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SEA STORIES AND SHORTS

AN ANTHOLOGY
Copyright 2010 by Roger L. Johnson
Commander, US Navy

FOREWORD
Welcome! My first career was as a Naval Aviator flying rescue and combat support
missions during the Vietnam War. During my flight training at the Naval Air Training
Command at Pensacola, Florida, in the West Pacific Fleet, and later in the Naval Air
Reserves, I experienced many incidents that could have killed me and my crew, but what
is contained in these pages is the worst of the worst. There is no exaggeration. What I
have recorded happened exactly as written. You may or may not be a Believer in Jesus
Christ. I was not a Believer when these incidents occurred, but I am convinced that the
Lord was putting me through these trying situations to get me attention. It was shortly
after making that emergency landing on Mount Disappointment in the Angeles National
Forest near Burbank, California that I finally surrendered and put all of my faith and trust
in Jesus Christ and His finished work on the cross.

Following the Sea Stories, please read the series of Short Stories. Most are completely
fictional. However, IT TOOK A TEN PENNY NAIL happened just as I have written it.
Those were my neighborhood buddies. We survived that day together.

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 INVERTED IN A THUNDER STORM

At age nineteen—following graduation from Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa,

California, I went on active duty as a Naval Aviation Cadet. I reported to NAS Pensacola
on 26 June 1963 where I began the sixteen week Pre-Flight phase of my sixteen month
training to acquire my wings and Commission as an Ensign in the United States Navy.
Following sixteen weeks of Pre-Flight—an intensive Boot Camp for officers—I began
moving from base to base around Pensacola. The first assignment was NAS Saufley Field
where I trained in the T-34 Mentor—a small tandem aircraft about the size of a
Beechcraft Bonanza. My next aircraft was the T-28 Trojan—a large tandem aircraft
nearly equal to the World War 2 fighters. My third aircraft was the TC-45J Expeditor—a
twin engine aircraft used for dozens of various military missions. The Naval Air Training
Command used the Expeditor for advanced instrument training.

On the fifth of August, 1964, my flight instructor and I left on a cross-country flight from
NAS Whiting Field in our twin engine TC-45J. We called this vintage aircraft the SNB,
which we jokingly agreed meant the Secret Navy Bomber. Why the Naval Air Training
Command used such an old airplane to teach advanced instruments will always remain a
mystery to me. The most advanced navigational instrument was the VOR—an arrow that
pointed to a transmitter. There was no distance measuring equipment.

My instructor and I took off in the morning and flew several hundred miles to MacDill
Air Force Base. We landed and checked into the Bachelor Officer Quarters for a well-
deserved night of rest. In the morning, after a good breakfast, we went to flight planning
and while my instructor watched, I plotted our return flight to Whiting Field. I was
concerned that a band of bad weather was approaching our destination, but my instructor
assured me that between us, we could make it through most any weather to a safe
landing. We should have waited.

On the sixth of August at about 1600 hours (4 PM), we hit the forecast band of weather.
At first it was just rain, but as we got closer to NAS Whiting Field, the rain shower turned
into a full-blown thunder storm. We had an alternate field thirty minutes away, but an
unexpected headwind slowed our progress and caused us to run low on fuel. In other
words, we had to land at Whiting Field or we had to crash, and with zero visibility, that
crash could be in the water, in the trees, or into the middle of one of the many small
towns that dotted the countryside.

Since we were trying to reach the airport in a thunderstorm, my instructor took the
controls and asked that I back him up. He really didn't need to ask for that back-up,
because if he crashed the airplane, we would both suffer the same injuries. As he
maneuvered the aircraft through the approach to Whiting Field, he must have experienced
vertigo for a moment. He did not tell me. In a matter of two seconds, he turned the yoke
and we were completely inverted.

This was no time for soft words or conciliation. With zero visibility, I grabbed the yoke
and yelled, "We're inverted! I've got the aircraft!" By instinct, he released the controls as

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I twisted the yoke hard to port until we were once again upright and wings level. Since
we were still on the approach, I continued until we broke out of the weather at three
hundred feet above the runway.

As we rolled into the parking spot, our port engine ran out of gas and quit. We shut the
other engine down, got out, and kissed the tarmac. Later, my instructor told me that if I
had not taken the controls, we would have been killed. I got a perfect 4.0 grade on the
flight to MacDill AFB, and another 4.0 for the return flight to NAS Whiting Field.

There was only one other time I got out of a military aircraft and kissed the ground. That
was my unscheduled landing on top of Mount Disappointment in 1970.

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 THE FOG BANK

It was the Spring of 1976 during the USS Enterprise's workup fo deployment th the
7th Fleet and the Vietnam War. The Airwing (that's the carrier's assigned squadrons of
fighters, bombers, and attack aircraft which deploy with the ship) was in the middle
of its Carrier Qualifications (CARQUALS) off the coast of Southern California. Day
CARQUALS had been completed and we were in our first period of night launches
and recoveries.

I was a Lieutenant Junior Grade and had completed one WestPac cruise on the USS
Ticonderoga, so I had "learned the ropes", as they used to say on the old wooden ships. I
was the Plane Commander of the "ANGEL"; the rescue helicopter which orbits in the
starboard DELTA pattern waiting to pull pilots out of the water if they take a swim. My
co-pilot was Tom Matthews, a brand new "nugget" right out of the Training Command at
Pensacola, Florida. Our two aircrew men had been on at least one previous WestPac
cruise, so three of us were savvy to the do's and don'ts of plane guard duty. Our helicopter
was the single engine UH-2 Seasprite which carried a fuel load for 3+ hours. This
occasionally became a problem during CARQUALS because the fixed-wing aircraft
would come and go all night long. If we didn't bug the Air Boss, he would forget all
about us. Many a night during these work-ups, we would land with a LOW LEVEL
FUEL warning light glowing. Such was the case this particular night, but with an added
element that nearly killed us.

The weather was CAVU. That means that the ceiling was unrestricted and the horizontal
visibility was also unrestricted. I commented to my co-pilot that the moon was so bright
that you could actually pull down you daytime dark visor and still see well enough to fly
VFR. This fact would play a pivotal roll in the decisions I would make just prior to the
incident.

A squadron of A-7 Corsairs had just completed their required number of night traps
(arrested landings) and had "bingo'd" to NAS Miramar in San Diego 120 miles away to
the east. The term "BINGO" means that an aircraft is directed to depart the carrier
landing pattern and proceed to another designated destination. Quite often, a jet pilot will
report being at BINGO fuel, which means that he's reached that point where he can no
longer make it to that other place unless he departs now. If they get below BINGO fuel,
an airborne tanker would rendezvous with them and give them a drink of fuel. The
helicopter I was flying that night had no such option, and even though we were now
below BINGO fuel, I wasn't worried because the night was clear and it was never a
problem getting a helicopter landed on an aircraft carrier.

The A-7's departed the pattern, switched to departure frequency and climbed to altitude.
Moments later, five (5) S-2 "Tracker" aircraft (these are twin-engine, prop type, anti-
submarine aircraft) came up on the land/launch radio frequency and checked in with the
Landing Signal Officer (LSO) so as to begin their night traps.

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It was at this time that I spotted an enormous fog bank approximately five (5) miles ahead
of the Enterprise. It was a solid wall extending from as far North to as far South as I
could see, and went from the surface to 600 AGL (above ground level). I figured that
somebody in CIC (combat information control) had to have seen it on ship's radar, but
with my low fuel state, I decided to warn the ship. "Tower, this is Angel 25. Be advise
that you have a fog bank five miles ahead, and if you continue on your present course,
you'll have to BINGO all aircraft. I guess the "little man" will never really know why the
"big man" does some of things he does. Even after two more warnings, the Enterprise
drove straight into the fog. And what really amazed me, was that they kept heading west,
deeper into the fog bank even they knew the weather was CAVU back to the east.

You guessed it. All of the S-2's were directed to climb and orbit to the east of the fog
bank and wait for instructions. We, on the other hand, were directed to fly west, into the
fog bank at 300 AGL to see if there was an end of the fog further west. My reply to that
was, "Tower, Angel 25, we are 30 minutes to splash. Request you reverse course so we
can land to re-fuel, over." The Air Boss' reply left something to be desired. I could note a
tinge of sarcasm as he said, "Roger your fuel state, Angel. Proceed as directed and report
weather to the west, and don't worry, we'll get you aboard." Oh, if only that calm all-
knowing voice that floated across the airwaves to us had the power to turn his words into
substance! I foolishly took the Air Boss at his word and entered the fog.

It took only seconds to realize just how thick this fog was. Because we were so low on
fuel and faced the real possibility of ditching at sea, I directed Tom and our crewmen to
open all the doors in preparation for a quick escape. There was so much moisture in the
air that within seconds after entering the fog, all of our instruments and everything else in
the helicopter that was cool had collected a layer of water droplets. The fog was so thick
that we had to secure not only the rotating beacons (which were reflecting off the fog and
inducing vertigo), but our position lights as well.

As directed, we proceeded at 300 AGL through the soup, past the Big E and beyond to a
point 20 miles west of her. This was very scary, because San Clemente and San Nicholas
Islands are out there nearby, and a rock in the middle of the fog can ruin a night. At this
time, I declared "emergency fuel" and requested immediate radar vectors to a CCA
(carrier controlled approach). Without further sarcastic protests, we were given excellent
radar vectors to a three mile final and handed off to CCA. I can only assume that the
young man who talked us down had been informed of our options of either getting aboard
within five (5) minutes or ditching, because he broke all the rules. As best as I can recall,
from the point where my controller said, "One mile, re-check gear, on glide path, do not
acknowledge further transmissions", our one-sided conversation went something like
this:

"ANGEL 25...YOU ARE NOW CLEARED FOR IMMEDIATE LANDING ON THE

ANGLE...APPROACHING THREE QUARTERS OF A MILE...ON GLIDE-
PATH...ON CENTER-LINE...ON GLIDE-PATH...ON CENTER-LINE...ONE HALF
MILE...ON CENTER-LINE...GOING SLIGHTLY ABOVE GLIDE-

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PATH...SLIGHTLY ABOVE..COMING DOWN...ON GLIDE-PATH...AT ONE
EIGHTH MILE...ON CENTER-LINE...ON GLIDE-PATH...REDUCE SPEED TO
FORTY KNOTS...ON GLIDE-PATH...ON CENTER-LINE...NOW AT ONE
HUNDRED YARDS...SLOW FORWARD SPEED TO THREE ZERO KNOTS...NOW
PASSING OVER THE FANTAIL...BEGIN TRANSITION TO A HOVER...YOU ARE
ON CENTER-LINE...HOVERING OVER NUMBER THREE WIRE...HOLD THAT
POSITION AND SET HER DOWN, SIR."

At this point it's important to explain something about the CCA radar. The dish is located
on the aft edge of the superstructure, not in the center of the angle deck. With proper
calibration, a controller can only give accurate glide-path and center-line data to within
about a half mile. Beyond that point, the displacement of the radar dish makes it
impossible to even see an aircraft on the screen. That means that the last half of the above
transmission was made up. That young man had no better idea where we were than we
did.

Throughout the approach, we never saw anything outside the helicopter except the glow
of our own position lights; which we had turned back on at three miles. The controller
must have been told how thick the fog was because he never asked us to "call the ball".
For those of you who have never made or seen an arrested landing on an aircraft carrier,
CCA controllers like to know when the pilot spots the meatball, because from that point
on, the pilot goes "visual" and the controller's glide-path and center-line information
become advisory only. This "meatball" is a reflected yellow light which moves up and
down in a parabolic mirror to indicate that you, the pilot, are above or below the flight
path. There is also a horizontal row of green lights about twelve feet wide through which
the meatball moves. When the meatball is lined up with the green lights, you are on glide-
path. This array of very powerful lights is positioned on the port (left) side of the angled
deck sixty-five feet forward of the fantail. We weren't told, but there were twelve parked
aircraft on the right side of the deck, and just forward of them was the superstructure of
the Big E.

Legend has it that Napoleon wore a red cape during battle so that if he should take a rifle
ball, the blood from his wound would be hidden by the color of the cape, his men would
not know he was wounded and they would continue to fight courageously. Another
legend says that the Italian Generals wore brown pants for a similar reason. I was so
scared that night that I could have used a brown flight suit. Think about it. "...HOLD
THAT POSITION AND SET HER DOWN, SIR." CLICK.

Imagine being blindfolded and having your wife "talk" you through a store full of crystal
and expensive china. When she says to move right or left, to stop or proceed, and you
don't obey perfectly, you end up buying the store. For us that night, one wrong move and
we would "buy the farm."

So there we hung, with less than 5 minutes of fuel to flameout, on instruments and unable
to tell whether we were drifting right (toward the parked jets) or left (over the edge of the
deck), forward or backwards. There was nothing left to do but begin easing the collective

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down and see what happened. Our worst fear was that the main rotor blades would strike
something hard, we would roll up into a ball of angry metal, and plunge into the sea 85
feet below. The Enterprise had all of its high-intensity deck flood lights turned all the
way up, and we couldn't see them. There was a long moment of total despair for all four
of us, but there was nothing to do but hope and pray. Then, out of the corner of my right
eye, I noticed a faint green glow about two feet below the starboard landing gear. We
were descending just to the left of the meatball and the row of green lights. I stopped our
descent, raised the helicopter four feet and applied a slight amount of right pressure on
the cyclic to slip us sideways to the flight deck center line. Once Tom told me I was clear
of the meatball, I set the Helicopter down on the deck.

In all my life, I have only seen fog that thick one other time. I was seven years old and
walking to grammar school and had to literally "feel" my way from bush to tree to curb
edge. That night on the flight deck of the USS Enterprise, you could not see an hand-held
flashlight ten feet away pointed at your eyes.

My crew and I were unwilling pawns in a near-fatal IFR incident. We had run out of
options. I credit our successful landing to the air controller's skills, the excellent yearly
IFR training the Navy required me to undergo, and my ability to stay calm in a hot
situation. But most of all, I credit my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, for preserving my
life, because without Him, we would have died that foggy night. By the way, I didn't end
up needing that brown flight suit after all.

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 TEN FEET TO DEATH
COCKPIT MISS-COMMUNICATION:
A TEN FOOT MISS WITH THE WATER

In 1967 during my second deployment to Westpac and the Vietnam War, there came a
time when the Officer-in-Charge of the helicopter detachment aboard the USS Enterprise
decided that the co-pilots needed to be rotated so that they would learn how the other four
Plane Commanders did things. I had been flying with Tom Matthews (High School
Buddy who followed me into the Navy), and my newly assigned co-pilot was to be Bill
Bates.

Even though Tom and I had three very close calls together, we operated as a true team.
He knew what I expected of him, and he could count on me when he flew right seat and I
acted as his co-pilot. This partnership was especially crucial at night...when this incident
happened.

