tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-72847839738970528692023-11-15T09:42:11.434-08:00The Backpack JournalistCovering Mexico,
the United States
- and CanadaMichael J. Fitzgeraldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09840859418177870381noreply@blogger.comBlogger17125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7284783973897052869.post-37741979539698848472012-03-14T13:21:00.002-07:002022-01-25T16:03:53.810-08:00The Milagro in Santa Serena<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">The Milagro in Santa Serena</span></div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>(Copyright 2012, All Rights Reserved)</i></div>
<br />
<b>By Michael J. Fitzgerald</b><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-large;">A</span><span style="font-size: large;">mid all the worldwide 2012 hoopla and speculation about the end of days - by the devout, the doomsayers and the definitely deranged - a baby girl was born in the Pacific coastal Mexican village of Santa Serena at first light on Ash Wednesday morning. Her birth came just as the church bell was clanging loudly to call the faithful to a Roman Catholic Mass in the church by the town jardin.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">There was an unusually bright star still visible in the early light, though only a few people - gringos or Mexican - took much notice of it. And those who did were used to the bright starry skies that are routine along the sparsely populated stretches of the Pacific coast, thinking the star's brilliance was simply some quirk of the atmosphere or perhaps a planet orbiting extra close to the earth.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Joe Martin saw it, waking up on the beach after a late-night margarita marathon that left his mouth cotton dry and his bladder about to burst.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">His six-month leave of absence from his California newspaper was nearly done; his book on the financial meltdown in California still only a notebook full of random ideas and two boxes of research materials.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">And his advance from his California book publisher was mostly gone.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">He stared at the bright star, wondering if the sand fleas had left him any spot on his body unbitten during the night. It would be a hour probably before Pablo would open the restaurant just above him and he could get some orange juice, maybe with a little vodka or tequila, to ease his pounding headache.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Then the star simply disappeared, or as Joe would later write, "It was as if God flipped a switch and turned the light off."</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">In a way, she had.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">---------------------------------------------------</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>T</b>he joke was as old as the U.S. space program:</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">A manned mission to the dark side of the earth's moon goes behind luna and lands, but is quickly out of radio contact.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">When the spacecraft emerges three days later, the commander radios the earth.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">"We have good news and bad news," he reports.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">"The good news is that God exists and lives on the dark side of the moon.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">"The bad news is, she is black and really pissed."</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">It was one of Joe's favorite jokes, particularly when he was around either racists or right-wing Christians who would try to bury him with arguments why he should hate a person of another race - or visit a particular Christian church to be enlightened.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">A few words about his Roman Catholic upbringing usually shut them up. If not, he would pull out the joke.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">On this particular morning, he was in no joking mood as he crawled out of his light sleeping bag. The night before he had gotten into a blowout argument with his best gringo friends in the village, who were concerned about his nearly non-stop drinking - and his obvious lack of interest in writing the book he had come to Mexico to work on.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Fran and Gregorio had known Joe for years in the U.S. in San Francisco, back when he was married and a 35-year-old investigative newspaper reporter on the fast track. So when he landed a book contract, they encouraged him to come and live in their upstairs guest casita, where he could work undisturbed and yet enjoy the ocean and surfing a block away as a break from writing about the economic disaster called California.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Instead of going home - after slamming a half-dozen of Pablo's industrial strength margaritas and cursing his friends - Joe Martin had gone back to the casita, grabbed his sleeping bag and come back to sleep on top of a surfboard while he watched the stars.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Had he not been so drunk, he might have also seen when the bright star appeared suddenly in the east, like a someone threw a switch.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">----------------------------------------------------</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>M</b>oira Walsh saw the star that morning, too, though in her case it was from her bed in a rooftop palapa only a short walk from where Joe Martin had been sleeping while the bugs chewed on him.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">She hadn't taken too much notice at the time. And now her attention was focused between her legs, where midwife Lupita Alvarez was cleaning her up after a birth that Lupita said was 'muy facil' (very easy) compared to any she had attended to with Mexican women in the village.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Thirty-eight-year old Moira was the first gringa Lupita had helped with a birth and Lupita wondered if all gringa women had children so easy.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Moira's best friend Carlos was in the room, too, holding the newborn in its swaddling blanket. The infant's face was perfectly sculpted and already her eyes were open, fixing Carlos with a solid stare.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">"Is it usual for a baby to have its eyes open?" he asked. "And she is smiling at me, I swear. Smiling."</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Indeed, the hours-old infant was smiling and it was a smile that people later would report had the power to make grown men burst into tears when she fixed her eyes on them, even the gruffest, macho and most powerful.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">The smile was later credited with the power to bring people out of deep depressions and making the stingiest of people generous.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Moira Walsh's daughter, they would whisper, was an angel.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">-------------------------------------------</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>F</b>ran and Gregorio made their way down the hill towards the small Catholic Church along with villagers and some vacationing Americans. Now in their mid-50s, they had returned to the Catholic Church - at least the Mexican Catholic Church - after a 30-plus year hiatus during which they married and raised their children.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">In retrospect, they wished they had raised their children with some kind of religious upbringing, but didn't dwell on it much. One day, shortly after they had moved to the village five years ago, on a whim Gregorio sat in the back of the church at a Mass and was impressed with the joyfulness of the service, even if he could barely figure out what the priest was saying during his homily.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">"It's so different from the U.S.," he told Fran that day. "You can feel it in the church."</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Fran thought what Gregorio was experiencing was ignorance because of the language barrier until she went with him to a Mass a few weeks later.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Now they rarely missed Mass when they were home.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">This morning they were shocked to see an American priest on the altar, standing alongside the village's regular padre, Father Alberto Morales. The American priest had a shock of red hair that screamed of Northern Europe and a face that looked like a map of Ireland. Occasionally there were visiting priests, but they usually were from other parts of Mexico and spoke in dialects even harder for Gregorio and Fran to understand.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Father Michael O'Brien's Spanish proved to be classic Castillian, which perplexed some of the villagers but was welcomed by Fran and Gregorio who had studied the more formal Spanish before moving to the village. Five years into living in Mexico they were still occasionally struggling with the oddities of the local Mexican slang.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">"There has been much said about this importance of this calendar year - 2012," Father O'Brien said, first in Spanish, then repeating his remarks in English for the 20 or so gringos scattered about in the church.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">"Time to God is meaningless. Except in the sense that God knows that our time, the time of man, is limited here on Earth. In heaven, we will be with him forever. And so it is important to use our time on earth to his greater glory.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">"The year 2012 is like all years and we should always be prepared for the return of our lord, Jesus Christ. And to face him."</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Fran and Gregorio listened to the Irish's priests homily, thinking how much better it sounded in Spanish and reminding them of the contrast between this slightly dour visiting Irishman and Father Morales who sang nearly every phrase during Mass and who could barely contain his glee anytime he was up on the altar or greeting people in front of the church.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">It was right about then when 94-year-old Tia Mele, the oldest Mexican woman in the village and wheelchair bound for more than 40-years, stood up and walked to the front of the church where she started to sing in a powerful, melodic voice.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">People called it a miracle.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">It wasn't the last one that day.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">---------------------------------------------------</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>P</b>ablo served Joe Martin his orange juice straight, with a double-shot of tequila on the side, as requested. Pablo had seen Joe drunk plenty - practically every night for months since Joe had made an unsuccessful pass at a 30-something-year-old American woman on vacation who was impressed that Joe was a writer, less impressed that he was over 50 years old and had trouble enunciating any word with more than one syllabus after two drinks.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Right after that, Joe started coming in before lunch for a quick drink or two. He told Pablo he was able to write so fast in the mornings he could get his work done in an hour a day.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">If only that had been true.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">But last night Pablo had witnessed Joe turn belligerent for the first time - and towards his gringo friends who were forever bragging to people in the bar about the important book Joe was writing and how he was a famous author from San Francisco.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">On the deck looking out at a half-dozen surfers grabbing the first good sets of the day, Pablo saw that Joe was spiraling downward to the bottom of his life. Pablo's long-dead father, a farmer from the Mexican state where real tequila is made, would have said that maybe Joe was getting ready to eat the worm at the bottom of the bottle.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">From two blocks away, the church bell started ringing, a persistent clanging that made Pablo wonder if some children had grabbed the bell rope and were making sport. But it didn't stop and Pablo knew that Father Morales would not allow it to go on without some reason.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">In the centuries before, the church bell would be rung like that to warn of attacks by Indians, banditos or even the Mexican Army on a raid for supplies.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">"Pablo, que es?" Joe asked. "La campana?"</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Pablo just shrugged his shoulders, aware though that the clanging was getting on Joe's tender nerves.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Then a 10-year-old boy best known in the village for convincing naive tourists he needed money to help his sick mother roared past the deck at Pablo's shouting that people should come to the church to see el milagro.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">"The miracle will be if that kid lives to see adulthood," Joe mumbled to himself.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">The boy's mother actually was a successful street vendor who thought her son was in school every day while he was out caging money.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">But when a second child - a six-year-old girl neatly dressed in her school girl uniform - came roaring past shouting about a miracle at the church, too, Joe thought, 'Why not? I could use one, myself."</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">He asked Pancho to pour his orange juice - and the tequila - into a plastic cup to carry to church.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">For the first time in maybe months, Joe Martin's curiosity had been awakened, even if it was reeking of alcohol.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">It was a small miracle in itself.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">-----------------------------------------------------</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>M</b>oira Walsh looked out the window at the town and heard the persistent church bell calling the village. Next to her, the baby she had decided to call Isabel, was sleeping after Carlos had cradled her for nearly an hour, talking to her about anything he could think of. Whenever he spoke, she smiled at him, and he was mesmerized by the smile.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Baby Isabel's father was long gone, gone even before Moira realized that she was pregnant. Paulo was a tall, handsome Mexican man traveling through the village, dressed a monk's garb. He told Moira he was a pilgrim on a spiritual journey, headed to the Shrine of the Virgin of Guadalupe.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">He and Moira were alone together for just one night - a night marked by late-night drinking, smoking a lot of high-grade marijuana and endless conversation about the universe that lasted until dawn when Paulo told Moira he needed to continue his journey south to Barra de Navidad before he headed to Mexico City and the shrine.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Moira told her friends that nothing had happened - sexually - between she and Paulo in that one night, a least nothing that she could remember with any degree of clarity.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">But two months later there was no denying she was pregnant.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Now looking at baby Isabel , Moira saw her life taking a turn away from living day to day on a beautiful beach, flirting with tourists and Mexican men with equal ease whe not hawking her jewelry and artwork. Now she was a mother with the responsibility of a child, a responsibility that scared her a little, but filled her with joy, too.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Baby Isabel's eyes snapped open, as if she could hear the internal monologue of her mother about the future and the joy she felt. The same smile that had so transfixed Carlos came across Isabel's face, making Moira's tears well up.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">And as Moira cried and baby Isabel started making a gurgling noise that could almost be interpreted as a laugh, Moira noticed Isabel's eyes for the first time.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Her left eye was an incredibly deep ocean blue. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Her right was clearly the most beautiful shade of brown imaginable.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">And when Isabel opened her mouth to give that gurgling laugh again, Moira could clearly see inside her tiny mouth.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">There were two tiny baby teeth starting to show in Isabel's lower gums.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">-----------------------------------------------------------</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>A</b>s Joe arrived at the church all he saw was pandemonium. Half the people were on their knees, their eyes cast upward, others had gaping jaws as Tia Mele would let loose with one spiritual song after another while she stood next to the priests on the altar.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Father O'Brien, unfamiliar with Tia Mele's long-term confinement to a wheelchair was perplexed by the fuss and was urging Father Morales to get the singing and swaying congregation under control so they could complete the Mass.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Father Morales was crossing himself so fast it looked like he might poke himself in the eye and didn't seem to hear O'Brien at all.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Near the back, Fran and Gregorio were working their way forward, past the worshipers to get closer to Tia Mele. She was a favorite of theirs in the village and they frequently stopped by the chat with her in her small shack on a side street near their home.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Two years before, they had asked her if she would accept an electric cart to get around but she declined. She said her wheelchair - a gift of the village many years before - was good enough. When she couldn't get around it that, she would say, she would let God take her to heaven any way he wanted to.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Today it seemed like God might let her run there, Gregorio thought.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Joe tossed his orange juice and tequila into a trash can outside while he pulled out a small reporter's notebook and pen from his pocket. He looked like hell. His hair was matted from sleeping on the surfboard, his face unshaven, his clothes wrinkled and soiled beyond even the lax standards of this beachside village, used to tourists drinking too much and dressing inappropriately.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">He saw Fran and Gregorio moving up the side aisle toward the front and caught a smile from Fran that said his drunken ramblings and rage from the night before had been pushed aside. Gregorio motioned to him to come up front - and fast - and for a moment it seemed to Joe like perhaps there was some kind of medical emergency.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">The Irish priest's face was beginning to get the beet red, ruddy-look that Irish get when they have been into the whiskey for too long. Then the priest actually put a finger inside his clerical collar as if to let off a little steam.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Father Morales - who always talked to Joe about coming to church with Fran and Gregorio whenever they met - looked happy and bright while he tried to talk to Tia Mele, still belting out tunes like a Mexican Ethel Merman.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Joe pushed forward, trying desperately not to step on any of the people who had chosen to go from simply kneeling to becoming completely prostate on the church floor. Joe suddenly connected Tia Mele with the wheelchair and remembered that she was a local character and a favorite of Fran and Gregorio.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">As he got to the altar at the same time as his friends, Tia Mele stopped singing and the church went completely silent.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">"Mr. Joe Martin," Tia Mele said in perfectly accented British English, "Would you like to dance with me?"</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Fran looked at her husband Gregorio and nearly fainted.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">----------------------------------------------------</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>G</b>abriel, Michael and Christopher sat on a white marble bench, a flock of snow white doves in front of them.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">The trio's wings were neatly tucked behind them as they tossed peanuts a few at a time to the doves, who waiting patiently for each throw.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">In human terms, Gabriel, Michael and Christopher were an unmeasurable distance from the planet called earth, but simultaneously actually on earth, too.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">It was one of those ecclesiastical riddles one learns the answer to only after going to heaven.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">If you took away the white robes and the misty cloudy atmosphere that seemed all around them, the trio looked like three retirees on a park bench in Florida, a little bored and all buried in their own thoughts.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Gabriel threw enough peanuts to the doves to feed a small Mexican village - another side benefit for all heaven's inhabitants. You can eat as much as you want.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">But then he asked the nearly sleeping Michael and Christopher about Santa Serena.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">"So what exactly is going on in that Mexican village? Gabriel asked.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">"You don't know?" Christopher responded.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">"No," Gabriel said, "I am not omniscient, like She is, thank you very much."</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Michael shook himself awake.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">"Careful Gabe. That sounds very close to envy. And we can't have that can we?</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Gabriel stood up and waved his hand, clearing away the mist, revealing a scene of the Catholic Church in Santa Serena where Joe Martin was being dragged around in front of the altar by the ancient Tia Mele, doing something resembling a cross between the foxtrot and the Lindy Hop. He also looked like he might actually be enjoying it.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">"So, what exactly is that?" Christopher asked. "And don't say foxtrot if you don't want me to twist your wings.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">"I remember her. She used to travel a lot when she was young and carried my image on a medal around her neck."</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Michael leaned forward, absent-mindedly reaching in his robe for eyeglasses, a visual crutch he never had need of but a habit he had picked up when spending time on earth observing the Watergate hearings.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">"I see the hand of Sofia in this. She loves these little Mexican villages. Wait. I think that half-swacked guy dancing is on schedule for a suicide attempt pretty soon, isn't he?"</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Gabriel snorted. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">"Ooooh. So now who's trying to be omniscient?