Shelter Island Baby

 Sioux Falls Northern Plains Sentinel

Editor, Sundays Outdoors Section

Re: Fantastic Fish Tales Contest

Dear Sirs,

               I found the following story while I was sorting through some of my brother Louis’s personal effects. My wife read the article about your contest and we both felt this tale would certainly qualify. I know it probably exceeds your suggested word total but I could not find it in myself to edit it. (I did take the liberty of copying it to type from his original script and also to correct some spelling errors.)

               My younger brother saw fit to take his own life shortly after last Christmas. He was nearly 15 years my junior and I think we both believed we had little in common – apart from family that is. I sadly realize that I did not know him all that well. I had found him a bit remote, reflective, almost somber. It comes as an unfortunate surprise for me to now find, through his manuscripts and journals, that he was possessed of a kind, expansive nature and a keen wit.

               That is not to say that he was given to flights of fancy, however. Frankly I do not know what to make of this story. Being a part of the family I do share some of the memories mentioned herein, for instance the old man and his fireside yarns at the resort. However, as you will see, I have no way of verifying the actual events that happened to my younger brothers on their last day of fishing together in 1966.

               But, just the same, in all honesty, I think I will elect to stay home on opening weekends that coincide with Mother’s Day.

                                                                                                         Best regards,

                                                                                                                        Dr. Henrik Voldersdyke M.D.

                                                                                                                        Edgerton, MN.  2-21-‘01

                                             `              SHELTER ISLAND BABY

               “You know Louie, lets not tell anyone about this.” Danny whispered.

 I met his eye and nodded. It was the sort of statement a big brother makes that is actually a command but feels more like a mutual consent.

               We looked at the water and then looked at each other and then looked back at the water again.

I wondered what his reasons were for keeping this silent. At first I thought it was the typical fisherman’s coy code of secrecy, an already forming plan for him to return to these waters for another secret conquest. I also suspected that perhaps he wanted to keep this incredible event quiet because nobody would believe it anyway and the telling of it would make us look like fools.

I never got a chance to ask him his reason. Within 3 months his flame would flicker out on a rice paddy in some weirdly alien place called Viet Nam.

It was the last day of our annual vacation at Higgin’s Resort, (now Norway Point) on Pelican Lake, the big Pelican Lake, the one at Orr. Danny and I were fishing Dutchman style. At least Danny was fishing; I was just running the motor and enjoying time spent alone with my spit polished big brother.

I call it Dutchman style fishing because I have observed that most of the practitioners of this style of fishing were indeed “Hollanders”, specifically my entire extended family. I certainly would never lay claim to this type of fishing as an ethnic domain. I am sure many others employ it and I noticed the style would propagate through the resort as those “Crazy Dutchmen” would be the only ones tying up to the dock in the evening with full stringers. It was not uncommon to see furtive cane poles leaning up against many other cabins by the end of the week.

I suppose it wasn’t the most sporting type of fishing. Often a fish would be hauled in caught by the tail or the back of the head. Really it was more like harvesting fish, but when you had a limited budget, limited time, and seemingly unlimited mouths to feed, it was effective.

The accoutrements were simple: A long bamboo cane pole, 45 pound test braided line, a huge spoon or buck tail, a stout gaff, and a heavy stringer. And, in case you hooked a monster: a ball peen hammer and a gunnysack. A big muskie, or even a huge northern pike, was a formidable adversary inside a small boat. I recall my father handing me the burlap once as he was about to land a muskie on Leech, “Louie, you cover his head up with that sack now. He’ll think he’s hiding and it’ll quiet him down a good bit….then you hand me that ballpeen.”

Danny and I were trolling that day at the usual pace, one that nearly causes that big spoon to plane. Suddenly I sensed him tense up. He’d had a strike. Instead of reacting with a jerk, he reacted with the kind of discipline necessary to this type of fishing: allowing his pole to slide back towards the stern. Following his line of sight, I turned my head to the side and saw the huge swirl on the surface. Then came a burnished flash, down deep, like submerged lightening. Danny’s pole was nearly pointed straight back alongside me as we waited. The Scott Atwater screwed us forward inexorably.

I was about to turn for another pass when his line snapped taut and his bamboo pole was bent acutely. Now here is where the heroic part of this sort of fishing is manifested. Knowing full well there is probably a once in a lifetime fish down there; it is extremely difficult not to haul back on that cane. Stalwart as ever, my brother let it go.

That pole shot out over the surface like a cruise missile and we were off on our own version of the Nantucket sleigh ride. We followed that pole up and down the north shoreline. Sometimes the fish, having found a hitherto unknown deep spot, would dive leaving just a few inches of the butt above the surface, rotating there quietly, alongside our boat. Then it would tear off again and so would we in its wake, the pole looking like some type of liberated compass needle, quivering on a heading of its own. Twice that fish took the entire pole under. That is no small feat if you have ever tried to keep one totally submerged lengthwise. We would wait in quiet panic, holding our breaths, fearing we would lose it.

But it was a calm day, the kind of sultry, brassy, August doldrum “that drives pike wild.” Had there been seas that day we would’ve never heard the “ploop” the pole made as its end finally surfaced, this time directly astern. I peered, with more than a little apprehension, over the transom. Slowly, gracefully, the entire pole emerged and floated there mutely.

I nodded at my brother and pointed down. He deftly joined me at the stern and leaning over, he gently grasped the pole. Indicating to me with a tilt of his head, I clambered forward, amidships, and got things ready. I pulled out the sack, hooked the hammer through an oarlock and I hefted the mighty gaff. I stood there poised, one foot on the seat, like a mad freshwater Ahab, coiling, focusing on my thrust and silently breathing to myself, “Don’t let me screw this up.”

Danny maneuvered the line up alongside. I brought the gaff back a fraction. Then came the coppery flash again. Oh my God it’s big. I hope it is entirely spent. Danny edged it closer, slowly, easy now, get ready.  I took a deep breath, this was it.

“No!” Danny shouted. I nearly did a full pirouette and he grabbed my shoulder, steadying me. He pointed, “Look!”

It wasn’t a fish. It was a man. Clearly it was not a fish. Danny’s line had been cut, probably sawed off by the pointed triangular teeth exposed in the thing’s slash of a mouth as it sneered or smiled or grimaced up at us. He held the line in one tiny claw-like hand at his side. It appeared as if some sort of membrane had fused his arms to the trunk of his body.  Likewise, his legs were conjoined. His feet were unnaturally long and flat and flexible, as if they had never borne the weight of gravity but instead had been melded by the forces of hydrodynamics.