It was our first night flight together. Following the checklist, I started the H-2 Seasprite
and engaged the rotors. When I was satisfied that everything was working properly, I
radioed the tower, "Climax, Angel 22 for liftoff." The tower cleared me and I said to Bill
over the intercom, "Give me the ASE." ASE stands for Automatic Stabilization
Equipment, and acts much like an auto pilot. Not only does it keep the helicopter in the
same attitude and direction when you release the controls, it will hold the helicopter at a
set barometric altitude when that channel is activated. Bill flipped the switch and said,
"ASE engaged." That was the last thing we did before lifting from the bow of the
Enterprise. Why the last? Because if the ship turned or rolled with the ASE engaged, the
helicopter would sense the change in attitude and try to compensate. That could cause the
helicopter to tilt or turn on deck, creating a dangerous situation.

I lifted the helicopter into the night sky, and once I was satisfied with its performance, I
pushed the nose over and lifted the collective to climb up and away from the ship. As I
passed over the bow, I rolled to the right in order to get away from where the fixed wing
aircraft would be catapulting in a matter of moments. While looking back at the ship out
my right door, I climbed to 300 feet and pushed the altitude hold button on the collective.
Expecting the ASE to hold the helicopter at the selected 300 feet, I eased my upward pull
on the collective and continued to watch the ship while we continued to arc around in the
DELTA pattern.

Suddenly, one of my crewmen yelled through the intercom, "PULL UP!" I instinctively
pulled up on the collective, and at the same time glanced at the radar altimeter. The
crewman saw the Radar altimeter needle passing downward through twenty feet, and
when I jerked the collective up, the needle stopped at ten (10) feet and then started to
climb. We were flying at 80 knots and all four of us would have been killed has that
crewman not been watching the radar altimeter.

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What went wrong? Well, whenever I asked Tom for the ASE, he knew I wanted the
second switch...the altitude channel...engaged without asking. Bill Bates didn't know that
and didn't do it for me. When I got to 300 feet and was looking back at the Enterprise to
make sure we were clear, the helicopter started to descend toward the water. It was a very
close call and a lesson I took to heart. Once again, looking back, God was trying to get
my attention.

By the way, both Tom Matthews and Bill Bates were later killed in helicopter crashes—
but separate from one another.

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 DOWNDRAFT

During my 1967 Enterprise cruise to Vietnam, Tom Matthews and I almost got killed
while making a crosswind landing on the bow of the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise. A
little background first.

While going through flight training in a new helicopter, there is a lot of "talk" about
dangerous situations. Some of the situations can be simulated and practiced during
routine flight training, but some are so dangerous that they can only be described. It's a
lot like telling a child about a rattlesnake. "Stay back. If you get too close, he'll bite you
and you will die."

There's a maneuver called a full autorotation that was taught and required of all the new
pilots as they went through the 30 training flights at HU-1—my fleet squadron. The
maneuver simulates an engine failure. The instructor has the student approach the runway
at either 500 feet (for a straight-in auto) or 1000 feet (for a 180 degree auto), and at just
the right moment, the instructor cuts the student's power. The student lowers the
collective and maintains 70 knots while he maneuvers to keep the helicopter lined up
with the runway. At about 60 feet off the runway, the student flares by pulling back on
the stick, and then eases the helicopter down onto the runway using only the built-up
rotational speed of the rotor. Well, so many helicopters got broken in practice, we
instructors began calling this type of maneuver, "practicing bleeding". Shortly thereafter,
all auto rotation landings were modified so that the recovery ended 20 feet above the
ground with full engine power, where nothing could be broken.

The dangerous maneuver that could only be discussed until actually done was the
crosswind landing on an aircraft carrier. Here's the theory behind this very tricky and
potentially fatal maneuver. The wind that runs across the water doesn't like to divert for
anything. When a 1,100 foot long aircraft carrier is turned sideways to the wind, the wind
must swoop up and over the windward side of the massive ship, push across the flight
deck horizontally at a greater speed, and then plunge down the 85 feet to the water on the
lee side of the ship so it can continue its rush across the ocean. Picture the wind currents
as an enormous continuous piece of silk that goes up the one side, across the flight deck
and back down the other side. The air around the flight deck is affected by this rushing
wind as high as 40 or 50 feet above the deck, and that downdraft is actually plunging
faster than the wind speed that is creating this disturbance. What that means is that if the
wind speed across the water is thirty knots, the updraft and downdraft will be forty to
fifty knots.

Well, I'm assuming that my co-pilot, Tom Matthews, is up to speed on the dangers of a
cross-wind landing, but to make sure, I asked him. "You know about cross-wind
landings, right?" He assured me that he did, so I acted as his co-pilot and lowered his
landing gear. Our flight director was standing at the upwind deck edge with his back to
the wind as Tom made his approach. The director began signaling for Tom to increase his

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altitude. I keyed the intercom and said, "Watch you altitude, Tom. We need to come in
higher than normal." He nodded back as he continued forward toward the landing spot.

The next events happened in about three seconds...much quicker than it takes for me to
write them out and for you to read them. Tom was lower than he should have been and
got caught in the down-draft on the lee side of the flight deck. He sensed what was
happening and instinctively pulled up on the collective to regain altitude. But the
downdraft was too strong. Tom pulled in all the power he had, but the helicopter rotated
quickly to the right and downward toward the water in the lee of the bow. I grabbed the
controls and yelled those words that are so familiar to all pilots. "I've got it!"

Before I tell you what happened, let me explain how that cross-deck landing should be
made. With clearance to land, and with your landing gear down, you approach at least 40
to 50 feet above the flight deck. This keeps you well above the down-draft on the lee
side. Once you are positioned straight over the deck and your intended landing stop, you
descend vertically to your spot. By making the approach high like this, you are never
affected by that dangerous downdraft. Tom had never been trained, nor had the landing
ever been demonstrated to him. Why did the helicopter rotate to the right? The main rotor
is driven counter-clockwise by the engine, creating a tremendous amount of torque in the
opposite direction...causing the body of the helicopter to turn to the right. The tail rotor
(properly caller the anti-torque tail rotor) keeps the body of the helicopter from spinning
right when power is applied. The single-engine H-2 Seasprite's tail rotor was never quite
large enough, and when Tom pulled in all that power to try to regain altitude, the tail
rotor simply could not hold the helicopter straight. We were suddenly spinning to the
right and falling backwards toward the sea a hundred feet below.

It was actually a Godsend that we twisted around to the right as we were sucked
backwards and downward toward the water. When I grabbed the controls and reduced the
power, we had rotated to the right more than ninety degrees. Had I not taken the controls,
the helicopter would have continued to spin right and impact the water. Ironically, if the
tail rotor had more authority, then we would have been sucked down toward the water
with our nose toward the ship and would have gone into the sea tail first.

So, I've just grabbed the controls from Tom and yelled, "I've got it!" Now realize
something. I had never been caught in such a situation, nor had anybody ever lived to tell
about it. I had made many cross-wind landings, and since I understood what the wind
could do to a helicopter, I always avoided the fatal downdraft. All we talked about was
how to avoid that situation. None of the living pilots knew how to recover once the
helicopter had been captured in that downdraft.

So, down we went, already in a hard spin to the right and plunging toward the water. It
was mostly instinct that saved us. I knew there was no point in keeping the collective
pulled up like that, and I didn't realize it until some time later that if we had not spun to
the right, I could not have recovered. When I grabbed the controls, the helicopter was
already well into the spin that put us facing down and away from the side of the ship,
exactly downwind. My first instinct was to lower the collective to regain tail rotor

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control. With the helicopter under directional control, I pulled the nose up so that if we
did hit the water, at least the helicopter would be in a flat attitude and we might be able to
survive the impact. Understanding how the wind current was acting, I knew that at some
point that vertical column of wind that was racing down the lee side of the ship would
reach the water and change directions so as to continue away from the ship. Sure enough,
at about ten feet above the water, we hit that horizontal cushion of air. It was like hitting a
pillow. Our downward fall stopped abruptly and I was able to fly the helicopter away
from the ship into smooth air.

Once we were well clear of the ship, I climbed up to altitude and asked for another
landing. This time, I told Tom everything that I was doing and why.

By this time, all the men up on the flight deck had run to our side of the ship and looked
down, expecting to see us in the water, dead and surrounded by debris. The Air Boss was
at an angle where he was able to watch the whole thing. As soon as we were safely
aboard, the Air Boss came and asked me what happened.

I am convinced—beyond a doubt—that God was trying to get my attention. I was not a

Christian at the time, and God was thumping me in the side of the head to get me to
realize that I needed to believe in His provision for my salvation...the Lord Jesus Christ.
After a couple more narrow escapes, I did become a believer.

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 ZUNI ROCKET ATTACK

During my 1967 Westpac cruise to Vietnam on the USS Enterprise, I had another very
close call that I should not have lived through. Tom Matthews was my co-pilot, but he
was sitting in the right seat (the Plane Commander's seat) so he could get accustomed to
the differences in the cockpit. It was a beautiful clear afternoon and the launch and
recovery of the fixed-wing aircraft was just finishing up. As the last jet caught the wire, I
lowered the landing gear for Tom and we headed around the stern of the great ship for
our customary landing on the angle deck. Tom reported the gear down, but the Air Boss
came back with, "Negative Charlie on the angle, Angel 25. Proceed 270 five miles and
investigate a smoke sighting on the water." Tom broke off his approach and I pulled up
the gear.

Using the TACAN (the needle always points at that ball on top of the mast and gives a
mileage readout from the ship), Tom headed out to the west of the ship. At 120 knots, it
took us only about three minutes to reach the designated location of the "smoke sighting".
Tom slowed the helicopter to 70 knots and we started looking about. There was no sign
of any smoke or anything else either in or on the water. I told Tom to report that the
search was negative and he called the Air Boss, telling him that we were heading back.

While Tom was till talking to the Air Boss, I happened to look down at the water and
caught sight of a fleeting shadow that crossed our shadow. I looked up through the plastic
cockpit roof to see an F-4 Phantom jet that had just pickled off (dropped) six cylindrical
objects from his wings, and then he rolled sideways for a moment before continuing
away to the north. I keyed the intercom and said, "Hey Tom, look up at—" But before I
could get the words out, I realized that what the Phantom had pickled off were six (6)
Zuni rocket pods, each about the size of a rolled-up single garage door. From the angle
they were falling, they would hit us in a matter of seconds. As I grabbed the controls, I
yelled, "I've got it!" and then rolled the helicopter 90 degrees to the right and dove for the
water. We dropped from 300 feet to 20 feet in about five seconds. When I leveled out, I
looked back to the left as the Zuni rocket pods hit right where we would have been if I
had not seen that shadow.

So, what happened? The Air Boss of the Enterprise was told by somebody down in the
bowels of the ship about an explosion at that heading and distance, but wasn't told that it
was also the designated coordinates where all unexpended ordinance from all of the
fighter and attack aircraft from the three aircraft carriers was being dropped. You see, the
jets are not supposed to land back aboard an aircraft carrier with bombs and rockets on
their wings, because that ordinance had a way of coming off during the deceleration of a
trap. It can be quite disconcerting for the deck personnel to have rockets and bombs go
bouncing up the deck at them.

That's right. We were directed to ground zero. Now, by standard operating procedure,
those jets are supposed roll up on a wing and look below them to see that there are no
boats or helicopters down there before they drop. That Phantom pilot forgot, and then

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because he remembered too late, we were bombed. As I pulled out and looked back, I
could see our rotor wash as it left a trail across the water. I know for a fact that the rocket
pods would have come through our rotors and killed us except for that shadow.

Once again, God was trying to get my attention.

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 MOUNT DISAPPOINTMENT
After getting out of the Navy for the second time and while working at the Coronado Fire
Department, I remained in the Naval Air Reserves at Los Alamitos, California. The SH-3
was a great helicopter (the same kind the President flies in from the White House), but
like any aircraft, things can go terribly wrong. There was one of the helicopters that had a
hydraulic leak up on the rotor head, and specifically from one of the sleeve and spindles
that hold a rotor blade to the head while allowing the blade to twist. A bunch of us pilots
would write up the leak, but the maintenance department would always tell us that the
leak was within specified limits. That blade flew off in the air and the crew of three was
killed over Arizona.

Back to my story. I was assigned as co-pilot with Jerry Rice for a four (4) hour flight.
Since we had no specific mission, Jerry asked if I would like to go see anything. Since
my wife and I had recently purchased ten acres of land just south of Edwards Air Force
Base, I suggested flying up past Palmdale and Lancaster so I could take a few photos of
the land. He agreed and off we went. Several years before this particular flight, I had
flown traffic patrol in Los Angeles for KABC Radio, so I knew my way through the city.
At my request, we followed the freeways along the right side and as we passed each
emergency landing area, I would point it out to Jerry. So, following the freeways all the
way up through the Angeles National Forest, we flew over Palmdale and then Lancaster,
and searched until we located our ten acres. We also flew around the high desert looking
at geologic formations and whatever else we could find. To make a long story short, we
didn't realize that time had passed so quickly. We would have to cut across the mountains
of the Angeles National Forest rather than following the freeways back.

So there we are, at 6,500 feet amongst 7,000 mountains that are literally shaped like
cones with sides that have forty-five degree inclines. The only emergency landing spots
are about 5,000 feet below us in one valley, and it was nothing more than a single-lane
dirt road. Now, you must understand that a helicopter does not fly like an airplane. Matter
of fact, helicopters only appear to fly like airplanes. If the automatic stabilization is
turned off and the controls are released, the helicopter immediately tumbles out of
control. If a helicopter has a catastrophic emergency, it can not push the nose over (like a
real airplane) and dive at full speed for the ground. It takes nearly a minute to autorotate
each 1,000 feet in that emergency descent. That's why military helicopter pilots are
required to wear parachutes any time their planned route of flight is going to take them
higher than 3,000 feet above ground level (AGL).

As I looked around those shark-tooth mountains—helicopter pilots are always looking for
emergency landing spots—I was thinking that this was not the place to have any sort of
emergency. Suddenly, I smelled hot 90 weight oil. If you've ever smelled transmission
oil, it has a totally different smell than 30 weight engine oil. At the same time, the two
crewmen began yelling that oil was streaming down the cabin walls and Jerry pointed
down at the transmission pressure and temperature gauges. The pressure was at zero and
the temperature was climbing to the red line about ten times as fast as the sweep second
hand on a clock. Jerry called for full power and things on my side of the cockpit became

16
very busy. I lowered the landing gear, turned the IFF to EMERGENCY, turned the UHF
radio to GUARD and transmitted, "MAYDAY, MAYDAY, MAYDAY! ROMEO
ALPHA 24, TEN MILES NORTH EAST OF BURBANK! TOTAL LOSS OF MAIN
TRANSMISSION OIL! GOING DOWN IN THE MOUNTAINS!" I repeated the
MAYDAY call and then heard an answer from Los Angeles International Airport,
Marine Corps Air Station El Toro and a third person who was airborne in the area.

The reason Jerry called for full power was to keep torque on the main rotor. Even though
he immediately went to an autorotation, it was essential that the engines be at full power.
As we descended—a lot slower than either of us liked—we both searched for a place to
land as high as possible. Sikorsky claims that when a main transmission has a
catastrophic oil loss, the transmission should continue to turn dry for another five
minutes, and it would take longer than that to descend down into the valley to the dirt
road at the bottom.