</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">--------------------------------------------</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>M</b>oira was wobbly as she came out of the tiny bathroom of her casita, Carlos on one arm, Lupita on the other.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Baby Isabel had been born hours before and Moira was just beginning to feel her strength come back.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Lupita gasped when she looked over at the small bassinet where Isabel had been sleeping before she and Carlos hoisted Moira out of bed for the bathroom trip.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Carlos and Moira stopped in their tracks, too.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Baby Isabel was not Baby Isabel anymore. She stood tall in the bassinet, spinning the mobile of dolphins and sea creatures around, as tall as the mobile was above the bed. Her baby hair was gone, replaced by nearly shoulder-length auburn tresses. And her baby diaper and shirt were gone, too. Now she wore a white, long-sleeved dress with gold trim that fit her perfectly.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Anyone walking into the room would have said she was five or six years old and dressed for a school play.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">And when she gave Moira big smile, there was mouthful of teeth showing.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">"Santa Maria," Lupita said, making the sign of the cross repeatedly.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Moira and Carlos maneuvered over to a pair of kitchen chairs, where they carefully sat down, never taking their eyes off the baby-now-child Isabel.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Isabel stopped smiling for a moment and looked at them curiously, like a child might do when presented with a new toy or something foreign to their experience.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">"Oh my God," Moira said. "She's going to say something. She's going to talk. Carlos, she's going to talk. Lupita, pienso que la nina va a hablar!"</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">"Es un milagro senora, a milagro," Lupita cried, dropping to her knees and beating her breast as she repeated "Santa Maria. Santa Maria, Santa Maria."</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Exactly what happened next was subject to debate, even among Moira, Carlos and Lupita.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Isabel either floated or stepped down from the bassinet onto the floor. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">And on what had been bare feet in the bassinet suddenly were wearing exquisite golden slippers.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">But each of the three adults agreed that they heard Isabel speak, each in their native language, the message exactly the same.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">"Take me to Father O'Brien in the church, please."</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">-------------------------------------------------</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>T</b>ia Mele sat in her wheelchair again, the same chair from which she sold small items every day, outside her home not far from the church. Many of the people in the church were already filing out, stopping to say hello to her and comment on the miracle of her walking and dancing before heading to their homes and into the village tell everyone what they had seen.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">The Mexicans Catholics seemed a little more sanguine about witnessing miracles than gringos, Joe thought, his heart still pumping hard from dancing.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Tia Mele said nothing, and seemed almost returned to the way she had been, except that the deep age lines in her face were gone and her sad smile had been replaced by one appropriate for a child seeing a birthday cake for the first time.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">After being whirled around, Joe had stood by while Tia Mele faced the congregation and sang one final joyful song before making her way slowly to the back of the church and her wheelchair.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Father O'Brien was sitting in the chair reserved on the altar for the priest saying the Mass and wiping his sweating head with a white handkerchief. He had given up trying to get Father Morales to control the service.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">In all the chaos, the Mass was actually never completed and O'Brien was trying to figure out how to get Morales back behind the altar to prepare Holy Communion for the handful of church goers who were not leaving.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">He was also trying to figure out who the disheveled man was by the altar who had been dancing with the Mexican woman. When O'Brien heard her speak English - with what he thought was a decidedly British accent - he began to wonder if he was headed down the road to the onset of the same Alzheimer's disease which had seized his Irish mother years before.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">I am only 60-years-old, Lord, O'Brien thought. Please spare me and let me be of use to the people.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Joe realized that he hadn't written down a single thing and motioned to Fran that he needed a pen. Somewhere in being grabbed by Tia Mele and twirling about, he had kept his reporter's notebook safe in his pocket but his pen had gone walkabout.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">And he needed to make some notes, he was sure.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">He also was developing a powerful thirst for a margarita - maybe several - but let his newsman's instincts keep him at the church where he knew he had just witnessed something incredible.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">He couldn't bring himself to call it a miracle. Too many years of starting out skeptical and then sliding to cynical as a newspaper reporter couldn't allow him label what he had seen as miraculous. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">But what would he call it, he wondered?</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">As Fran tossed him a pen from her purse, he looked up to see a young woman of maybe 20 years with sparkling auburn hair walking across the jardin towards the church, gold slippers on her feet and wearing a white dress trimmed in gold that made him think of a Hollywood movie representation of an angel.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">The people in the square were murmuring as she walked past. They were looking at her as if she was a movie star and while Joe couldn't understand all the Spanish, he heard the word "milagro" being said aloud repeatedly by dozens of people.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Later, Joe would write that a blind man begging by the fountain suddenly had his sight restored, a deaf six-year-old boy covered his ears when he heard sound for the first time in his life and a teenage girl on crutches whose legs were crippled from polio suddenly sported muscles in her calves and thighs and walked normally.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Joe could see the woman's eyes clearly from the front of the church as she entered, parting the crowd at the door. She never looking to the side, just straight ahead at the altar. She had a small smile on her face, though she looked serious at the same time.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">The Mexicans and gringos still in the pews in the church stared at her openly with an epidemic of signs of the cross breaking out.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">She stopped at Tia Mele's wheelchair for a moment and gently stroked the old woman's hair, then marched straight towards the altar where Father Morales stood with his mouth wide open, Father O'Brien clutching his crucifix in both hands over his heart.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">"God have mercy," O'Brien said. "God have mercy."</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">He need not have had any doubts.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">------------------------------------------</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>F</b>ather O'Brien clutched his crucifix ever more tightly as the woman approached the altar, her face changing into a shape that O'Brien thought looked a lot like his late sister Anne. His mind was racing. All his years of training as a priest, his work studying religious tracts and personal prayers had not prepared his to meet face to face with, well, what, he thought?</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">First a wheelchair-bound woman is singing and speaking in English - followed by her doing the Lindy Hop - and now a woman so beautiful and, well, frankly angelic-looking was coming straight to him, freezing time and space.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">He was afraid his heart would burst and he would have a heart attack.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">And he was afraid that this vision in front of him might appear to be a vision of heaven but in reality a representative of something much darker.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">She stopped at the foot of the steps leading up onto the dais where the altar was, as if she could feel his doubts and fears. She stood very still, watching him, her facial expression changing slightly in tiny waves that washed across her cheeks and eyes, not all at once.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">O'Brien was transfixed by her eyes - one blue, one brown - and couldn't get the thought out of his head that the woman's eyes were as hypnotic as a cobra's.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">"Padre," she said. "Padre, let me come to you. You have nothing to fear."</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">And while Father O'Brien seemed frozen in place, he was in good company.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Father Morales thought his feet had turned to cement.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">And Joe Martin, hungover newspaper reporter, was feeling disbelief, awe, relief and terror simultaneously when the vision in front of him turned her eyes fully on him and smiled.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">--------------------------------------</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>"T</b>he Miracle at Santa Serena" was a best-seller before a single copy hit the bookstores and the electronic book warehouses.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">It carried both Joe Martin and Father Michael O'Brien's names as authors, though much of the book was based on a series of newspaper and magazine articles written by Joe that had reached a worldwide audience.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">He couldn't keep up with the demand for his writing and when his California publisher asked him to drop his contracted project for a book about the Santa Serena "miracles", Fran and Gregorio said it was truly a miracle, certainly for Joe.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Television reporters from all over the globe were slow at first to take up the story amid a world in turmoil with environmental woes, politics and war dominating their airwaves. But when the film crews finally came to Santa Serena weeks after Ash Wednesday they found nothing much to film, except for Tia Mele who would stand up out of her wheelchair for a moment on request - for 100 pesos or more - but refused to utter a word of English, no matter how much people begged or how much money was offered.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">The villagers, ever resourceful, produced enough miracle souvenirs and related items that it doubled the average income of the village within weeks. And the tourists who flooded the streets were no longer just young surfers intent on finding the best ocean waves and a hookup with the sex of their choice after dark. The tourists now included many older, less margarita-inclined folks who dropped in to say prayers at the church and walked by Moira and Joe's house snapping photos like it was a shrine itself.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Moira and Joe were married a month to the day from Ash Wednesday, in the church where the angel who people claimed was the earthly embodiment of the martyred St. Sofia came. Fran and Gregorio stood up for them and both Father O'Brien and Father Morales conducted the marriage and Mass in a church packed to the rafters.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Tia Mele was asked to sing, but declined politely.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">On occasional mornings in Santa Serena, Joe and Moira would step out of Moira's house onto the veranda overlooking the street with baby Isabel in their arms where they would wave to the people walking by.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Joe had found Moira that Ash Wednesday morning at her house, cradling an infant in her arms when he left the church on Father O'Brien's insistent instructions to go help a young mother who was in desperate need, he said.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">The baby had one blue eye and one brown eye and smiled at Joe that day when he entered the room.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Joe later told Fran and Gregorio it was love at first sight - for all three of them.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">----------------------------------------------</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">On some early mornings, the new star that puzzled astronomers (finally named SDSSpX1 after a worldwide debate over where the star actually is) would appear suddenly in the coastal Mexican sky, then wink out sometimes just minutes later.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Other times it hung in the sky for an hour and only visible along a very short stretch of the Pacific Coast - a natural phenomenon that smashed so many established scientific theories it was regarded as a hoax by many astronomers, at least until they traveled to Mexico and viewed it themselves.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">No amount of video or still photography could convince them.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Whenever the star appeared, and baby Isabel was outside and awake enough to see it wink on, she would smile at it.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Someday she would tell the world its secret, just like she told Father O'Brien.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>#####</b></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><i>(Copyright 2012, All Rights Reserved)</i></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
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- Posted using BlogPress from my iPadMichael J. Fitzgeraldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09840859418177870381noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7284783973897052869.post-4797628827567277742010-08-06T08:28:00.000-07:002010-08-06T08:28:25.209-07:00Chapter 12 of the novel, The Talking Mime<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Chapter 12</b></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Not just a great brandy</b></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>W</b></span>hen we climbed into our aft cabin bunk that night - after an animated dinner with talk of hit men and crime - we could see the two guards posted on <i>The Talking Mime</i> and a Sheriff’s Department patrol boat tied off the stern.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">The water was lit up with the deck lights of the boat, casting a big pool of light for 100 feet around the boat and drawing hundreds of small fish to the surface, much to the amusement of the guards. I could tell I was getting into the spirit because all I could think was what a target the boat made, lit up like that, the guards clearly visible. Visions of one of the <i>Die Hard</i> movies - and an anti-tank weapon - flashing through my mind.<br />
The 'floater' off Breakwater Cove in Monterey, turned out to be a dead dolphin tangled in some very strong fishing line. Tragic enough for me, though. I love to watch the dolphins bounding around the boat when we sail.<br />
Still, that it <i>wasn't</i> a human corpse - and possibly the rest of the body that went with the errant hand that had landed on our deck carried by a seagull - was almost a letdown. I realized my patience for this mystery was growing thin.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">Suddenly I was tired of Capitola, the hand that had landed on my deck, the whole mess. I wanted to unhitch <i>Rocinante</i> in the morning and move further south, away from dismembered bodies and what felt like a pretty unfriendly town. I had been planning a summer of Southern California — warm beaches and sand — and this Northern California fog was starting to induce some serious depression.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">Nym was positively perky, furiously making notes on a yellow legal-size note pad. If that were me, the notes would either be for short stories or novels yet to be considered, or doodling while I avoided both. With Nym, it was her way of analyzing problems.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">I crept into the cabin with a small bottle of Bailey’s Irish Crème and two small glasses. I kept Bailey's on board as a hedge against nights when I couldn’t sleep. It was also there when I needed to slow Nym down to the speed limit so <i>I </i>could rest. Between all the coffee we had with Wilma Krebs in the morning and an afternoon of talking about the fingernails - and saving the <i>Talking Mim</i>e from sinking - we would be lucky to get to sleep before dawn.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">“For me!” Nym squealed, Bailey’s being one of very few alcoholic beverages she enjoyed. “I thought we were out.” Nym smiled, then gave me one of her looks that said she suspected I had other secrets stashed on the boat that she would either ferret out in the morning, or try to get out of me tonight before she would let me close my eyes.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">“There’s not a whole lot, but we can share,” I said.<br />
<br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b> W</b></span>hile Nym stared at her notepad and sipped from her glass I held up the large scale chart of Catalina Island, a few days of relatively easy sailing to the south where the water was most likely 70 degrees instead of the 55 here, the sun shone most days all day, and the water was so clear you could see your anchor in 50 feet of water.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">“Beaches, bathing suits, hot weather. Boys off the boat and safe,” I said very softly holding the chart in front of me. I took Nym’s glass of Bailey’s from her hand as if to fill it, holding it just beyond her reach.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">“Not funny Alex, give me the Bailey’s back. I’m trying to think.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">I held onto her Bailey’s and decided to try a little more nudging.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">“Swimming, fishing, <i>sunbathing</i>,” I said throwing my last trump.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">Nym looked over the top of her tiny reading glasses, cocking her eyebrow. “The boys haven’t had a chance at surfing here yet, so let’s save the warm water for later. And besides, Professor Cameron….”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">I winced at the <i>Professor</i> comment. We have an unwritten rule that says I don't call her <i>Officer</i> and she doesn’t call me Professor when we are on vacation. So I knew it meant that it signaled a serious discussion, prompting me to pour more Bailey’s in my glass and stretch my brain as to where I had another, unopened bottle stashed.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">“Besides, Officer Nym, we are on vacation. <i>We</i> as in you and me and the boys,” I said. “And unless you are not the woman I married, I think you are getting sucked in deep into all this intrigue. I’m not sure I want to spend our summer here. I just want the fog to lift and us to get underway.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">Nym ripped off the cover sheet of the pad she was working on, holding it up to me in much the same way as our cat Thompson (short for Hunter S. Thompson) would do with any of the prizes he found hunting in our small backyard. I exchanged it for the glass of Bailey’s, giving up for the moment but hoping that the break in her scribbling might give me her full attention and to show I was serious, and getting <i>more</i> so as the Bailey’s was taking hold of my tongue.<br />
<br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>I</b></span> looked at the notepad, marveling at the neat writing Nym always produced. My lecture notes, or notes for writing, had to be transcribed within a few days or I would lose their import forever. I kept notebooks in my desk at the university from years ago mostly as memorabilia. The handwriting in them was as unreadable as if they were written in Sanskrit.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">“I’ll play for a minute,” I said. “Who is this Charles Martell, other than someone who makes great brandy? You have him listed with a ‘Madame X’ and Rojas on the <i>Talking Mime</i>. I thought Wilma didn’t know who the other people on the boat were.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">My stomach began to sink slightly as I realized that Nym was not <i>just</i> doing some notes, but her brain was fully engaged, a wonderful thing to watch unless you wanted her to do anything else. Her concentration was startling.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">“Wilma didn’t know who they were, but that’s why you have to read newspaper articles more closely,” Nym said, her little grin getting bigger.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">She reached for the bottom of the bed, pulling a stack of newspaper clippings with a cover sheet marked “<i>Salinas Californian</i>,” shuffling the bits of paper until she found on from the social page from several weeks ago. I tried to remember when I saw her going through the papers and clipping, wondering if she ever slept or if I was getting dangerously oblivious to my surroundings.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">“OK,” she said, “Listen to this and you tell me. Quote: Charles Martell, owner of Martell’s Liquor stores of Salinas, Sacramento and Fresno missed Friday night’s Rotary Club installation dinner where he was supposed to be installed as membership committee chair. His wife Helga attended in his stead, accepting the chairmanship for him. Helga said he was on a fishing trip with his longtime friend Frank Parker. End quote. You have to love these small town newspapers Alex.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">I was happy to hear that I was back to Alex and ‘<i>Professor</i>’ had dropped out of the conversation. But I groped for something really detective-like to say.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">“Sounds pretty thin, Cameron,” I said in as gruff a voice as I could muster without breaking into a laugh. Then I gave up and chuckled. “Damn Detective, you are good. Are you going to row to shore and call Wilma tonight or save this good news until tomorrow.”<br />
<br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>N</b></span>ym smiled, watching me carefully roll up the chart of Catalina Island. It was obvious I wouldn’t need it for at least a few more days.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">“I want to investigate a little more about this Mr. Charles Martell before I call her.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">I sucked in a breath. “Nym, please just call Wilma and let her know what you think you found, otherwise…”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">Nym leaned forward. “Just one phone call Alex, I promise. Everybody gets just one phone call, right? Then I'll call Wilma.<br />
