A Tale of Two Thanksgivings

Ron Schaffer, the owner of The Friedville Daily News, laced his fingers behind his head, planted his size twelve leather boots on his desk, and stared at the ceiling.

“Another one bites the dust,” he mumbled to himself.

With the Friday, November 24, 1939 edition of the News delivered to Friedville’s only printing business, Ron could at last relax. For whatever reason, working at the office always seemed longer on holidays. Like the founder of the paper, Ron’s grandfather Frederick, Ron always gave all of his employees holidays off. Which meant he had to do their jobs as well as his own.

Such a work ethic had been instilled into Ron by his recently deceased father Wilhelm. During grade school years, Ron had been the paper’s janitor. While in high school, Ron had apprenticed as a reporter and photographer. Now, he spent his days wondering if his paper would fold as so many other newspapers, large and small, had across the forty-eight states of America.

After locking his small office’s front door, he walked three short blocks from downtown to home. Inside the small three-bedroom wood framed house, he sat down at the living room table and sifted through the remnants of the feast enjoyed by his wife Marita, two of their five children, and eight of their fifteen grandchildren. Marita updated him about what he had missed that afternoon.

She would have preferred her husband of fifty-five years to have stayed home for Thanksgiving. Ron thought being their town’s publisher and ad salesman for its only newspaper justified his absence. At least he had promised to attend next week’s second Thanksgiving celebration from start to finish.

Trying to pump life into a national economy weakened by a decade of depression, President Franklin Roosevelt had proclaimed this Thursday instead of the traditional last Thursday of November to observe the holiday. Retailers had reassured FDR that giving them an extra week to promote the Christmas shopping season would help. They did not dare to advertise Christmas until after Thanksgiving had ended lest potential customers become offended and boycott them.

A sort of civil war had erupted.

The District of Columbia and twenty-three states opted to celebrate on November 23. Twenty-two states decided to celebrate on November 30. Colorado, Mississippi, and Texas chose to observe both Thursdays.

A God-fearing woman, Marita told anyone who would listen, “At least I got Ron to promise to take time away from his newspaper office for the second Thanksgiving.”

The region surrounding Friedville boasted a mishmash sort of ancestry. Descendants of Comanche Indians. Mexicans who had migrated from Mexico northward into what would later become Texas. Germans who had emigrated from Europe to America and settled in or near Friedville. Of course, other native tribes’ and European, African, and Asian heritage could be found among Friedville’s 5,926 residents.

But as local historian Selma Walderstein liked to brag, “Everyone in these parts has got blood flowing in their veins from either Comanches, Mexicans, or Krauts…. Well, most everyone that is. I’ve researched it thoroughly, tell you what.”

Ron’s grandfather had immigrated from Bavaria, Germany. Marita’s great grandparents had come from the arid Sonoran Desert.

* * *

During the second week of November, Ron had been flooded with press releases from the ladies of the Friedville Baptist Church Missionary Society. They all announced a need:

Please save your turkey carcasses, chicken bones, ham bones, and any other kind of bones leftover from your First Thanksgiving feast. Bring them to Friedville Baptist Church’s kitchen. We need them for our church’s Second Thanksgiving Potluck Feast, which our church members will be celebrating on Thursday, November 30. Times are tight but by all of us working together, we can make do.

By Monday, November 27^th, the church’s seven refrigerators were packed with bones of many shapes and sizes. All had meat clinging to them. Many who read Ron’s column Around Friedville brought other donations.

Mason jars filled with apples, blueberries, blackberries, carrots, cherries, corn, elderberries, gooseberries, honey, huckleberries, lima beans, okra, peas, pecans, peaches, rhubarb, strawberries, tomatoes, or yams filled the once bare shelves of the church pantry. The overflow had to be stacked along the walls of the fellowship hall next to the kitchen. Bags of potatoes surrounded the jars.

Ron printed the final press release from the ladies verbatim:

Due to the tremendous outpouring of donations and those who have volunteered their time and kitchens to bake and cook, we have no other choice than to expand our invitation for the November 30, 1939, Second Thanksgiving Feast to every resident of Friedville. The festivities will begin promptly at noon. See you there.

* * *

And what a feast it was.

Turkey carcasses and other bones simmered in dozens of ten-, twenty- and thirty-gallon pots producing a thick, rich bone meal. Jar after jar of vegetables and sliced potatoes added to the fragrant soup. Homemade crackers to crumble into the steaming bowls. Yams topped with sweet Texas honey produced by hardworking bees living in backyard hives. For dessert, apple, berry, cherry, pecan, and rhubarb pies.