I was certain that we were dead, but I knew that the world would at least know why we
died. Then—and I will always believe God put it there—I pointed to a small mountain
about one mile and a thousand feet below with the top flattened off to the size of a
baseball field. A bulldozer had climbed the steep mountain, cutting a fire break as he
proceeded, flattened the top, and then continued down the other side to the valley below.
Jerry didn't have to turn or maneuver in any way to reach the spot—it was placed at
exactly the right spot.

Using power, Jerry set the crippled helicopter on the dirt and told me to cut both engines.
Now, for you to understand what happened next, you have to know the normal shut-down
procedure. When the pilots return a helicopter to the parking ramp, they follow a
somewhat lengthy procedure. With the rotor turning, number one engine (the left one) is
pulled back to idle and a switch (the ACCESSORY DRIVE) is thrown that frees that
number one engine from driving the main transmission, and it only drives the accessories
on the back of the main transmission. Once #1 is pushed back up to speed, then the main
rotor can be shut down. Number 2 engine is pulled back to the shut-off position and the
main rotor begins to slow. Now, if the rotor brake is not engaged, the transmission and
rotor are so heavy and have so much inertia that it will take in excess of ten minutes for
them coast down to a full stop. Using the rotor brake, the rotor can be slowed and stopped
in about a minute.

When I pulled both engines to the shut-off position, the main transmission and the five
main rotor blades seized before one rotation was completed. Under the tremendous
torque of those great blades stopping all at once, the helicopter spun twenty degrees to the
left and then came to rest...thankfully still standing upright. Between Jerry and me, all the
important switches were turned off and we exited the helicopter. All four of us ran down
the ladder, dropped to the earth and kissed the dirt. We had survived by God's
intervention.

It was a warm afternoon there on Mount Disappointment. Yes, that was the name of that
little mountain down among all those other higher mountains of the Angeles National

17
Forest. Several civilian aircraft flew over and within an hour, a Marine helicopter landed
and evacuated the four of us back to NAS Los Alamitos. In the following weeks, the
Navy airlifted crews to the mountain, stripped everything they could off the helicopter
and then using an H-53, hoisted our crippled helicopter from Mount disappointment and
up to Palmdale Airport where a new transmission was put in and all the other parts and
pieces were put back on the helicopter. I got to fly with the test pilot to bring the
helicopter back to Los Alamitos.

One last thing. When the Sikorsky mechanics opened up the main transmission, they
were appalled at the extent of damage the oil loss had created, and in such a short time.
Everything was melting and they estimated that we had only about five more seconds of
powered flight before the transmission would have seized. Had Mount Disappointment
not been exactly where it was, the rotors would have stopped and we would have become
a free-falling safe.

Did God have a hand in that? You bet He did! Within six months, I turned my life over to
Jesus Christ—trusting in His finished work on the cross to redeem me from sin and grant
me eternal life.

18
 A HIT MAN'S FAVOR

Al Foster was a pain in the butt to every woman in the Jacobson Insurance Group, but he
was an effective insurance salesman, and that counted more than the daily sexual
harassment complaints. Selling insurance was a gift that brought him more residuals than
the next four salesmen or women. But his gambling habit was a curse—taking away most
of that money. At last count, he owed eighty-thousand dollars to the Sultan Casino in
Atlantic City, New Jersey.

Al Foster's office stood next to the hallway, allowing him to grab the most likely clients
as they came from the row of elevators. That is how he beat everybody else to the crashed
elevator, and that is how he found the manuscript.

The title was simple—THE SENATOR—but it exposed a twenty-five year trail of

corruption that could potentially bring down an entire political party. "This has to be
worth at lease a hundred-thousand to the senator." After a quick internet search, Al
punched in the senator's number and waited.

A well-seasoned woman with a charming voice answered. "Senator Smith's office. May I
help you?"

"I need to talk to the senator."

"He isn't here, sir. If you'll give me your name and address—"

"What kind of an idiot do you think I am?"

"I honestly don't know how many kinds there are, sir. If you'll tell me what it is you want
to discuss with the senator, I'll give him a message."

"I have a manuscript that exposes senator's money laundering, and unless I get one-
hundred-thousand dollars in unmarked bills, I will take it to the media."

"I…"

"Tell Senator Smith that I will call at noon tomorrow—straight up." Al slammed down
the phone and smiled. But his glee turned to fear as he looked at the telephone. "Ha! How
silly of me. How could a United States Senator have the equipment or knowledge to trace
the telephone call of one of his constituents?"

The next day, the senator agreed to Al's demand and the arrangements were made for the
trade. If everything went as planned, Al would turn over a new leaf. No more gambling.
No more risky investments.

19
Al tapped the floor with the red and white cane and stepped forward to the rail. Making
certain nobody cared about the antics of a blind man, he raised the dark glasses and
peered down onto the main floor. The senator's courier was a minute early. Al liked
people who were punctual.

The courier walked to the center of the crowded pavilion, stopped, made a quick survey
of the crowded station, and then stood on the mosaic star imbedded in the floor. As Al
Foster had instructed the senator, the courier wore a bright red sweater and carried the
money in a black Nike sport bag.

The three homeless men with identical Nike sport bags stood against the east, south, and
west walls, waiting for Al's signal. He gave a distinct nod and the three walked through
the crowd toward the courier. It was all a little melodramatic, but Al had seen enough CSI
programs to know how ransoms were supposed to be paid.

The first of the three men reached the courier. Without a word, he set his bag down next
to the courier's bag. The other two homeless men stopped and set their bags down with
the two others.

The courier watched while the older of the men switched bags. The other two men picked
up their bags and the three turned to leave. The courier called to them. "I have a message
for your employer!"

The man with the money stopped and turned. "We don't care about any messages. All we
care about is delivering this to the man who hired us and getting our pay."

"Tell Mister Albert Foster that he made a terrible mistake blackmailing a United States
Senator."

The homeless man raised the bag. "Blackmail money, huh? We don't care if it’s the
crown jewels or dirty laundry." Without waiting for an answer, the man turned and
walked away.

Al Foster drove around the city for half an hour to make sure he was not followed.
Satisfied, he drove to his apartment building and rode the elevator to his floor.

It was dark—after midnight. A neon VACANCY sign buzzed outside the pull-down
shades, casting the small apartment in alternating blue and red light. Everything in Albert
Foster’s apartment looked the same as when he left it to pick up the money. The breakfast
dishes were still on the table and the two cigar stubs were in glass of dried bourbon next
to his collection of pornographic magazines. Al turned the first two locks on the door, but
hesitated at the third. He took a sniff. Something was different. He looked around at the
kitchen and the bathroom.

20
Is there a woman here? It was the smell of shampoo and perfume—like the makeup
section at the Macy's department store.

He stepped toward the dark kitchen, but froze when one of the many shadows moved. He
backed away. “Who’s there?”

The voice was level and matter-of-fact. “Some people call me the Angel of Death.” A
young man stepping forward into the flickering light. He stood just over six feet tall, was
tanned, and obviously worked out. His hair was jet black, his features were a cross
between Paul Newman and Tyrone Power, and his diction was impeccable—like British
royalty. He wore black eel skin Ferrari driving gloves and held a small caliber stainless
steel pistol with a silencer screwed onto the barrel.

“Who are you?” Al swung the sport bag behind him and backed to the door where he
fumbled at the bottom lock. “How did you get in and what do you want?”

“If there’s $100,000 in that bag, then I’m here to kill you.”

Al pointed at the telephone answering machine. “I sent the damn policy! You said you’d
give me a full month to pay my gambling debt, and there’s still over three weeks left!”

“What policy?”

“You are Mike Spallioni from the Sultan, aren't you?”

“The Sultan?” The assassin shook his head slowly. “What Sultan?”

“The casino! The one in Atlantic City!” Al paused. “Your accent! You’re not Spallioni,
are you?”

“I get it!” The assassin burst into laughter. “There’s a hit man from Atlantic City who’s
also waiting for that money!”

Al looked down at the sport bag and back up at the young man. He spoke with a cryptic
tone. “If you’re not Spallioni, then you have to be working for the senator.”

“Ha! Lucky me! I get to kill a master of the bleeding obvious.”

“Here.” Al threw the bag onto the coffee table. “Take the money! Spallioni’s gonna kill
me anyway.”

“Save your breath. You only have a dozen or so left, so don’t waste them pleading for
your life.”

“Is there anything I can do to change your mind?”

21
The assassin smiled and shook his head. “That’s why important people hire me. I’m
reliable. I don’t ask questions. I don’t make bargains. I appear from nowhere, I resolve
their issue, and then I disappear.”

“Well, well!” Al said, re-gaining a portion of his manhood. “Isn’t it comforting to know
I’ll be killed by a reliable hit man?"

“You will, however, be pleased to know that you’re unique—different than any of my
other assignments.”

Al brightened. “Does that mean you’ve changed your—“

"No, Mr. Foster." He pointed at the sport bag. "You’re just the first one who has
personally delivered my fee. I like that touch. Creative.”

Al pointed at the coffee table. “It’s her novel, isn’t it! The Senator paid me this hush
money because it’s all true. That manuscript exposed his dirty charity—didn't it?”

“Like I said, I never know why I kill. It would only complicate things.”

“You’re serious! You’re really going to kill me!”

“Serious as cancer.” The hit man unzipping the sport bag and touching the bundles of
money with the silencer. “Just as soon as I know it’s all here.”

“Since you’re so determined, can I ask a favor?”

The hit man gave Al a suspicious look. “What kind of favor?”

“Can you make it look like an accident?”

The assassin dropped the bundle of hundred dollar bills and stood up. “Why?”

“Please. It’s important.”

“Let me educate you about my work.” The assassin stepping close, raised the pistol, and
touching Al behind the left ear. He lowered his voice to a whisper. “I put the muzzle right
here and I pull the trigger! The bullet goes inside your skull, spins around a few times,
and you die. How can I make that look like an accident?”

“I owe $80,000 to the Sultan Casino. Mike Spallioni was going to fly up here a week ago
to kill me, so I begged him for more time. He knew I sold insurance, so he made me a
deal.”

“Go on.”

22
“He said that if I bought a $100,000 accidental death and dismemberment policy and put
him down as the sole beneficiary, he’d give me another month.”

The hit man gave a nod. "Uh, huh?"

“That way, if I failed to come up with the money and he had to kill me, then the casino
would get its money, and he’d pocket the other $20,000 for his trouble.”

The assassin gave a laugh. “Clever. I’ll have to write that down.”

“That’s why it has to be an accident. The policy doesn’t pay on homicides or suicides.”

“But if you're dead, why would you care whether the Sultan Casino or this Spallioni guy
gets their money?”

“You’re right! The casino can go to hell! But Mike said that if I didn’t get the money to
him, one way or another, he’d kill my ex-wife, our two kids, and then he’d go after my
parents.”

“That’s ridiculous! When you come up dead, that will end the thing.”

“I know it should, but I can’t take that chance.”

“He’s not going to go after your family. There’s simply no point to it once you’re gone.”

“You don't know Spallioni."

"I know how hit men operate. He would have no reason to go after those others."

"He has a big reputation in Atlantic City. If he doesn't follow through with a threat—even
a small one—then nobody would believe him, and they will stop paying their gambling
debts." Al took a large breath. “Come on. If Mike could make it look like an accident for
$100,000, surely you could too. You’re a better hit man than him, aren’t you?”

The hit man's sense of competition was aroused. “Go on.”

Al pointed at the coffee table where the manuscript set. “The Senator just wants that
manuscript—and me dead. How you kill me shouldn’t matter.”

“But I never make it look like an accident unless I'm paid extra.”

“If you do it right, nobody will know you were even here!”

The assassin looked around the room. “Let’s say, just for grins, that I agree. How are you
going to have a fatal accident in a little place like this?”

23
Al pointed at the bathroom. “I have a bath tub.”

“So?”

“The insurance industry never disputes that kind of death, as long as it’s done right.”

The hit man’s curiosity was piqued. “Show me.”

The bathroom was tiny, with just enough room for a sink, a toilet, and the claw foot tub.
There was a choking smell of mildew from too many wet towels, and tile grout that had
never tasted bleach. The hit man put his sleeve to his nose. “What do you mean, as long
as it’s done right?”

“I have to drown. They have to find soapy water in my lungs.”

The assassin backed out into the living room. “Absolutely not!”

Al followed him back to the living room. “It’s the only way.”

“You want me to hold you under water, naked, kicking, and fighting until you drown?”

Al shook his head. “What you have to do is knock me unconscious, put me in the tub
while I’m still breathing, and then fill it with hot soapy water. I’ll suck my lungs full as I
die.”

The assassin walked back to the restroom door and looked at the tub for half a minute. He
turned back to Al. “Very well.”

“Thank you.” Al walked to the kitchen, poured himself an eight ounce glass of bourbon,
and drank half of it in one great gulp. “I have to be drunk. While I’m standing in the bath
tub, you’ll hit me right here, in the nape of my neck.”

“What do you want me to hit you with?”

Al pulled open a drawer, picked up a wooden rolling pin and held it out to the younger
man. “After I’m unconscious, make sure my head’s low enough in the tub.” Al returned
to the bathroom, picked up a bottle of liquid dish soap, and squirted a generous amount
into the tub. Next, he turned on both taps and stripped naked.

“You’ve done this before, haven’t you?”

Al downed another two fingers of the bourbon. “I’ve worked out every detail a hundred
times…just in case I had to set up the same scene. Like I said, I’m an insurance agent.
We all think this way.”

“You should have been in my business.”

24
“You’ll want to wait to make sure I’m dead…for your reputation, of course.”

“Of course.”

Al stepped into the tub, grabbed the shower curtain and ripped it from the bar. He took
another large gulp of the liquor. “When the water overflows and begins dripping into the
apartment below, they’ll find me.”

“Is that everything?”

Al nodded. “What is your name?”

“Why?”

“Maybe I’ll look you up in hell and you can buy me a drink. You owe me that much.”

“It’s Alex—Alexandre Dumas—just like the man who wrote the Count of Monte Cristo.”

“Really? I read that book when I was ten.”

“My mother was French, with a streak of the theatrical in her. She died in prison from a
drug overdose right after I was born.”

Al lifted his glass in tribute. “Then here’s to you, Alexandre Dumas.” He downed the rest
of the strong liquor, dropped the empty glass on the pile of clothes, and turned away. The
rest of the assassination went exactly as Al had choreographed it.

With the Senator’s issue resolved and the water beginning to run from the bathroom onto
the avocado shag carpet, Alex stuffed the manuscript into the sport bag on top of the
money and stepped to the door. He hesitated to make one last survey of the room.

“An insurance salesman. Ha! Amazing what a person can learn if he’s willing to try
something new.”