Oh, and I need to break our no-Intenet rule and take the ship's computer into shore." </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">I leaned my head back again the cabin wall and looked forward where Jacob and Jerrod were sitting on their bunk, looking back down the hallway at me. I felt my head nod with a resigned ‘yes’ motion, and got the inevitable war whoop that the boys have developed over the years into a family staple why Nym grabs the bit in her teeth on a case like this.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">“Whoop, Whoop, Whoop!” the boy screamed.<br />
"Mom's on the case. Whoop, Whoop!" </div><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">Chapter 13 - Goodbye Catalina? </span></b> </div>Michael J. Fitzgeraldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09840859418177870381noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7284783973897052869.post-7844059364194042402010-08-02T10:04:00.000-07:002010-08-02T10:16:09.989-07:00Chapter 11 of the novel, The Talking Mime<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;"><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Chapter 11</b></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>The Woman's Touch</b></span></div><br />
<b><span style="font-size: large;"> W</span></b>ilma Krebs settled her bulk onto the comfortable couch behind our teak table and ran her fingers through her hair with the same exasperated motion that most men do with shot haircuts.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">“There are advantages to having women detectives at crime scenes,” she said. “My men opened that container in the bathroom that said ‘shit paper’ written on it and when they saw it was full of toilet paper that’s as far as they got. Their mother’s probably did all the dirty work when they were kids. Christ, most of deputies wives probably pick up their husband’s dirty socks off the floor.”<br />
I wondered immediately if Wilma was married and what kind of relationship she might have with her husband. But I decided not to dwell on that thought for long and kept my eyes focused on the nearly brewed coffee.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">It turned out that Nym had seen the toilet paper receptacle in the forward head, noting from the dirt on the floor that it had been moved. On most boats — particularly where the captain is worried about stopping up the rubber hoses that transfer the waste water (and anything else) from the toilet to either a holding tank or overboard — there’s a cute container for soiled paper and strict instructions not to flush paper.<br />
<i> Rocinante</i> has the same rule, particularly because I have spent many hours freeing up stopped up toilet hoses.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">“The nails were wrapped up tight in a piece of off-white tissue, like kleenex,” Nym said. “That’s why I noticed. The tissue was a slightly different color than the toilet paper.” I marveled at the female immune system. I was sure if I stuck my hand in a poop-paper container without gloves, I would come down with a nearly instant case of Black Water Fever.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">We all stared at the five finger nails, now secure in a clear plastic evidence bag in front of Wilma on the table. I shuddered, thinking how they probably were removed from the hand. But I couldn’t see them closely enough to note any tool marks or breaks from being forcibly pulled out.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">“My instincts tell me that these are from the hand that landed on your deck. And we’ve got a pretty good idea whose hand it might be,” Wilma said, sighing. “Forensics will tell us for sure, but the nails go with hand. Christ, I hope the sheriff gets back early from his vacation.”<br />
I remembered <i>looking</i> at the hand on the desk in the harbormaster's office and couldn't remember if there were still fingernails attached. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">Jacob and Jerrod couldn’t contain themselves any longer and started firing questions at Wilma, doing a passable imitation of the White House press corps. I jumped in and shouted “Enough!” I could tell Wilma was going to tell us something, but only if we gave her enough room to let a few words out of her mouth.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;"><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b> W</b></span>ilma nodded toward the coffee mugs on the counter and while I found one that was relatively clean. She sighed again and started filling in some gaps while I played boat steward.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">“A month ago that boat pulled in full of party people, bunch of rich-looking people, pretty common this time of the year. About a half-dozen men and about as many women. You could tell they didn’t get out on the water much. All generally pale skins, except where they got sunburned sitting out on the decks of the bars in town. They threw a lot of money around for a couple of days, then a limo showed up one afternoon and took most of them up to San Jose and the airport.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">I set a coffee mug down in front of Wilma while she paused. She chewed on her lip, as if she was trying to decide whether to tell us anymore or just thank us.<br />
Maybe it was Nym's coffee, but she took a breath and let go again. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">“We talked with the limo driver who took the people,” she said after a moment. “And of them we think was Johnny Rojas, even though he used the name Franklin Parker when he was in town. At least he used some credit cards named Franklin Parker.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">Nym’s right eyebrow shot up slightly, but I wasn’t sure whether it was at the name Johnny Rojas or if it was Franklin Parker. One name sounded like a gangster to me, the other someone who gave a lot to charity, played polo on the weekends and probably sat on the boards of corporations.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">Nym shot me a look that clearly said, ‘don’t ask’ anything right now. So I picked up the coffee pot and waved it at Wilma, who shook her head and studied the outside of the mug for a moment. Then Nym spoke up for the first time since Wilma had started sipping the coffee.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">“I heard Rojas was killed in a boating accident more than a year ago,” Nym said. “It was in Florida, wasn’t it? Somebody supposedly ran over him with a big ski boat and he was hit with the propeller. They said they only found parts of him.”<br />
I envisioned a seagull flying the thousands of miles from Florida to California, all with an intact hand its mouth. I almost laughed.<br />
Nym caught my eye and gave me another sharp look. She knows how my mind works and most of the time would have laughed, too. But she was in full investigator mode and jokes were mostly off limits.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">Wilma waived her coffee mug at me, changing her mind about pumping more caffeine. “I had never heard of him until we got an anonymous call at the Sheriff’s Department that he was in town using the name Franklin Parker,” Wilma said. “We’re still not <i>sure</i> it was Rojas. We didn’t get any pictures of the guy, but a couple of the people who saw him here have I.D.ed a mug shot of Rojas. But it's not a sure thing.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">The boys were beginning to get restless, conditioned by years of television in which most mysteries are solved in a half an hour. I was getting a little impatient, too, and decided to go ahead and push a little.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">“I don’t mean to sound too ignorant, but I don’t think either the boys or I know who this Rojas is, or what the connection is to the fingernail collection you have on my table,” I said.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;"> Wilma actually smiled. “Fingernail collection. Ha! You’ve got a cop’s sick sense of humor,” she said. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;"><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b> W</b></span>hile I decided it was ok to beam just a <i>little</i>, Wilma opened the evidence bag and peered in. “I don’t know whose fingernails these are, but I do know that Johnny Rojas, aka Franklin Parker, aka William Patterson, aka Simon Sayes, was — hmm... maybe <i>is</i> — an honest-to-god hit man, according to what I've read. He was arrested several times in the late 1990s in New Jersey. Then he testified in one of the Gambino-family trials and disappeared. Maybe into the Witness Protection Program, I don’t know."</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">I couldn’t resist.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">“Simon Sayes? You're kidding. Simon says? Was he a comedian, too.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">Wilma laughed again, but quickly zipped up the evidence bag as if she was afraid the fingernails would leap out. “The FBI won’t tell us if they think he's still alive. So I think it might have been Rojas in town.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">It was an impatient Nym who asked the obvious question. “Did we find Johnny Rojas’ hand on our deck?"</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">Wilma slugged some coffee and then said a tentative <i>no</i>. “The hand was in pretty bad shape, but the thumb print was good enough to lift a print. doesn't match what’s on file for Rojas. But that diamond ring was seen on the hand of one of the other men from the boat. The whole bunch paid for everything in cash, so we didn’t get anything on the other people except for some physical descriptions. The waiters and waitresses were a lot more interested in how big the tips were than what these people looked like.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">I grabbed the coffee pot and leaned over to top off the coffee cup for her while she and Nym had a side conversation about the general lack of cooperation between the federal government and local authorities. I couldn’t understand much of it, except it sounded more like people complaining more about their HMO health coverage than some big crime scenario.<br />
"So, why did you search the boat in the first place?" I asked. "Were you looking for some clue where Rojas might have gone?"<br />
Wilma waved her coffee mug at me again and got her refill before answering.<br />
"Yes and no. You finding the hand with the diamond ring and the I.D. of Rojas made that boat a pretty hot ticket to take a look at," she said. "So you could say we were kind of fishing, at first."<br />
I winced at Wilma's bad joke, as Nym jumped in.<br />
"Whoever tried to sink the boat wasn't worried about these fingernails," Nym said. "There's something <i>else</i> on that boat they don't want anyone to find, I bet."</div> Wilma grinned and nodded her head and sighed, a big, <i>I'm-tired</i> sigh.<br />
"Absolutely," she said. "And thanks to all of you, we have some time to check out just what that is."<br />
We were just finishing up the pot of coffee - the boys <i>beaming</i> - when Wilma's police radio crackled to life with the voice of one of the deputies stationed on <i>The Talking Mime</i>.<br />
"Sheriff Wilma, dispatch just radioed and said they heard Monterey Harbor Patrol talking about someone spotting floater near Breakwater Cove a few minutes ago."<br />
I looked at Nym and mouthed the word "floater."<br />
"It's could be a human body, Professor Cameron," Wilma answered without being asked. "But it could also be a dead dolphin or something else."<br />
Jacob and Jerrod looked at each other and I knew a new term was now burned into their memories and would be popping up for the rest of the trip. And I also suspected that my crew would now suddenly be <i>much</i> more interested in leaving Capitola and heading south across the bay to the city of Monterey - perhaps to find a berth at Breakwater Cove Marina. <br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Chapter 12</b></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Not just a great brandy</b></span></div>Michael J. Fitzgeraldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09840859418177870381noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7284783973897052869.post-29255133560387624562010-07-29T07:40:00.000-07:002010-07-29T07:45:06.797-07:00Chapte 10 of the novel, The Talking Mime<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Chapter 10</b></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Five nails in a coffin</b></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>A</b></span>s I drove a wooden plug into the cut hose as a safety precaution, I heard the heavy thump of boots on the deck as the Santa Cruz County Sheriff's office came to the rescue. The voices were familiar - it sounded like the deputies from the day before - and then another raised voice starting barking orders, a voice that was <i>much</i> more familiar.<br />
It was Wilma Krebs, Santa Cruz County Undersheriff, who sounded simultaneously relieved and quite pissed.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">She and Nym exchanged words above decks in the cockpit and then I heard the sheriff's boat roar off, probably to get more pumps or to arrange for some other docking somewhere for <i>The Talking Mime</i>. One deputy stayed aboard, looking down at me through a porthole. When I gave him the thumbs-up sign to indicate we had found the leak, he grinned and stood up away from the window.<br />
Jacob and Jerrod had done a great job scrambling around the boat, closing all the thru-hulls and looking for any other leaks. The years in the boatyard working on our boat were paying off and I realized that they could probably start doing a <i>lot</i> more mechanical work about <i>Rocinante</i> in the future.<br />
It turned out that the toilet hose was the only real leak in the boat. All the rest of the thru-hulls were fine. And thanks to boys, closed and secured.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">"You people certainly get around," Wilma said as I came up into the cockpit. "I appreciate you saving this tub. And I want to see this cut water hose your wife told me about. Obviously we missed something yesterday when my men tossed the boat. I guess we'll look again when the water goes down. Somebody didn't want the boat searched a second time."</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">As she said, "we'll look again," Nym's eyes lit up almost as brightly as when I gave her a diamond anniversary band, 10 years into our marriage. Both boys popped their heads from the forward cabin, the same look across their faces.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">"Oh no! Absolutely <i>not</i>," Wilma said, raising her hands as if she was about to push against a wall. "You're civilians and even if you <i>found</i> something, then I can't use it as evidence."</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">I opted to stall for a moment, offering that while I certainly agreed, couldn't we help check the boat over for any other <i>possible</i> leaks, just in case? Whoever had tried to sink the boat, might have some other less-obvious devices ready to go. The thinly veiled excuse placated her just enough to nod her head slightly, which catapulted Jacob and Jerrod back into the forward cabin where they had been rummaging before she arrived.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">"You know Wilma, you don't exactly have a pristine crime scene here anyway," I said. "We've been crawling over every inch of the boat for the last half-hour looking for leaks. And now that we know someone tried to sink the boat, well, if you would tell us what you think might be here? We might have already seen something and not recognized it."<br />
<br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>W</b></span>ilma Krebs, sat down on the settee, looking like a female James Earl Jones and for the first time in my life, I understood what the expression, "weighing the alternatives," really means. Wilma tipped her head left, then right, moving her tongue around over her teeth like she had just eaten a doughy burrito. She looked up at the cabin ceiling for a moment, then back down directly at Nym, who hadn't said a word, but was wearing a slight smirk that told me I was on the right track with my argument.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">"OK. Here's the deal," Wilma said. "You keep looking around for <i>boat</i> problems that might sink this thing, while I wait for my deputies to get back here. I can't really say what we are looking for, but make sure we're going to float. My deputies aren't exactly skilled in this area."</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">Nym and Wilma disappeared into the aft cabin and head to take a look at the severed hose. I could hear them speaking in low tones and could only make out a brief "Jesus" from Wilma, probably when she saw the cut hose.<br />
Then I had another thought: Why not deputize Nym (or all of us) which would then make any evidence we found admissible in court.<br />
I plunked down at the navigation station in the main cabin, where nautical charts for the west coast of Mexico and Baja California were on the counter with casually drawn stars and pencil marks on them. There wasn't really a course plotted - there were no lines or compass headings to indicate direction or speed - but it looked like someone had wanted to highlight places on the coast. Most of the points were not ports, but anchorages.<br />
I turned on the Global Positioning Unit and electric chart plotter, which had several dozen saved programs of courses to west coast destinations, arranged alphabetically by port. It was quite different from my GPS. I have never totally trusted the electric charts on <i>Rocinante</i>, preferring instead to work on paper. I made a mental note to get Jacob to rearrange the waypoints in the GPS and electric charts to show me the most recently accessed charts and destinations, provided Wilma let us stay on the boat and tinker that much.<br />
Next to the navigation station there was a coffee mug, half-filled with what looked like days-old coffee, judging from the bacteria floating on top. I marveled that the cup stayed upright — considering how much the boat had listed at the worst of the flooding. It also was interesting that the deputies hadn't touched it. I kept my hands away from it, too.<br />
I could feel that the water in <i>The Talking Mime</i> was starting to drop quickly. The boat had stopped wallowing in the swell and was only about 10 degrees off level.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b> I</b></span> was making some progress on the GPS - to see where <i>The Talking Mime</i> had likely come from the most recently - when I heard Nym call me from the aft cabin.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">"Alex, Wilma's going to come over to <i>Rocinante</i> when the boat is all pumped out and secure. And they are going post a guard here. Why don't you and the boys go back over and put on some coffee. One of the boys can come back in the dinghy in a half-hour or so if I need a ride over. Or I can catch a ride with Wilma on the sheriff's boat."</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">I was <i>clearly</i> being dismissed, as my coffee is <i>so</i> bad, some of my faculty colleagues at the university boycott the pot in the faculty lounge if there's any chance I've been near it. But it was obvious Nym wanted a few moments with Wilma without any other ears around. My adrenalin had worn off anyway and a cup of coffee - even mine - sounded good.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">It took a measure of stern fatherly urging to get the boys to disengage from the forward cabin where they were looking through some magazines. But I drew a happy sounding war whoop from both of them in the dinghy when I told them the undersheriff was coming to <i>Rocinante</i> for a visit. They were still bouncing around as we were about 100 yards away, when Nym came out on the stern and shouted for us to come back.<br />
"Hey! I'll go with you. Wilma is too nice to make her suffer through your coffee."<br />
I ignored the insult as we rowed back toward <i>Rocinante</i>, the mid-morning sun feeling good. I could feel the day slipping away from me at light speed. I had wanted to begin a draft of new book on the trip, a way of avoiding several unfinished manuscripts in my desk back in my university office. But so far the sailing life - and this adventure - was intruding. Then again, I was just procrastinating, too.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">Wilma had said she and the lone deputy on board would be fine - the boat seemed safe and was floating level when we left. And the sheriff's boat was already at the dock near the Anchor Inn and would likely return shortly.<br />
<br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>T</b></span>he boys were watching a pod of dolphins in the distance, and Nym had a mysterious smile on her face. I knew that once we got aboard <i>Rocinante</i> I would hear a preview of what Wilma was going to tell us. Or perhaps they found something, I thought. Most of the time, Nym likes to treat Jerrod and Jacob like the Hardy Boys. But this particular mystery was too close to us and had enough danger that she seemed to want to keep them at a distance. Criminals and their minds is her area of expertise anyway, not mine, so I rowed and made some mental notes on what I wanted for a late breakfast or lunch and tried to guess if we would end up dining with Wilma.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">I saw the sheriff's boat leaving the dock, where the breakfast crowd had gone back inside as it appeared the boat was safe after all. We clambered aboard <i>Rocinante</i>, and, predictably, the boys quickly commandeered the dinghy to row over toward the dolphins.<br />
Seeing some fog blowing in, I threw them two windbreakers and a gratuitous "be careful," as they rowed off.<br />
In the cabin below, Nym started the coffee while I waited for her to break silence.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">Finally, I gave up and asked. "Is it a sorority secret? You know the boys might not be gone long. They'll be back for food as soon as they realize they haven't eaten."</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">Nym sat down on the settee before speaking, looking at that back of her hands for a moment. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">"I think I found his fingernails," she said, a small smile growing as she spoke.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">"Whose fingernails?" I asked, then I realized quickly who she was talking about.<br />
"<i>Kee-rist</i>!" I said.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">"Yes, I think so," Nym said. "Five entire fingernails. From the hand we had on our deck."<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Chapter 11 - The Woman's Touch </b></span></div></div>Michael J. Fitzgeraldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09840859418177870381noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7284783973897052869.post-29529678593835600352010-07-20T15:27:00.000-07:002010-07-20T15:27:34.176-07:00Chapter 9 of the novel, The Talking Mime<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Chapter 9</b></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Shouting fire in a crowded theater</b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;"><br />