Pastor Farnsworth ended the day with a final prayer:

O heavenly Father, we thank You that You have allowed us the joy of two Thanksgivings this year. To tell a fact, every day should be a day of thanksgiving to You.

We thank You, mighty Creator of everything, for preserving us through year after year of an economic depression that at times seems like it will never end.

Send Your Holy Spirit to strengthen us for the war in Europe that appears to be spreading worldwide. Have mercy on those suffering from the Blitzkrieg thundering from Nazi Germany, especially Your people chosen thousands of years ago, the Jews.

Finally, eternal God, cleanse us with the blood of Your Son and our savior, Jesus Christ of Nazareth, the King of kings and Lord of lords.

Amen

November 22

November 22 has always been special for our family because Mom was born on that date. According to Dad, Mom “turned 29” every year. Later on, Dave Arnold, who would serve as a youth pastor, church worship leader, and missionary to the nations, married my sister Mary. Dave also had been born on November 22, which meant that day now became a double header with twice as much cake, ice cream, and merry making.

Some years, Thanksgiving also fell on November 22, transforming it into a triple header complete with turkey, dressing, cranberries, mashed potatoes, gravy, pumpkin pie, and birthday cake. The November 22 that still stands out most in my memory happened sixty years ago.

We were sixth graders at Saint Catherine Laboure Catholic School in Torrance, a suburb of L.A. School policy dictated uniforms. All the girls wore the same color and style of dress and the boys had matching pants topped by a white shirt. Life was feeling mighty fine that fall.

The weather had stayed balmy with no need yet for sweaters or coats during daytime. The Los Angeles Dodgers had just trounced the New York Yankees four games to none in the World Series. Odds of that happening had been 25 to one. According to news stories, some lucky duck had borrowed as much as he could, taken those odds, and walked away rich.

Top 40 radio station KFWB cranked out nonstop hits like Sugar Shack by Jimmy Gilmore and the Fireballs, She’s a Fool by Lesley Gore, Bossa Nova Baby by Elvis Presly and the Jordanaires, Dominique by the Singing Nun, Maria Elena by Los Indios Trabajaras, Little Red Rooster by Sam Cooke, 500 Miles Away from Home by Bobby Bare, Fools Rush In by Rick Nelson, Mean Woman Blues by Roy Orbison, Be True to Your School and In My Room by the Beach Boys, Saturday Night by The New Christy Minstrels, Can I get a Witness by Marvin Gaye, Louie Louie by The Kingsmen, Be My Baby by The Ronettes, Don’t Wait too Long by Tony Bennett, The Nitty Gritty by Shirly Ellis, and one that had just cracked the Top 100, Pain in My Heart by Otis Redding.

Of all the popular songs of the day, Otis Redding’s Pain in My Heart would prove to be the most prophetic.

November 22, 1963 fell on a Friday, which made me daydream during school time of the weekend ahead followed by a short school week because next Thursday and Friday kicked off the long Thanksgiving weekend.

Ah, Thanksgiving.

That meant tradition. Not just the Thanksgiving feast but also The Wizard of Oz, which would be broadcast nationwide. Dad’s USAF career had brought us to our Oz, Southern California, where he worked as an Air Force liaison to the aerospace industry. It was going to “put a man on the moon by the end of the decade” because President Kennedy had said so.

The space race and Dad’s part in it drew me to anything and everything even remotely related to it.

Every week the announcer for one TV show promised: “…For the next hour, sit quietly and we will control all that you see and hear. We repeat, there is nothing wrong with your television set. You are about to participate in a great adventure. You are about to experience the awe and mystery which reaches from the inner mind to The Outer Limits.”

My daydream ended as someone appeared at our classroom’s front door and snatched our teacher away without a word of explanation to us. Sister’s black habit exposed only her face and hands. It and her mere presence had always been adequate to keep us in line. But her sudden exit unleashed us.

Mike McNeil began to dance an Irish jig. Girls gathered in small groups to chat. Most of us either watched the fun or chatted to a neighboring classmate. Our fun ended when our principal’s voice entered the room through the small speaker attached high on a wall.

“Children, I have some bad news. President Kennedy has been shot.”

Eleven or twelve years old, we slumped back into our desks and stared blankly.

“We need to pray,” Mother Superior continued.

As a few slid from their seats to their knees, the rest of us followed their example. We started the longest rosary of our lives, with our principal saying the first halves of many Hail Marys and we the last halves. Tears and sobs began to flow.