25
 A RANDOM ACT

Mike Green’s grip on the newspaper tightened. It hadn't been a good week, and so far, it
hadn’t been a good morning either. Brenda—his wife of three years—was just as angry,
but unlike Mike, she wanted to talk about it. One of his chief complaints was that she was
a habitual chatter box—always talking and never really saying anything. She—being a
self-declared 'people person'—hated it when he shut her out with the political section of
the Virginia Star.

"Hmm." She leaned close to read a short article on her side of the newspaper. "Another
killing over by the Potomac River and the police don’t have a clue." She waited for a
grunt or a huff. "No comment?" She continued the read. "It says that the man's wallet was
still in his pocket and none of the money or credit cards had been taken." She waited
again. Still nothing.

She tapped the paper and continued. "It says the man was found in an alley with his
throat slit.' Mike gave the paper a twitch, as if shooing away an irritating fly. She was
pleased that he reacted, even if it was only the twitch. "You're the Sherlock Holmes of the
family. What do you figure happened?"

Mike lowered the paper just enough to make eye contact. "Probably pissed somebody off
and got what he deserved." The paper went back up.

"What?" She stood up to look over the paper. "Did I see your eyes? Did you say
something to me?"

He raised the paper a little higher and exhaled sarcastically.

“You spoke to me!" Brenda stepped to the middle of the kitchen, spread her arms, and
turned around, as if speaking to an audience. "Good Lord! I’m blessed!”

“I said the guy probably did something stupid."

"Oh? Like what?"

"He probably kept talking when somebody asked him to shut up."

She pulled down the top edge of the paper and received his steely glare. "I'm bugging
you, aren't I?"

He lowered the paper, took a large breath and exhaled slowly through gritted teeth.
"Look! I’m 40 years old. Normal men my age are planning their mid-life crisis. I wanted
children—three of them—but the fertility clinic says there’s something wrong with us. I

26
don’t like the job your father got me, and I’m trying to read the political page so I don’t
come off like some stupid ignoramus in front of the senator. Do you mind?"

"So I am bugging you." She pushed away from the table, stood and walked to the kitchen
door. She picked up a small brown paper lunch bag and held it out to him as if she had
just cleaned up after the dog they would own some day. "I’m probably a fool for doing
this, but here’s a fried egg sandwich, a bag of chips and an apple. If you decide to eat out,
just throw it away or give it to a bum." She set the bag in his attaché and picked up her
purse. "If I’m not here when you decide to come home, I’m probably out committing
adultery or spending your hard-earned money on a pair of ugly shoes, whichever of the
two sins you think is worse."

"Well, if I don’t come home, then I’ve probably decided to jump off a bridge or run in
front of a truck to get out of this nightmare of a marriage." He held up the paper and
touched the article. "Or maybe I'll end up like this guy. Maybe your mother and father
will see it on the eleven o’clock news." He dropped the paper and held up his hands to
frame the picture. He spoke like one of the talking heads on CNN. "Washington Lobbyist
found in an alley with his throat slit. Details at eleven!" He lowered his hands. "You'd
like that wouldn't you? Maybe then you'd…"

She stopped half-way out the door. "Maybe then I’d what?"

He crumpled the paper. "Look! I don’t give a rat’s wazoo where you go, what time you
come home, or what you do while you’re gone."

"A bridge or a truck, huh?" She walked back to the table and put her finger close to his
nose. "Careful what you say, Mike." She pointed up and whispered. "God might be
listening."

The taxi arrived five minutes late. Like most of them, the driver was from the Middle
East.

"You’re late." Mike climbed into the back seat. His voice hade that there goes your tip
tone to it.

The driver ignored the snub. He slung an elbow over the seat and greeted his first fare for
the day. "My name Fayed Dubobni. I am from Mosul. That is in Iraq."

"Look! I've had a very bad morning and I don’t want to chit-chat. I have to get to the
Cannon House Office Building before nine. Can you do that?"

The driver frowned, put the taxi into drive, and pulled away from the curb. He glanced at
Mike in the rear-view mirror. "Fayed is my Iraqi name. I get new name soon. Can you
guess what my American name will be?"

"I don’t care."

27
"David Smith."

"What?"

"That will be my American name." The driver gave him another look—this one more
hopeful than the first. "You like my American name?"

"I’m sorry, David. Like I told you, I would rather we get there with no talk. Is that alright
with you?"

"But at nine o'clock, you talk with important person, right?"

"Yes, a senator."

"You are lobby person?"

"Please...just drive."

The driver continued to glance in the rear view mirror for the next several minutes. "I
have friends who know people who do what you do. Someday, maybe I learn enough
English—"

"Stop!"

David slammed on the brakes. The traffic around them swerved and horns blared. "You
get out here?"

"I meant to stop talking, not stop the cab."

"I not know English very good yet. You say stop and I stop."

"Can you keep a secret—a really important secret?”

"A secret!" The driver sat a little higher in his seat. "Yes! I know many secrets! I know
one about Osama—"

"If I tell you why I’m going to talk to the senator, will you be satisfied and keep quiet for
the rest of the trip?"

"Oh, yes!" David touched his forehead in some sort of Middle-Eastern sign and rejoined
traffic. "Like I said—"

"Watch this" Mike slipped his foot under his attaché. He held up his hands so the driver
could see them and then he pressed a button on his wristwatch. At the same time, he
raised his foot, lifting the attaché upward along the back of the seat. Just before his foot

28
would become visible to the driver, he put his hands on top of the attaché and pushed it
back down to the floor.

The driver’s mouth dropped open. "What is that? What do you have in suitcase?"

"I’m from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. This case contains a top
secret NASA anti-gravity suit."

"What does anti-gravity suit do?"

"It allows a man to leap into the air and travel up to a mile, just like Superman. I’m taking
it to the senator."

"What does the senator need it for?"

Mike stifled a smile. "He’s tired of riding in taxi cabs with talkative drivers. He wants to
be able to fly back and forth from his home to the Capitol Building in peace."

There was a short pause while the driver pondered. "Do you want to sell it?"

"No. It’s the only one I have with me, and it’s already promised to the senator."

"Can you get another one?"

"Oh, we’ve got over a thousand of them in a warehouse back at NASA, but they’re not
cheap."

"How much do they cost?"

Mike loved making a fool of the foreigner, and knew it would most likely be the high
point of his otherwise crummy day. "They’re $500,000 each, but like I said, this one is
already promised to the senator."

"Have you sold any yet?"

"Dozens!" Mike gave a chuckle. He finally had a situation to tell his joke. "They’re going
like free bacon at a Bar Mitzvah."

"What would it cost for you to break your promise to the senator?"

Mike considered. "Tell you what. If you have a million dollars in cash, you can have this
one. Now...you promised to be quiet for the rest of the drive. I intend to hold you to that."

David picked up his cell phone and punched in a number. He spoke for a minute in
Arabic, and then after nodding several times, he hung up. At the next off ramp, he turned
and drove down into an Arab neighborhood.

29
"Hey! Where are you going?"

David turned and put a finger to his lips. Two men stood in front of a Mosque a half
block ahead. When they spotted the cab, one of them ran forward and pointed into the
alley. David turned and drove to the end.

"What the hell are you doing?" Mike pulled his cell phone from his pocket. "Back up or
I’ll call the police!"

The cab stopped with the passenger’s side six inches from the brick wall of the adjacent
building, blocking Mike’s exit on that side. Two more men, one of them carrying a small
suitcase, stepped from the side door of the Mosque and walked to the cab.

David turned around and snatched Mike’s cell phone from his hand. "You will bring the
senator another anti-gravity suit, another day.”

Mike looked behind him. The two men at the alley entrance stood with their arms
crossed. The man with the suitcase stepped to the cab window, bent down and opened the
lid. There were three rows of neatly taped packets of $100 bills. "Your million dollars,
Mister Nasa. If the anti-gravity suit works as well as David tells me, we will want one
hundred more as soon as you can get them to us." The man reached in and took Mike’s
attaché.

It was nearly 12 hours later that the homeless man returned to his alley from his "office",
as he called his begging corner, and stumbled across Mike’s partially decapitated body.
The liquor store owner didn’t believe the old man’s story at first, but after seeing it with
his own eyes, he called the police. In moments, the alley was a cluster of rotating colored
lights, crime scene tape, and investigators.

A young police officer stepped to the detective while the Medical Examiner and the
department's forensic team went about their business. "What do you think, Lieutenant?"

The lieutenant closed Mike's wallet and looked up at the officer. "It wasn’t a robbery."
He held up the wallet. "This is just like that murder two nights ago over by the river."

"Think we got us a serial killer?"

"I would hope not, but the cuts are the same, and that other victim’s wallet was full of
money too. For now, unless the Medical Examiner comes up with something more
definitive, I’m calling this a random act of cultural hatred. If, however, we come up with
a third one, then we have a serial killer."

The young officer picked up the sack lunch and looked inside. "Hmm."

"What’s that?"

30
"It’s just a sack lunch—a sandwich, an apple and a bag of chips."

The Captain looked at the liquor store owner and the homeless man. "You found him,
right?"

The old man nodded and pointed. "Yeah, it’s my alley. I sleep right over there."

"You want his lunch?"

The homeless man nodded and took the sack. "I heard what you said about his money.
Do you think he did something stupid to deserve this?"

"I hope so."

The homeless man unwrapped the sandwich and gave it a sniff. "What do you mean, you
hope so?"

“It means that if this guy didn’t deserve it, then the killer will be back." The detective
watched the Medical Examiner zip the body bag closed and turned back to the homeless
man. "God help us if I’m right."

31
 BUBBLERS ANONYMOUS

It was a typical rainy Spring morning in Port Orchard, Washington. Doctor Maynard S.
Lugger stood at his office window looking out on the Sinclair Inlet and the Puget Sound
Naval Shipyards. To the west a quarter mile stood three mothballed aircraft carriers; gray
warriors from a time far in the past. His eyes dropped to Bay Street where groups of
tourists—mostly tortoises—scampered about with dizzying speed from one knick-knack
store to another.

The doctor turned about to his desk where a stack of Port Orchard Independent
newspaper articles lay paper-clipped together. The judge had insisted that Doctor Lugger
read the articles before meeting with the young trouble-maker. He scanned the first. The
banner headline read; BUBBLERS ANONYMOUS: A GREAT SUCCESS! The support
group had been the doctor's brainchild and personal project to counter the devastating
effects of the recent rash of gastropod salt abuse and deaths in King, Kitsap and Pierce
Counties. To date, he had referred 45 young slugs and snails to the program, reducing the
recidivism rate from 82 down to an all-time low of 32 percent. He removed the paper clip
and read the first several lines.

With several locations on the Kitsap Peninsula from Gig Harbor to Silverdale, Doctor
Lugger's very successful Bubblers Anonymous intervention program might be a snail and
slug's last-ditch hope for a salt free life of normalcy. Herds of these precious gastropods
—most of them very young—have been decimated by the ravages of salt abuse. Recent
studies throughout the Pacific Northwest have uncovered alarming statistics indicating
that nearly half of all young slugs who are still in their first year of life have tried this
deadly substance at least once. By an act of the Washington State Legislature, Doctor
Lugger's Bubblers Anonymous was created and funded by a $5 million dollar grant from
the recently built Herbert S. Nail Desalinization Plant near Port Townsend. The youth of
Washington have been given a second chance—a chance to 'kick the salt habit' and return
to a normal life. It is both sad and ironic that what was a slug's greatest enemy—salt—has
now become an object of commerce; exposing the sticky underbelly of the drug cartel
and...

The doctor looked around at the clock and pulled a court file from his IN-BOX. The
name on the cover was Jerold S. Nail. He didn't like it that a full 20% of the cases
referred to him by District Court Judge Myrna Slyme were pro-bono, but in the present
state of affairs, that was one of the hoops a leading therapist had to jump through to
remain in good standing with the courts. They said he'd be late—always has been—
always will be.

There was a commotion outside in the reception area. The doctor slid to the door, pushed
it open just enough to allow a single antennae to snake through the opening far enough to
see what was the matter. Two uniformed slugs who were obviously too big for their

32
uniforms had young Jerold trussed between them. He was typical of the youth who were
leaving their salt-stained tracks through the Juvenal Court system and were filling the
jails. Baggy clothes that barely clung to his sticky skin and at least a dozen piercings of
various parts of his long body identified the youth as a trouble-maker. He was a light
yellow color—a little lighter than the doctor—with just the beginnings of his adult
markings along his back. The spots looked more like garish tattoos than the usual liver
spots of his particular breed. One of the officers handed a court document to the
receptionist while the other pushed the young slug down into one of the plastic chairs.

"I'll see if Doctor Lugger is ready for you, uh..." She waited for him to tell her, but the
young slug wouldn't look up. "I didn't catch your name, young man."

"It's Jerold," said the officer who was holding the young gastropod down in the chair.
"Jerold Nail...middle initial; S."

The receptionist pushed the intercom. "Doctor Lugger, there's a young slug here from,"
she looked up at the officers, "the court. Are you ready for him?"

The doctor closed the door and slid back to his desk. He pushed the button. "Yes, show
Mister Nail in."

The officer pulled Jerold up by his baggy shirt and pushed him to the door. "You want for
me to take you all the way in and stick you to the couch, or are you gonna cooperate with
somebody for a change?" The cop could have been from central casting.

Jerold looked up at the overweight slug and gave him a passive look. "Whatever."

"Look, you little sorry excuse for a snail, it's either you be nice and talk with the doctor or
you go to Ortho Prison right now! They'd love to get a young slug like you in the big
house," the officer said while making a lewd gesture, "if you know what I mean."

Jerold gave the officer a barely noticeable shrug and slid to the door. "Yeah! I'll talk with
the doctor, if that's what it's gonna take to get you two off my case."

Doctor Lugger met Jerold at the door and ushered him inside. "There!" he said, pointing
at the plastic couch. The doctor slid to his desk and picked up the newspaper article.
"You're his grandson, aren't you?"

Jerold stopped in front of the window and looked out on the Puget Sound. "You didn't
think I got referred to you because you're such a great psychiatrist, did you?"

"Shall we begin?"

Jerold slid to the couch but stopped. He looked up at the doctor. "What's the matter?
What are you looking at?"

33
Doctor Lugger looked down at Jerold's track across the polished hardwood floor. He
looked up at the youth. "That color. When was the last time you bubbled?"

Jerold turned about. "Who told you I..." He fell silent, knowing that he had already said
far too much. "Who said I've ever bubbled?"

"Look," said the doctor, pointing down at the distinctive tracks. "Only slugs and snails
who do salt leave that color."

Jerold slithered up onto the couch and turned around so he could see the doctor. "So,
what am I supposed to do here so you'll tell them to let me go home?"

"Is that all you want—to go home? What about what the officer said? What about Ortho
Prison? They tell me you're looking at three to five years."

"What would you want, Doc, if you were in my tracks?"

"I'd want to have clean tracks," Doctor Lugger said, giving the foul slime a glance. "That
would be where I'd start. Then I'd want to go home to my family and stop hurting them.
That would be a wonderful beginning."

"Have you ever bubbled, Doc? Have you ever snorted salt?"

"I ask the questions here, Jerold, not you."