<b><span style="font-size: large;"> W</span></b>hen someone yells "the boat is sinking," aboard a cruising sailboat - and you <i>happen</i> to be the captain - it's about the worst thing you can possibly imagine. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">And when you find out <i>your</i> boat is <i>not</i> sinking and that the person who told you it <i>was</i> is within reach, their life as they have known it is over — at least on <i>Rocinante</i>.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">As I snapped out of my sleep, I assumed that nearly $150,000 worth of fiberglass, teak and loving affection was in trouble and maybe headed for the bottom of the bay, which I knew was 20 or 25 feet below me. In seconds, I was calculating salvage costs in my head, wondering how quickly the boat could be going down, where all the thru-hulls were located, and any tiny errant leaks I had been ignoring but simply pumping out of the bilge out every day.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">Oddly, I could tell that Nym and the boys seemed clear of the boat, their voices carrying from above me down to the aft cabin where I was still stretched out trying to sit up, my notebooks crashing to the cabin sole with an assortment of pens, pencils and other detritus slipping across the cabin. I mentally prepared a list of things I needed to grab, if <i>Rocinante</i>'s bilge pumps failed to get enough water out of the ship for me to see what might be filling her up.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">And then I thought it was all some kind of really awful bad dream.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">I could still hear the shouts of Jacob, then Jerrod, saying "It's sinking. Dad! It's sinking," but their cries were getting fainter and fainter as I sat up. I stereotypically pinched myself to see if I was awake, a trick my mother taught me when I had nightmares as a child.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">I swore at the welt I raised on the back of my hand and scrambled into the main cabin where a quick visual survey of the cabin told me the boat was upright and seemed fine. I bolted up the companionway ladder to the cockpit, thinking that maybe it was the <i>dinghy</i> was swamped with the boys and Nym aboard.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">I could hear more voices as I popped out, neatly putting my hand on the railing where a seagull had just deposited a present.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">Nym and the boys were in the dinghy all right, but it was fine, listing slightly to port as it headed across the water toward a <i>badly</i> listing <i>Talking Mime</i>. <i>The Talking Mime</i>'s deck rails were clearly visible with the yellow crime scene police tape. The starboard side was still about two feet above water, when it should have been four feet at least, a telltale that there was a lot of water below decks sloshing around. With the heavy — and 10 foot tall — flying bridge above decks, there was a danger the boat could just roll on its side.<br />
If it did, it would sink very fast.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">"Come back! Wait! Hey," I shouted to my crew. They were nearly halfway there. And I didn't want the boys to get aboard <i>The Talking Mime</i> and go below. They might be trapped if the boat rolled over and although they believe themselves to invulnerable, I know they are not. I shouted again, then realized that I would have as much luck recalling the charge of a battalion of Bengal Lancers than getting the boys — or Nym — to come back.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">The twins had spent the last five years hanging around in boatyards and helping with maintenance on <i>Rocinante</i> and I was confident if there was an electric bilge pump switch to throw, they would find it - if it wasn't already below the rising waters in the cabin. I was worried about random electrical currents shooting about in the cabin if the ship's batteries were below the water. If that were true, the pumps might not work at all anyway.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">I watched through the field glasses as Jerrod and Jacob scrambled out of the dinghy. Jerrod went into the cabin, probably look for a bilge pump. Nym stayed in the cockpit of <i>The Talking Mime</i> where I could see her going through the lockers in the back, where an emergency pump might be found.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">I turned toward the shore where the remnants of the breakfast crowd had gathered on the deck of the restaurant to watch the show. Already, Jacob was rowing back to me in the dinghy, throwing a small wake, he was pulling so hard. I hoped that his leaving his mother and brother on <i>The Talking Mime</i> was a sign that Jerrod had already found the switch for the pump to save the sinking boat. But I was still concerned that <i>any</i> pump could overcome the water that might be coming in — and pump out what was already making <i>The Talking Mime</i> roll like a drunk on Saturday night.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">"Dad! Dad!" </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">Jerrod was 50 yards away, half standing up in the dinghy, his voice carrying across the gulf. "Mom wants your big flashlight. And Jerrod wants our extra pump."</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">I dove back belowdecks, cursing silently when my Eveready Commander flashlight was missing from its hook, its lens cap mysteriously sitting on my navigation station, an indicator that the body of the flashlight and the batteries were in the V-berth where the boys slept, part of some electronic experiment going on. My main backup flashlight — hidden in the compartment with the cleaning supplies — was where it was supposed to be and by some miracle so was my portable electric bilge pump, which gave out its signature groan when I threw the switch to test it.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">I grabbed four life jackets on my way back up the ladder, just in time to hear Jacob unceremoniously slam the dinghy into the side of <i>Rocinante</i> in his excitement. I tossed the life jackets in, holding onto my flashlight and bilge pump, beginning my lecture even before I lowered my rump onto the rear seat in the dinghy. "You guys should not have gone over to that boat. It could sink in a second," I said, knowing it probably wasn't true, but certainly sounded convincing.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">"Mom said you would be mad, but you would've gone over if you had been in the dinghy already."<br />
It turned out that the Nym and the twins had been heading over to <i>The Talking Mime</i> to take a look when they saw that the ship was listing badly.<br />
That's when the shouting started to wake me up.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">I opted to put on my brooding, resigned look as we covered the distance between the boats. Jacob's wrestling muscles translate well for pushing our 11-foot hard frame dinghy through the water. From 100 yards, I could see the outlet for <i>The Talking Mime</i>'s bilge pump <i>which was </i>putting out water at a furious rate, and I wondered for a split second if Jacob had started the engine and was using its water pump to empty the bilges. There was no tell-tale smell of diesel burning, though, and my respect for the power of the pumps on the boat went up.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">Nym met us at the stern of the boat, grabbing the lines and acting quite official. "I think it might have been the sharpshooter," she said as I climbed aboard. 'That dog didn't have that much blood around it. I think maybe a couple of his shots went wide in his panic. he could've ripped through the bottom."</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">The rail on the boat did seem to be rising now, and while I could see some water inside the cabin on the floor, it was only a few inches deep on the low side. Nym's theory dovetailed with my assessment of the competency of at least on the one deputy who had done the shooting. And if she was right, we could be looking for a couple of holes least than an inch in diameter — still a problem, but fixable if there were some emergency plugs on board.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">Both boys were crashing about below on the boat, doing a passable imitation of the deputies who had been going through the boat hours before. "Look around for the batteries and close all the thru-hulls," I shouted. A backsiphon could only add to the incoming water while we looked for the source. Jacob found the batteries — six giant, golf-cart type units, enough to keep the pumps working for hours if necessary, and by some miracle, they were only about half submerged with an assortment of switches to isolate individual batteries as needed. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">I began to breath a little easier, but still insisted that everyone put on a life jacket in case the pumps failed and we had to make a hasty exit. Nym headed into the aft cabin to look around while I pulled up some boards covered with dried blood to see if one of the bullets had passed through the dog — and the boat.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">From shore the wail of sirens joined the crowd noises. I began to worry that our presence on <i>The Talking Mime</i> might be misinterpreted by the authorities. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">I was looking for some rags and plugs when I heard a crash from the back of the boat and Nym called me from the aft cabin. "I think I found the leak, but you should keep checking," she said as I walked in.<br />
Nym had shouldered the door to the other bathroom open, knowing there was a marine toilet inside - with a big thru-hull to let sea water in to flush the marine toilet. "The door was locked," she said.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">She stepped back to show me the gleaming white marine toilet, and the two-inch hose to the unit which was cut - a neat cut, several inches above the valve where it connects to the toilet. And judging from the lines of the boat, the valve was about a foot below the normal waterline. Water was gushing in a furious rate and draining down into the bilges.<br />
I quickly threw of the lever for the toilet thru-hull and stopped the inflow of the water.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">"I don't think <i>this</i> can be blamed on bad aim with a gun," Nym said.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;"> I didn't disagree.<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Chapter 10 - Five nails in the coffin </b></span></div><br />
<br />
</div>Michael J. Fitzgeraldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09840859418177870381noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7284783973897052869.post-28791779428651225242010-07-19T14:01:00.000-07:002010-07-19T16:14:30.038-07:00Chapter 8 of the novel, The Talkiing Mime<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Chapter 8</b></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Call the coroner or the pound?</b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>S</b></span>eeing the dead dog, all I could think about was a pooch named Neal, a martini-guzzling St. Bernard, a stock character on a 1950s television program "Topper." The program had become a fixture on TVLand reruns which I had gotten hooked on last winter when I was down with the flu. I flashed for a moment on Leo G. Carroll, the star, and how he would spar with the dog over the martinis and it made me sad, and a little angry. In death anyway, this dog hardly looked vicious.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">Whether Nym was thinking about Neal or not, I don't know. She held the dog's head in both hands for a few minutes, as if the dead animal could tell her secrets. I stayed back by the transom and out of the way of the deputies who had suddenly started to methodically tear the boat apart — confirming for me an earlier guess that they thought there were drugs aboard. I caught several looks from the deputies that warned me not to move too far into the boat, an idea that didn't appeal to me at all, anyway. In fact the sight of the dog confirmed my feelings that perhaps <i>Rocinante</i> should slip her lines and head south, away from what seemed to be a center of mayhem, not a tranquility base.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;"> "Why do people do this?" Nym said, looking up at me.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">I erroneously thought she was talking about the sheriff's deputy pumping four rounds into the dog, then realized she was talking about whomever left the dog locked on the boat.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">"The poor thing was probably starving and when he saw someone break through the cabin door. He was delirious, not dangerous."</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">But the deputy who had done the shooting disagreed from the navigation station where he was standing, pulling out the ship's papers and generally making a mess of the countertop. He voiced his defense in relatively hushed tones — probably so his two partners in the bow cabin of the boat couldn't interject.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">"Damn dog came right at me," the deputy said. It was barking and snapping like crazy. It could have rabies, you know."</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">Nym and I looked at the deputy — now<i> I </i>even recognized he was the one at the bar last night — and I thought he had a far greater risk of catching herpes from one of the women in the bar than rabies from this likely pedigreed animal. But I held my tongue. He had just fired four bullets into a dog and still seemed edgy.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">Nym felt around the dog's wounds, commenting that he hadn't really bled very much - at least not for an animal his size. "The tag says his name is 'Tiny'" Nym said. "That's two weird names for these people. First the boat, and now a moose of a dog named <i>Tiny</i>. I hate it when people give animals ridiculous names."</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>N</b></span>ym's hands had some blood on them from the dog, but even with the blood around the cockpit, it didn't look like the movie scenes where gallons of blood seem to fill the screen whenever anyone is shot. I could see where some of the blood had dripped down between the deckboards, into the oily bilges around the engine — a combination that was going smell as ugly as a roadkill skunk if it wasn't cleaned up.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">"What is your protocol for something like this," Nym asked, wiping the blood off her hands with a towel from the cockpit sole. "In San Francisco, we usually would have to treat this like it was a human shoot. People take their pets pretty seriously."</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">The three deputies paused in their searching, looking at Nym as if she had asked them to explain the quadratic equation to her. Their looks hardened, too, as if they suddenly realized that this perky woman with a badge was actually associated with a <i>district attorney's office</i> — not the cops — and that put her somewhere in the netherland between friend and enemy, depending on the kind of questions she asked.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">"We had a warrant, <i>counselor</i>. A warrant to search this barge. And I don't know what we do about the dog, but I'm not worried about it."</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">I noticed that the deputy speaking had a name tag said M. McGuire, and while I couldn't say much about his choice of fashion in wearing his hat backwards, he did seem to have a grip on procedure, and he was definitely less destructive than his two colleagues who seemed to be under his command, but in a sort of corporal-private relationship.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">Nym motioned to me to move over to her and we carefully stepped down into the salon of the boat, which in the interior showed a carefully built luxury yacht, not just a souped-up fisherman's toy. The floor was teak and holly with built-in mahogany bookshelves, fancy electronics and a stereo. At one end of the salon, a projection television with a screen that looked six or seven feet wide.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">In the forward cabin, all three deputies had ripped open a mattress and were spreading the stuffing all over. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">"Is this a drug case?" Nym asked. "Because if it is, I would be surprised if they hid the stuff in a mattress."</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">This time, when the deputies paused, it reminded me of one of those scenes from a horror movie, when the monster suddenly takes notice of the hero and the audience collectively groans at him for drawing attention to himself. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">"You know, you'll be a good witness if the owner files a claim for that mutt," McGuire said. "But you are way out of your jurisdiction here and we have a lot of work to do." </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>I </b></span>waved to say goodbye, gripping Nym's arm, even though I knew she would be angry later that I was being "husband." But I didn't like the deputies faces and it occurred to me that if they didn't find what they were looking for, we might not be welcome at all.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">We backed out of the cabin, carefully stepping by the dog. I bent over and gave him a little pat on the head, dead or not. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">The wind was starting to come up, and as we rowed back, Nym turned around several times, looking at the boat and listening to the sounds of things crashing from as the deputies continued their rough quest for something. She was quiet, which I decided to interpret as thoughtfulness about the shooting, and not pique at me for encouraging our exit.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">At <i>Rocinante</i>, Jerrod and Jacob lounged in the cockpit, feigning complete indifference to anything short of an Elvis sighting, but we hadn't even grabbed the ladder to tie up the dinghy before they began screeching like spider monkeys, firing questions at us about the shots, and who was killed and what did they look like, and was there blood...</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">"I bet they were looking for the body that goes with the hand," Jerrod said. "Murder. Right over there!</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">Nym groaned as we swung up onto the ladder and handed the lines for the dinghy to the twins. "Only in a very bad, very bad novel, would there be a body on that boat," she said. "Those deputies are after some of drugs, I think. That's one reason they were so trigger happy. I think they expected resistance."<br />
And it was dog they shot,"she said, " I think it scared the deputies quite completely. It's dead, boys. The shots were one of the deputies killing it."<br />
Jerrod and Jacob looked at Nym, uncomprehending. "They shot a dog?" they said in unison. "What assholes."<br />
Before that train got too far down the tracks, I jumped into the conversation and said we needed to get about our day with some boat work and plans for heading south again. The boys grumbled, but starting eying the dinghy and the shoreline where some surfers had arrived and just started catching some low rollers.<br />
Alone later with Nym, I asked her why she didn't press the officers about what the warrant was for and she said that she decided to get that information from our friend Undersheriff Wilma Krebs, later in the day.<br />
"Those deputies told me more than they should have anyway," she said. "And by the way, I don't think they were looking for drugs. No dog of their own to sniff the drugs out."<br />
<i>Duh</i>, I thought to myself, I knew that.<br />
In the distance, we could see the deputies were already putting up that familiar yellow crime scene tape - police tape - around the cockpit of the boat. Then we saw the dog - or at least something large wrapped in a blue blanket, being hauled by two of the deputies and put into the Sheriff's boat. <br />
"Apparently there's no need for any shooting team," Nym said. "In San Francisco, that boat would be swarming with people. And probably somebody from the Humane Society."</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>T</b></span>he trip to <i>The Talking Mime</i> had stolen away all of the morning, and I went below decks and cracked open a beer at my navigation station. I began writing a letter to my publisher, telling her that my book outline would be coming within say, three weeks, giving myself a long deadline for a 10-page outline, but not so long that I could ignore it completely.<br />
Jacob and Jerrod stayed on deck for at least an hour, watching the deputies finishing their taping and then roar off in the Sheriff's boat, back to shore. The boys came below, <i>still</i> muttering about the deputy shooting the dog, and <i>still</i> somewhat puzzled. <br />
The afternoon disappeared for me in a haze of writing and puttering on the boat. Jacob and Jerrod rowed over past <i>The Talking Mime</i> several times to check it out. Many other small boats did the same, curious about the yellow tape. At one point, I noticed several people up on the outside deck of The Anchor Inn, looking through field glasses at the boat. Nym was buried in her yellow notepad.<br />
But then the sun started sinking towards the horizon and the fog rolled in, making T<i>he Talking Mime</i> disappear, then reappear, winking in and out of the fog bank on the edge of the anchorage.<br />
Later, right after sundown, Nym whipped up a great chicken dinner in the galley and the four of us ate quietly while I pondered what I needed to do to get the boat ready for the rest of our trip.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">Nym and I shared a bottle of wine and talked about what she wanted to do (keep asking questions) versus what I wanted to do (sail south, soon). The boys begged to take a night row in the dinghy around the anchorage to look at boats in the dark.<br />
I vetoed the idea, though I noticed some dinghy traffic coming and going from the Anchor Inn dock and a few cruising the anchorage.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">And as is <i>so</i> often the case for me, a couple of glasses of wine, and the big dinner sent me to my bed in the aft cabin by 9 p.m. - ostensibly to read. Nym climbed in shortly thereafter, sans her yellow notepad and we both fell asleep, the rocking of the boat as gentle as a cradle.<br />
An odd day, I thought, disturbed by everything that had happened. <br />
It was just at first light the next morning, as I worked my way out of a dream, that I heard Jacob holler from the boys' bunks in the V-berth, his voice cracking like he was still 13-years-old. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-align: center; text-indent: 0.25in;">"<i>Dad! Dad! </i><br />
<i>The boat's sinking. </i><br />
<i>I am NOT kidding.</i><br />
<i>Get up!</i><br />