He undulated in the water there, panting a bit, the edge of that wide mouth just above the surface. His head, and so his face, was like the blade of an axe. Through adaptation and necessity his eyes had migrated more to the sides of his head and his nose was pointed so it could just crease the surface for his respiration. Save for wisps on his elongated skull and random remnants on his chest and genitals, he was nearly totally hairless.

With what seemed like disgust he let go of the line. He floated there awhile, slowly arcing back and forth. Danny and I were speechless.

His eye arrested me and I could not break its spell. Large and flat, nearly entirely iris with very little white at all, the pupil was widely dilated and it was fixed on me.

I have heard it said that a human cannot look an animal directly in the eye because a beast has no soul. I have always thought that perhaps the reason some cannot look an animal in the eye is because they have no soul themselves. I routinely look my dog in the eye and in it I can see mirth, impatience, anger, determination, fear, a wide range of identifiable emotions. There is a spirit there, if not a soul.

But there is something else there. It is a rift I see. It is a mutual awareness that between our total understandings there lies a cleft that cannot be breached. It is the boundary between man awareness and animal awareness.

No such divide existed here between that fishboy and I. His gaze bore down upon me heavily, carrying an intensity and a depth of understanding that felt like physical weight. It was a look of contempt and rage and despair, and maybe most of all, in the end, it was a look of longing.

Curling, he lifted his head totally out of the water. He regarded us, and then, startling us both, he uttered the most plaintive cry imaginable. Clearly human in origin, its timbre was such that gooseflesh blossomed on my skin and a gasp erupted from my throat. It was the sound of an infant, hungry or otherwise in need of its mother’s affection. But it was also a cry wrought by long unused and unpracticed vocal instruments, a keening rasp that still haunts.

He circled the boat once, paused, inspired a long whistling draught of air through his extended nose and then he dove like a dart for the depths, leaving a whirl, a swirling eddy on the placid surface, a perfect vortex in his wake.

A person would think that having borne witness to such events, a fellow might return to them and often ponder their significance. I suppose I did at first, but the traumas inflicted by the learning of my brother’s death have somehow intruded upon most of my memories prior to his departure for the war. And no memories are so deeply affected as those surrounding the times spent together with Daniel. Those times are cherished keepsakes. Although rare and beautiful, sometimes looking directly at them can smite the heart’s eye. The handling of such rarified elements can levy a toll that is often too extravagant to afford.

Yet sometimes a memory can come crashing to the surface unbidden, like a muskellunge from the deep arrowing towards an innocent duckling bobbing in the sun.

So why tonight, at this late hour, do I permit myself the sweet discomfort of recalling that event of 33 years ago? Why do I sit here, on the eve of my uncle Gerritt’s funeral, looking at this grainy photo in an old psychology textbook?

In my defense I can honestly say my brother’s tragic death prohibited me from making the connection I stumbled upon tonight, a connection that would seem so obvious to anyone else. It was my uncle Gerritt’s death, and me laying there awake tonight trying to learn what his life had to teach me, that caused me to bolt upright with a dawning comprehension. This revelation would lead me to shuffle down here to the basement, beneath a swinging bulb, to an old carton and this dusty volume.

               Tonight, as I thought of my late uncle, my memory was drawn back again to Pelican Lake and Higgin’s Resort. It was our week at the lake, probably about 2-3 years before my adventure with brother Danny would occur.

I was making my way back to the cabin one night concerned about my 10:30PM curfew. I hated to leave my playmates behind at the campfire on the point, but showing contempt for the rules would surely merit consequences.

               I was just stepping out of the woods near the fish cleaning house, where the feeble advance of the yellow bug light was a mockery to the unassailable dark of the northwood’s night. I paused, the men were cleaning fish and my uncle Gerritt was addressing Old Leo, the fishing guide, outboard repairer, beach groomer, lawn mower, toilet paper bringer, boat steadier, dock greeter, story teller, local historian and all around handy man at the resort. Tonight Leo was performing the fish-cleaning role of his long, but often enviable, job description.

“You know Leo,” my uncle was saying in that nearly incessant whine of his, “I don’t mind if you like to spook the kids a little with that myth about the baby crying at Shelter Island…and some of that other stuff.”

He paused, and after a quick look at his brothers, he then damned the torpedoes and sailed on, “That kind of tall tale is all in good fun, I suppose.  But I don’t think telling our children about the dead whore they found drifting out there in that boat years ago would be the sort of thing I’d want them to hear.”

Gerritt raised his chin and sniffed, “The wages of sin is death, that’s what I say.”

 Nodding in self-affirmation he again peered over Leo’s shoulder at his big brothers, as if to seek some type of consensus. But they had suddenly became intensely absorbed with the cleaning of fish, as if they were extracting priceless pearls from those fillets. My father cleared his throat. Uncle Gerritt was the kid brother, the only one who had moved to the city, and he always made the kind of noise you didn’t want to hear.

               “Thank you Cousin Gary.” I whispered to myself. Gerritt’s own son had just taught us the meaning of the word whore. Gary had held court that night at the fire and expounded upon his vast knowledge of the ways of “worldly women,” and where to find them in Sioux Falls.

               Leo did not respond for a moment. He just put down his knife and reached into his khaki shirt pocket. Extracting a pack of Lucky Strikes, he shook one out into his lips and returned the pack in the kind of practiced motion that revealed a lifetime’s devotion to the act.

               It became very quiet. I could hear the bell jingle up at the lodge as someone passed though the door. The insistent whir of the Lure-A-Light, which Higgin’s Resort boasted, was magnified to my ears.

               Leo drug a match along the table and the flare of it revealed his face, which had been in the shadow of his Pure Oil cap. He was looking at Uncle Gerritt with an expression that was, as far as I was concerned, foreign to his face.

 I had known Leo for as long as I could remember and it was true that sometimes he would join us at the campfire, with a bottle of Hamm’s, and tell us tales. Some of them were real beauties too: the Goat Girl and her pyrotechnic ways, The Baby crying at Shelter Island, and of course the one about Leveque’s Hand still scooting around out there on the bottom of the lake. That one always got the kids to look uneasily over their shoulders, and sometimes I would swim all afternoon without putting my feet on the bottom, much.

