if to wipe something off the backs of his hands. “Well, now, we continue. You were in the stable?”

“Yes.”

“You were putting the croquet set into its box?”

“Yes.”

“You hear someone crossing the yard?”

“Yes.”

“It was Withers?”

“Yes.”

“So you called him?”

“Yes.”

“Loudly? Did you call him loudly? Could anyone have heard?”

“No, Father. I’m sure not. I didn’t call him. He saw me as I went to the door. He just waved his hand and came over.”

“How can I find out from you whether there was anyone about? Whether he could have been seen?”

“I’m sure not, Father. I’m quite sure.”

“So you both went into the stable?”

“Yes. It was raining quite hard.”

“What did he say?”

“He said ‘Hullo, Milly.’ And to excuse him coming in the back way, but he’d set out to walk over to Lyston.”

“Yes.”

“And he said, passing the park, he’d seen the house and suddenly thought of me, and he thought he’d just look in for a minute, just to tell me something. He said he was so happy, he wanted me to share it. He’d heard from the Bishop he was to have the vicarage. And it wasn’t only that. It meant he could marry. And he began to stutter. And I thought me meant me.”

“Don’t tell me what you thought. Exactly what he said. Nothing else.”

“Well … Oh dear!”

“Don’t cry. It is a luxury you cannot afford. Tell me.”

“He said no. He said it wasn’t me. It’s Ella Brangwyn-Davies. And he was sorry. And all that. Then he went to go.”

“And then?”

“I went mad. He turned his back. I had the winning post of the croquet set in my hand –“

“Did you shout or scream? I mean, as you hit him?”

“No. I’m sure I didn’t.”

“Did he? Come on. Tell me.”

“No, Father.”

“And then?”

“I threw it down. I came straight into the house. That’s all. I wish I were dead.”

“And you met none of the servants. No one will go into the stable. You see, George, he probably told people he was going to Lyston. Certainly no one knows he came here. He might have been attacked in the woods. We must consider every detail . . . A curate, with his head battered in –“

“Don’t, Father!” cried Millicent.

“Do you want to be hanged? A curate, with his head battered in, found in the woods. Who’d want to kill Withers?”

There was a tap on the door, which opened immediately. It was little Captain Smollett, who never stood on ceremony. “Who’d kill Withers?” said he. “I would, with pleasure. How d’you do, Mrs. Princey. I walked right in.”

“He heard you, Father,” moaned Millicent.

“My dear, we can have our little joke,” said her father. “Don’t pretend to be shocked. A little theoretical curate-killing, Smollett. In these days we talk nothing but thrillers.”

“Parsonicide,” said Captain Smollett. “Justifiable parsonicide. Have you heard about Ella Brangwyn-Davies? I shall be laughed at.”

“Why?” said Mr. Princey. “Why should you be laughed at?”

“Had a shot in that direction myself,” said Smollett, with careful sang-froid. “She’d have said yes, too. Hadn’t you heard? She told most people. Now it’ll look as if I got turned down for a white rat in a dog collar.”

“Too bad!” said Mr. Princey.

“Fortune of war,” said the little Captain.

“Sit down,” said Mr. Princey. “Mother, Millicent, console Captain Smollett with your best light conversation. George and I have something to look to. We shall be back in a minute or two, Smollett. Come, George.”

It was actually five minutes before Mr. Princey and his son returned.

“Smollett,” said Mr. Princey, “will you come round to the stable for a moment? There’s something I want to show you.”

They went into the stable yard. The buildings were now unused except as odd sheds. No one ever went there. Captain Smollett entered, George followed him, Mr. Princey came last. As he closed the door he took up a gun which stood behind it. “Smollett,” said he, “we have come out to shoot a rat which George heard squeaking under that tub. Now, you must listen to me very carefully or you will be show by accident. I mean that.”

Smollett looked at him. “Very well,” said he. “Go on.”

“A very tragic happening has taken place this afternoon,” said Mr. Princey. “It will be even more tragic unless it is smoothed over.”

“Oh?” said Smollett.

“You head me ask,” said Mr. Princey, “who would kill Withers. You heard Millicent make a comment, an unguarded comment.”

“Well?” said Smollett. “What of it?”

“Very little,” said Mr. Princey. “Unless you heard that Withers had met a violent end this very afternoon. And that, my dear Smollett, is what you are going to hear.”

“Have you killed hiim?” cried Smollett.

“Millicent has,” said Mr. Princey.

“Hell!” said Smollett.

“It is hell,” said Mr. Princey. “You would have remembered–and guessed.”

“Maybe,” said Smollett. “Yes. I suppose I should.”

“Therefore,” said Mr. Princey, “you constitute a problem.”

“Why did she kill him?” said Smollett.

“It is one of these disgusting things,” said Mr. Princey. “Pitiable, too. She deluded herself that he was in love with her.”

“Oh, of course,” said Smollett.

“And he told her about the Brangwyn-Davies girl.”