<i>Get up now."</i><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Chapter 9, Shouting fire in a crowded theater</b></span></div>Michael J. Fitzgeraldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09840859418177870381noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7284783973897052869.post-39372814569666853832010-07-18T06:10:00.000-07:002010-07-18T06:10:13.871-07:00Chapter 7 of the novel, The Talking Mime<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Chapter 7</b></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>A bark worse than a bite</b></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>I</b></span>t took us nearly 15 minutes to get the dinghy untangled from the davits and lowered. I wanted to swear at the boys for not putting it away property, but I suspected it was my wine imbibing the night before that had improperly set up the lifting blocks after our trip to the Anchor Inn. But it was still aggravating, made more so by Nym's impatience to get over to <i>The Talking Mime</i> and see what shooting was all about. I was less in a hurry, thinking we would likely be waved off and I also knew I would be <i>rowing</i> in both directions. I vowed to work on our outboard motor later in the day. It had become comatose as we prepared for our voyage last week. It seemed the motor ran fine in San Francisco Bay, but take the 5 horsepower Honda offshore, and it was balky at best.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">As we pushed off from <i>Rocinate</i>, both boys bleated their dissatisfaction at being left behind <i>again</i>. But this time it was Nym who played the heavy, arguing that we didn't know what we would run into, and besides, she simply <i>said</i> so.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">I marveled at Nym's ease of putting her foot down today, when yesterday she had wanted to bring the boys with us to the harbormaster's office. Then I noticed that instead of her <i>Rocinante</i> sweatshirt and shorts, she had on a very military looking shirt, long slacks, boots more suited to climbing than boating, and was wearing her police-issue mirrored sunglasses.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">"You're going to <i>buzz</i> these guys," I said, laughing.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">Nym stared at me from behind the mirrored sunglasses, trying not to smile, but I just shook my head at her chutzpah and then resigned myself to probably having to sit in the dinghy while she got aboard <i>The Talking Mime.</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">In police culture, cops from one jurisdiction frequently give special favors (such as ignoring potential speeding tickets) to other cops, when the police flash their badges to identify themselves (better known as a <i>buzz</i>). In this case, I was more than a little doubtful my 105-pound wife was going to buzz her way onto the boat, but then last night I knew she would've drilled out the kneecaps of any — or all three — of the men threatening us if she knew it was the only way to protect her family.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">She also knew — which she told me later — that because she had witnessed their boarding and was an officer of the court, her testimony about the way they boarded, and whether they had just cause to shoot would be given some credibility. As I rowed, she practiced giving hard looks. I tried not to stare, or laugh.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">I began covering the distance methodically wth strong, hard strokes, trying to establish a sense of purpose in case the deputies were watching. We seemed to have the water to ourselves as we crossed the distance. In fact, I could only make out a few people on the pier and the shore that seemed to be paying any attention.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>A</b></span>t about 50 yards from <i>The Talking Mime</i>, I could see the boat reflected in Nym's glasses, and I saw that one of the deputies was holding his pistol at his shoulder pointed straight up in the air while he spoke into a hand-held radio. Then he yelled directly at us.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-align: center; text-indent: 0.25in;"><i>"YOU! In the dinghy.</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-align: center; text-indent: 0.25in;"><i>Stand off. </i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-align: center; text-indent: 0.25in;"><i>Don't come any closer. </i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-align: center; text-indent: 0.25in;"><i>This is police business."</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">I stopped rowing but didn't turn around. I imagined a flurry of bullets whisking through the water around me. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">Nym stood, holding her badge and ID folder directly over her head, showing her other hand to be empty. "I'm a DA," she shouted, whispering "investigator," so low <i>I </i>could barely hear it.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">"It's still a sin," I said, getting a smile out of her, knowing her strict Catholic upbringing was already nagging at her for not telling the cop on the boat her true status.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">"Just keep rowing, smart guy," she said, still standing up flashing her badge, reminding me of that famous painting of George Washington crossing the Delaware. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">As we bridged the gap, I kept waiting for a second challenge and I noticed in Nym's glasses that the cop had dropped both his arms to his sides, the radio still squawking with calls. We were within 10 yards when the deputy told us to halt again, but this time his voice was tentative and instead of telling us to take off, he said to hold our position, as he disappeared down the hatchway and into the boat for a moment.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">I nudged us closer, letting the light breeze move us in, thinking I would be rowing against the wind when we went back. Then another deputy, this one with his baseball cap on backwards, yelled for us to tie to the stern where a boarding ladder hung down over a tall transom. "Just you though, mam," he said to Nym. "Your buddy can't come aboard unless he's a DA, too."</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">Nym answered him by patting me on the head as she climbed out of the dinghy, disappearing out of my sight, down low behind the transom of <i>The Talking Mime</i>. I could hear her introduce herself, now that she was safely aboard and at the shooting scene she said "investigator," first, DA second. Apparently there was no objection, at least none that I could hear.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">I felt my stomach tighten slightly, the same way it did whenever Nym walked into these situations and I knew about them. She was very fit, and three years ago had been nationally ranked in martial arts. But I knew her size made assailants and martial arts competitors more likely to underestimate her, though generally they regretted it.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">I heard Nym give a girlish laugh, and there was some other laughter from the deputies. I heard one loud, "Oh shut-up" from one deputy, then some more laughter, then Nym's voice saying my name. I heard several words like "stiff, slab" and "body," hoping they were referring to whoever had been shot and not a comment about me.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">"Sure, let him see this mess." It was the voice of the deputy with the backwards baseball cap. He had the same southern drawl that you frequently hear from almost any American airline pilot when they make their announcements.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>I</b></span> stuck my head up, eyes peering over the transom and saw Nym standing with the deputies, blocking the entryway to the trawler's cabin. There's was blood, plenty of it, and it occurred to me that I should hear some ambulance sirens pretty soon — unless someone was dead. But even then, I wondered, don't they always call somebody, even to make the official pronounciation of death?</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">"Alex, you can come aboard, but watch your step, there's blood just in front of you on the cockpit sole."</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">I crawled up the ladder, weighing in my mind whether I wanted to view a corpse, still a little unclear about why Nym was <i>laughing</i>. I had once gone to a crime scene with her where a man had been killed in a knife fight in an alley. We heard the call on the police scanner on our way out for dinner and she convinced me it was a good idea.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">It might've have been a good idea for her — she would get the case and already have it half figured out before she ever went into the office. But for me it prove so awful to see the bloody corpse that I skipped dinner entirely, nursing some wine. Nym devoured a rare steak. The victim hadn't been just stabbed, it looked like his assailant had attempted an appendectomy and maybe a tonsillectomy at the same time.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">I shuddered at that thought as I swung my legs over into the boat, glad I hadn't had breakfast yet. Seeing a dead body before breakfast must be some kind of bad luck, I thought.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">The cop who had first waved us off, now was sitting on the rail, looking <i>very</i> unhappy as his two partners stepped aside. I figured he had done the shooting and was going to have to do the explaining. And I could see Nym kneeling down on the cabin sole, her back turned to me. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">As I stepped closer and looked down, I could see she was tenderly cradling the head of the apparent shooting victim — a <i>very</i> large, <i>very</i> dead, male adult St. Bernard.<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><b>Chapter 8 - Call the coroner, or the pound? </b></div></div>Michael J. Fitzgeraldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09840859418177870381noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7284783973897052869.post-26236409238490951662010-07-17T08:38:00.000-07:002010-07-17T08:43:32.332-07:00Chapter Six of the novel, The Talking Mime<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Chapter 6</b></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>We meet an Oxymoron</b></span></div><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b> T</b></span>he next morning was as foggy as San Francisco Bay at its worst and we were all asleep at 8 a.m. or so when some passing boats threw large enough wakes to stir all of us and send my bottle of Bailey's — left on the galley stove — crashing onto the cushioned bench next to the table.<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">I rocketed out of bed to retrieve the bottle, thinking a lot more about my need for a future nightcap than the probable mess. The Bailey's was OK, but we rocked for a few moments as the boat settled down.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">I looked out the porthole to see if I could spot who had shaken us, and I saw that <i>Rocinante</i> and the 20 or so other boats hanging on the buoys looked as disorganized as a Little League team on its first day of practice. The still air was letting each boat rock and drift pretty much in its own pattern. <i>Rocinante</i> seemed to be feeling some deep current with its keel, because our bow was still clearly facing the ocean while some pointed to Santa Cruz and others looked squarely at the windows of the Anchor Inn.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">A 60-foot Cheoy Lee ketch was nearest to us with the name <i>Golden Wings</i>, painted in gold letters on its teak stern. A handful of well-varnished boats, mostly sailboats, were moored, too, with handful of large motoryachts. I wondered how many of them we would see in the Channel Islands and points south along the coast where I figured we would be in a few days.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">I had <i>originally</i> planned to pull out today for a short sail over to Monterey Harbor for an overnight, followed by another push in a couple of days south around Point Conception and on to San Miguel Island, the northernmost of the Channel islands and a bit mysterious. There is a wonderful, if somewhat tricky entrance to an anchorage on San Miguel Island where we had spent the night two years before. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">Still feeling the ache in my shoulders from the all-night sail from San Francisco, I decided to not even raise the issue. I thought Nym was likely already planning a day ashore to do some sleuthing, sleuthing that definitely included talking to the coroner if she could find him. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">I finally spotted the culprit that had likely awakened us with its wake — a 25-foot, twin-engined powerboat with "Santa Cruz County Sheriff" painted in two-foot high letters on the side. It was out near the edge of the buoys, moving cautiously like a dog sniffing for something. It slowed way down as they approached a 70-foot fishing trawler. The trawler was anchored just outside the buoys in an area where people too cheap to spend $20 for the peace of mind a buoy buys drop their anchors. If I have the option of paying a reasonable fee to a local municipality (which becomes liable for my boat if the buoy breaks loose) or relying on my anchor and chain, I almost always opt for the buoys on the theory that my chain and anchor have a definite lifespan that's shortened every time I use them.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">Nym thinks I just hate pulling up the anchor. She's right about that, too. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>T</b></span>he sheriff's boat circled the trawler, this time as the boat's stern swung towards us in the waves. I reached for the field glasses, and after getting everything in focus saw the name. I read it again, always amazed at the names people give their vessels. Looking closer, I realized it <i>looked</i> like a commerical fishing trawler but was really some kind of personal yacht. It was too fancy for a commercial boat. And the name <i>The</i> <i>Talking Mime</i>, seemed out of place for a fishing boat that went after tuna, or squid, or whatever they can catch.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">I shouted to Nym that she had some of her law enforcement colleagues to thank for rocking us out of our bunks and that the sheriff's boat looked like it was looking for something on <i>The Talking Mime</i>.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">"Dad. Did you say 'Talking Mime?'" Jacob asked from the V-berth. "Isn't that one of those oxymorons, like when you say military intelligence or jumbo shrimp?"</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">I smiled as only an father - who is also an English professor - does when their child grasps a concept, until it was shattered by his brother Jerrod.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">"That's an oxy, you moron," he screamed and I heard the tumbling and wrestling start in the v-berth cabin. "Anything gets broken, you clean the decks all day, bozos," I said.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">Back in the galley Nym was already making coffee, dressed in an ankle-length nightshirt she favored on cool mornings like this. On the back it says "Admiral of the Fleet," and there were times when she meant it.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">"What's going on with the sheriff's boat?" she asked, obviously still sleepy or she would already be up on the deck with the field glasses.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">"I'll go look," I said, pulling on some jeans and a sweatshirt as I realized how cold it seemed below decks, even as the sun was beginning to push some of the gray back.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">Out in the anchorage, the sheriff's boat was circling <i>The Talking Mime</i> like a matador circles a bull, swooping around fast, stopping, then turning and swooping again, but in the other direction. The motion of the sheriff's boat was rocking <i>The Talking Mime</i> with its wake and it was hard to tell just what the deputies were thinking. I counted three men, one carrying a hand-held radio, one driving the vessle and a third securing fenders alongside the side of the boat.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">"I think the guys on that sheriff's boat are going to board that big trawler out the edge of the anchorage. I don't see any crew above decks on the trawler though."</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;"><i><span style="font-size: large;"><b>R</b></span>ocinante</i> has visited harbors all over the California coast in the 10 years we've owned it, not to mention many hours in San Francisco Bay and the Sacramento Delta. We have witnessed quite a few U.S. Coast Guard boardings of vessels — ostensibly to check for safety equipment — but there was a such a disproportionate number of boats stopped that had bikini-clad crew I often wondered whether safety or skin was the issue. Still, I had never witnessed the Coast Guard board a boat that was unoccupied. But then, these were cops. And for a minute I wondered if maybe the boat was stolen. It's rare, but it happens. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">Nym came up on deck and we traded the field glasses back and forth, watching the three deputies, clad in short-sleeved, dark-blue shirts and matching shorts, now side-tied to <i>The Talking Mime</i>. Their shorts gave me great hope that it might actually be warm later today.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">Nym peered intently, put the glasses down and then peered again. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">"I'm sure," she said.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">"Sure?"</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">"I'm sure that one of those deputies was sitting at the bar last night when we went in," Nym said. "He was the only one in the place with a decent haircut — except for you, of course."</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">I shook my hair in mock indignation, but didn't doubt Nym's observations. Our 10x50 binoculars could almost count nose hairs at this distance, and I was sure she had picked him out.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">"I remember him because he watched us the whole time we were there," she said. "Even when we had that visit from the planet of the apes." </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">I suspected that the deputy might have been staring more at Nym than all four of us. She had been certainly the best-looking woman in the place. Well, actually she might have been the <i>only</i> good looking woman in place. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">Jerrod and Jacob popped their heads up out of the forward hatch, hollering back to us in the cockpit in the middle of the boat. "What are you guys talking about up here? Can't you see we <i>youths</i> need our sleep?" Jacob said.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>I</b></span> was pleased to see they had apparently not broken any bones and were, I hoped, going to now shift into their Hardy Boys personalities, which although pretty boisterous, was at least survivable on the boat.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">"It look's like some sheriff's deputies are going to board that fishing boat or yacht, out at edge of the anchorage," I offered. "If your Mom would quit hogging the field glasses, I could tell you more about what's going on."</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">I turned to see if Nym was going to give me a hard time, but she was still staring intently, barely moving at all.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">"Alex, they all have their weapons out. One is staying in the sheriff's boat, the other two are boarding. They have a pry bar, too. The one who was watching us last night is working the lock with the bar, I think. Damn. His back blocking the door now.<br />
Nym watched for another few minutes while I nudged her, trying to get her to give me field glasses back. She didn't take the hint.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-align: center; text-indent: 0.25in;">"<i>JESUS</i>!" Nym suddenly shouted.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">She almost dropped the glasses from her neck, snapping them back up to her eyes while I looked off in the distance, trying quite unsuccessfully to see what had startled her — Nym who never swore.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">Then I heard the sharp report of the gunshots that Nym had seen. She told me later that she saw the gun flash — four times — all so fast and unexpected it had startled her.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">"They're just staring down in the cabin now with the door open," she said, still peering through the binoculars. "The closest deputy still has his weapon pointed down into the cabin like he's ready to fire again.<br />
Somebody just got hurt Alex," she said shaking her head. "I think somebody just got hurt really bad."<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><b> Next: Chapter 7 - A bark worse than a bite </b></div></div>Michael J. Fitzgeraldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09840859418177870381noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7284783973897052869.post-14252964119480876412010-07-16T07:53:00.000-07:002010-07-16T09:14:30.880-07:00Chapter 5 of the novel, The Talking Mime<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;"><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Chapter 5</b></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Of stuffed mooseheads and stranger things</b></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><b><span style="font-size: large;"> W</span></b>hether it was Nym's charm - or the fact that we were so simply dishelved and tired - it's hard to say, but the three barflies, or maybe should I say <i>bearflies</i>, seem to decide we might just be harmless tourists. Their sudden rudeness and confrontational style evaporated as quickly as it had appeared, and Jacob, Jerrod and I sat back down while the three men pulled up chairs to sit down.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">The first man who had come to the table confessed that, <i>yes</i>, he was a commercial fisherman and he had found all kinds of weird things in his nets and tangled on his lines — hypodermic needles, bales of marijuana, and once a mounted moose head that was weighed down with a cement block but floating just below the surface. He said he personally had never found any human remains in 15 years of fishing, though when a boatload of immigrant Chinese sank last year near Point Sur, other fisherman only a few miles south had recovered several corpses. We bought the trio a round of beers, and vowed to visit their fishing boats in the next few days. We even offered them a tour of <i>Rocinante</i>, hoping, of course, that when they slept off their beers they would forget the whole notion.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">Later, in the rowboat on the way back out to <i>Rocinante (</i>bobbing peacefully on its mooring), the boys asked me what we would have done if the three men had decided to take a poke at us. "Your mother probably would've fired a couple of rounds into the ceiling, like in a western," I said. "What do you think?"</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">Jacob said he figured a hammerlock would have put the man he had targeted out of commission with a good twist of his neck. Jerrod said he thinking he would use a shoulder throw on the fellow who was most likely to charge at me. "Coach says it's illegal," Jerrod said.<br />