But the familiar twinkle had left Leo’s eyes now and his mouth twisted down as if he had tasted something offal. He exhaled a billow of smoke that hung in the humid air like a hive in front of his face. He fanned at it and looked down at the cigarette with disdain, as if he was surprised to see it there between his fingers.

His eyes locked on my uncle’s and I was thinking, “Oh boy, he’s finally gonna get it now, come on Leo let him have it, give it to him for not letting us swim for 2 precious hours after we eat.”

               “Well, mister,” Leo began as Uncle Gerritt backed up against the screen a little, “My good book tells me that it is dangerous to judge what is in the heart of another. And when it comes to that final payday, the wages we each draw will be tallied ONLY by that master who cuts the check.”

               Leo tilted his head to the side, his gaze not wavering, “Have you ever seen a baby get born?”

               My uncle quickly shook his head, blinking.

               Leo continued, “Well my last one, Loretta, was the only one born in the hospital. The rest were born at home and I’ll tell you,” he paused, nodding slightly as if confirming some recollection, “It makes one heck of a mess. There is blood and human fluids that gush all over the place.”

               Gerritt swallowed still looking into Leo’s face.

               “I found that girl, you’re so-called “whore,” out on the lake that day and she wasn’t drifting either.” Leo continued, pointing now in the direction of the lake, “She was tied up to my dock out there on Shelter Island.”

               “I have a duck hunting shack there and I go out there sometimes,” he said, “And one morning I see this boat at my dock. So as I get closer I see there is blood all over everything and then, when I clamber out onto the dock, I see her body there in the bottom of the boat.”

               Leo’s words were becoming more forceful now, “She had went out there, you see, to have that child in my little shack. But something went wrong, really wrong, there was too much blood. And you know what?”

Uncle Gerritt shook his head again, quickly.

               “Your harlot even brought a pail and rags with her and she tried to clean up the shack. The best she could anyways. She even put the afterbirth in the pail.”

               Leo looked down now, “But something went wrong, like I said, and she knew it. She tried to make it back to the boat; I followed the trial of blood. I think she stumbled. It looked to me like she tumbled into the boat and she died there reaching over the side like she was trying to get something out of the water. The bloodied baby blanket was half in the water too. I think she dropped her baby over the side when she fell, and she died reaching for it.”

               Then Leo squared his shoulders and pointed a finger at my uncle. “I myself have heard a baby crying out there at Shelter Island. And it is the sort of sound a man would never want to hear again. Now your calling it a myth calls me a liar. I have lived 75 years and no man has called me that to my face yet, sir,” he poked at my uncle, “And I am not about to let someone like you be the first.”

               My uncle shriveled back further, crossing his arms about his chest, grasping himself in some sort of pitiful embrace. He turned his head to the side and closed his eyes tightly.

               “Here it comes, “ I thought to myself, but just then my Uncle Frank stepped forward and gently grasped Leo’s arm. He looked down at Leo and said quietly, “You know, my good book puts a lot of stock into forgiveness, Leo. It says a man should turn his other cheek.”

               The Dutch, except for my Uncle Gerritt of course, are not overly demonstrable about their faith. They live a certain way to be sure, a lifestyle that could aggravate others, but they aren’t much for Bible thumping or grand piety. But one thing is certain: you can never trump them when it came to Good Bookisms.

               So here I am tonight looking again at this photograph in my old psychology text. I have not seen it since my college days but it has always been with me it seems. Never far from my consciousness, I have thought of it often. There was something about it, there still is, that was familiar and disturbing. Even though the picture is of poor quality, the shadows too dark and the light too bright, the portrait still reveals much to me.

               In it a boy squats on his haunches. A coarse blanket or robe covers what appear to be bony shoulders. His knuckles rest on the rocky ground and his head is hunched forward, jaw partly agape as if panting. His hair is wild and even though his brow is heavy, it cannot afford enough shadow to quench the galvanic charge generated by that piercing gaze.

               Tonight I know that it was the look in those eyes that resonated within me years ago back there in my classroom in Brookings. It modulated an air of indifferent understanding upon a thick wave of what, to me, seemed an accusatory inquiry. The frequency once disturbed by locking eyes with the pikeboy, or pikeman, was again excited by the gaze of the boy in the photo. Although I failed to identify that source when I was making my pitiful college psychology report on “Nature vs. Nurture,” the connection is now bridged, the crystals vibrate in tune and the signal is finally received.

               The text below the picture reads in part: “In 1911 a hunter in the Transylvanian Alps near the city of Sibiu in what is now modern day Romania was said to have captured this boy. The hunter claimed the boy was running with a group of wolves. It was asserted the boy, “Lycan,” as he was called by the peasants there, had been adopted by the wolf pack shortly after birth. A country physician who examined the boy said he did not walk erect, but rather, preferred to “Scamper on all fours like an animal.” He claimed the boy fed himself as a dog would and uttered only canine-like vocalizations. Unfortunately the boy died in transport to the University in Bucharest where an objective evaluation had been proposed.

On every continent folk tales have been identified which support similar myths. Whether it is tigers in SE Asia, leopards in West Africa, or jaguars in South America that perform the nurturing, the appeal of these legends seems to be universal among primitive societies. Why do you think it might be important for aboriginal cultures to construct these”…… And so on.

              

               So now I wonder, did that lonely girl who gave birth on Shelter Island accidentally drop her child into the lake when she returned to the boat?  Or, as her death posture might suggest, did she hand her child over the side? Did she find one last desperate hope for her newborn there? Would not a newborn so recently suspended within the womb’s waters be at least familiar with a buoyant environment? Can anyone know the maternal instincts of such a beautiful and noble creature as the Northern Pike?

                                                                                                                         Louis Voldersdyke

                                                                                                                         Ivanhoe, MN

                                                                                                                         8-15-99

Six Weeks

                                                          SIX WEEKS

Martin pulled over. He was sweating. Goddamn it was hot in the car. He fiddled with the wheel on the center of the dash. The radio blasted to life, some Hispanic female shrieked unintelligible lyrics over a pounding dance beat.

He fumbled with it, squinting. Suddenly a cold blast of air blessed his face. He tried to turn on the dome light and a disembodied voice said, “One half mile, take a right at the signal.”

“Son of a bitch!” He almost took out his gun. He was gonna shoot that son of a bitchin’ god damn spool in the center of its unblinking eye.

Again he asked himself, “What’s so bad about a switch? Huh? How about a goddamn knob.? Or a lever? What in THE hell was so bad with that?” He was getting agitated. “Someday I’m gonna blow that bitch right back to Bavaria.”