"It's a fair question isn't it?"

The doctor thought for a moment. He wasn't sure what approach would get through to
this troubled young gastropod. He could play the classic angry father, but that seldom
worked with the kind of young slug that sat before him. Then there was the coach—give
him lots of support and point him to a glorious horizon—but he had the distinct feeling
that Jerold was beyond having that kind of smoke blown up his skirt. The empathetic
fellow sufferer would be best, and since he had already asked the key question, the doctor
changed his pace.

"Well," asked Jerold with a slight movement of his head, "have you?"

"I suppose we all experimented a little when we were young, but most of us realized early
on that the damage salt would do to our bodies—and to the people who care for us—was
not worth the cheap rush we got from bubbling."

"You didn't answer my question, Doc. Have you ever abused salt? Have you ever
bubbled?"

"Once, but it was so awful that I never went near the stuff again."

34
"Well, at least you know something about it; a hell of a lot more than that judge and those
pushy cops out there."

The doctor looked at Jerold's chart. "I see that you've been enrolled in Bubblers
Anonymous three different times and have always dropped out." He looked up at Jerold.
"Why? What happened?"

"They're all losers, that's why!"

"But it's a good program. Everybody wants to help you."

"I'll go to jail before I go back to all that mental masturbation."

"Mental masturbation? Are you talking about Bubblers Anonymous or me?"

"Both!" Jerold looked up, this time with fire in his eyes. "Isn't that what you do? Screw
with our brains?"

"Well..."

"That's why I'm here, isn't it? It's either I bend over for you, or I bend over for some
perverted slug up at Ortho."

The doctor held up the file. "Why don't we go back to another place?"

"Where's that?"

"Why...how did you get started?"

"Like most everybody, I guess."

"Beer?"

Jerold nodded. "Uh-huh."

"When was that?"

"In the fall, just after I found out I wasn't a snail."

"Huh!" said the doctor with a chuckle. "That's when I tried salt too. I guess it's an
important day for all of us."

"I only wanted to do beer. It gave me a great rush." Jerold gave a chuckle.

"What?"

35
"Oh, that word—rush. Kind of antithetical for our kind."

The doctor nodded. "Get back to the salt—the first time."

"Yeah. There was salt—some of my best friends were snorting lines over an inch long
and then bubbling for an hour. I didn't like the looks of it—watching them rolling up into
little balls and getting all covered with spit bubbles—so I passed up their offer. They
made fun of me. They called me a snail."

"How did you feel about that—being called a snail?"

"It hurt."

"Bad enough that you succumbed to the peer pressure?"

Jerold gave a shrug.

"So...what changed?"

"You mean, how did I move up to the hard stuff?"

The doctor nodded.

"It was last month, just after the first thaw. Some of us got together to celebrate and out
came the beer, like usual. We were all sipping and telling snail jokes—"

The doctor cleared his throat and looked up from his pad of paper. "You could get in a lot
of trouble for that."

"What?" Jerold made a sarcastic face. "Telling snail jokes?"

"It's now classed as a hate crime to make fun of our shelled cousins."

"Cousins, my slippery ass!" Jerold spat. "They're just snails—duck food—not worth their
slime!"

"That isn't fair."

"They run Hollywood, you know."

"You could have been born a snail, Jerold. Did you ever think of that?"

"I wasn't though, was I? And that's why I drank the beer. We were celebrating."

"Don't feel bad," said the doctor with a knowing chuckle. "That's how most salt abuse
starts. So, tell me what happened next."

36
"You think its easy being my age, don't you?"

"I don't want to argue with you, Jerold. I just want to know what happened. Where'd the
salt come from?"

Jerold gave a huff, pulled his tentacles in for a moment and then allowed them to poke
back out. "Well, like I was saying, we were all sipping the beer, telling the jokes and
feeling the rush. We don't know who did it, but somebody dumped in a full packet of salt.
One of us should have noticed when the head formed on the top of the beer, but by then,
we were all too wasted."

"So..." The doctor wrote something on his pad. "So, it was never your intention to ingest
the salt?"

"None of us knew until it was too late."

"What happened next?"

"Oh, man! It was like those fireworks everybody told us about!" An involuntary shiver
crept up Jerold's body and several bubbles formed at the corners of his mouth.
"Everything went kind of crazy for a couple of minutes and then all these bubbles started
coming from our mouths. There was a lot of yelling and gagging, and then we all rolled
into balls and the lights went out. I don't know how long we lay there like that, but when
we finally started waking up, we were changed."

"How? What do you mean, you were changed?"

"All those stories our teachers and parents told us; how salt would kill us or make us go
crazy."

"But those stories are—"

"It didn't kill us, Doc!"

The doctor recoiled at the fresh smell of salt on the youth's breath.

"It was all a lie! We didn't go crazy either!"

"So, how did it change you?"

"Two ways." Jerold knew he had gained the upper hand. He smiled the way only young
slugs could smile. "First—like I said—we found out our parents and teachers were liars."

"They told you those stories because they cared for you."

"Yeah...right!"

37
"What was the second thing that changed?"

"We tasted the forbidden fruit and we found out how good it was."

The doctor gave a defeated huff. He had never come up against such an able foe. Now it
was personal. Jerold might end up dead in a few days from a salt overdose. If it
happened, it was only a statistic on a chart, and statistics could be manipulated. But the
doctor was determined that he couldn't allow the impetuous youth to maintain the upper
hand any longer.

"I didn't do any of the expensive stuff—iodized or Sea Salt—for several months."

"Oh?"

Jerold gave a chuckle. "You know about No-Salt and the other salt substitutes, right?"

"Mrs. Dash and the seasoned salts—yeah, I know about them."

"We tried them all, but they didn't give us that same rush—that same burn that the hard
stuff gave us. Mrs. Salt just made our breaths smell funny." Jerold laughed.

"Where did it come from—the salt?"

Jerold stopped laughing. He looked across at the doctor as if there were something wrong
with his body.

"What's the matter, Jerold? What are you looking for?"

"Your shell! Where is it?"

"I'm a slug, Jerold, just like you."

"But you're acting like a snail, Doctor Lugger. You're acting really dumb, just like a
snail!"

The doctor squirmed in his slick chair. There was an embarrassing issue of extra slime.

"You're just like the rest, aren't you?"

"What?"

"You don't see anything, you don't hear anything and you don't say anything. It's all
politics—the slugs telling us lies and the snails swearing to it."

"What are you talking about?" asked the doctor. "What lies?"

38
"The lies from the slugs down in Olympia. The slugs that control the state. The snails
who run the newspapers, television and radio stations."

"I don't know what you're talking about, Jerold. What lies?"

Jerold gave the doctor another one of his looks. "You're being straight with me, aren't
you? You don't know, do you?"

"Tell me, Jerold. What are they lying about?"

"My Grandfather's desalinization plant up at Port Townsend. Thousands of gallons of

fresh water. What do you think happens to all that left-over salt? Do you think its saved
to spread on the icy roads?"

"Why, it's..." The doctor didn't know. He shook his head.

"One question first," said Jerold, leaning forward.

"What?"

"Can you tell the police or the judge anything I tell you in this room?"

"No," said the doctor, shaking his head, "it's against the law. Nobody can every find out
what we talk about in this room.

Jerold looked at the doctor for what seemed to be a full minute. Finally, he took a deep
breath. "We're the Kitsap Salt Cartel. We have our supply lines and we make payoffs
whenever and wherever we must to keep the salt flowing. Our network is deep and well
established. We have dealers and pushers. We have judges, attorneys and police officers
on our payroll. We get all the salt we want—all the salt we need. Everybody is getting
rich, and everybody is getting high."

The doctor was in shock. He just sat and looked at the young gastropod.

"You've tried it more than that one time! You know how great it is! You've had the rush,
and you keep coming back, just like all the rest of us!"

"I..." The doctor tried to shake his head, but it wouldn't move.

"I know about your habit, Doctor Lugger."

"But how—"

"Because I'm three steps away in your upstream. The salt you sniffed yesterday in the
privacy of your hill-side mansion passed through my hands an hour before you bought

39
it." Jerold laughed so loud that the secretary slid to the door to make sure everything was
all right. The doctor assured her that it was and sent her back to her desk.

The doctor turned back to the young slug. "What's so funny?"

"Just the irony of all of this. If you think about it, Doctor Lugger, you are profit and I am
overhead."

The doctor considered where the conversation had gone. Bubbles started coming from his
mouth—bubbles of fear. "You won't get away with—"

"I already have, Doctor, and that's why I'm here."

"What are you talking about?"

"We've been watching you."

The bubbling increased. Not the kind of bubbling you get from salt, but the kind that
comes from deep within...that primeval fear like just before a duck or a goose finds and
swallows you whole. The doctor slid from his chair and backed toward the corner. He
spit some of the bubbles away. "What do you want from me?"

"Your cooperation, Doctor Lugger. I want to put you on our payroll."

"Your payroll? Are you crazy?"

"Isn't that why I'm here?" Jerold said with another laugh. "Aren't you trying to find out if
I'm crazy?"

"I could be sent to Ortho Prison! They'd love to get a psychiatrist inside one of that
place!"

"I know. It would be like Christmas in April."

The doctor spit away the new bubbles that had collected around his mouth, slid to the
door, and pushed it open. The two police officers stood and slid forward. He looked back
in at Jerold. The youth gave him a cold stare.

"Is everything alright, Doc?" asked the larger of the two, looking up at the clock. "You
still have twenty minutes with our prisoner."

"I need you inside my office," he said with a quick look at his secretary. "It's important."

Jerold was up. He had moved to the window. The track across the carpet was now
showing signs of fear.

40
The two officers slid into the inner office. They recognized the fear in Jerold's track.
They looked at the doctor and the larger one spoke. "What is it, Doc? What did he do?"

"The judge's order; it gives me the latitude to decide whether Kitsap County will be best
served by Jerold Nail going to Ortho Prison for three years or to be placed in a recovery
and rehabilitation program of my design."

"And?" asked the other officer with a nod. "Have you decided?"

"Yes." The doctor looked across at Jerold. The youth was obviously scared, but he was
standing his ground. "I have decided that Jerold S. Nail should continue with his therapy
and group intervention sessions at Bubblers Anonymous. We have made terrific progress
in these short 35 minutes, and I can assure you, and Judge Slyme, that within six months,
our young friend will be completely healed of his salt addiction and will return to society,
a full and functioning slug."

The officers looked at Jerold and back to the doctor. The larger one spoke. "We'll need
that in writing sir." He pulled a sheet of paper from his vest. "Write what you said there at
the bottom, sign your name and we'll be gone."

A moment later, the two police officers had left. Jerold continued to look out on the Puget
Sound. He wanted to hear the doctor's terms. He waited patiently.

"I want a retainer of $10,000 in cash a month and another $10,000 bonus in cash every
time I release one of your associates. I also want all the free salt I can use."

"It's a deal!" Jerold smiled at first, but the smiling turned to a deep belly laugh.
"What's so funny? What did I say?"

Jerold slid to the door and pushed it open. He scooted into the reception office, stopped
and turned. He leaned close and whispered. "I was authorized to pay you double that."

He turned and slid to the door and out into the hall. They could hear Jerold S. Nail
laughing until the elevator had swallowed him whole.

41
 HANDPRINTS

The visits began on the first day of July 1968, twenty years after Ritchie Ramm had
disappeared. The drifter never told anybody his name or where he was from. He would
stay for only a week—the same week every year—doing small jobs for the families that
lived on either side of the Sparks Creek, and then he would be gone. He slept on an old
Army bed roll in a small glade at the north end of the bridge. He came like that for ten
years, as steady as a heart beat and as reliable as the seasons. Nobody seemed to notice
him except Sheriff Martin. The new Sheriff had based his recent electoral campaign on
several key issues; one of them being that he would put an end to the vagrants and pan-
handlers sitting near the parks and schools. Now that he was the Sheriff, he was waiting
for the man.

"Don’t sit down!" called the Sheriff, walking from his patrol car. "We have a law now
against your type."

"My type?"

"Yes, your type!" He gave the man a rough push against the oak tree, searched him for
weapons and then applied the hand cuffs to his wrists. "You’ve passed through Sparks
every year at this same time for a decade, and this is going to be your last. Tomorrow—
after you've spent a night in my jail—I’ll drive you to the county line and be done with
you."

As the Sheriff’s car drove over the Sparks Creek Bridge, two small children who were
wearing their cowboy outfits, set down their plastic buckets and nets in the shade of the
bridge to eat lunch. Charlie, the six year-old, was extra protective of his four year-old
sister, Betty.

Charlie finished his sandwich first. "You stay back there Betty, while I see how deep the
creek is here," he said, poking a stick into the dark water next to the bridge’s cement
foundation. The bottom was too far down to feel. "This isn’t a good place for us," he said
backing away. "I’ll check further down stream."

"What are the nets for?" Betty asked, finishing her sandwich. "What are we trying to
catch, Charlie?"

"Whatever we can find," he said, leading her along the shore to the other side of the
bridge. "It might be a frog or some crawdads...whatever we come across first."

Betty pointed and whispered. "What about that big frog over there?"

It was the biggest bull frog Charlie had ever seen. He set down his bucket and raised his
net. With the stealth of a cat, he stepped forward toward the small pool and moved the net

42
out and over the enormous frog. "One...two..." Before he could say, "three," the frog took
one great leap, landing six feet closer to the Sparks Creek.

"Can you still get him?" asked Betty, touching Charlie’s arm.

"Yes, but I have to move slower this time." Charlie took another step, this time into the
shallow water. The mud was soft, but it seemed to support his weight. Another step, and
then it happened. Something under the surface broke, as if there were a crust over the
softer mud underneath. Suddenly, Charlie was sinking into the mud so fast that he could
barely get out his call for help. Betty screamed and grabbed at his shirt, but the mud had
grabbed onto her too, pulling her down with her brother. In a matter of seconds, the two
small hunters had become the prey of this mindless and hungry subterranean monster.
The quicksand had them both and they were going down fast. For a terrifying moment the
sound of the two children’s screams pierced the peaceful Nevada sky, and then, after their
last choking gasps, there was silence.

The hands were large and strong that reached down into the mud and pulled Charlie and
Betty Burney from the quicksand and out onto the grass. The children’s mouths and
noses were filled with mud, but their coughing cleared enough of an airway that they
were able to start crying and breathing again. The stranger wet a rag and wiped their
faces clean.

"There now...you're both going to be just fine." The man's soothing voice assured them as
the two children sobbed. "You’re safe now."

It took several minutes before either child could speak. Charlie was the first. "You saved
us, Mister! The mud was eating me and my little sister!"

"Where do you live?"

Charlie pointed. "Across the bridge and up that road a little ways; just past the train
yards."

The man picked up both children in his arms, climbed the bank to the roadway and
started walking through the bridge. "I think we better be getting you home to your mother
and father."

"Our father ran away," said Betty. "He didn’t love our mommy enough to stay around."

"Well, then, we’ll take you home to your mother." Several neighbors stepped out onto
their porches as the three passed.