"True." I said, "But not in a bar fight."</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">I rowed quietly, both proud - and a little disturbed - that my 15-year-old boys could have such an intuitive grasp of bar brawling without having ever been in one. Two years of grappling on a high school wrestling mat had apparently taken away fear of physical contact. I didn't want to disavow them of the idea that might be some rules of encounter even in the Anchor Inn. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">Nym laid back on the rear seat and watched the stars like a lady of leisure as I pulled against the light breeze and the swell that was left over from earlier in the day. It was a postcard-perfect night, with a partial moon and some reflection of light off the water. In the distance we could hear the surf crash against the beach and the occasional cry of seagulls as they argued over food.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>B</b></span>ack on board <i>Rocinante</i>, we all got ready to turn in, the summer fog creeping around the Santa Cruz headlands and headed our way. There was an unmistakable summer chill in the air which promised to drop some moisture on the deck before morning, a prospect which was fine with me. The moisture would be condensation and fresh water, not the salty mess that was crystalized on most of the cabin top. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">I secured all the topside accessories, the cushions, lines, fenders and lawn chairs that might take flight if the wind came up strong in the night. Some of my worst scares at anchor — or on a buoy like tonight — came when an empty aluminum beer ban would go skittering across the deck in the, sounding like a 747 attempting to land. Up on the bow, as I checked the line secured to the buoy, I noticed there were even more seagull droppings, perhaps the leavings of the gull who had deposited the hand on our deck. There was no trace of blood, which surprised me, but then again, the hand apparently had been in salt water. Wilma Krebs had said what little blood might have been resident, probably bled out long before it crashed landed on <i>Rocinante</i> in the mouth of the seagull.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;"> I stared at the spot where we had spied the hand first for several minutes, wondering where the rest of Mr. X might be. It seemed common knowledge at the bar that the hand was actually that of a man, not a woman. Indeed, by the time we left, our three new-found fishermen friends, told us that most people thought that the man was probably in his 40s and, of course, the ring suggested that he was quite wealthy. I hoped that tomorrow we would be let in on the coroner's findings, though after hearing the remarks in the bar about the coroner's early morning drinking habits, I wasn't too hopeful of learning much.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">Nym was hard at work in our cabin by the time I went below, tucking the boys in who were already nearly asleep, close to 11 p.m. Jacob had his Gameboy on his chest on with his eyes closed and Jerrod had one eye open, looking up at the stars through the forward hatch, still open from my earlier exit that morning.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">"You want me to close it up for the night?" I offered. Jerrod shook his head and I was grateful that at 15, I no longer was responsible if he — or his brother — got cold in the night. They could get up and close the hatch themselves if the cold air got to be too much.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>I</b></span>t was warm in the aft cabin, where Nym was already at work with her yellow notepad and a stack of blank index cards next to her. She had a half-dozen clippings on my side of the bunk, all of which she grudgingly moved when I came in to the cabin. She looked so intent that I wondered if she had found something or was just trying to block all the wonderful sounds of the ocean around us. I noticed a tornado outline in the works on the yellow pad, with a well-drawn diamond ring in the center. Before the boys were born, Nym had flirted with the idea of becoming a commercial artist, but found investigative work more fun and in some ways easier to work into the schedule we kept.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">I undressed, slipping on my a nightshirt Nym called my Ebenezer Scrooge outfit — it can get damn cold — and I struggled with sleep for a half-hour. I finally gave up on sleeping and decided to read, my afternoon nap overcoming the fatigue and even the effects of two glasses of wine at the Anchor Inn.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">It felt good to be back on the boat, well away from shore. Even though our encounter had gone all right with the fishermen, I didn't like the stares we were receiving from the other locals perched at the bar. They seemed more like residents of some small-town in the rural South than California coast dwellers. When the boys were still toddlers, we had drove a motorhome through several southern states, including Georgia. Many miles from Atlanta, we stopped at a widespot in the road at a diner for breakfast. The place looked like a run-down railroad car from the outside but had a nearly full parking lot. The diner was complete with checkered tableclothes and long strips of flypaper hanging from the ceiling covered with hundreds of flies, many still alive and buzzing with indignation.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">All I knew that morning was the food smelled great when I walked in, though my eggs, potatoes, bacon and toast had more grease on the plate than I would cook with in a month at home.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">We got the same brand of hard stares in that diner years ago that we had at the Anchor Inn. And so that morning I was somewhat relieved to see a Georgia State Trooper walk in and sit down at the table connected to ours. He was a beefy guy, looking like he probably played football for Georgia Tech or perhaps had even left the state for the far reaches of Alabama. He didn't return my hello as he sat down. He just stared at my over-the-ears-length hair. He sipped a cup of coffee for a few minutes while I shoveled in my breakfast. And then he reached over to our table picking up — and putting on — my aviator-style Foster-Grant sunglasses.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">"They sure look good on you Roy," one of the men sitting at the diner counter shouted over to him. (Nym would later introduce me to the expression <i>white trash</i> when she described the man sitting at the counter.) I smiled at the Trooper and he smiled back. He continued to smile as he adjusted the sunglasses on his nose, and keep the smile in place while he stood up and walked out the door to his cruiser and drove off.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">I remember telling Nym quietly, "it seems the New South I have been reading about is a lot like the Old South." </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>N</b></span>ym poked me with her elbow.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">"If you're not going to go to sleep, why don't you help me think aloud about this?"</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">I mumbled something about being tired, but she showered me with newspaper clippings for my troubles.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">"Okay," I said. "Here's my two cents and then I'm going to go to sleep and have a nightmare about a seagull flying around with <i>me</i> in its mouth.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">"Those people in the Anchor Inn were <i>way</i> too surly to us. It was like we're responsible for someone being killed. Almost like blame us for it."</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">Nym grinned and stuck an index card in front of my nose with the words "Diamond ring. Big spender, Town secret?" written on it, with connecting circles.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">"No, I don't think they blame us for the death, Alex. But they do blame us for drawing attention to it. We found the hand and now there's police and a coroner's investigation.<br />
"How many men could walk around that town with that big a diamond ring and not be noticed by somebody? I bet they have a pretty good idea who it is.... well... was. I just wonder how the hand got separated from the rest of him."</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">I swung my legs out of bed and decided to get a glass of Bailey's Irish Cream to put me to sleep.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">With severed hands, crazed seagulls and a semi-hostile town keeping secrets, I was going to have a splendid night and splendid dreams.<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><b>Chapter 6: We meet an Oxymoron</b></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div>Michael J. Fitzgeraldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09840859418177870381noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7284783973897052869.post-90924983600289734912010-07-15T06:42:00.000-07:002010-07-15T06:53:21.924-07:00Chapter 4 of the novel, The Talking Mime<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Chapter 4</b></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Service with a smile, sort of</b></span></div><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>N</b></span>ym was wrong about the coroner but right that it was a man's hand, not a woman's. She was also wrong that Capitola was always friendly little town to strangers. To tourists maybe, but tourists are tourists and strangers, well, they're different. And we had crossed that line when we found the severed hand on the bow.<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">After the afternoon of reading clippings and a dinner complete with a nice Merlot and my special boat-chicken casserole, we rowed in to shore with the boys for a nightcap at the Anchor Inn saloon and dessert for Jerrod and Jacob. Nym insisted on carrying in her waterproof shore bag which usually contained a flashlight and some safety gear in case we tarried ashore and had to row out after sunset.<br />
The Anchor Inn was decorated in a combination nautical/sports bar/pub-restaurant motif that likely drove anyone crazy who tried to figure out what the owner had in mind. I had given up on the no-TV rule before we even rowed in, figuring that the boys deserved a little TV time at the place after being such good sports and helping with the research.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">We chose a table in the back side of the bar, 20-feet from the big-screen TV, where the boys could watch TV and we could also see <i>Rocinante</i> rocking in the now settling water in the harbor. A 60ish blonde waitress, sporting an impossibly high beehive hairdo from the 1950s looked at our matching <i>Rocinante</i> sweatshirts as if they said "Hells Angels, Oakland Chapter" and avoided eye contact with us.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">Nym stared at her long enough that the waitress finally made a big flourish out of walking over with her cocktail tray and stopping in front of the boys watching television. "Help ya?" she asked, more of a statement than a real question.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">I thought perhaps a little charm might help so I asked what she recommended.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">"Another restaurant if it was me, mister!" she laughed nervously. And I laughed, and Nym laughed, too, but it was thin, nervous laugh that I followed with an order of wine for Nym and I and Dr. Peppers for the boys.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">"Would you recommend the dessert?" I asked as a last shot for getting at least a neutral response. "You can eat it, I wouldn't," she said walking away.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>N</b></span>ym and the boys looked at me as if I had insulted the waitress, but I shook my head. "Oh no! Don't blame this one on me. Did you you guys eat here earlier and not tip her or something?"</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">A basketball game grabbed Jacob's interest while Jerrod studied the bar and the waitress. It was about 8 p.m. and I hoped we were going to be treated to a nice sundown before the fog rolled in for the night. The California coast in summer vacillates between socked in fog and sun, with Capitola right on the edge. I stared at the horizon, trying to figure out if we would be rowing back to the boat through mist, or actually get to see some stars tonight.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">"It's kinda weird Dad, but, the waitress isn't acting all bitchy at the people at the bar," Jerrod said. "And, uh, Dad. About three of the guys are staring at us. Uh, Dad, one guy is pointing at you."</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">I grimaced, thinking about the men who had been arguing in low tones when we walked in. Had we been a little farther south, I would have guessed they worked on an offshore oil platform. It had been so many years since I've had anything remotely close to trouble in a barroom that my senses were dulled. I looked around without making eye contact and realized that the Anchor Inn was one place during the day, quite another at night when most of the tourists head into Santa Cruz and the boardwalk - or to the better restaurants of Monterey.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">The peanut shells on the floor reminded me of a night in Buffalo, New York 25 years before when a group of eight of us from Canisius College were confronted by five very large, very angry longshoremen who objected to our long hair, our youth, and finally, our existence on the planet and started a brawl that only ended when I was able to bring a folding chair across the noses of two of the men, dropping them to the floor.<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b> N</b></span>ow in the Anchor Inn, I decided that it would likely take a good Louisville Slugger to dent the heads of men I had seen on the way in. And my reflexes and wrists were pretty soft from years of working on a computer keyboard and giving lectures to undergraduates.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">"<i>You</i> found the hand."</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">It was a statement. Not a question, and it came from a bearlike man in a plaid shirt and baseball cap that said "San Jose Sharks." He and his three friends had ambled over slowly while I was checking the room for graceful exits.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">"I asked you a question, bud."</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">It was certainly <i>not</i> a question and I was not his bud by any stretch, but I could feel my adrenalin beginning to surge through my arms and shoulders as two other men — equal in size and manners — edged up closer to the table, dwarfing us, all still seated.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">"We certainly did find the hand," I said, wondering what <i>that</i> admission was going to mean to these people. They're limbs seemed intact.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">"I hope that's all we find, it was quite enough."</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">I realized as I finished my sentence that I had stood up without even being aware of it. And I had stood suddenly enough that the three men backed up a step, interpreting my movement as a threat. I realized that Jerrod and Jacob had stood also, trying to look a lot older than 15, and that at their last wrestling match weigh-in, they topped 170 pounds each. At nearly 6 feet, they were probably more imposing to these guys than I was.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>I</b></span> could feel my heart beginning to pound, the situation moving a little too fast, too many questions, and in the dryness of mouth I remembered the last fisticuffs I had gotten into - many years back - when Nym and I were dating. After a dinner at Fisherman's Wharf restaurant I ran through the rain to get my car only to return to find Nym struggling with a man near the entryway of the restaurant. I thought he was trying to steal her purse — then I realized he was assaulting her and ripping her dress off, in nearly full view of the restaurant. Nym told me later she never wanted to see me in that kind of rage again, and that I had nearly clawed the man's eyes out in a manical fit. The police told me that I bit the top of the man's ear off — I still don't remember that — and I had to take penicillin for 10 days, as a preventive.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">The boys eyes were flickering back and forth from me to the men and then to each other, the same flickering I had seen many times when they wrestled and were just about to dive across the mat to drop and opponent for a takedown. The three men were standing very still - no moving or talking - just staring at us with a dull look that suggested the movie <i>Deliverance</i>. I found myself wondering if I should grab a chair to swing or simply go straight to being a madman and bite someone's ear if they moved towards us.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">"Are you three all <i>professional</i> fishermen?" Nym's soft voice came from behind me.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">It broke the silence that had descended on the bar. In our male-lion, <i>protect-the-species-mode</i>, we had forgotten that she was even sitting there.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">"You guys have that look of men who spend a lot of time on the water."</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Nym flash her best "you big strong man" smile and all three of us Cameron men exhaled silently. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">Nym only turned on <i>that</i> voice when she had everything so completely under control that even the President of the United States couldn't make her sweat.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;"> We knew from that same voice that somewhere within easy reach in Nym's shore bag at her feet, was her police issue .38 special revolver, her badge identifying her as a special investigator with the San Francisco District Attorney's office, and a pair of much-prized handcuffs that had once been on the wrists of Charles Manson, a gift to her from a friend in the FBI.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">There would be <i>no</i> trouble in the Anchor Inn tonight. But no dessert either.<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><b>Chapter 5 - Mounted Mooseheads and stranger things</b></div></div>Michael J. Fitzgeraldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09840859418177870381noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7284783973897052869.post-64111057207676098252010-07-14T06:40:00.000-07:002010-07-14T06:45:48.700-07:00Chapter 3 of the novel, The Talking Mime<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Chapter 3</b></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Researching</b></span></div><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>W</b></span>e had been away from most newspapers and television for several weeks. I have a rule about not reading newspapers or watching television when we're doing our summer cruising — a rule which drives Nym crazy, but one she respects, grudgingly. <br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">She was a journalism major in college and is still hooked on the news of the day, frequently interrupting my writing with some tidbit from NPR that falls on my deaf ears.<br />
The laptop computers stay home, too, no hardship for me, but sometimes for the balance of the family. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">I take my fiction writing relatively seriously, much more so than my publisher and my agent who were still waiting for a big book after three modestly successful novels in 10 years about the intrigues of university life. Since taking a position teaching American Literature at the University of San Francisco, I found that I had plenty of plot lines right outside my door on the campus, but precious little time to write with the staggering number of papers to grade. When Jerrod and Jacob were very young, I had tried my hand at some newspaper writing and gave it up when my editors tried to make me parargraph every sentence and rarely let me put together a story of more than 500 words.<br />
It might have been than experience that made me so dogmatic on our summer sailing trips, or perhaps it was the peace and quiet — and not hearing about the latest stock market problems or the riots in St. Petersburg, Florida. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">Nym and I rowed quietly back out to <i>Rocinante</i> where the boys stood on deck, pretending to be bored but twitching with excitement to hear what had happened in the Harbormaster's office. I had made them stay behind, partly to get cleaned up before coming ashore, but also so that if things got complicated and we were gone, someone would be around the boat to keep an eye on things.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">I opted for a nap, while Nym filled the boys in on our adventure. Then I heard Nym shout that she was leaving with the dinghy — and the boys — for some exploring in the town. It sounded like a lot of fun, but I was still a little nervous about leaving the boat unattended. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">I checked the bowline one more time, saw that the wind was still light and likely to remain so, and headed into the aft cabin where my bed looked more comfortable than it could possibly be. There's nothing quite like anchoring when you are tied to a buoy attached by 3/8 inch chain to a one-ton block of cement sunk 10 feet in the sea bottom. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">I all but passed out when my head hit the pillow and dreamed of our trip down and had visions of Wilma Krebs on the bow of my boat, checking for fingerprints around the deck and collecting little particles and feathers so she could track down the gull.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">Sleeping on the boat is usually very peaceful for me once I settle in to the rhythm of the water. In an anchorage like this, motorboat wakes can stir things up a bit, but that afternoon I slept soundly, with the waves keeping the boat lifting and dropping gently with a regularity that would've put me to sleep if I hadn't already been so drowsy.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">Sometimes at anchor I'll have awful dreams about the boat. The most common has the boat in shallow water and the tide going out. That had happened to us once in the Sacramento River Delta, earning us a nice photo in a sailing magazine of the boys and I cleaning the bottom of <i>Rocinante</i> while she sat high and dry on her side.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">I had just awakened and fallen back into a sleep that was leading me to a dream about Ingrid Bergman — another <i>favorite</i> dream topic — when I was startled awake.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">"Yo! Daddo!"</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">I heard the shout from the stern of the boat and rolled over wondering why they were back already , only to read the clock — 1400 hours. Good God. I would never get to sleep tonight, I thought.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">They had been gone three hours, now it was just 2 p.m. and I realized that the wind had come up and with it some sizable swells that were making <i>Rocinante</i> creak in the wind as she rode on the chain. Jerrod and Jacob and Nym were bouncing pretty wildly right near the ladder and as I came up the companionway, I could see that the dinghy was riding low with groceries and two large sacks of plastic-wrapped newspapers in the back.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">"Mom bought every newspaper for the last month, Dad," Jacob shouted, beating his brother to this bit of news by seconds. Nym cut Jacob off with a quick hand motion before I found out what it cost to buy the last month's worth of the Monterey <i>Peninsula Herald</i>, the Salinas <i>Californian</i> and Santa Cruz <i>Sentinel</i>. Luckily they were all relatively small-town newspapers or the dinghy might've foundered from the weight of the newsprint.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">When I saw the papers, I knew what we were in for. The "no newspaper" rule was out the window and there was little use arguing.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">We had done something similar when we lived in Sacramento for a year and I was a visiting professor, teaching about the political writings of Norman Mailer to some generally unappreciative feminists at California State University, Sacramento. Nym worked part-time as an investigator for the Sacramento County District Attorney's office, as she does now in San Francisco, but she became obsessed with a rapist who lurked along a jogging trail adjacent to the American River, waiting for solitary women victims. The police kept issuing lots of "be careful out there" stories, but seemed unable — Nym said <i>uninterested</i> — in catching the perpetrator despite the howls of protest from the community that wanted the guy caught and locked up.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">Nym studied news reports, looking at where he had struck, at what time of day, what his likely escapes routes had been. She put together a logical case describing a pattern — and where she thought the rapist would likely strike next. She ended up making the news herself when her boss discounted her theory completely and she went out, alone, to stake out a lonely stretch of the trail for several days.<br />