“And,” he added sourly, “If I had the time, I’d go after the bastard who thought you were a good idea in the first place.”

The voice repeated its directions. He took a deep breath, no need to settle the score now. He had done it one better already tonight. Just drove down the alley, right on cue, Trent Kelso came around the corner of his garage lugging his recycling. He looked up. Did he recognize the car? Probably. So what? He got the message. Right between the eyes. He dropped like an anvil through ether. It made no difference to Martin whether old Trent recognized him or not. Martin wasn’t out to gloat, just get the job done.

He fished a little black leather book out of the inside packet of his sport coat. He opened it and adjusted his glasses. He crossed Trent Kelso off the list. He smiled briefly and then frowned.

He recalled the day clearly, once again. Had thought about it a lot over the last year. He had left the dealership that day after a long lesson with the late Trent Kelso. He thought of one more question and returned. Trent, good old Trent – he’d sold him his last 3 BMW’s – had his back to him, was talking to the kid from the detail shop. Martin paused when he heard his name mentioned., “The good Dr Goldberg, can’t figure out his iDrive system,” he snorted, ( HE SNORTED!!! the bastard) “Don’t think he ever will….I tell you Evan,  doctors are a car salesman’s dream, “ he took a long pull from his Coke, “They aint as smart as they think they are.”

Martin slipped out of the dealership with his face burning. He pulled out his little book and entered Trent’s name there. The late Trent Kelso, BMW salesman of the month, eight times in 2004!

He got the idea for his little book one day at lunch when a drug detail man had idly mentioned adding a  balky receptionist to his “Dying of Cancer List.”

“What’s that?” Martin had asked, curious.

“Well”, the patronizing rep replied out of the side of his mouth, “If one of you guys ever give me 3 months to live, I’m gonna shoot all the people that were a pain in the ass to me.” He laughed and Martin joined him. The first interesting thing a drug rep had ever told him.

That night Martin had started his own list. Over the years it had been a comfort to him.

He replaced the book and attempted to turn off the dome. “Right at the next signal’ blurted out again, sounding just a bit nervous to Martin’s ear.

He cruised through the city, picked up his cell phone and dialed a number he had impressed into his brain. Always do your homework. Just like with the now 3 eyed salesman of the month. It had taken him just a week. Garbage night, Tuesday. Come home to the little lady, take out the trash.

A young sounding female answered, “Dr Friedman’s service.”

“Yes, this is Dr. Abe Weinstien at Mount Sinai Myrtlewood E.D. I need to speak with Dr Friedman.”

Without pause the young lady said, “Please give me your number and I’ll have him call you right away.”

“I’d rather have you put me through to him,” he paused, “I have Pamella Anderson here in the ED and it is kind of urgent…”

“I understand,”  she replied with expert understanding. “Hold the line.”

A few moments passed. Martin practicing his best Abe Wienstien. So fortunate Ben was on call on a Tuesday evening.

A voice came on the line, “Abe, how are you? What can I do for you?”

Martin started, “Well, Ben,  it’s probably nothing really,” he cleared his throat. “I can most likely just patch her and have her come see you in the morning but...just thought I’d run it by you…”

“What is it?” Ben asked solicitously.

“Well Pamela Anderson, she is one of your patients, right?”

“Certainly. What happened?’

“Well, she was doing something with her nails, using an adhesive, Poison Control says its just a sort of jazzed up super glue, well anyway, she got some in her eyes..”

Ben exclaimed, “Dear God!” A little too emphatically, Martin noticed.

Martin smiled, tried to fake a sigh, not convincingly, but it was lost anyway on Ben, “Yeah, I know, well I got her under the slit lamp here and her corneas look like the craters on the moon, I’d usually do the standard, you know, eye patches, a bead of antibiotic, see you in the morning?”

“I know, but Abe, this could be more serious than it appears, I’ll be right down.”

Martin was following Ben’s Mercedes within ten minutes. At the first light he pulled up and motioned for Ben to roll his window down. Ben recognized him, and did it, obviously surprised. Martin looked up and down the empty boulevard and then shot him in the face. The late opthalmologist slumped sideways and the Mercedes shot forward, engine screaming it arced through the intersection , leapt over the distant curb and plunged into the dark, a drop of God knows how far in this L.A. Canyon neighborhood. Martin hung a left and heard a muffled thud. He noticed a faint flash in the darkness behind.

He got home and crossed Ben’s name off the list. The bastard. Had come up to Martin at the Foundation Gala, swirled his martini and said, “Sorry about that lawsuit,” He extended his head back and rolled it around in an act of physical nonchalance, hand plunged into his side pocket, the son of a bitch, “I hope you don’t take it personally...it’s only business Martin.” 

Business? Business?! It had been the talk of the office for a day or two, Martin just knew it, although no one ever mentioned it to him. Martin that night had given him his best Oh Shucks shrug and swirled his own drink. Some kind of tropical thing that made him want to puke. He wanted to poke the little umbrella right into the eye of that preening opthalmalogist.

Sue me about the outcome on your daughter’s crooked toes? I worked like hell on those claws you call toes. All the specialties and all the surgeons in the world would never make a silk purse out of Ben Wiesman’s club footed, buck toothed, crosseyed, honknosed redheaded daughter. Hell, even old Ben himself couldn’t straighten her eyes out…completely. The late old Ben.

Martin crossed the foyer into the dining room and then the kitchen. He listened to the usual messages and then, his wife, sounding tired but happy. “We’re doing fine, honey, wish you were here with us…only 6 weeks and we’ll all be together!”

He smiled at that. He thought of them, all the way across the country. Spending time with her folks in Fort Lauderdale. Six weeks.

“Six weeks” the consulting oncologist had told him. Martin didn’t even have to ask. Martin had known. Even a podiatrist knows something about cancer. No one ever gives a podiatrist credit. He had sent his family off to Florida knowing it. Had read all the books before he even visited his internist. The biopsy, according to the oncologist, revealed, “An especially aggressive, rare form of gastric Ca, er, ah , cancer. Very, rare Dr. Goldberg, I mean, Martin.”

It only had confirmed what Martin had been suspecting for months now. The heartburn, the gnawing pain, the dyspepsia, bloating, anorexia.

“Get your things in order,” the oncologist had advised. Martin only half heard it. He was thinking about his little black book.