A short pause stopped our prayers.

“Children, President Kennedy is dead.”

Soon we were led into the large church next to the school. After the service, we were sent home before noon. There, I turned on the TV and saw a grim-faced Lyndon Baines Johnson droning on and on about how sad he and our whole country was. His words sounded phony.

He’s glad because now he gets to be President, I thought.

That evening, Dad took us to the International House of Pancakes to try and celebrate Mom’s birthday. The restaurant was packed, with customers standing and waiting for an empty table or seat at the counter. Instead of IHOP’s usual happy conversations, sad murmurs filled the air, as if we were at a wake.

Nonstop news coverage of Washington D.C.’s preparation for JFK’s funeral and Dallas’s processing of Lee Harvy Oswald, suspected assassin of the President and a police officer, replaced normal Saturday morning cartoons. The next morning, the news shifted to Oswald’s being shot and killed.

Many in church that morning wore black.

The dead president’s funeral procession and burial consumed most of Monday. It being declared a National Day of Mourning by LBJ kept most workers and students at home. Tuesday and Wednesday at school dragged until the approaching holiday sent us home.

Watching The Wizard of Oz seemed different that year.

Where was the yellow brick road to take us away from this mean, wicked world? If we could make it to the Moon before the next six years ended, why couldn’t we travel to somewhere over the rainbow? Why were we bombarded with the platitudes and promises of so many wizards masquerading as our leaders when Dorothy, the Cowardly Lion, Scarecrow, and Tinman only had to endure one Wizard? Most of all, if “there’s no place like home,” why does our nation no longer feel safe, like a home is supposed to?

Sixty years later, the questions linger.

Artificially Intelligent

“Why don’t you talk to Dorothy Lahr?”

Rod Terrington stopped yelling and waving his arms. Just like his wife to send him to someone else. Why couldn’t Judy understand? Everything he had hoped for for years was now threatened by artificial intelligence and its ability to do whatever humans did, only better.

“Dorothy? Why should I call her?”

Judy smiled, the expression only wives possess.

“She’s a ghost writer, isn’t she? I bet she’s even more worried than you are about whether those new computer programs can write books better than people can.”

Rod pounded his forehead with his right palm – the kind of gesture reserved for his why didn’t I think of that moments. His palm stung and forehead wore a temporary tattoo on it.

“You’re right! Dorothy’s is in even deeper doo-doo than us authors.” He grabbed his phone off the kitchen table and hurried toward the front door. “Thanks, honey bear.”

Judy sighed. What a relief for him to vent his pent-up frustrations and anger at someone else. She began to pray, asking her Lord to give Dorothy the words of wisdom Rod needed to hear.

Long ago, she had defined categories of wives who had harder marriages than hers. At the top of the list were those married to ministers of the Gospel, whether they were pastors, evangelists, Bible teachers, missionaries and so on. Next were those married to those wearing uniforms: soldiers, sailors, marines, airmen, police officers, firefighters, and other first responders.

After twenty-seven years of marriage, Judy had decided she belonged to a third category, wives of creative types, be they musicians, actors, artists or writers. At least Rod had included her in his dreams. Judy had served as an alpha reader and story consultant for the first drafts of all thirty-one of Rod’s self-published books. And as his editor and proofreader when he had grown weary of the extra expense of hiring others to fix his mistakes.

* * *

“Hello, this is Dorothy.”

“Hey, this is Rod Terrington. Isn’t it awful how AI is putting us writers and you ghost writers out of business?”

Dorothy frowned

She searched her memory of all the writes she had met and tried to match a face to the name. There had been hundreds over the decades during the workshops and seminars where she had tried to teach the craft of creative writing.

With a shrug of her bony shoulders, she gave up.

“Young man, my memory as usual is somewhat foggy after constant use for going on 80 years. I can ascertain that you must have taken my advanced deluxe course in writing as that included my phone number and up to three phone calls. Would you be so kind as to show your face?”

“Sure.”

Rod pushed an icon on his phone’s screen. His image traveled almost 3,000 miles to the secluded swamps where Dorothy lived.

“Hmmm, you look somewhat familiar. Have you gained some weight by any chance? And your hair appears to be thinner.”

Rod blushed.

“Uh…Well, it’s all because I’m super stressed out. Ever since the artificial intelligence programs are letting authors push a few buttons and then sit back and relax while it kicks out a book that they can claim they wrote, I haven’t been sleeping right either. It’s …it’s…it’s just not fair.”