All without telling me. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">Late one afternoon she was sitting under an eucalyptus tree a mile from downtown Sacramento when she heard a scuffle nearby and ran out to find the trail-side rapist pulling a woman jogger off the trail, a cloth stuffed in her mouth so she couldn't scream. Nym ran up and when he turned, she emptied a 24-ounce can of orange Day-Glo paint all over the face, arms and chest of the would-be rapist, most of which he was <i>still</i> wearing five hours later when the police responded to a report of an oddly colored man reeking of paint thinner who was trying to board a Greyhound for Los Angeles.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">"Mom's on the case," Jerrod yelled as they dragged the newspapers and groceries below. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">"She's a little out of her jurisdiction, too," I said, regretting it instantly when I felt her eyes on the back of my neck. I opted to smile and get the wine chilled for what was probably going to be a long afternoon of looking at mediocre writing on banal topics — and all printed in 9 point newsprint type.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">Nym's methodology was like that followed by a lot of detectives in novels. She would amass her evidence and pin up notes, ideas, and news clips in a melange on a bulletin board so she could visualize and make connections between disparate events and ideas. I had taught her the technique when we were first married. In literature, we call it a tornado outline, in which the main theme usually jumps off the page at you after a little staring. We kept a 2 foot by 3 foot bulletin board stowed on <b><i>Rocinante</i></b> for just such a purpose but it had only been used by me up until this point for writing projects — not junior crime stoppers' stuff.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">After a snack of peanuts, we settled in around the table, but after about a hour of quality time of the family reading, I realized we were rocking just enough that my eyes had trouble focusing on the newsprint. The curse of being nearly 50 was that I now had to buy reading glasses in packs of three at the drugstore, usually getting several different strengths, for different jobs. Today the newspapers seem to demand pretty powerful lenses which were making me a bit queasy as the rocking continued and I began to worry about a summer windstorm. The bulletin board was littered with some clippings but still looked pretty bare.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">"Mom, what are we looking for?" Jerrod asked. "Somebody who lost a hand and is offering a reward?"</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">Jacob snorted from the V-Berth where he had retreated with his Gameboy, opting not to get his hands dirty on the newspapers. "Yeah, look in lost and found, under body parts..."</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">My offering was just as bad. "It might be less obvious than that boys. I think your mother is going to say, 'Look for missing persons first, attacks by crazed flesh-tearing seagulls second.'"</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">I was about to make a really bad joke about the hand belonging to Tippi Hedren, star of the classic Alfred Hitchcock film, "The Birds," when I noticed Nym had stopped reading and was staring at Jerrod and I over the tops of her reading classes, with only a trace of a smile.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">"I hope you guys are more observant than funny," she said, shoving us each another stack of newspapers. "I do want you to look for missing persons, but also anything else weird. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-align: center; text-indent: 0.25in;"><i>...Grave robberies. </i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-align: center; text-indent: 0.25in;"><i>Theft of a corpse from a hospital. </i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-align: center; text-indent: 0.25in;"><i>A motorboat accident. </i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-align: center; text-indent: 0.25in;"><i>A missing scuba diver..."</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">Jerrod and I held up our hands in mock surrender and Nym smiled, returning to her stack of newspapers and I felt myself falling asleep as I scanned the Santa Cruz newspaper with its endless stories about planning commissions, rezonings for new sewer connections and some social event calendar items that made me long for being back out on the ocean. It was reminding me of a friend in college who had worked at a film lab, processing people's snapshots and making prints. I offered that it must be something to see all those different people and what kind of pictures they took. My friend said he would swap jobs with me in a minutes — I was working in the library, checking out books and refences for co-eds — because the pictures he developed and printed documented, he said, the most boring people on the face of the earth.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">My eyes were wandering for the porthole by 4 p.m., nearly two hours into the research and many papers to go. Jerrod had started reading just the comics pages of each newspaper, clearly not part of the rules, but had great sympathy.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">Nym snapped us all out of it with her clear, part-time DA voice. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">"Stop!"</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">"We have to go back through all of these papers again. We can't assume we're looking for an incident dealing with a woman," she said, drawing looks from all three of us.<br />
She grabbed the stacks and newspapers and started dealing them out to us again, like a dealer at a poker table.<br />
"I think that might have been a man's hand, not a woman's. I just wish I could remember the ring better. Maybe the coroner will be able to tell us something tomorrow."<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><i>NEXT: Chapter 4, Service with a smile </i></div></div>Michael J. Fitzgeraldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09840859418177870381noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7284783973897052869.post-44414546988515038762010-07-12T12:07:00.000-07:002010-07-13T15:32:44.820-07:00Chapter 2 of the novel, 'The Talking Mime'<div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Chapter 2</span></b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">The Harbormaster</span></b></div><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>T</b></span>he Capitola Harbormaster's office has all the normal tide tables, pamphlets on the ABCs of boating safety and local restaurant guides you find in most of the small harbors up and down the California coast.<br />
<br />
This morning, however, the 15-by 25-foot wood-frame office overlooking the anchorage was dominated by a small, red Igloo cooler sitting on the desk of Harbormaster Harry Brookmun, which Brookmun, Nym and I took turns staring at.<br />
<br />
Inside, neatly packed by Nym in ice and locked in a ziploc bag (16 ounce), was a severed hand, sporting the big diamond ring that we had found on our deck after a seagull gave up and flew off - but only after making one more run at trying to lift it off the deck of <i>Rocinante</i>.<br />
<br />
It took us nearly a half-hour to get the Monterey Bay Coast Guard on the VHF radio, which after some discussion, decided body parts being carried by seagulls weren't under their jurisdiction, particularly because we were sitting hooked on a buoy belonging to the Capitola Harbor District. The Capitola Harbormaster wasn't monitoring the VHF radio at all, so I broke my rule and used our emergency-only cellular telephone, dialing 911 and creating a panic in the Santa Cruz County Sheriff's Office before they finally realized there was no real emergency, just an understandably gross situation.<br />
<br />
"The Undersheriff's on her way," the harbormaster said, listening to the police scanner on his desk. "Tolliver, the real sheriff, he's on vacation up north someplace chasing after abalone."<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>G</b></span>erald Tolliver, elected for six consecutive four-year terms, was a legend even in San Francisco for his low tolerance for outlaws and his high tolerance for Grey Goose vodka. I was a little sorry I wouldn't get the chance to meet him, given all that I had read about him in the <i>San Francisco Chronicle.</i><br />
<br />
The three of us sat transfixed by the cooler, as it sat like some kind of shrine on the corner of the gun-metal gray steel desk. I made a mental note to donate the cooler to the Santa Cruz County Sheriff's Department — or the harbormaster's office — because there was no way it would ever hold a cold beer for me again, provide cold storage for shoreside picnic lunches, or even be a basin for fish we had caught.<br />
<br />
"Maybe just once more, before the undersheriff gets here, you could tell me again about the bird and this hand?"<br />
<br />
Brookmun was well-dressed for the part of the harbormaster, even though the pictures on the wall behind him gave away the fact that for nine months of the year he taught geometry and wood shop to high school students in Seaside. He had the look of someone who breezed through the ranks of Boy Scouts, Sea Scouts, and Explorers, but came up short on the examinations to go the Naval Academy and now was stuck dealing with exploding hormones in high school classrooms while he tried to explain the dramatic importance of the Pythagorean Theorem.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>H</b></span>e stared at us, after asking his question, with a brooding look I would be willing to wager he practiced daily in the mirror before facing his classes.<br />
<br />
"One of our sons saw, well, recognized, that it was a human hand," Nym offered for the third time.<br />
<br />
"Our other son saw it and went into the head and vomited."<br />
<br />
I closed my eyes briefly, waiting for Nym to recount my episode of decorating the foredeck, but she as she was warming up to it, she was cut off by Brookmun, who adopted an exasperated tone.<br />
<br />
"The bird, tell me about the bird again, please." His facial expression was flat, but I began to wonder if he was trying to play cop before the police actually arrived. His uniform was a little too clean, his shoes looked like they had been spit-polished by a Marine, and his haircut was dorky, for even a high school teacher.<br />
<br />
"Are you asking if it had any scars or distinguishing marks," I quipped, regretting it immediately when I saw the look on Nym's face and the redness growing around Brookmun's ears. My sharp tongue has gotten me in lots of trouble over the years but I always see clearly when I should've kept my mouth shut well after I've let go with a few bon mots.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>B</b></span>rookmun's face did tell me that he had already been having visions of "Hard Copy" or "A Current Affair," as this might be his moment in the limelight, certainly the biggest event in Capitola in some time. Already he had told us not to even leave the Harbormaster's office, until the police arrived. I wasn't sure a harbormaster had that kind of authority, but his coffee was passable and it seemed only reasonable to wait for the police.<br />
<br />
I was getting cranky and more than a little uncomfortable, with both boys waiting out on Rocinante, where I knew they were contemplating the short swim in to the pier because they were missing all the excitement. As we rowed away in the dinghy for shore — the cooler between Nym and I on the floor of the boat — I had warned them there might be sharks lurking. And between that warning and the cold water, I though we were probably safe for another hour or so before they showed up — dripping wet.<br />
<br />
"Professor Cameron, there's no need for sarcasm," Brookmun said. "If we knew what kind of gull it was, it might help tell us where the gull picked up the hand and lead us to the killer."<br />
<br />
I bit my tongue while I envisioned a seagull picking up the hand and flying from anywhere. It had barely been able to pick it up on our deck, a thought that disturbed me even more now. Perhaps the rest of the body was bobbing near my anchor chain right now. I shuddered at the thought of the boys spotting a floater after their reaction to the hand.<br />
<br />
"Sorry," I said, "But maybe we should just wait for the sheriff. Excuse me, undersheriff. I'm beginning to believe this is all a bad dream."<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>B</b></span>lackmun slid back in his chair and sighed the same sigh the boys perfected the week I had the flu and canceled our Disneyland trip the year before. They noted, quite accurately, that I have never been too sick to go sailing, but the mention of a theme park, a shopping mall, or visit from my mother-in-law has been known to bring on violent fits of sneezing and the approximate symptoms of recurring malaria.<br />
<br />
We stared at the cooler for a few minutes of reverent silence, only to be startled by the slam of a car door, followed closely by the harbormaster's door opening and the arrival of the undersheriff, who brought in a gust of wind and highway dust with her.<br />
<br />
If the severed hand with the diamond ring on the deck of <i>Rocinante</i> was a shock, Undersheriff Wilma Krebs came as a first-class surprise.<br />
<br />
Barely five feet tall, and at least 160 pounds, she sported a knot of blonde, tightly-curled permed hair, and looked more like she belonged in a toll booth on the Golden Gate Bridge than in the uniform of the Santa Cruz County Sheriff's Department. She was wearing a .45 caliber automatic pistol that, on her, looked like cannon. Her shoulders were square and squared off with her hips, though she didn't appear fat as much as brick solid. And right here in trendy, nearly completely caucausian Capitola, Wilma Krebs was also clearly African-American, reflecting an almost blue-black skin tone that was as beautiful as it was hard to miss.<br />
<br />
She spoke in a short, barking voice that made Harry Brookmun pop up out of his chair, as if his principal had arrived and found him sleeping in class.<br />
<br />
"Harry, I forgot my rubber gloves. If I'm going to shake hands with whatever you people have in that bucket there, I want some protection."<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>W</b></span>ilma turned to look at us, giving us a perfunctory grin while Blackmun scrambled through a cupboard behind his desk. She did a thorough visual examination of the room, slowly turning, taking in every detail as if she had a camera implanted in her eye, finally coming all way the way back to us where she stopped.<br />
<br />
'You're the folks on that pretty sailboat that came in last night?" she asked, drawing the expected smiles from Nym and I.<br />
<br />
"Is it named after Don Quixote's horse."<br />
<br />
Wilma didn't wait for our response, but instead reached for a set of gloves offered by Blackmun.<br />
<br />
Competent, quick-witted and even literate, I thought. Maybe it was going to be a good day after all.<br />
<br />
She popped the lid on the cooler slowly, as if it might hold something that could jump out at her, then she gently reached in, poking the ice aside to get to the bagged hand. She lifted it out, the plastic bag dripping and the hand looking more like a piece frozen salmon than anything else. For just a moment I had a sharp jab of fear that it <i>was</i> a piece of salmon that the boys had somehow made look like a hand — complete with the dimestore jewelery just to fool me.<br />
<br />
But when Nym stood up with me, to peer from a few feet away while the undersheriff laid the hand on the desk top, I knew what I had seen was real and that joking aside, we had found a damned body part on our deck.<br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-size: large;">W</span></b>ilma held the hand, still in the bag while Blackmun grabbed some paper towels and put them next to the bag, anticipating Wilma's next move to get a closer look.<br />
<br />
"Well, I'm glad you got this thing a little cold," Wilma said, unzipping the top of the bag and peering in as if there was a ham sandwich encased. "Human flesh gets pretty rank even in a seawater bath. And this is pretty decomposed. Another day and that nice ring would be on the bottom of the ocean. Hmm..."<br />
<br />
Wilma slid the hand out of the bag onto the towel, poking it again with fingers and then putting a flat piece of paper at the wrist. "I was hoping you were maybe a shark attack victim, or part of somebody who drowned," she said, speaking to the hand.<br />
<br />
"Afraid not."<br />
<br />
She slid the hand back in the plastic bag and put it back in the cooler as carefully as if it was radioactive or plastic explosive, snapping the gloves off, and tossing them into the trash. "I don't know where the rest of her is, but somebody cut this hand off with something very sharp. It's as clean as a cleaver cut, or a meat saw, maybe. Maybe even an electric carving knife."<br />
<br />
She turned to the harbormaster, who had backed up away from his desk, and looked a little ill. He hadn't moved the whole time she was examining the hand.<br />
<br />
"Put some fresh ice in that cooler, will you Harry? No telling how long it will take me to find the coroner in Santa Cruz — whatever bar he's having his breakfast in."<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Next - Chapter 3: Research</b></span></div>Michael J. Fitzgeraldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09840859418177870381noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7284783973897052869.post-61158095139866720612010-07-12T09:35:00.000-07:002010-07-12T11:04:56.683-07:00Chapter I of the novel, 'The Talking Mime'<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>The Talking Mime</b></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><br />
</b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b>Chapter I</b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><br />
</b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><b>Down the California Coast</b></i></div><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>W</b></span>e picked up a mooring buoy at the north end of Monterey Bay offshore of a little tourist town called Capitola where gourmet coffee prices would make a New Yorker blush and there are more men wearing pony tails than women. Capitola was the first stop in our annual summer sojourn southward along the California coast aboard our 45-foot sailing ketch, <i>Rocinante</i>, which seemed as tired as we were after fighting the wind and waves from San Francisco Bay in a rolling night voyage.<br />
<br />
We had pulled in after a bouncy ride that the National Weather Service had said wasn't happening — even as we we're being tossed about on 12-foot swells with 30-knot winds pushing from all over the compass. It was just before 8 a.m. on July 6th, past the July 4th madness that passes for boating on San Francisco Bay and my wife Nym and I had taken turns hand-steering through the sloppy seas, unwilling to trust our autopilot, which had begun making strange groaning noises just off Pillar Point at Half Moon Bay.<br />
<br />
Our twin teenage sons, Jacob and Jerrod, had slept below like mummies oblivious to the roar of the water around them through the entire night. Our calico cat Thompson, short for Hunter S. Thompson, had also slept through the trip, hiding somewhere below.<br />
<br />
We had left in the early evening, enveloped in a thick fog inside San Francisco Bay which stayed with us out along the coast, laying low on the water even with the wind. It would have been a night of glorious sailing had we been willing to sail much farther out from the coast, but I was determined to make Monterey Bay by morning. The radar scope did its usual yeoman service, picking out a handful of freighters and a few fishing boats as we drew a line from the sea buoys and San Francisco Entrance to an imaginary point I had drawn on my chart three miles off the Santa Cruz headlands.<br />
<br />
I had glanced behind me and was warming my hands on my coffee mug — trying desperately to visualize a sunny day at the Santa Cruz Harbor beach — when out of nowhere it seemed, I was staring at a huge wooden bowsprit that I recognized in a frightening moment as California's official tallship, the twin-masted <i>Californian</i>.<br />
<br />
The Californian came out of the night straight at us from behind, sans any running lights and sailing at a good 12-15 knots, forcing me to turn sharply, almost causing a serious broach in the tall waves. I swore loudly enough to raise the whole crew out of their warm bunks, or maybe it was just the sudden lurch, but it was over quickly as we sped south and the <i>Californian</i> roared south, too. The twinge of seasickness I had felt was gone as I hailed the <i>Californian</i> on the VHF radio to tell them their lights were out and to report the near miss. But my call was only answered by static and a Portuguese fisherman who was lonely and commiserated with me about the close call.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>I </b></span>had almost forgotten about it as we cleaned the cockpit out, the debris of spilled coffee and snacks from the night passage hidden about cracks in the teak and on the fiberglass. I was watching forward, where the bowline was made fast from our cleats to one of several dozen firmly anchored buoys owned by the city when I saw a very ugly relative of Jonathan Livingston Seagull semi-crash-land near the anchor windlass on the bowsprit of the boat, extending over the water.<br />
<br />
That a seagull — with or without poor navigational skills — decided to take up residence on the bow of Rocinante was not unusual. In our slip in San Francisco's City Marina, right next to the world famous St. Francis Yacht Club, gulls were always circling the area, watching for the leftovers from the meals of our twins, neither of whom would be allowed in Emily Post's home — let alone at her dinner table. But I had watched the bow and bowsprit take several tons of water on the trip down as we plunged through several troughs that almost stopped us completely in the rough seas. Some seriously sticky macaroni and cheese must be up there, I thought.<br />
<br />
"Maybe he's hurt?" Nym asked, poking her head up from the hatchway and looking forward at our guest. A caregiver of epic proportions, Nym has at times taken in birds and more than a few stray animals into the house and nursed them back to health. "He's pretty ratty looking even for a <i>male</i> gull," she said.<br />
<br />
I went back to scrubbing the cockpit, wondering if it was going to be open season on the male species today. Nym had made several comments during the night about the lack of hygiene in the forward head that the boys and I shared whenever we took an extended voyage, giving her the larger, and certainly generally cleaner, aft head and shower area for herself.<br />
<br />
"Alex," she said, "The gull has something in his mouth. Oops, he dropped it. I bet it's a flying fish that landed up when we rounded the point."<br />
<br />
I watched the gull pirouette around forward, but my vision was blocked by rigging and lines, dinghies and assorted paraphernalia that was part and parcel of our cruising equipment whenever we ventured out the Golden Gate. Nym always complained that we looked like a bunch of gypsies and heaven help the crew member — or captain — who left a towel hanging over a rail when we left the dock.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>O</b></span>ur twin-boy demolition team roused from their snoring reverie when they heard mention of fish and realized that a live seagull was nearly at arms length, just above their heads through the hatch from the V-berth where they slept. <i>Rocinante</i> is a traditional, center cockpit rig, which gives her a nice v-berth (for the boys) a spacious central cabin with a galley, table and salon and my navigation station, complete with GPS, a computer, weatherfax, and several radios, including a Ham set purchased last year. The boat's aft cabin, with a double bed, desk, and private head is the reserve for Nym and I, far enough away from the bow when the boys want to stay awake, and far enough away to sleep in tidily in the morning when they opted to get up early to head out on some adventure.<br />
<br />
Neither of the 15-year-olds could be considered a naturalist, but they had spent a good part of their summers in recent years scraping seagull droppings off boats in the harbor to make money for their small sailing skiff, <i>Sancho Panza</i>," new CDs or to treat our 15-year-old neighbor girl to a burger. She overlooks their neanderthal eating habits, if they're paying the bill. The boat took most of their money, because, like their father, they enjoyed the puttering on the boat that costs so much money, and while cheap in some ways, would never consider cutting a corner when it came to boat equipment.<br />
<i><br />
</i><br />
<i>"Dad! Is he still there?"</i><br />
<br />
I peered forward from the cockpit where the gull was shaking something pretty large in his mouth but his huge rump blocked a good view of it from the cockpit in the center of the boat. ""He's up there, but I don't know for how long," I shouted down, hoping to get either boy out of the bunks so I could talk them into helping me wash down the decks.<br />
<br />
Normally early risers, both boys had perfected<i> sleeping in</i> with a science that bordered on precision when we were traveling, recognizing that there are jobs that need to be done on boats at all hours, but early in the morning there were more than normal. And having just completed an all-night passage, there was plenty to go around.<br />
<br />
The forward hatch, located about ten feet from where the gull was perched, began to slowly lift, blocking my view entirely, and I wondered if this gull would take off quickly when he saw the twins malicious eyes. Finally it was up all the way, standing up straight and I could see someone's fingers on the outside edge as they pulled themselves up out of the bunks.<br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-size: large;">I</span></b> felt the boat lurch from a passing motorboat wake and leaned down in the cockpit, looking at a row of peanuts (my favorite on-watch snack which had found their way to form a perfect circle in one of two large drain screens in the floor of the cockpit, blocking the salt water I was splashing from draining out.<br />
<br />