Martin crossed the glittering expanse of kitchen and headed for his bathroom. Instinctively he reached for his antacids. He paused, funny, not much burn tonight, think I can get by without ‘em.

For a change he was taking deliberate action, taking control, for maybe the first time in his beleaguered life and it felt good. Damn good, he mused. He gave himself a kind of giddy thumbs up in the medicine chest mirror.

He pulled onto the searing black asphalt of Vista Manor at 2 in the afternoon. He’d driven 130 miles into the arid interior of southern California, past Joshua trees and miles of windmills spinning electricity to the insatiable appetites back along the coast. He got out of his car and nearly swooned in the shimmering heat. He looked around. What vista? he thought as he looked around. Not unless you count the back side of a strip mall as a vista. At least the front of the place had a manor façade, big columns, fancy  lights hanging in the portico. Martin noted however, that extending in a V behind this manor mirage there stretched rather ordinary, metal prefab arms, like some sort of high output supercharged chicken hatchery.

He crossed the plush carpet to the directory. Just like he learned on Google last night, there it was: Herbert Clark. Mister Clark to a student like Martin. “Coach” to the ascendant jocks who made high school such a misery.

Good old Herb Clark. Always anxious to use Martin as an example. An example of how not to dribble, how not to block, how not to throw a goddam softball, let alone catch it. With his classmates laughing and the jocks sneering, the humiliation was complete.

Dribble a basketball? What? Bouncing a ball and running at the same time? That was supposed to be valuable, laudable, worthwhile? It looks ridiculous even when experts do it. The cromagnon miscreants absolutely shivered with glee whenever “Coach” would choose Martin to demonstrate something oh so important, like catching a grounder. In his mitt. Mitt? Jesus Christ.

Room 188. He walked down a long hallway approaching an intersection, not really comfortable with the smell in there. Some kind of nurses station was at the cross roads ahead. He heard voices, bits of laughter. The hallways were empty except for far in the distance a lone stooped old women appeared to be ramming her wheelchair, again and again, into an apparently locked exit.

Motion caught the corner of his eye. An old man was poised on the pinnacle of a railing that ran along his bed. Martin was about to shout but the old man pitched over the fence and landed on a thin mat placed along his bed. Sounded like a bag of bones hitting floor. A shrill alarm sounded ahead. So that’s what the mat was, Martin figured, an alarm. Well, that’s good, attention will be drawn away from me with all that racket.

He kept walking, trying to shake the sound the old man’s impact had made. He recalled hearing a pro wrestler once say in a radio tell-all interview that a good body slam doesn’t hurt when it is just one “Smack!” on the mat, all the body parts hitting simultaneously. But when there are multiple “Smacks!” it hurts. This particular slam had a sound to it that, Martin figured, Coach Clark would’ve cherished as an example of how not to do a body slam. His only regret would’ve been that Martin was not the subject.

Still, ahead, no one materialized into the hallway. No concerned nurses or aides. He walked past the station. No one looked up. The alarm squalled but no one paid it any mind, no one paid Martin any mind either. That’s good, he thought.

He paused outside 188. He strode in. He was shocked to see what remained of the once tyrannical nemesis he had known. A scrawny man laid, skeletal, on a rumpled bed.

It was him though. Could tell by the crew cut. The bastard. Crew cut all white now, thin, but still a remnant redneck exclamation point on an otherwise pathetic creature.

Martin was slightly taken aback. Old Clark was decrepit. He would’ve turned around and walked out, feeling his job would certainly be done for him, and soon, but, a flash caught his vision. There it was. Hanging on the crummy little corkboard. A whistle. Silver, dull and worn at the edges. Under it someone had pinned a recipe card with a loving “Coach” neatly penciled on it. That did it.

Martin looked around. No one. Herb’s roommate snored with a death rattle himself.

Martin said “Hey! Coach?”

The old man’s crusted eyes fluttered. Martin Grabbed a pillow and pushed it down on coach’s face, hard, so hard he could almost feel the bed frame. Coach’s hands did not lift off the bed. Palms down, he did not struggle.

Martin did not care, he was taking care of business. It didn’t matter to him a bit if Coach had recognized him, fought him, felt pain or fear. Coach was just another name on a list.

Martin straightened his tie and walked out, past the nurse station. The siren shrieked, a phone was ringing too. He couldn’t resist looking at them in disbelief. No one raised an eye. They continued with their banter. Martin understood. Shift change. One of them was snapping her bubble gum. They would all have made his list, if he had someone that he cared about in this wretched place.

He cast a glance into the room where the old man had dashed to the floor. There was a dark smear of blood across the mat/alarm. The old man had wormed his way under his bed. His skinny legs were protruding and appeared to be jerking a spasm of some sort. Convulsion, Martin concluded  as he crossed the elegant lobby. Idly he wondered, how are they gonna drag him out of there?

It was a long hot drive into the sun. He got back home and headed for the medicine chest. Again he reached for the Prilosec but, he was surprised, he didn’t need any. He felt hungry for a change too. He shrugged. Palmed a few Tylenol’s for his headache.

He punched the answering machine, “This is Dr. Reynolds. I need to see you.”

Martin wheeled into the gastroenterologist’s shady lot. The palm trees made a nice border along the lane and secluded parking lot. He wanted only to stop here today for a moment and thank Reynolds, not so much to hear what he had to say. Dr. Reynolds was the only guy who just went right to the biopsy, his fool internist wanted to rule out this and that and order such and such a study, exam, or test. Tests? Dammit, Martin knew what was wrong, he had suspected, hell, knew, from the start but…nobody listens to a podiatrist. Treat him like a goddam child, explaining things ever so painstakingly, like he was a moron.

Reynolds was different. Had this place here. Did what Martin wanted, none of this screwing around chasing expensive frivolities. He knew the message of last night meant that the oncologists had probably contacted Reynolds again, offering some more false hope, a possible excruciating procedure, a tedious treatment, or a clinical trial perhaps, some new toxic potion they wanted to pour down him. No way, he had but 3 weeks left and had never felt so alive.

“These six weeks are what I was born for!” He had exclaimed this morning, giving himself another thumbs up in the bathroom mirror.

 But he was resigned, the ride was coming to an end. Today he’d screwed up. The problem was, this morning, tellers saw him. Customers saw him. They heard the booms he supposed, even though he had a rag over the muzzle. Witnesses now.