The stranger stopped at the front gate of their home and set the children on the ground.
"Go get your mother and tell her what happened to you."

43
The two children started running up the walk, but Betty stopped and looked back at the
man. "You aren’t going away, are you?"

He shook his head. "No, not until I speak with your mommy."

Before Charlie could reach the porch, his mother stepped from the front door and looked
at the two children and then at the stranger. "What happened?"

"We fell into the quicksand and that man pulled us out," cried Charlie, pointing back. "He
saved our lives!"

She wasn’t sure if she should believe her boy. She walked down to the gate. "Is that true
what Charlie says? Is there quicksand someplace around here? Did you save my
children’s lives?"
The man’s shirt was caked with mud from the children’s clothes. He nodded and looked
toward the bridge. "Other side of the bridge on the down stream side. Yes, both your
children were gone when I reached in and grabbed their hands."

Charlie and Betty stepped next to the stranger. "It really happened, Mommy," said Betty.
"He reached in and grabbed our hands and pulled us out."

It was as if a great emotional bubble suddenly burst open and spilled over the woman.
She dropped to her knees and grabbed her children, pulling them close. "Oh, my God!"
She looked up at the man. "You saved my children’s lives!"

He smiled and wiped at the dirt on his shirt. "I best be on my way now." He looked about
while he unbuttoned his shirt. "I need to go back to the stream and rinse off this mud."

"Give it to me!" she said, taking the shirt and starting toward the house. "I’ll wash it for
you."

"It only needs a rinsing, Ma’am."

"You’re not from around here, are you?" she asked, looking at his Army bed roll.

"I’m just passing through," he said, shaking his head. "I usually sleep up at the bridge."

Twenty minutes later, the stranger had his shirt back and the children were in fresh
clothes. As he buttoned up his shirt, he said, "If it would be alright, I’d like to tell your
children a quick story."

"Their father used to tell them stories, before he left us."

The stranger knelt down. "It was the first day of July, 1948...Ritchie Ramm’s sixth
birthday. He asked if he was big enough to take his dog, Rex, and walk to the Sparks
Creek Bridge alone."

44
Did his daddy let him do it?" asked Betty.

The man nodded. "Ritchie set out the next morning with a hobo’s stick over his shoulder
and his lunch tied up in a red kerchief, just like the pictures in the Saturday Evening Post.
His dog, Rex, trotted at his side. That was the last anybody ever saw of Ritchie Ramm.
Rex returned home after dark covered with mud and exhausted from an obvious struggle
of some sort. The local Sheriff led an organized search for three days and then Ritchie’s
father continued to search alone for another week. Nothing was ever found, not even the
hobo’s stick and red kerchief."

"They never found Ritchie?" asked Betty with a furled brow.

"Ritchie’s mother and father eventually moved away to Portland where John got a job as
a fireman. They never returned to Sparks, and the passing years never healed the Ramm’s
broken hearts."

Charlie shook his head. "His Mommy and Daddy gave up the search?"

"But then, a very strange thing began to happen. People who had passed through Sparks
on their way to California started bringing their photographs back to the clerk at the
Rexall Drug Store. They all had the same complaint."

"What was it?" asked Charlie. "What was the matter with their pictures?"

"In every picture, there were fresh muddy hand prints on the people’s clothes."

Betty pointed toward the bridge. "Was it the same kind of mud that tried to eat us?"

"Yes, the very same kind." The man pulled a stack of photographs from his pocket and
removed the rubber band that held them together. He spread them out on the porch.
"Look."

It was just as he described. There were twenty photographs, and the same small muddy
handprints were on all of the people’s clothes.

Charlie held out his hand. "That’s the same size as my hand!"

The man turned to Mrs. Burney. "Do you have a camera?"

"Yes, a Brownie camera, but since John left, I hardly ever use it."

"Would you get it and take a picture of me with your children?"

The man sat down on the top step at the porch with a child on each side.

45
Charlie turned to the man. "Will there be muddy handprints in the pictures?"

"We’ll have to wait and see."

A few minutes later, their mother came from the house with the old box camera. "There
are only two pictures left on the roll."

The man pulled the children close. "Two pictures will be fine. One picture for me, and
one for the children."

She looked through the camera. "That’s good." She took the first picture. "Why don’t you
hold the children...the same way as when you brought them home earlier?"

The man shook his head. "No; it won’t work. It has to be the same as the first picture."

Mrs. Burney took the second picture and looked at the number. "That was the last picture.
How long are you staying in town?"

The man got up and walked to the gate. He stopped and turned. "I'm always here." He
slung his bed roll over his shoulder and walked back toward the bridge.

The next day, the Pastor of the Sparks Baptist Church stopped his sermon to ask if
anyone had a testimony to share with the congregation. Mrs. Burney stood and told in
great detail how the Lord had used a drifter to save Charlie’s and Betty’s lives.

The Sheriff sat alone in the back pew so he could listen to his portable radio without
disturbing the congregation. After the last hymn and they were dismissed, he met Mrs.
Burney at the door.

"Yes?" she asked.

"Would you come with me to the jail? I have a man there who matches the description of
the man in your testimony."

"Why’s he in jail? What did he do?"

"He didn't do anything illegal, but we have that new ordinance against vagrants and pan-
handlers hanging around in places where children play."

At the jail house, the Sheriff got the keys and led Mrs. Burney and the two children down
the hallway to the line of cells. "He’s in the last one on—" The Sheriff fell silent and
stepped to the empty cell. He checked the door. It was still locked.

"Where is he?" asked Mrs. Burney.

46
"I don’t know. I locked him up early yesterday morning before your children fell into the
quicksand."

"Look!" cried Charlie, pointing up at the message written in fresh mud on the stone wall.
It said, "COME FIND ME. I'M WAITING FOR YOU."

"It’s him!" cried Charlie. "That was Ritchie Ramm! He's in the mud!"

They got into the Sheriff’s car and drove to the bridge. Charlie and Betty led the way to
the quicksand. "That’s where he is! That’s where Ritchie Ramm died!"

"Who’s Ritchie Ramm?" asked the Sheriff.

"He’s the little boy who disappeared in 1948," said Charlie. "He’s still there; at the
bottom of the quicksand!"

That afternoon, a cement pumping company came and sucked all of the mud from the
hole. Just as little Charlie had told them, the bones of a little boy lay at the bottom of the
hole.

That night, Mrs. Burney pulled the set of freshly developed photographs from her purse,
opened the envelope and spread them out onto the kitchen table. The last pictures were
the ones taken on the front porch. Sitting between Charlie and Betty was a little boy the
same size as Charlie, but he was covered in mud.

47
 IT TOOK A TEN PENNY NAIL

The year was 1951 and there were two more months of grammar school before summer
vacation. It was a mixture of desperation and determination that brought the six members
of the Oak Hill Gang together for an emergency meeting in Terry Dowell’s tree house.

Butchy Green stood up—both of his hands filled with iron nails. He was the smallest of
the gang, but there was never a question of his courage. He stepped in front of the others
and spread his arms as if he'd been crucified. “Look at me. Look at my clothes. I did what
you told me to do. I stood up to Jerold alone, just like you told me to!" He turned around
slowly so that the other club members could see the nail holes in the seams of his shirt
under each arm and down the inner and outer seams of his new blue jeans. “He nailed me
to that tree, and he would have done much worse if I hadn't cried 'Uncle' when he told me
to.”

“He really hates me.” Michael looked to the others. “No telling what he’d do if I stood up
to him like that.”

Rusty, the only boy with red hair, turned to Terry. “You asked your father for help. What
did he say?”

“My dad said it’s all just a part of growing up, and that if I really wanted to do something
to teach Jerold a lesson—I would figure it out for myself.”

“Figure it out for yourself?” Butchy gave the nails a squeeze. “What’s that supposed to
mean?”

“I don’t know. That’s what he tells me every time I have a real problem.”

Michael gave a huff. “I asked my father too, and he told me pretty much the same thing.”

Patty West was ten, and one of the three older members of the gang. Girls had never been
allowed in the Oak Hill Gang, but since she was starting to grow breasts, Terry and
Michael insisted she be allowed to join. “Maybe we should all go together and ask him
what he wants—what we did to make him so mad at us. Maybe it was our fault and if we
say we’re sorry, he’ll stop his bullying us.”

“That won’t work.” Michael shook his head. “He wants our money. If we let him know
we’re willing to pay for our safety, he’ll start with a dollar or two a week and then raise it
every week. I don’t know about any of you guys, but I don’t get an allowance. The only
way I get any money is to find soda pop bottles and turn them in for the deposit.”

48
“But couldn’t we try it?” Patty look about at the others. “We could do that—collect pop
bottles. That’s two cents each. With all of us working at it together, it wouldn’t take that
long.” Her suggestion only received groans.

Terry looked about at the others—the smaller boys. “Does anybody else have a
suggestion?”

Tommy cleared his throat. Everybody in the gang knew Tommy Martin was the smallest,
but he was also the smartest. “Here’s how I see it.” He held up a finger. “Jerold Cordova
is a bully.” He held up a second finger. “He’s never going to stop being a bully until
something really bad happens to him.” He held up his third finger. “If we don’t do
something to stop him, he’s going to kill one of us before we have a chance to grow up.”

A hush fell over the group. Every one of them knew Tommy was telling the truth, but
nobody wanted to pose, the question.

Finally, Butchy spoke. “Like what, Tommy?”

Tommy held up his right hand. “Do any of you go to church?” They all held up a hand
and nodded. “Have you ever heard your preacher say anything about a sinner seeing the
light?”

They all nodded again.

“How do you make Jerold see the light?” It was Terry.

Tommy continued. “There’s six of us. The only reason Jerold can keep hurting us is
because he catches us one at a time walking to or from school. If all six of us can catch
him alone somewhere, we can get him down on the ground and make him see that light.”

Patty gave Tommy a squint. “I don’t understand. What kind of light are you talking
about?”

“We have to do something that will scare him so bad that he’ll never hurt any of us
again.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know yet.” Tommy turned to their leader. "Terry. Why don’t we meet back here
tomorrow at this same time with our ideas?” After a quick vote, the six children ran back
to their homes.

The next afternoon, the Oak Hill Gang met again. Nearly all of them had brought
something.

Tommy pointed at Terry. “You’re first.”

49
“Jerold has two dogs. I asked my father what he’d do if he wanted to get rid of a dog.”

Rusty shook his head. “It’s not Jerold’s dogs we’re after, Terry.”

“I know it, but we could kill the first one and threaten him that we’d kill the other one if
he didn’t stop beating up on us.”

Tommy held up a hand. “These are only ideas, so we’ll listen to everybody.” He looked
at Patty’s rope. “How about you, Patty?”

“Well, I just thought that we could tie a piece of rope across his back porch. Then, if he
ran out to chase one of us, he’d trip and fall down his stairs.”

“That’s a good idea, but there are two problems with it.”

Patty looked around at the others and back to Tommy. “What?”

“Well, first, it will only make him madder at us, and second, what if his mother or father
trips and falls? They're really old and could get hurt really bad.”

“He’s right.” It was Rusty. “His father and mother are as old as my grandma and grandpa.
Besides, we aren’t mad at them.”

Tommy pointed. “What’s in the box, Rusty?”

“It’s the one thing that will cure Jerold for sure.” Rusty pulled a small jar from the box
and held it up. “It’s a Black Widow spider!” He gave the jar a shake.

Patty let out a scream and scooted back against the clubhouse wall. "Get that away from
me!"

“There’s a bunch more in my father’s shed, and Jerold has to be afraid of Black
Widows!”

“Might work.” Tommy turned to Michael. “What’s in the wooden box?”

Michael opened the oil-stained box and set his father’s alphabet metal stamping kit on the
floor. Next, he pulled a Zippo lighter and a small piece of leather from the tobacco bag.
“Take a look at that!” Michael handed the piece of leather across to Terry. There were
lots of “Ooh’s” and “Aah’s”. By the time it made its way to Tommy, the gang was ready
to vote. Tommy asked for a show of hands, and only Patty voted “No.”

Since Butchy was Jerold’s favorite victim, he was selected as the bait. At 10:00 am on
Saturday morning, he walked to Jerold’s side yard and stood on the grass. Like a spider
feeling twitches on its web, Jerold was out the back door and running after Butchy as fast

50
as his huge chubby body would allow. Butchy ran around the fence and into the alley.
Jerold caught up with him just past the trash cans. That’s where the other five members
of the Oak Hill Gang were hiding.

With the help of Patty’s rope, Jerold tripped and fell down in the dirt with a thunderous
cry of pain. All six of the gang jumped on top of him, rolled him onto his back and
started tying him down. Rusty held the jar full of spiders close to his nose to keep him
still while the others could make their knots fast.

Michael climbed up onto Jerold’s chest with his knees next to the bully’s neck. “Jerald
Cordova! You have beat up, molested, and stolen the lunch money of your last victim!”
As he spoke his cryptic words, Patty held the metal “B” with a pair of needle nose pliers
while Terry held the flame from the Zippo underneath it.

Jerold struggle to get free. “Michael Wood, you’re the first one I’m coming after when I
get up from here!”

Michael looked across to Patty and Terry. Patty shook her head.

Jerold bellowed like a dying bull. “What are you looking at, worm?”

“I’m looking at the thing that’s gonna stop you from ever hurting another kid.”

“If it’s those spiders, I’m not afraid of spiders—even Black Widows.”

“It’s not spiders.” Michael gave Patty another look.

She nodded. “It’s ready, Mike.” She got up and handed him the pliers. The letter was
glowing red hot.

Jerold gave a gasp. “What’s that!?”

“We are going to brand you as a bully. For the rest of your life, every time you look in
the mirror, you will see the letter “B” between your eyebrows. You'll remember what you
used to be.”

“If you brand me I’ll kill you, Michael Wood!”

Terry and Patty grabbed Jerold’s head and held it steady while Michael pressed and held
the “B” against his forehead. Jerold screamed while Tommy counted off the seconds.
“One...two...three!”

Michael pulled away the hot letter. The smell of burned flesh filled the alley.

“That’s not going to stop me, you worms!” Jerold thrashing about but couldn't break free.
“Nothing you do to me will stop me from killing every last one of you!”

51
Butchy Green stood several feet away. “This will!” He held up a hammer and a ten penny
nail. “Hold his head steady and pull back his upper lip.” Terry and Patty did as he asked.

"You nailed me to a tree the other day." Butchy put the tip of the nail against one of
Jerold’s large front teeth—the permanent ones—and raised the hammer several inches
above the nail.

“No!” The word was garbled by his lips being pulled apart, but everybody knew what he
was saying.

“We got you down this one time, Jerold.” Butchy touched the hammer to the head of the
nail. “If you ever hurt another child, or a dog, or a cat, or even a bug, we’ll catch you
again and bust out one of your front teeth. If you do it again, then we’ll bust out the other
front tooth.” Terry and Patty took away their hands. “Now do you understand us?”

It took Jerold a full minute to stop crying enough to answer. “Yes! I understand!”