“Life isn’t fair, Rod. I and my fellow ghost writers have seen a huge dip in the demand for our services lately. The self-publishing craze increased our workload immensely. But now it appears that AI might be the death knell for us ghost writers.”

“I’m even seeing groups all over the internet for people who are using the AI writing programs. It’s spreading like wildfire. What are you going to do to survive?”

“Tap into my retirement plan.”

“Huh?”

“The contracts I signed with those whom I ghost wrote books for all contained a clause that I cannot reveal that I was the real author until my customers have died. Then I am free to reveal my role if I so choose. Who knows? Maybe there is a market for tell-all books about my secret of my working arrangement with some who are quite well known.”

“But what about suckers like me who believe in making up stories with our real imaginations instead of fake ones? We need a way where the reading public can know whether a book was written by a human or a computer using AI.”

“Hmmm. I’m no expert. But I think the only way we’ll be able to do that is if they come out with a computer program that can read books and then pass judgment.”

Bobbi Heck: The Case of the Wacky Whacker Part Three

LAX doesn’t look much different from the last time I flew out of here roundtrip back East. But it sure feels different. Probably because this is my first flight since the Corona Virus lockdowns, restrictions, and requirements began.

I’m relieved when my nonstop redeye flight to Chicago’s O’Hare is uneventful. There’s been way too many flights canceled, delayed, or interrupted midair by a passenger with an agenda they are no longer willing to keep hidden.

One of Wilma Fernandez’s daughters meets me curbside by the terminal. It takes about a half hour to reach the Fernandez home on Chicago’s northwest side. Looks like Wilma wants to introduce me to the whole clan.

I am thankful for the glass of ice-cold lemonade handed to me as I sit on a couch next to who knows who. That mystery is solved as Wilma makes introductions by pointing at each of her four children and speaking their names. One thing about Wilma. She is in charge.

“You’re all here to help Bobbi find who killed my son and your brother Douglas. I need you to tell her who might have hated him.”

Her oldest son Juan lets out a laugh that sounds like a wolf howling at a full moon.

“Get real, Mom. Douglas was such a low life. There had to be at least a dozen people that hated him.”

The expression on Wilma’s face goes from hopeful to stern to angry to sad.

“Then give us some names, Juan,” she says.

Juan rattles off five names.

“How about the rest?”

Juan stares at his shoes.

The rest of this family gathering releases more emotions. Most of them are ugly, even hostile. None of it is helpful. Well, maybe to clear up unfinished family business. But nothing to help me find the killer.

I describe what I could glean from the security camera footage from the motel where Douglas died. Then Juan growls out a word in Spanish, jumps to his feet, and stomps out of the room. I try to follow him but Wilma grabs my arm before I can stand. Guess I’ll have to let things play out.

Meanwhile, my driver Carmella offers to drive me to the address that Douglas’s P.I. gave me.

“Are you sure this is where Douglas stayed?” she asks an hour later as we pull into a parking lot of a rundown apartment building that borders the state line to Indiana.

* * *

Sigh.

So maybe this is why Dad used to sigh and Mom would cry whenever Dad would go crazy because one of his difficult P.I. cases seemed to become even more unsolvable. At least I picked up a few more clues from a neighbor who lived next to Douglas’s old apartment.

This eight-year-old kid claims he saw some guy who looked like a gang banger pounding on Douglas’s door. To be friendly, the kid told the stranger that Douglas had gone to L.A. to visit his long-lost natural father.

One thing that stuck with the kid about the gangster – he wore the skinniest looking boots he had ever seen. The kid asked if he could get a pair of boots like that on account of his helping the stranger. Then the gang-banger wrote down the kid’s shoe size, 7, and promised to return with a pair when he got back from a trip.

When I get back to Wilma Fernandez’s house and pass along the new info, she turns a ghostly white. Her oldest son has returned from wherever he stormed off to during the earlier meeting. Once again, he reacts the most after hearing my update.

“I knew it!” he says. “I knew it had to be Crazy Rodrigo. He offered to waste Douglas after he heard some of his half siblings didn’t like him. I told him to back off.”

Juan shakes his head.

All of Wilma Fernandez’s daughters move closer and hug her as she breaks down. After a good cry, she takes charge.

“Then we must tell the police about this Crazy Rodrigo. We will inform the Chicago police and Bobbi, you need to tell the Los Angeles police for us.”

Her face grows dark.

“There must be justice.”