A certain officious little banker. Late banker, well ventilated, who had, so many years ago, took Liselle’s and his application fee and then, grinning all the time, told them they did not qualify for a mortgage on that bungalow on Yucca Court.. A bungalow? On Yucca Court?

He had to humble himself and ask Liselle’s father for the down payment. Her dad had been kind when Martin had told him about it, “Pricks like that, you gotta prove ya don’t need the money before they’ll loan it to ya.”

But he didn’t loan Martin the money either. “Bungalow’s not worth it.” Later Martin saw that both the banker and his father in law were right, but the banker had grinned. He acted like he thought he was cute or something. Well he’s cute, Martin thought, now with about 3 new holes in his big bald forehead. Strange, Martin didn’t recall him being bald before. Same guy though.

But all those screams in the bank lobby this morning…

He sighed and got out of the car.

He was escorted into Dr. Reynold’s plush office and not for the first time did Martin reflect on his own little cubbyhole at the medical center.

“Cubbyhole.” That’s what Eli Roth had laughed and called it when he came to meet Martin one day before golf. Martin was irritated by that remark, coming from a damn lawyer. So irritated he lost the round to Eli that afternoon. Never played with him again, imagine losing to a fat plug like Roth. He made a mental note to add him to the list, if he wasn’t there already.

Owen Reynolds entered his office and shook Maritn’s hand. “Thank you for coming down this morning, Martin.” He laughed a little and nodded reflectively, “Well, let’s see, I don’t know where to begin.”

Martin thought back with satisfaction on his productive morning. Sure, the banker will probably turn out to be a bust, but he celebrated inside as he crossed off 2 other names from the list before him.

First, a retired alderman. (He’d declined to support Martin’s request for a garage setback variance.) He made the mistake of jogging alone every morning. Just like clockwork.

Then the guy at the gun shop. Martin smiled, profoundly gratified.  Smart ass. Just 3 weeks ago Martin had come in wanting to buy his gun.

The guy asked what kind. Martin had never owned a gun before, he had no idea what kind. Martin had said, “I don’t know, how about one of those little ones, like James Bond has?”

The guy was quiet for a minute, studying Martin, looked like he might say something or laugh. “Walther PPK? Sure I can sell you one of those.”

He turned and slid a drawer full of different guns out from a cabinet behind him. With his back to Martin he said, “I can sell you the gun, 007, but you’re gonna have to go down to the dime store for the decoder ring and the license to kill.”

He turned to face Martin and his smile evaporated. 

A big guy at the end of the counter must not have seen Martin’s expression because he slapped the counter top and nearly choked on the meat stick he was gnawing on.

Martin whirled and glared at him. The guy never noticed and he returned to the assembly of the shotgun or rifle or whatever it was that he just moments before disassembled.

Martin took inventory of him. Big, jowly redneck. Wearing cammo. It was almost time for Martin to laugh. Hell, there wasn’t even so much as a green blade of grass around here for blocks, let alone a leaf. Obviously the man sported the cammo just to be noticed. If he would’ve craved a disguise in this neighborhood, he would’ve been better served if his jacket were of a cinder block pattern with scattered spray paint scrawlings all over it.

Both men would make Martin’s book, the latter, as “Big fat cammo redneck..”

This morning “Gun shop guy” was not smiling. Martin had came in, first customer of the day. The man looked up at him, dimly recognizing him from somewhere, “What can I for do you?”

Martin beamed, “Got it.”

The man looked at him curiously, tilted his head a bit, “What’s that?”

 Martin slapped his hand on the counter just like the “Big fat cammo redneck” had done about 3 weeks before.

Martin removed his hand and the man looked down puzzled at the little black book there on the countertop . On the front was printed “Glaxo” in gold letters.

The man looked up at Martin, “What?” he said, shaking his head, confused.

“License to kill!” Martin yelled.

The man saw the little automatic in Martin’s hand and quickly bent sideways as if reaching for the floor. Martin shot him in the ear.

Martin wriggled up, clawed his way over the top of the counter so he could look down at the man.. He was sprawled there, motionless. Martin noticed the man had a little gun strapped to his leg, above his ankle. Huh, so that’s what he was reaching for, Martin concluded, stupid ass place to keep a gun, especially when you really needed one. His own expert opinion on the man’s gunmanship startled him. Martin shook his head, he was getting good at this gun business. He wished “Big fat cammo redneck” would’ve walked in just then.

His attention was drawn back to Dr. Reynolds, he heard something about biopsies. Reynolds was saying, “I pity the poor doctor who is right now having a conversation with the patient whose biopsy was switched with yours, Martin. As well as you can probably all too well understand how that unfortunate patient must feel.”

Martin tried to focus, had he said something about gastric reflux? GERD? He looked down, he blinked, rubbed his eyes. Reynolds was facing the window, hands clasped behind his back, shaking his head and laughing, “You’re a lucky man, Martin. You’ve been given a new lease here.”

“What a mistake,” he continued, marveling, “I trust you know how it is. Same biopsy, same symptoms. Similar names, same pathologist, lab etc. it happens. I apologize for this. I only hope this good news will erase the memory of what you’ve been going through these last few weeks.” He added that last part, hopefully, defensively. Martin thought about why. Because Martin might want to conduct business on him? Nothing personal?

Well it was personal now. Somehow there were 3 holes in Reynold’s back. It looked like it was sizzling in there, smoke came out too. Then blood. Dr Reynolds was hurled against the window so hard it cracked. Martin was surprised, he looked down at his hand. Yes, the gun was there. He felt vaguely uneasy, Reynolds wasn’t on the list.

Somehow he was at his car. Sirens were on the way, approaching. Just one more thing left to do  now. He slammed the door.

The police surrounded the car and waited. Dispatch had told them a caller from inside the doctor’s office had reported seeing a muzzle flash from within the vehicle, heard a muffled report. The cops could see Martin in there, he wasn’t moving. They finally approached the car, slowly, weapons trained on the motionless shape inside. When they finally flung open the car door they discovered that there was a bullet hole in the center of Martin’s……dashboard.

Martin stared down at the paper the screw had given him. It was from his attorney. Detached, he read it again:

I am informing you that your wish has been granted. The mandatory appeals have been exhausted and I shall field no further appeals on your behalf. As per your request all possible delays and stays have been waived. I hope you know our firm gave your defense our best efforts.

Execution, by lethal injection, is scheduled for 12:01 AM, on third of November, next….