“I see,” said Smollett.

“I have no wish,” said Mr. Princey, “that she should be proved either a lunatic or a murderess. I could hardly live here after that.”

“I suppose not,” said Smollett.

“On the other hand,” said Mr. Princey,” you know about it.”

“Yes,” said Smollett. “I am wondering if I could keep my mouth shut. If I promised you–“

“I am wondering if I could believe you,” said Mr. Princey.

“If I promised,” said Smollett.

“If things went smoothly,” said Mr. Princey. “But not if there was any sort of suspicion, any questioning. You would be afraid of being an accessory.”

“I don’t know,” said Smollett.

“I do,” said Mr. Princey. “What are we going to do?”

“I can’t see anything else,” said Smollett. “You’d never be fool enough to do me in. You can’t get rid of two corpses.”

“I regard it,” said Mr. Princey, “as a better risk than the other. It could be an accident. Or you and Withers could both disappear. There are possibilities in that.”

“Listen,” said Smollett, “You can’t–“

“Listen,” said Mr. Princey. “There may be a way out. There is a way out, Smollett. You gave me the idea yourself.”

“Did I?” said Smollett. “What?”

“You said you would kill Withers,” said Mr. Princey. “You have a motive.”

“I was joking,” said Smollett.

“You are always joking,” said Mr. Princey. “People think there must be something behind it. Listen, Smollett, I can’t trust you, you must trust me. Or I will kill you now, in the next minute. I mean that. You can choose between dying and living.”

“Go on,” said Smollett.

“There is a sewer here,” said Mr. Princey, speaking fast and forcefully. “That is where I am going to put Withers. No outsider knows he has come up here this afternoon. No one will ever look there for him unless you tell them. You must give me evidence that you have murdered Withers.”

“Why?” said Smollett.

“So that I shall be dead sure that you will never open your lips on the matter,” said Mr. Princey.

“What evidence?” said Smollett.

“George,” said Mr. Princey, “hit him in the face, hard.”

“Good God!” said Smollett.

“Again,” said Mr. Princey. “Don’t bruise your knuckles.”

“Oh!” said Smollett.

“I’m sorry,” said Mr. Princey. “There must be traces of a struggle between you and Withers. Then it will not be altogether safe for you to go to the police.”

“Why won’t you take my word?” said Smollett.

“I will when we’ve finished,” said Mr. Princey. “George, get that croquet post. Take your handkerchief to it. As I told you. Smollett, you’ll just grasp the end of this croquet post. I shall shoot you if you don’t.”

“Oh, hell,” said Smollett. “All right.”

“Pull two hairs out of his head, George,” said Mr. Princey, “and remember what I told you to do with them. Now, Smollett, you take that bar and raise the big flagstone with the ring in it. Withers is in the next stall. You’ve got to drag him through and dump him in.”

“I won’t touch him,” said Smollett.

“Stand back, George,” said Mr. Princey, raising the gun.

“Wait a minute,” cried Smollett. “Wait a minute.” He did as he was told.

Mr. Princey wiped his brow. “Look here,” said he. “Everything is perfectly safe. Remember, no one knows that Withers came here. Everyone thinks he walked over to Lyston. That’s five miles of country to search. They’ll never look in our sewer. Do you see how safe it is?”

“I suppose it is,” said Smollett.

“Now come into the house,” said Mr. Princey. “We shall never get that rat.”

They went into the house. The maid was bringing tea into the drawing room. “See, my dear,” said Mr. Princey to his wife, “we went to the stable to shoot a rat and we found Captain Smollett. Don’t be offended, my dear fellow.”

“You must have walked up the back drive,” said Mrs. Princey.

“Yes. Yes. That was it,” said Smollett in some confusion.

“You’ve cut your lip,” said George, handing him a cup of tea.

“I … I just knocked it.”

“Shall I tell Bridget to bring some iodine?” said Mrs. Princey. The maid looked up, waiting.

“Don’t trouble, please,” said Smollett. “It’s nothing.”

“Very well, Bridget,” said Mrs. Princey. “That’s all.”

“Smollett is very kind,” said Mr. Princey. “He knows all our trouble. We can rely on him. We have his word.”

“Oh, have we, Captain Smollett?” cried Mrs. Princey. “You are good.”

“Don’t worry, old fellow,” Mr. Princey said. “They’ll never find anything.”

Pretty soon Smollett took his leave. Mrs. Princey pressed his hand very hard. Tears came into her eyes. All three of them watched him go down the drive. Then Mr. Princey spoke very earnestly to his wife for a few minutes and the two of them went upstairs and spoke still more earnestly to Millicent. Soon after, the rain having ceased, Mr. Princey took a stroll round the stable yard.

He came back and went to the telephone. “Put me through to Lyston police station,” said he. “Quickly … Hullo, is that the police station? This is Mr. Princey, of Abbott’s Laxton. I’m afraid something rather terrible has happened up here. Can you send someone at once?”

by allen0997