I always hate being the messenger. But it comes with the territory. I turn to Juan for backup.

“Your sister and I were gone for hours. That gave you plenty of time to check things out.”

Juan bares his teeth, probably his signal that I shouldn’t be betraying his knowledge of Chicago’s gangland hoodlums in front of his mother. Sorry, Juan. But I need some help. His mom comes to my rescue like only a mother can.

“Answer Ms. Heck, Juan,” she says.

He grumbles.

“Okay, okay. I talked to some of the guys who hang with Crazy Rodrigo. They all say they haven’t seen him for weeks.”

Wilma turns her anger toward me.

“You said Rodrigo told the little boy that he would get him the boots made at the same shop where his were made. Where is that shop? What is its name?”

“All he knew is that the shop is in TJ.”

“TJ?”

“Tijuana.”

* * *

Wilma ignores my suggestion of just informing the police and letting justice make its way through the long, slow maze of the Los Angeles and Chicago law enforcement bureaucracies. She insists I have to do everything I can to track down Crazy Rodrigo’s whereabouts.

So after flying home to L.A., I grab a shower, change clothes, and drive the two hours south to the border and Tijuana.

It’s not the safest part of Mexico these days. At times, the drug cartels engage in open warfare on its streets, with innocent bystanders serving as collateral damage. Luckily for me a Hispanic couple who run my favorite bakery prove helpful.

Using the internet, they came up with a list of every boot maker in Tijuana. Not until I enter the third one’s shop do I find what I’m looking for.

The boot maker is kind. He waves off my sorry attempt at Spanish complete with a Valley Girl accent and speaks to me in much better English than the Spanish I spoke.

“Rodrigo? I’d like to know here he is too, Senorita. I finished the size 7 boots he ordered more than a week ago. I need him to come pick them up so he can pay me.”

Sigh.

Looks like Crazy Rodrigo has:

Decided to go on the run to who knows where
Gone on a bender of alcohol and/or drugs somewhere here in Baja California and still hasn’t sobered up
Gotten himself killed

If it’s number 3, then his dead body was most likely stripped of any identification to hinder any solving of the crime.

Sigh. Next stop, the TJPD.

Daddy told me there would be cases like this.

(More Bobbi Heck cases are available in the five-book Short Stories Series. Available at Amazon and Smashwords.)

Bobbi Heck: The Case of the Wacky Whacker Part Two

This case is beginning to feel more like a melodrama than a mystery to me. It appears that Melvin got a fake I.D. card when he was seventeen and living in Chicago that got him into the local jazz and blues clubs. After a night of drinking too much at one of them, Melvin wound up in the car of a college student who also had too much to drink. She wound up pregnant and Melvin in a whole lot of trouble.

His family called her white trash. I’m sure her family had more than one ugly word they called Melvin. Another case of your sin will find you out, as the Good Book says.

Because of their different economic statuses and races, marriage was out of the question. Last thing Melvin heard before he left Chicago, Wilma planned to put the baby up for adoption. Decades later, Douglas, now almost sixty, reappeared and tracked down his mother, who now lives in a quiet suburb north of Chicago.

I say goodbye to Melvin on my front sidewalk. Now he seems more interested in the huge boat on a trailer parked in front of his car than me. He nods approvingly as he caresses its motor, which has to be more powerful than the one in my car.

“This boat looks a lot like the one that Lloyd Bridges had on his TV show Sea Hunt,” Melvin says. “At the end of each episode, he would drive it across a huge bay out toward the ocean. You don’t know how much I wanted to go with him so I could escape my messed-up life. Living out here in L.A. with my aunt and uncle was no fun. They watched me like hawks. So, I joined the Navy as soon as I turned eighteen and docked in Japan, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Australia…”

He smiles.

“The Navy made me a machinist’s mate. It turned my life around because I learned enough to become a mechanic once I got out.”

* * *

A couple days later I feel well enough to try and find out who killed Melvin’s and Wilma’s son Douglas. The COVID pandemic and my lack of cases have kept me away from the main office of the L.A. Sheriff’s Department for almost two years. Judging by all of the new faces, it looks like what I’ve been reading is true. Most of the older guys and gals who worked out of here have evidently either quit or retired or taken a law enforcement job in a place where the judges and politicians are more concerned about those who keep the law than those who break it.

Who can blame them? Why keep risking your life for ungrateful people who want to defund the departments you work for?

Maybe this is my lucky day. Even though I wound up with a newbie who I have never met before, the detective involved with the case is more than helpful. She tells me everything I need to know.