It went on about his family, estate etc, just a bunch of talk. He looked up at the calendar over the Screw’s desk. The third? Let’s see, from today that gives me, exactly…. six weeks.

He picked up his little black book. He had been making very many revisions and additions to it. He considered the law firm, no, they did their best. Who else did he know? The screws? The bastards. But they were just doing their job, he only put the names in his book of those who did him wrong of their own volition.

It made him feel good, this book. He considered and then wrote in it again adding the names of a couple of the cons who gang raped him in the Paint Shop. And how about that kid back in camp? What was his name? The guy who put the Ex Lax in his cocoa?

The Catacombs Of Yucatan

CHISAGO COUNTY PRESS, 10/31/91

SCRIBE’S CORNER, page 4                                                  

                                                                            

                                                                             The Catacombs of Yucatan

                                                                                  By Jeffrey Smith

                    Richie had never meant to go into that cave, but he had to now. His dog, Dusty, was down in there. He stooped to light the lantern.

                    Nobody had been in there for years. Nobody even went close to it anymore. Even the owner of this land now lived in Florida and the old souvenir shop near the road was a pile of debris – a victim of some forgotten and fierce summer thunderstorm.

                    Richie didn’t like this place. None of the kids from around Black Hammer ever played or explored here. It wasn’t their parents’ stern warning that kept them out – parental cautions were often an invitation to forbidden pleasures.

                    No, what kept them away were the things their parents didn’t say; troubled allusions and vague mutterings about tourists, an entire family from Iowa, who were lost down there in the 1930’s, shortly after this attraction had opened. And, a whispered legend about the young constable who, after searching in vain for that family, returned to the surface as a white haired, bulging-eyed, gibbering idiot.

                    Even area farmers pastured their sheep and other livestock away from the cave. There had been too many lost animals over the years, probably victims of one of the yet to be discovered sinkholes common to the Driftless Region.

                    It gave Richie the creeps just to bicycle past this place and, when Dusty chased up that rabbit, it was with a sense of dread that he wheeled down the fading track to the cave’s entrance in their pursuit.

                    His hesitation had been costly. For by the time he drew near he managed only a glimpse of Dusty wriggling through a gap in the boards which had sealed the cave since that unfortunate constable stumbled out there over 20 years before.

                    He heard Dusty’s excited barking for several minutes it seemed. At fist, they boomed, and then echoed as if there were a thousand Dusty’s down there. Eventually the sounds became tiny, feeble, and then, disappeared altogether.

                    He had pried off boards, creating an opening he could squeeze through. Shivering in the dark, he’d called and called and hollered until he was hoarse. His voice ricocheted into the depths and sometimes would boom back at him. It sounded frightened. He would need a light.

                    After frantically pedaling home, he had made off with his pa’s lantern. More of a challenge was obtaining the matches. He had to appear nonchalant while his mother insisted he have some cookies and milk. He finessed the matches when his mother went to the clothesline.

                    Finally he was back and breathless. The lantern sputtered and lit. Pausing outside, he considered the cave. The entrance; with its few missing boards looking like toothless gaps in a frown of unspeakable sorrow, sent a shudder through him. Richie was losing courage.

                    But, Richie’s dog was his best true friend. It was inconceivable when pa had let him keep Dusty. He knew his pa would never enter the  cave ‘for just a dog” and would probably never let him get another. In any event, he was sure to get a whipping if his father found out about his being in here.

                    He looked up at the weathered, faded sign. He read it aloud, “The Catacombs of Yucatan,” and wondered what in the dickens that could mean.

                    “If it was me lost in there,” he vowed, “Dusty would come and get me.” He stepped inside.

                    Several yards ahead a mist and rotting stairway descended into the depths of the cavern. Carefully, in the flickering light of the lantern, he inched forward. Clutching the now flimsy railing with his freehand, he tested every timber. It was painfully slow going.

                    Once, after many steps, he craned his neck back to see the opening he had made in the entrance. Viewed from below through this constricting tunnel it looked like a tiny blue sliver of light and seemed impossibly distant.

                    Down he went, fighting cloying spider webs and the cold. He reached the foot of the steps and followed the narrow, slimy corridor forward. Onward and down, he stopped occasionally to venture into side chambers with signs that identified them as “The Cathedral” or  “the Dungeon.”

                    Calling for Dusty, sometimes his voice would boom out and reverberate, returning to him sounding taut and hysterical. Other times, depending on the cave, his calls would sound puny and muffled – as if the best he could squeeze out was a squeak.

                    Frightened and alone, he plumbed the depths of that cave, He crept over spongy catwalks where, in the blackness below, he could hear cascading water and again a long forgotten sign would proclaim “Niagara of the North” or “Ghost Falls.”

                    He followed the ancient knob-and –curl electrical wires, stung overhead to illuminate the god forsaken hole for former paying customers.

                    He had lost hope by the time the wiring curved up and out of sight, perhaps to a now corroded bank of floodlights. He had reached the end of the line. A sagging railing surrounded the platform from whish, as one final sign read, “The Catacombs of Yucatan’ could be viewed.

                    Holding his lantern aloft he saw, in every direction, openings, fissures and tunnels, reaching out like black tentacles.

                    He bellowed one last throat torturing “ Dusteee!” Fragmented echoes returned and rebounded into a deathly quiet.

                    A single whimper disturbed the oppressive silence.

                    “Dusty!” Richie whirled and plugged off the walkway, following the sound into a crevice to his left, Now slipping though mud and clay, he could easily see tracks left by his big dog.

                    Following the trail, he stooped through an opening into a cavern. With the lantern held overhead, he viewed this new room with astonishment. The walls, as far up as his lantern could illuminate, were swathed in webs. Huge, thick mats of webbing extended everywhere and swirled upwards out of sight.

                    A  slight movement caught his attention. There, hopelessly bond in a tangle mass of web, was his dog. With sides heaving and his snout covered with foam, the young animal was exhausted and spent from his fruitless attempts at escaping from the sticky net.

                    Setting his lantern down, Richie noticed something else. The floor in there was covered with a layer of bones. Picked as clan as matchsticks, they provided a shifting and uneven carpet underfoot.

                    Kneeling beside his friend, he scratched an exposed ear. The dog whimpered again and managed a feeble was of its tail, despite the binding webs.

                    “Hang on Dusty,” he said  dragging out his knife, he began sawing at the tough strands.

                                                                                                    **********

                    Like some kind of sinister telephone operator, the huge arthropod tended to a network of unimaginable complexity and sophistication.