Jerald wet his pants that Saturday morning. He and his parents moved away from our
neighborhood that summer and were never heard from again. As far as anybody knew,
Jerold Cordova never hurt another child, another dog, another cat, or even another bug—
for the rest of his life.

52
 Joshua Smoot's Grave

Jack threw back the covers and sat up. "I've got it!"

"No more!" Cindy grabbed his arm, pulled him down, and pushed the covers up over his
head. "It's just an old eye patch with a stupid note sewn inside!" She looked at the clock.
"It's stolen our whole weekend, and I'll be damned if it's going to steal another minute of
my sleep!"

He lay silent for twenty breaths before whispering. "I think that picture means something.
He was a pirate and I think the note's a treasure map."

"You said you hated your grandfather for it—for giving everything to the others and
leaving you a stupid book with an eye patch for a book marker!"

"I know, but the note—"

She put a foot to his hip and gave a shove, sending him to the floor. "Okay! Go play
pirate if you absolutely must, but leave me out of it!" She turned over and covered her
head with the pillow. "All I wanted was a Gucci purse, and you had a fit!"

He stood in the dark. "Is that why you're being such a—"

She uncovered her face. "It was on sale and it was my birthday. You told me I could have
anything I wanted. I wanted that Gucci purse."

"But they charge so much for the name—triple or quadruple what it's worth."

"But you promised."

It seemed like he had only been gone two minutes when he pushed the bedroom door
open. He stood on his boxer shorts and silhouetted in the kitchen light. "Get up, Cindy. I
was right."

She uncovered her head and gave a defeated groan. "Right? Right about what?"

"The note."

She gave a groan and sat up. "Okay—put on the coffee."

Jack waited until she took her first sip of the rejuvenating brew. "It's kind of like those
Nicholas Cage movies—National Treasure—where they're looking for gold."

Cindy squinted across her cup. "A treasure? What makes you think—"

53
"I've been on the computer—Google Earth. I found an old map that shows an old church
and graveyard on the east side Savannah. I'm sure now that my grandfather intended that
I go and dig him up."

"Slow down." She took another sip of coffee. "You think those lines in the flowers are
that—that way sailors signaled each other?"

"Semaphore! Yes! I'm sure that the lines are numbers and the numbers are latitude and
longitude for my great-great grandfather's grave?" Jack stepped to the computer desk and
returned with the old family Bible. He opened it to the births and deaths and tapped a
name. "Look."

"Pirate Captain Joshua Smoot." She looked up. "You're related to a pirate?"

Jack nodded. "I should have told you sooner, but I thought you might not want to be
married to somebody with that in his genes."

"But it doesn't mean you'd become a pirate." She gave a laugh. "I think it's kind of neat."

"Not that neat. My Grandpa told me that Joshua Smoot ate people's hearts."

"Oh." Her mood darkened. "What else did your grandfather tell you?"

"He said Smoot was the bastard son of John Flint, and that he hated his father so much
that he dug up his body and watched while the seagulls, ravens, and crabs picked his
bones clean on the mud flats."

She reached across and touched the red X on the old map. "Let me guess. Your great-
great grandfather did that right there—where the semaphore says he's buried."

"It all fits."

She wriggled her nose. "He didn't join in the feast, did he?"

"I hope not, but that's not what's important."

"So…you want to go to Savannah and dig up Joshua Smoot's body, just like he did to
John Flint?"

Jack held up the eye patch. "Yes, and so did his grandson."

"Can we afford to do this?"

Jack smiled. "I'll work a couple of extra shifts."

54
The plane ride from Charleston to Savannah took under an hour, and by noon, Jack and
Cindy had purchased a metal detector and a shovel. After a quick lunch, Jack drove the
rented van to a vacant stretch of land on the south shore of the Savannah River a half mile
east of the city bluffs.

Cindy walked to the river's edge and looked about. "So…where's the church? Where are
the headstones?"

Jack pointed west. "That inlet was John Flint's Creek. That's where his ship—the Walrus
—was burned and then rotted away in the mud." He looked down at his GPS and walked
to the east, paralleling the shore. He stopped and held up the device. "If this thing is
accurate, I'm standing on Joshua Smoot's grave."

Cindy grinned. "Let's get the metal detector and the shovel."

With the machine set on GOLD, it took only minutes to find the grave. The signal was
sharp and clear, and covered an area the shape of a man's body. With a look to make sure
nobody was watching, Jack scratched several lines in the dirt and began digging. At four
feet, the shovel tore through a layer of rotted canvas. He bent down, reached through the
material, and closed his fingers around something.

Cindy nudged him with her foot. "Well?"

He looked up and smiled. "We won't be flying back to Charleston."

"Why not?"

He raised his hand. It was full of gold Doubloons, pearls, and cut jewels. "The airline
won't let us through with suitcases full of treasure."

"Does this mean you don't hate your grandfather any more?"

An hour later, Jack and Cindy walked into a luggage store. Cindy touched a set of bags
and turned to Jack. "What do you think, Honey? Can we finally afford Gucci?"

55
 ONE MORE BREATH

Bruce Murdock had just turned 40, and if he kept his nose clean, he could retire from the
U.S. Forest Service in ten years with 55% of his pay, medical, dental and a pretty good
eye care plan. He and his younger wife, Carol, had just moved to Oregon with the
intention of retiring in their dream home; a three bedroom rambler next to one of the
prettiest lakes in the state.

It was the off season, so Bruce was on duty by himself. The daily routine was low key,
with him arriving at eight in the morning and going home at six. After a leisurely
morning of paperwork, phone calls and checking out the two trucks, he carried his lunch
into the TV room, sat down in the Lazy Boy and fired the remote at the television. He
and Carol always watched the first ten minutes of the local news, and then switched to
Fox News for the rest of the hour. He had just switched the channel when the house
phone rang.

“Hello?”

“Bruce!”

“Carol?”

“You’ve gotta get home right now!”

“Why? What happened?”

“I can’t tell you!” She started to cry. “They might already have our phone bugged!”

“Who might have our phone bugged? What’s going on?”

“Something terrible has happened and I need you home right now!”

“Carol! Take a big breath and let it out slowly. Then tell me what’s going on.”

“A big breath isn’t gonna work this time, Bruce! Call dispatch and tell them there’s an
emergency at home and you have to close the station!”

Bruce had seen Carol upset many times before, but never like this. “Okay, I’ll see what I
can do. One of the reservists owes me some hours and I might be able to—“

“Might isn’t gonna work either! Lock up and get home!”

“Okay...I’ll be there in about an hour.”

56
Forty five minutes later, Carol met Bruce at their gate and rode with him down to the
house.

“Okay, who died?” he asked, doing his best to control himself.

“So you already know!”

“I don’t know anything yet! You called me in a panic and told me to get home! What else
am I supposed to think?”

“Did you watch the local news today?”

“Yeah?”

“Then you had to see it!”

“What was I supposed to see? That dog with 16 puppies...the fishing derby down on the
Rogue River...what?”

“That woman they found face down in the pond!”

Bruce parked the car and they got out. “What about her?”

Carol spoke the words slowly. “I...killed...her!”

“You killed her? What the hell are you talking about?”

Carol looked around as if they were being watched. “Maybe we should go in the house.”

He pointed across the lake. “We’re alone up here! There’s nobody for miles!”

“Still, I’d feel better if we were inside.”

Bruce followed her through the back porch and into the kitchen. He sniffed the coffee pot
and poured himself a cup. “So who’s this woman you think you killed?”

“I don’t just think it, Bruce. I know I killed her.”

“Okay! Tell me what happened...from the beginning.”

“Day before yesterday, I drove down to the city to do the monthly shopping. The last
place I went was the Fred Meyer grocery store. I was the only one in line and as I was
putting my things on the counter, the two women...the checker and the bagger...were
talking about a Sheriff’s deputy who was cheating on his wife.”

“Yeah?”

57
“They were so busy gabbing about this guy’s tawdry affair that they didn’t notice me, so
I figured I’d give them a good shaking.”

“A good shaking?”

“I wanted to get back on the road and they weren’t doing their jobs!”

“So...how did you...shake them?”

“When the checker mentioned the deputy’s name, I screamed and said, ‘Oh, my God!
That’s my husband!’”

“You didn’t!”

“You should have seen them,” she said, with a momentary smirk. “The checker turned
white and the bagger ran to the office and never came back. That checker was so shook,
she forgot to ask me for my money.”

“Okay...you played a joke on a couple checkers.

What does that have to do with the woman found dead in the pond?”

“That...woman...was...the...deputy’s...wife!”

Bruce sat back and let his mind run around for a moment. “Shit!”

“Yeah...shit!”

“Okay! Let’s both take a big breath and think about this.”

“There’s nothing to think about, Bruce! I killed her!”

“You didn’t kill anybody. That deputy was cheating on his wife, and he thought she
found out. He’s the adulterer, and he’s probably the murderer!"

“When you were in the Marines, Bruce, every time we had to make a big decision, you
always boiled it down to the best and worst case scenarios. What’s the worst thing that
could happen if the deputy finds out what I did?”

“Best case first,” said Bruce with a hopeful tone. “If he doesn’t know about you, then it
stopped in the pond.”

“And if he does know, he’s gonna find me and kill me too, isn’t he?”

58
Bruce nodded. “If we want to stay in Oregon and buy this house, we’re going to have to
find out which it is.”

“So how do you propose we do that?”

“I don’t know,” he said, searching the kitchen as if the answer was playing ‘I Spy’ with
him. “If we could somehow get around that deputy and his friends...like flies on the
wall...then we could listen to the gossip.”

Carol set the obituary section of the newspaper in front of him. “Her funeral’s tomorrow
afternoon at three.”

He read it and looked up at her. “That’s it! We dress up, go to the funeral and mingle.
After that, we make a decision.”

“A decision?”

“Sometimes armies stand and fight, and sometimes they run away to fight another day.”

Carol dropped her head and began to sob again. “I’m sorry, Bruce. I thought I was being
cute.”

The next afternoon, Bruce and Carol stepped through the front doors of the Burney
Mortuary. There were over a hundred people, many of the men in uniform. They didn’t
know a soul.

Bruce whispered. “Let’s split up and mingle with as many people as we can. If we don’t
hear anything about the incident at Fred Meyer by the end of the service, then I think
we’re safe.”

The service was short and to the point. When they finally loaded the casket into the
hearse, Bruce touched Carol on the shoulder. “Nobody knows anything. Let’s go.”

As they turned to leave, Carol ran headlong into the checker from the Fred Meyer market.
After an awkward apology, the woman gave Carol a questioning look. Suddenly, in a
moment of recollection, the checker pointed at Carol, screamed and fainted to the floor.

Carol grabbed Bruce and whispered, “It’s the checker!”

“I figured that,” he said, pulling her out the side door and to their car.

They drove north until they reached the trees and then pulled over. Bruce got out and
walked down a pathway.

“Now what?” she asked, following.

59
“Let me think!”

“She saw me, Bruce! She knows what I look like!”

He stopped and turned. “Then it’s only a matter of time...a few hours at most...and the
deputy’s going to know all about us.”

She looked at him for a full minute. “How long does a transfer take?”

“Just a phone call and a little paperwork. They’re always looking for people to take
positions in the ugly districts. There’s a bunch of those.”

“Make the call, Bruce, and I’ll start packing.”

Three days of hard driving found the Murdock’s at a Chevron gas station in New Mexico.
While Bruce used the restroom, Carol loaded up with snacks and took them to the
register.

The clerk was in her late teens. She was talking to another girl who was sitting up on the
counter. “Look, Tammy—I got this job, and I’m gonna keep this job by giving the boss
sex whenever he wants it. You want to work here too, then you’ll have to make your own
arrangements with Mr. Tucker.”

“Is he single?” asked Tammy. “With a joint like this, maybe I should shoot for the
position of Mrs. Tucker, and you can keep being his cashier and mistress.”

“Too late! He’s already got him a trophy wife.”

Tammy jumped off the counter and turned around like a pole dancer. “Is she as good
looking as me?”

“I’ve never met her,” the clerk said, turning to look at Carol. “I wouldn’t know her if she
was standing right in front of me.”

Carol set her food on the counter and looked at the clerk’s name tag. “So you’re Pamela!
I’d like to introduce myself! My name is Mrs.—“

Bruce grabbed Carol’s arm. “Don’t!”

She looked up at him. “But, she—“

“Just take a big breath and let’s get back on the road.”

60
 The Choice

The farm was founded in 1867 when Colonel Joshua McTavish retired from the Union
Army and was granted 1,200 acres of prime South Carolina bottom land by General
Ulysses S. Grant. Joshua and his seven children grew tobacco at a great profit for nearly
fifty years, but several poor investments by one of his grandsons decimated the farm,
forcing him to sell off the property in 40 acre parcels until only the white clapboard
house, the barn and three out buildings stood alone on the remaining 5 acres. Joshua was
forced to rely on his meager Army pension until his death in ’87.

Walter and Virginia McTavish inherited the farm in 1995. They would have sold the
place except for the family graveyard and the yearly reunions, which were always held at
noon on the first Saturday after Thanksgiving. This was one of those Saturdays.

Michael crashed through the back porch and skidded to a stop in the kitchen, followed by
his younger sister, Leanne. “Dad! They’re all here!”

The door!” Virginia cried, just before the screen door banging shut.

“Sorry, mom,” said Michael, turning to his father. “They’re all in line and they’re asking
for you, Dad!”

Walter sipped his coffee. “Well? Have you kids chosen yet?”

Leanne smiled. “I’ve invited great Aunt Clara again.”

Virginia gave a disgusted huff. “Did she put you up to that? Did she ask you to choose
her?”

“Well...” said Leanne with a look to her father and older brother.

Walter set down his mug. “She knows the rules! She knows they’re not supposed to
pressure you children to choose them.”

“I’m sorry, Daddy. It was last year before she went back. I won’t let it happen again.”

“What about you, Mike?” asked Virginia. “Have you made your choice?”

Michael looked across at Leanne and then to his mother. “Do I have to tell?”

Virginia dried her hands. “No, but we’ll find out in a few minutes anyway.”

“Then why can’t I just keep it a secret and surprise everybody?”

61
Walter cleared his throat, which meant trouble. “You’ve inviting your great uncle Robert
again, haven’t you?”

Michael didn’t answer.

“The last time he was at a reunion...three years ago...all hell broke loose. Half the family
wouldn’t speak to the other half for months.”

“But I like Uncle Robert,” said Michael. “He knew all the cowboys! Hopalong Cassidy,
Roy Rogers, John Wayne—“

“They weren’t real cowboys, Mike. They just played them in the movies.”

“But I like his stories anyway. Did you know he was best friends with Carbine
Williams?”

“I know all of it!” said Walter, irritated. “I know he made all their boots and holsters and
saddles. I even know about that silver plate that was on Jimmy Stewart’s Winchester
rifle. I’ve heard the same stories a dozen times.”

“Then it’s okay I chose him?”

“It isn’t that he’s bad, Mike. His problem...the reason nobody but the kids can stand
being around him for very long...is that he thinks he’s the center of the universe.”