I was actually thinking some peanuts might taste good with the fresh coffee I could smell from the galley when I was interrupted.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><i>"DAD!</i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>DAD... </i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>JESUS CHRIST!</i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>DAD!"</i></div><br />
The forward hatch over the boys' cabin dropped like a stone back to the deck and as I shot down the companionway ladder headed for the V-berth, I noted that the gull was still shaking his prize, but I was concerned about some disaster forward that probably included a badly pinched finger — or worse — in the bunks.<br />
<br />
Nym beat me by seconds, her slender five foot, two inch frame well-suited for quick motion in the small spaces below. I huffed into the cabin, banging my head slightly on the six-foot overhang, swearing, then catching myself because unless somebody was seriously hurt, the loud "Jesus Christ" that had reverberated across the water to half the boats around us was going to call for at least some stern talk.<br />
<br />
<i>"I hope Jesus Christ himself is on the bow, or else...</i>" I bellowed.<br />
<br />
A look from Nym told me to stop there, and I didn't like the look on either of the boys' faces.<br />
<br />
"Dad, that seagull's got a hand and some guts in its mouth," Jerrod said. "No <i>shit</i>, Dad."<br />
<br />
Jacob looked a little uncomfortable with his brother's observation - and the <i>shit</i> - but didn't dispute it. "It's gross, Dad. Take a look."<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>W</b></span>e had played enough practical jokes on each other that I knew I was somehow being set up, but as I require them to be good sports, I went along, hoping it would be over quickly because I was exhausted from the night voyage and was looking forward to a day of sleeping and reading — in that order.<br />
<br />
I inched forward, stepping up on the bunk so I could lift the hatch, laughing silently that two boys who once watched all of the Friday the 13th movies in an all-day movie marathon with their friends would think I would be so gullible that I would believe they would be intimidated by something in the mouth of a seagull — mostly likely the insides of a tuna or some other fish killed by a shark. As I inched it open, the gull ran by on the deck, trying to take off heading for the cockpit.<br />
<br />
"Shit," I yelled, dropping the hatch and tumbling down with Nym and the boys, who were now laughing. "Let's go see this critter. Whatever he has is too heavy to fly with."<br />
<br />
As we extricated ourselves from the bunk, the boys pulled their sleeping bags around them unzipped while Nym moved up into the cockpit. "He's back on the aft deck," Nym says. "No! There he goes forward again."<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">"ALEX!"</div><br />
I was still trying to get clear of the V-berth debris of clothes, shoes and empty potato chip bags and Pepsi cans when Nym shouted. She was still standing on the ladder, and I saw the gull skitter by the main cabin portholes, back up the bow and out near the end of the bowsprit where I had first spied him. Nym hadn't moved, and without the entanglements of the two boys, I jumped up on the bunk and popped the hatch like it was submarine.<br />
<br />
I had had enough aerobics, the fatigue of the all-night sail beginning to sink me. "Alex, be careful," Nym shouted.<br />
<br />
<i>Careful? </i>I wondered if she was in on the joke, whatever it was. Our practical jokes were sometimes pretty grotesque, but part of the unwritten Cameron family joke code was that although you could make a total ass out of someone, they could not get physically injured in the process.<br />
<br />
I edged up out of the hatch, reminding myself that I really wanted to trim down to 175 pounds this summer from the high 190s I'd crept up to since last fall. Since I had turned 45, the spare tire around my stomach came and went without much warning. A week of pizza and beer — and no exercise — could mean as much as a 10-pound gain. And it took a lot more than a single week to get rid of the same poundage.<br />
<br />
The gull was startled by my quick ascent and struggled, dropping his prize finally but not without a screech that hurt my ears. I also saw him drop a present from his hind end for the boys to clean near the end of the bowsprit, but the thing that had been in his mouth was just ahead of me as I slid out on all fours to look where the gull had been.<br />
<br />
It was certainly no flying fish or tuna that this gull had had in its mouth.<br />
<br />
And it certainly <i>looked</i> like a human hand.<br />
<br />
I mentally congratulated the boys on their adeptness. This thing was far more realistic than any dimestore Halloween joke I had ever seen. This was far better than Jerrod's last attempt to convince me that he had a broken arm, a dramatic skit one evening when he came home from a snow-skiing expedition that was completely plausible — until he yanked the case off his arm and declared that he was miraculously cured.<br />
<br />
Ahead I saw the gull, which had returned to the very end of the bowsprit leaving its prize between us. He was ten feet away, eyeing me the same way a dog does when you take away its bone as I took a lot closer look at what I thought the boys had tossed on the deck.<br />
<br />
I wished later I hadn't looked <i>quite</i> so close.<br />
<br />
The hand was neatly severed at the wrist, pecked out in spots, though still relatively intact. But the detail that ultimately triggered a gag reflex in my throat, sending last night's coffee, snacks and a half jar of peanuts onto the deck was a beautiful ring, polished by its exposure to salt water, — a ring I would later tell police was at least two-carats and smartly displayed on the ring finger, at least the stub that was left of it.<br />
<br />
It seemed the joke was on me, but I <i>wasn't</i> laughing.<br />
<br />
NEXT UP: <i>The Harbormaster </i>Michael J. Fitzgeraldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09840859418177870381noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7284783973897052869.post-1522238148197803112010-07-10T09:25:00.000-07:002010-07-10T09:46:58.406-07:00On a birthday numbered 62, a marriage, a fiesta and personal vow<span style="font-size: large;"><b>VALOIS, New York, USA </b>- The nearly insufferable heat broke last night, a few hours short of my hitting 62, that wonderful age at which I can file for Social Security benefits and also can <i>now</i> claim I am officially old enough to do whatever I feel like.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">More or less.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">This birthday comes on the heels of reading Pat Conroy's novel, <i>South of Broad</i>, a fabulous book, filled with characters that are so burned in my brain I want to dive right into the storyline, much the same way as I feel about the movie, <i>Casablanca</i>. It's a book that reminds how important friends and family are in lives, even when those same people can be such <i>pains-in-the-ass</i> you want to kick them down a flight of stairs.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">And today, a birthday for me, is also a day that marks the wedding of my wife's second cousin to a beautiful girl, some years his junior. But they seem perfect for each other, in similar ways to the way I see with my wife. For me, it's the finishing sentences of the other, knowing exactly where the eyeglasses were left, anticipating the need for some privacy - or a cold beer. For this young couple, it's younger things, more subtle, but obvious.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>I</b></span>t should be a party-of-parties. And while everyone will be toasting the wedding of Brett Beardslee and Jesse Ringsmuth, I'll be pretending that the party is in my honor, too.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Why not, I am officially old enough to do whatever I feel like.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">So what is the vow from the headline?</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">One of those things I want to do - vow to do - is to resuscitate my moribund writing schedule. Perhaps moribund is not the correct word. Distracted maybe, distracted by the unbelievably sunny days and nature here in the quiet woods of upstate New York.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>B</b></span>ut some of the various blogs I have written, for the past five years or so, seem (to me) to have turned as stale as two-day-old bread from a natural food store. (That's a <i>no-preservatives</i> joke, of course. The bread is excellent, minus the <i>rhizopus nigrican</i> spores that sprout so quickly.)</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Maybe that should be the title of a <i>new</i> blog: <i>Rhizopus Nigricans Rule. </i>Or the title of a children's book<i>.</i></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Perhaps after the wedding today, it will all be more clear.</span>Michael J. Fitzgeraldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09840859418177870381noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7284783973897052869.post-3715906091537184192009-12-05T10:21:00.000-08:002009-12-05T10:28:48.830-08:00Year of the Robie - a chapter from 'The Class of '66'In honor of the passing of Southwestern High School English teacher Harry Robie, here is posted a chapter from an unpublished manuscript, <i>The Class of '66</i>.<br />
<br />
===========================================<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>The Year of the Robie</b></span><br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-size: large;">S</span></b>enior year was not the best year of high school. Junior year was.<br />
<br />
Junior year, when the brain and body started somehow working together before real decisions had to be made. After junior year of high school, there's no real "I-must-make-big-bucks" summer job, no real need to sweat bullets about college. Not quite old enough to be a real adult, the summer after junior year is a simple time of enjoying a last gasping, crazed run at being a kid — irresponsible and getting away with it.<br />
<br />
But senior year! Good God! Suddenly it was college looming and ever so quickly the Yale and Harvard-bound separated themselves out simply by applying and we — we of the next level in the echelons of higher learning — we knew that our colleges would be Oswegos and Brockports and Fredonias, state colleges of the vast SUNY spider that couldn't touch the tassel's of the top rung but still held plenty of reason to be smug when compared to the joke schools people clung to keep out of the draft: Parsons, Miami-Dade Junior College.<br />
<br />
And right in the middle of all of it was Harry Robie, English Teacher, 5 feet 10 inches, a smug, smiling sonofabitch looking at us right in the eye and reminding a dozen of us that while we had slipped through his wide-webbed net by passing a state regent's English exam (after nearly failing his literature-based class as juniors), it was Robie who stood like a hanging judge waiting for senior year to be over and for us to head out to real literature classes in real colleges and have those real teacher/professors write real slashing comments on our papers like he did, but without the safety net of some kind of state test to absolve a semester's sins.<br />
<i><br />
</i><br />
<i>"Trying reading the book before writing the essay next time, Mr. Fitzgerald."</i><br />
<i>"How can you write so well and know so little?"</i><br />
<i>"Do you not read these books because your eyes hurt?"</i><br />
<i>"Even wrestlers need to read."</i><br />
<br />
It was the Robie who waved my report card in the air like a greasy taco shell the final day of junior year and announced that he was "darn proud" that the Regent's Exam of the great State of New York recognized talent and ability and didn't penalize for flat-ass laziness.<br />
<br />
"Nice job on the exam, Mr. Fitzgerald. See you next year When you're a senior."<br />
<br />
And in senior year, Robie had us all, all caged-in for a double-class period, an hour and a half of sitting on skinny rear ends, starved by having to “make weight” for the wrestling team. He had us all in a senior-seminar English/History/Civics melange that no one really understood much about except there were 50 of us packed into a long, narrow study hall and the half-dozen teachers rotated in and out like characters on a Swiss clock — with about the same impact. We were supposed to be preparing for college, which I suppose it was, because it was long and boring and basically ineffectual in such a large group — precisely what happens in the large lecture halls of academe where balding professors drone about the reproductive system of the lizard-like anole while the real reproductive studies take place after dances called “mixers” by those in charge and "shake and bake" by the students.<br />
Senior year was the year when a wild, angry wall-pounding punch broke my left hand — my writing hand — and Robie seized on the first paper I turned in a week later to show as an example to the class of what sloppy work was being produced. When he did, anger got the best of me.<br />
<br />
"I broke my hand, Harry." (Sweet Jesus, did I really say Harry!)<br />
<br />
I did! And in saying so broke an unwritten rule that was as big a sin as pissing inside the Mormon Tabernacle. You never, never call a high school teacher by their first name. For us, there were no first names attached to teachers, only Mr., Mrs., or Miss. No Ms. had appeared on the scene yet, though the boy/men could feel it in their bones when they watched a Sherry Tower or Carolyn Coulter calmly shred a male opponent to pieces in class debates by carefully blending the "I'm-a-girl, take-it-easy" coquetishness with a prosecutor's hard talent of going for the throat.<br />
<br />
The class debates seemed more like Tijuana cock fights than structured academic contests, with the teachers throwing in their champions, asking other teachers to sit in to judge so they could sit on the sidelines and snort. They pretended to look serious but laughed like hell later, in the teacher's room, where the smoke was thick and the talk mostly about houses and upkeep with a smattering of socializing and flirting going on. These were the teachers who couldn't drink in a bar, get caught speeding or even avoid church on Sundays. There were moral clauses in contracts in 1966 (most often written and, if not, certainly clearly understood). If the male teachers seemed to be eunuchs, they had to be, if they weren't before they took the jobs.<br />
<br />
But Robie was <i>no</i> eunuch. He kept up a play-by-play banter through five classes a day that made even Silas Marner mildly interesting to the farm kids who sat in the back, too tired to argue early in the morning after milking the cows, tossing a little hay, and riding a solid hour on a diesel-smoke-spewing schoolbus to get to high school. Robie used the now-famous technique favored by politicians wanting to have a "down home" image. He started class with his sports coat and tie intact, gradually taking his coat off and loosening his tie, sometimes rolling up his sleeves. Eventually he would give up the podium and walk around the room, becoming “one” with the class, making everyone forget he was the teacher, Mr. Robie, though calling him "Harry" nearly cost me a trip to see the principal, a man whose smile had all the warmth of a cobra on acid.<br />
<br />
Drugs weren't a part of the Year of the Robie, though we heard weird strange tales from some of kids had graduated and gone to “big schools” when they came home for their first break, freshman, but full of themselves, strutting down the halls of the high school during class, laughing aloud, calling teachers by their first names!<br />
<br />
They talked quietly — very quietly — about smoking “stuff,” but if we knew they were talking about marijuana, we didn't say it aloud. We maintained our reverent attitude toward these older brethren who we really didn't like much anyway, having played the junior student to their senior superiority.<br />
<br />
Our drug of choice senior year was alcohol, mostly beer, though a nice mixture for insulation against the New York winter was slugs of Southern Comfort washed down with gulps of Colt .45 (if we bought it) or Rheingold (if we stole it from the stashes kept by parents). The combination was lethal if you drank it fast enough, and we did, of course, as if by imbibing what was illegal for us to even carry around, we could avoid getting caught. Of course, we got stinking, puking commode-hugging drunk, a fast high that frequently faded fast, too, but when it didn't, it usually turned into a wild Mr. Toad's ride for the non-drunk who loved to parade the drunkest person in public for what we would later recognize as some kind of rebellious demand for attention via shock value.<br />
<br />
We were oddly scrupulous at that age about not driving and drinking. Jesus! Can you imagine, getting caught drinking and driving and then losing your driver's license? In New York, if you were seventeen and had passed a driver's training course, you could drive at night. And the world was clearly demarcated between those who could drive and night and those who couldn't. And if you couldn't, you were doomed to double-dating with some smug bastard who was just a little older than you or who lucked out and got into driver's ed a half year before you did. And after a date, the bastard would always drop you off before your date, with a wink and the suggestion that your date could sit up front.<br />
<br />
<i>Shit</i>.<br />
<br />
But if losing your license was a horrible, unendurable agony, so was driver training, particularly if you already had your license and the driver's ed teacher had seen your new Mustang or GTO or Chevy Malibu in the parking lot, a decided step above his Chevy Bel Air, Ford Fairlane four-door, or aging DeSoto. Between teaching wood shop to an odd assortment of seventh grade miscreants, the socially retarded and a third group so generally backwoods, upstate-New York weird that they defy description, these driver's ed teachers came out to a carload of 17-year-old boys with an unsettling mix of anticipation of getting free of the school for 45 minutes and utter dread at the thought of teaching us how to pass on a slippery ice-covered highway.<br />
<br />
My group drew arguably the gem of the group, a dark-haired Swede named Mr. Anderson who despite 15 years of watching accidents ready to happen in a metal shop filled with lathes, ball peen hammers, and hacksaws, retained a wolf-like smile that revved up us when he would get into the car, always a minute or two late, <i>reeking</i> of cigarettes.<br />
<br />
"<i>Ready boys</i>?" And we always were.<br />
<br />
We were mostly ready to see who would drive first, who would get the chance to accidently let the dog-of-a-Chevy fishtail ever-so-slightly when we turned out of the parking lot, in full view of the main study hall where at least 50 or so upperclassman were probably looking out the window instead of reading whatever claptrap the Robie had presented that morning. The trick was to let it slide just enough for people to see but not push the smile from the Anderson's face. If you did, he would watch out of the corner of his eye for the rest of your turn and a single instant of one-hand-on-the-wheel would draw a sharp rebuke.<br />
<br />
We always came back with some tale from those drives. Rick Shevalier would slide the wheels off the asphalt to send us briefly spinning. Jack Eckdahl would keep turning around to say something to us in the back seat, only to have Mr. Anderson demand that he stop talking. These outings were like a conjugal visit with freedom.<br />
<br />
Out on that road we were still shackled by the school, but with only a single bull to watch us, and in Mr. Anderson's case, he was as close to a friendly guard as we dared imagine.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">######<br />
</div>Michael J. Fitzgeraldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09840859418177870381noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7284783973897052869.post-27328254433306279332008-10-30T15:04:00.000-07:002008-10-30T15:18:55.607-07:00Stories right out the back door of my condo<span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size:180%;">S</span>ACRAMENTO, Calif., USA</span> - A walk out the back door (ok, the <span style="font-style: italic;">only</span> door) of my house into the neighborhood to take a stretch, reminded me that stories don't have to be dug up, sometimes they are right in front of your face.<br /><br />I walked a half-mile to the Sacramento River, which looks ever-so placid these days (at least until the rain arrives this weekend), and while watching a ski boat glide across the water, spotted a river dweller, neatly hidden right at the water's edge.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/mikefitz/2987722602/" title="Home along the river by Brite light photos, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3191/2987722602_60a76b5363.jpg" alt="Home along the river" height="375" width="500" /></a><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">A blue tarp to keep out the weather, a bicycle for transportation</span><br /><br />Whoever is living underneath the tarp is also living below the radar of most of Sacramento. From time to time, the police raid along the river, chasing out people they call 'transients.' I say <span style="font-style: italic;">call</span> transients, because there are some folks among these river dwellers who are there by choice, living as free as is possible in the USSA, way beyond credit checks, snooping landlords, police and the ever-present TSA.<br /><br />This person - or persons - chose their spot well, as it's necessary to stand up on top of a concrete abutment to even see that there is a tarp and bicycle below.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;" >M</span>y writer-hero, American author Jack London rode the rails of freight trains once, doing a chronicle of the lives of the men - and some women - who took to the road at the turn of the 20th century. They did so mostly because of tough economic times, but some just to escape from, well, whatever haunted them.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">The River People</span>.<br /><br />Hmmm.... now there's an idea for a literary journalism piece.Michael J. Fitzgeraldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09840859418177870381noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7284783973897052869.post-84207723208214673012008-10-14T18:32:00.000-07:002008-10-15T14:47:19.828-07:00Test posting on Backpack Journalist website seems to be working OK<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-large;">S</span>ACRAMENTO, Calif., USA</span> - The business cards have printed and the backpack is ready to go with a digital camera, a Flip Video, a Mac laptop - <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">and</span> a reporter's notebook - to launch the Backpack Journalist project.<div><br /></div><div>This website will be used as a log of activities, a news source, a compendium of useful links and a way to communicate with people about story ideas.</div><div><br /></div><div>Stories under consideration include:</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">• Corruption in the California State University system </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">• Capriciousness (and corruption) by the US Citizenship and Immigration Service's dealing with Mexican immigrants </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">• The timebomb of healthcare for poor Asian populations who rely on fish for protein<br /></span></div><div><br /></div><div>Those all sound pretty serious. And long term.</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Less</span> serious (<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">perhaps</span>) might be a story about life along the road between California and Mexico, based on a trip I expect to take in mid-December, retracing a road trip taken last year. Or about the resurgence of ukuleles in an era where the electronic game Guitar Hero sells hundreds of thousands of units. </div><div><br /></div><div>Yes, the ukulele is a piece of equipment that this Backpack Journalist carries along to remind that life isn't always serious. Plus, strumming on a ukulele is almost always a good way to get people talking, which leads to stories and more stories.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Michael J. Fitzgeraldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09840859418177870381noreply@blogger.com0