                    She was the last of her kind. But what she lacked in family and kin, she made up for in size, cunning and malevolence.

                    It was her unquenchable appetite that had sustained her for these centuries. A hunger which consumed her being and manifested itself in the utter devastation of any creature unfortunate enough to invade her domain.

                    That same appetite, now aroused, had alerted her to some remote disturbance in the system she had so painstakingly constructed. Delicately she scampered to the side. Yes, here the minute frequencies and vibrations were a bit more distinct. She traipsed several miles to the east and down. Oh, it was far distant, but her instincts told her is was definitely a matter requiring her immediate attention and it felt as if damage was being done to her network.

                    Rage welled up inside her. Fury and hunger spurred her. Bolting along her ancient thoroughfares, arcing over blind escarpments and ripping along the side of chasms, she was a belligerent wisp, a gossamer juggernaut.

                                                                                                    **********

                    Nearly exhausted, he had finally managed to free Dusty. Dusty was played out for sure, the way it looked, and might need to be carried. But first, he’d have  to saw his own his way out of the web – for his own foot had become entangled in the sticky stuff while freeing Dusty.

                    While he worked he wondered why there weren’t any spiders around, seeing how webs stretched out in every direction. Just then Dusty growled, a deep menacing rumble from somewhere deep and ancient inside the animal. Dusty was looking overhead and Ritchie, following the dog’s pointed gaze, saw her descending as quietly and quickly as a paratrooper commando from above.

                    Scrambling through the shamble of bones, he chose a weapon: a stout blade – like club. )Actually it was the femur form the father of that long-departed family form Mason City, who had disappeared down here in 1937.)  He brandished it in front of himself.

                    Purposefully, without hesitation, the spider advanced…..black and huge and hairy, easily the size of a pony. It minced tis way across the scattered bones, airy like a ballerina. Certain of her prey, she raised two legs like pinchers.

                    A grey shape lunged out the gloom. Snapping and snarling it severed a leg from the spider as effortlessly as if it was an articulated crystal stem.

                    Coiled and crouching, teeth exposed in a vicious growl, Dusty leapt again towards the now unsteady creature.

                    This time , however, she was prepared and caught him in midair and hurled him, thrashing, to the floor.

                    With one leg pinning the whining dog below her, the spider slowly lowering herself towards his thrashing dog. Richie desperately pummeled her and raked his club uselessly across her back. Still, her scissoring, serrated jaws descended.

                    In a final act of despair, Richie seized his pa’s lantern and hurled it at the spider. The lantern shattered, gushed kerosene over the monster, setting it ablaze.

                    The creature twirled and spun, canting onto its side and flailing its legs wildly. It reared up like a bronco, now a pillar of flames, and flung itself against a sheet of web.

                    It ascended upwards then, like a meteor, at an astonishing rate, each singular footfall igniting other patches of the web. The ratcheting fireball disappeared into the upper reaches of the cave leaving a path of fire in its wake.

                    The cavern was ablaze and filling with choking smoke. Dusty was on his feet, wobbly, but at Richie’s side. As Richie stooped to ecape the inferno he glimpsed a fluttering movement near his foot.

                    The rabbit, wild eyes, struggled in a wad of web. As the flames danced towards it, Richie grasped the trembling mass, tore it free and, following Dusty, dove back through the crevice.

                    Smoke soon obscured what little light escaped through the openings behind them. Without the lantern, Richie soon found himself in pitch darkness.

                    He soon lost his footing, as well as his directions, and began crawling through the muck on the cave’s floor. Thinking of the many catacombs, the rotting catwalks over chasms, and the endless steps, Richie began to sob.

                    A familiar snout nuzzled him. Grasping Dusty’s collar, his dog began to lead him to the surface.

                    It was an agonizing journey in that total darkness, he bashed his head several times on overhanging rocks and outcroppings. He stumbled on through, grasping both the rabbit and the dog’s collar and Dusty never wavered.

                    Choking, they finally reached the greasy stairway and the final grueling ascent. With their protesting lungs burning form the thickening smoke, they finally clattered into the boards which had sealed the cave entrance.

                    Squeezing through the gap he had made, Richie realized it was night. He collapsed in the sweet fresh air beneath a sky full of stars which burned with an intensity, the likes of which he’d never again witness. Dusty was licking his face.

                                                                                                    **********

                    Smoke continued to belch out of the Catacombs of Yucatan for nearly six weeks that summer. Smoke filled caves as distant as Harmony and Cherry Grove. Many undiscovered sinkholes were revealed during that time due to the telltale wisps and smoked issued from fissure in exposed rock on hillsides as far away as Hop Hollow, Peacock Ridge and Cabbage Ridge. Even storm sewers in  downtown Caledonia had smoke curling up through their grates.

                    Water wells in the regions were spoiled with a smoky taste for awhile. Indian Spring and other springs in the area carried bits of soot and ash.

                    No one noticed a decline in the number of lost livestock. The pattern had been too random and widespread.

                    What was noticeable, however, was the demise of many mature trees in the area. It seems trees, sometime an entire grove, would topple for no reason, exposing charred an absent root systems.

                    The local residents were fearful of volcanoes. A  university professor was summoned form his visit with relative near Brownsville down on the Mississippi. He dispelled fears of volcanic activity.

                    However, he was reluctant to enter the catacomb and pronounced the smoke’s appearance as being related to “An unexplained phenomenon.”

                    A nearby evangelist seized upon the smoke as a handy and visible example for the proximity of eternal damnation by claiming is was generated by “The embers of hell itself.”

                    If Richie would’ve heard that one, he might’ve agreed.

                                                                                                    **********

                    Nearly 10 years after the last of those subterranean fires had smoldered and died, Richard found himself outside of a large institutional appearing building on the campus of the Regional State Hospital.

                    For almost a decade he had made very pointed, yet discreet interrogation of his parents, their friend and other in his community.                   Upon entering the building he was shown to a stooped old man. In the corner he sat alone in a wicker wheelchair. Long hair, unkempt, grew to his shoulders. The hair was, without exception, totally white.

                    After several unsuccessful attempt at engaging the patient in conversation, Richard leaned over and whispered into his ear: “I was down there, I saw it. I killed it.”

                    As he straightened up to leave, the old man’s trembling hand shot out and grasped Richard’s arm.

                    Richard looked down, there were tears in the old constable’s eyes.

                                                                                                    The End