“That’s because he’s more interesting than anybody else,” said Michael. “Those other
guys...the ones that come in those dusty uniforms...all they talk about is the Civil War.”

“Your father’s right,” said Virginia. “Robert’s a bore and he’s nothing but trouble.”

Michael shrugged. “I’m sorry, Dad, but it’s too late. I’ve already chosen.”

“Very well,” said Walter, standing. “Since you invited him, I’m putting it on you to keep
him in line.”

“That isn’t fair,” said Virginia. “Uncle Robert’s responsible for his own conduct.”

Walter gave a defeated groan, grabbed his coat and pushed open the screen door. “Come
on. Let’s do this.”

The thirty two living members of the McTavish clan stood in two ranks, just like a
military firing line. The children, who were still of a choosing age, stood in the front
row. Their parents and grand parents stood behind them, arranged by age. Walter strode
to his customary spot between the clan and the graveyard. He pulled the Colonel’s watch
from his pocket and flipped open the lid.

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“Listen up! We’ve only got two minutes before they arrive, so I’ll make this quick. I
know the drive is hard for some of you, especially just after Thanksgiving, so as I say
every year, I’m pleased you made the effort.”

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world!” shouted one of the older men near the far end of the
line.

Another shouted. “The way I figure it, if I don’t show up every year, I may never get
chosen after I’m gone.”

Walter held up his hands in a gesture of silence. Almost as if on queue, the wind came to
a sudden stop and the ground fog that hovered over the graveyard settled more thickly in
the hollow. Walter held up the watch for a long moment while the family fell into
silence. Finally, he began calling out the seconds as they ticked away, “...three, two,
one...zero!”

Mike saw the first disturbance in the old cemetery. With a gasp, he pointed as a white
Stetson Ten Gallon hat rose from the fog. It was his great uncle Robert, and as usual, he
wore his full cowboy outfit, including his Colt .45, single-action, nickel-plated six-
shooter strapped to his hips and tied down to his leg, gunfighter style. He was followed
by the eleven others; various men and women dressed in the odd clothing from the past
and smelling of either flowers or sulfur and brimstone. The twelve children broke into a
run and met their choices halfway across the lawn.

Uncle Robert, with Mike in tow, approached Walter with an outstretched hand. “Howdy,
Walt! What’s it been...three years since I was last here?”

“Hello, Robert,” said Walter, looking down at the gun. “They allow you to wear
that...uh, up there?”

“This?” asked Robert, pulling the shiny gun from its holster. “Why, of course! Did you
know that this is the very revolver Tom Mix used in all his Hopalong Cassidy movies?”
He spun the gun around his finger several times and then checked to see that all the
chambers were filled with bullets.

“Planning on shooting anybody today?”

Robert chuckled. “I’d normally say you should put your money me, but...” Robert
slipped the gun back into its holster and wrapped an arm around Walter’s shoulder.
“Look, Walt. If I have to shoot one or two, they’re none the worse. They just go back a
few hours early. Besides, the only trouble I ever get into is what others force on me.” He
pointed at two men in Confederate uniforms. “So, as long as those others mind
themselves, we’ll have a grand reunion and nobody’ll get shot.” Robert spotted the food.
“What say we forget all this talk of killing and get us some vittles?”

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The food was excellent, and three full hours passed without incident. As usual, it was
Great Aunt Clara who started the trouble. She was one of those who smelled of sulfur.

Robert was smoking his second cigar and recounting his Hollywood days to the older
children when she attacked. “Robert McTavish!” she screeched so everyone would hear.
“What’s this lie you’ve been spreadin’ about my Grand Pappy?”

“It’s true! Every word of it!” said Robert with an off-handed tone and a wink at the kids.
“It’s a matter of written history that your Grand Pappy, Samuel McTavish, turned tail
and ran at the first Union shot.”

It was exactly the response she wanted. She turned and looked behind her.

Samuel stood twenty feet back. Like Robert and all the others who wore uniforms, he
was wearing his side arm. He called out. “You willin’ to stand by that lie, Yankee
Dog?” Everybody at the reunion threw down their food and ran to get a good spot for the
action.

Robert spread his arms, pushing the children aside. “Look! I promised young Michael
that I wouldn’t shoot anybody today, but if you’re in such a damned hurry to get back in
your grave and the fires of hell, I’m the man who can put you there!”

“It won’t be me breathing the brimstone!” called Samuel with his hand quivering over his
revolver. “Draw!”

“You go ahead, Sam! Cowards always draw first!”

The two stared at each other for a full minute. Most of the living held their breaths.
There was a slap of leather and the two guns exploded as one. Both combatants stood
motionless for a long moment, the onlookers watching with expectation for who would
fall first.

“Did they both miss?” asked one of the living.

“Beats me,” answered another, looking back and forth from Robert to Samuel.

Finally, Samuel’s revolver rotated from his hand, hung for a moment by his trigger
finger and then fell to the ground. Without a flinch or a whimper, the coward fell
forward onto the grass and was quickly consumed, gun and all. There was a cheer and
several of the children ran to the spot where Samuel was swallowed up.

As the money exchanged hands, Robert stepped up to Walter. “So...did you win?”

“Nope.”

Robert gave Walter a sideways look. “You were betting against me, weren’t you?”

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Walter pulled out his watch. “Let’s just say I was betting for...somebody else.”

“Hmm,” said Robert with a quick look at the graveyard. “Is there time for one more
cigar?”

Walter shook his head. “It’s been a good reunion, Robert, but it’s time for you to go.”

With a hand shake, Robert turned and followed the others down the grassy slope and into
the fog. He stopped and called back. “If you want to win back your money, make sure
one of your kids invites me again next year!” He turned and was swallowed by the fog.
As quickly as they had come, the dead were gone; safely back in their graves for another
year.

That night, after the kids were in bed, Walter brought Virginia a cup of coffee. “I had my
money on Samuel. What about you?”

“I know this is wrong of me, but I wanted somebody...anybody...to shoot Aunt Clara.”
Virginia leaned close and whispered. “She’s such a witch.”

65
 THE TEA PARLOR

The town of Granite Springs was suffering from a terminal case of social and economic
bowel obstruction. The sleepy town needed an influx of money and something to get
things moving again. The suppository came from an unexpected direction on the Fourth
of July while most of the town folk had their backs turned.

It was just after the last snow in May when Peter and Esther Abbott arrived in the U-Haul
van. The license on the truck was from Washington State, but since the trucks moved all
over the United States, that was never a reliable sign where people came from. On
Monday the young couple rented a room at the Star Light Motel, and on Tuesday they
purchased the abandoned parsonage and Corinthian Church of Christ for pennies on the
dollar. It took the couple until Wednesday afternoon to move their things into the
parsonage and deliver the U-Haul to the rental agency at the other end of town. On
Thursday, the work began.

While Esther put their home together, Peter began the renovation of the old church. With
each hammer blow the curiosity in the town grew. The six town gossips—all of them ex-
cheerleaders—made certain that one of them was always nearby—bringing a pitcher of
lemonade or an apple pie to the Abbott's.

"All that hammering and sawing, and all of that lumber, wallboard, paint, and wallpaper.
Are you going to re-open the church? Are you a preacher or something?"

Peter smiled at the nosey lady and gave a non-committal shrug. "Or something."

While one gossip hovered around Peter, another began making regular visits to the
hardware store in the hope of prying information from the owner. "So—Bert—what is
Peter Abbott doing in the old church?"

Bert knew more than he let on. "Some sort of restaurant I suppose. Mister Abbott didn't
say…not that I can remember anyway."

Another gossip took a dozen donuts to City Hall and offered them to the zoning clerk—a
sweet rotund lady in her late fifties. "A restaurant, huh? What kind of restaurant?"

The clerk wiped powder sugar from her lips. "Mister Abbott didn't know yet."

The old church took well to its transformation, and on the Fourth of July, the work was
completed, and the sign was screwed to the new façade. PETER ABBOTT'S TEA
PARLOR.

The six gossips stood looking up. "Peter Abbott…Esther Abbott?" She turned to the
others. "If you say their names fast, it sounds like Peter Rabbit and Easter Rabbit."

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As anticipated, attendance that first afternoon was zero. The tea, sandwiches, and other
treats were not the problem, as they were of the highest quality. It wasn't the ten dollar
price either because a High Tea in any other part of the nation—a two hour affair—cost
at least twenty dollars per attendee. What kept the women away was actually peer
pressure. Most of the women in town grew up attending the Corinthian Church of Christ
and had their sins washed away dozens of times in that very building. That naturally
rubbed their fur the wrong way.

So as to break the boycott, the Tea Parlor invited the gossips to a complimentary High
Tea with all the trimmings. Something incredible happened that afternoon when those six
women sipped at their tea and ate their miniature sandwiches. A young man wearing a
mask emerged from the pastor's door next to the baptismal tank, walked to the center of
the room, began dancing to raunchy music, and proceeded to strip himself naked. The six
gossips shrieked and gasped, but not one of them moved from their seat. When the young
man finished his last bump and grind, he gathered up his discarded clothing, gave a deep
bow, strutted back to the pastor's door, and disappeared.

Word flew through Granite Springs like rabbits with their fur on fire. The next afternoon
—and by unanimous agreement—every business in town closed at 3:00 PM. The women
—those who got into the Tea Parlor first—sat around the twenty tables adorned in their
finest tea-drinking dresses and hats. Outside, the line of waiting women reached all the
way down the block to the corner.

Just as the women anticipated, a masked young man walked from the pastor's door, began
dancing to some kind of jungle music, stripped naked, bowed, and exited through the way
he entered. The women shrieked, covered their eyes, feigned embarrassment, but just like
the original six, not one of them left the Tea Parlor nor filed a complaint. On the contrary
—they all left huge tips and reservations for the next afternoon.

Two Lesbians—the town outcasts who lived across the Muddy Bend River Bridge—
heard what was going on and filed a complaint with the local Sheriff. The Sheriff
accepted the complaint with all decorum and gave his personal promise that he would
look into the alleged incident. As the Lesbians left his office, the Sheriff picked up his
phone, dialed a number, and waited. "We may have a problem."

Both of their wives were already three sheets to the wind by the time the Mayor and
Sheriff pushed through the front door.

As the Mayor's wife threw back a shot of Vodka, she gave a throaty laugh. "I say he's one
of the football players from that college over in Centerville."

The Sheriff's wife re-filled the glasses while she shook her head. "I'd bet twenty dollars
he's one of those male models from up north—Winchester or Duggan Ville."

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The Sheriff set his gun belt on the floor by the front door. "Do I hear a complaint about
the male strippers?"

She turned and looked at her husband. "Yes—I have one complaint. If a good-looking
young man is going to expose his naked body to me, I want to see his face."

Later that evening, the Sheriff and Mayor excused themselves and drove to the grange
building. Inside, twenty men waited in expectation. The Sheriff held up the complaint
form. "Good news and bad news."

One of the men called out. "What's the bad news?"

"I've received one complaint against the Tea Parlor."

"What's the good news?"

"It's the lesbians. They never went inside the Tea Parlor, so it's only hearsay."

While the men laughed, the Mayor stepped to the podium. "Okay, let's calm down. We
have three matters to vote on."

One of the men called. "Three? We were told there were only two things we needed to
decide."

"The Sheriff's wife is now a regular at the Tea Parlor, and she wants the strippers to
remove their masks. Do I hear a motion to that effect?" All he got were frowns and
shaking heads. "Alright—item number two. Bring your numbers forward."

The Sheriff stepped forward and held out his hat. As he and the Mayor watched, the men
got out of their chairs, filed by, and dropped slips of paper into the hat. While they
returned to their seats, the Sheriff gave the hat a good shake, held it high, and turned to
the Mayor. "Would you do the honors?"

The Mayor reached up, selected four papers, and handed them to the Sheriff.

The Sheriff set down his hat and read the numbers. "Four, eighteen, seven, and twelve."
The men applaud the selections. The Mayor dumped the papers into the trash and asked
the eight younger men to write their numbers on another slip of paper.

This time, the Sheriff drew a single number. "Well, well. Number five."

While the men applauded the selections, the Sheriff pulled a folded paper from his shirt
pocket. "Okay…listen up. While our wives are watching number five strip tomorrow
afternoon, numbers four, seven, twelve, and eighteen will drive down to Wiley Springs
and rob the Farmer's Bank of Commerce. The manager called this morning to tell me that
a half million dollars will be delivered at noon. We take four-hundred-thousand and he

68
reports to the insurance company that the robbers got away with the full half million." He
looked around the room as the men applauded. "If there are no questions, can I have a
motion and second that this meeting is adjourned?"

The re-birth of Granite Springs took six more robberies of banks in the nearby counties.
The Federal Depository Insurance Corporation covered the thefts, and with the new
influx of money, the Mayor and City Council succeeded in bringing three factories to the
town. The un-employment rate in Granite Springs went from twenty percent in July down
to one percent by the end of summer, the manager of the Farmer's Bank of Commerce got
a promotion for his courage, moved to the corporate offices in Knoxville, and then he
retired to Florida a year later.

For the benefit of the ladies in town, the Tea Parlor continued to be visited by naked
masked men, but since there were no more banks to rob, only on a random basis.

69
 Roger L. Johnson

Commander, US Navy
Fire Captain, California Fire
Biography

Roger was born on 29 January 1944 in Los Angeles, California. His writing career began
at age five writing short stories and reading them to his neighborhood friends. At six
years old, he figured out what he really wanted out of life—to have wings, be magic and
never ever die. He has achieved those wishes, in that he was a Naval Aviator, the Lord
has given him a creative mind, and he is a Christian.

At seventeen, he enlisted in the Naval Air Reserves and upon graduation from college, he
went to Pensacola, Florida to earn his Naval Commission and Wings of Gold; graduating
first in a class of 47 men.

He married his high school sweetheart and shortly thereafter, he deployed on the USS
Ticonderoga to Vietnam. As safety officer, he wrote eight safety articles for Approach
Magazine; the Navy's flight safety magazine. His writing continued for eight years while
on active duty. At the end of his military obligation, he joined the Fire Service and
continued writing safety articles; nine of which were published in Fire Engineering
Magazine.

In 1990, he began writing the pirate adventure novel, The Treasure of Dead Man's
Chest. Since the publication of that first novel, he has written nine other novels. A
Bigot's Redemption was published in 2006, and The Last Time Machine was published
in 2008.

Roger is now enjoying his retirement with his wife, Elizabeth, in Gig Harbor,
Washington where he continues to write his novels. In 2009, he contracted with
Leafcutter Press for a series of Christian Adventure novels. The series is titled, THE
LAZARUS CHRONICLES, and contains the following titles: (1) Reunion, (2) Cookies
For Bobo, (3) Omak's Rock, (4) Redwood Search and Rescue, (5) The Last Time
Machine, (6) The Cardboard Kid, (7) Cardinal's Harvest, (8) Have Wings, Be Magic, and
Never Ever Die, and the most recent is (9) The Prophets of Damocles.

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