For instance: Douglas Weston’s last permanent address was an apartment in Chicago. He had stayed at his motel here in L.A. one night and had started on a second one when his murderer entered his room sometime in the early morning hours of June 5^th and put a bullet into his brain and another one through his heart. Most importantly, I now have the name of the private investigator Douglas hired here in L.A.

P.I. Paul Yee sounds old school. His phone’s land line is hooked up to an answering machine, something I have not encountered since the last century.

“Hello, Mr. Yee. My name is Bobbi Heck. I’m a P.I. trying to help the parents of one of your clients get some closure. His name is Douglas –”

A voice interrupts my message.

“Bobbi Heck? Are you by any chance related to a private eye named Roland Heck?”

Turns out my dad helped Paul Yee get established when he opened an office next to Chinatown during the 1970s. Seems Mr. Yee believes he still owes Dad for that. He buys me lunch. I must be completely over whatever put me flat on my back last week. I order a nice sirloin steak, salad, and baked potato the size of one of those nerf footballs.

Mr. Yee tells me what he knows about the deceased.

“Douglas had to be the most desperate client I ever have helped, Ms. Heck. He claimed it was a matter of life and death that he track down the father he had never met. All he knew was that his father’s name was Melvin and that he lived somewhere here in Los Angeles. He claimed that even his mother did not know Melvin’s last name. To speed up our search, he followed my suggestion and sent a DNA sample to one of those ancestry companies. We got a hit from one of his half-sisters who had given her DNA to the same company. Douglas was so excited after I gave him his father’s full name and address that he said he would be catching the next plane from Chicago to here.”

Paul Yee sighs, the kind born of the sort of strangeness only P.I.s like he and I encounter.

“It’s funny in a way. I only dealt with Douglas by phone and never got a chance to meet him in person. I’m just glad the credit card number he gave me still worked and paid my bill for his case after he got murdered. The card’s number stopped working a day later when I tried to bill it for the mileage I had put on my car for the case. I had forgotten all about that expense until I got my gas credit card statement in the mail. You know how it is these days with gas prices almost up to $8 a gallon at some stations.”

* * *

Maybe Douglas was either hurting for money or low class when it came to motels. This dump he spent his last couple of nights in looks like one- or two-star rating at best. Even worse, the desk clerk isn’t saying much of anything.

Until I slip a couple of twenties to him. After that, he proves much more helpful.

“Good thing you showed up here when you did, Ms. Heck,” he says. “The security tapes get wiped clean once in a while. The one you want to see would have been gone by next week.”

I have to watch three or four hours’ worth of video before I see a medium built figure walk toward the room Douglas stayed in, take about ten seconds to enter it by using some kind of tool, and then exit a minute later. Whoever it is was showed little skin, mostly just bare hands and patches of face. Oversized sunglasses and a beard cover most of the round face. Because the video is black and white, determining exact skin color is iffy. My guess is not very white or black, but somewhere in between. Probably a shade of brown.

Only one other thing stands out about this suspect. His boots. They have got to be the narrowest, most sharp pointed pair of boots I’ve ever seen. Now I wish I had been called in on this case right after the murder. If only I could have gotten the impression of those boots’ soles on the room’s carpet…Next best thing to fingerprints. The way it was raining the night of the murder, the killer would have left some tracks.

As far as fingerprints? The sheriff’s CSI crew found so many in that room, that it confirms my hunch this is the kind of place that gets new sheets and towels after a customer checks out and not much more in the way of cleaning.

I thank the clerk for his help, even though it was reluctant at best. Dad used to say it best: Money talks. B.S. walks.

In the P.I. business, money is what solves more cases than I care to admit.

Bobbi Heck: The Case of the Wacky Whacker Part One

Is this how people who catch the Corona Virus feel before they die? Or is this how they feel when they are destined to recover and live another ten, twenty, forty or Lord only knows how many more years?

Now, I’m beginning to wish I hadn’t gone to the pharmacy and gotten the free COVID testing kits. Ignorance is bliss. More and more, I’m becoming convinced that it might be better not to know if I have COVID, a cold, the flu, or some kind of new virus they haven’t even come up with a name for yet. The newest thing I saw on the internet was that viruses keep on mutating even after they invade your body. What if that means I caught the Corona Virus but the version I have has mutated to the point that these home test kits won’t detect it?

Detect it. Ha! That’s a good one. Since I’m a private detective with decades of experience, maybe I can transition into being a virus detective. No, that sounds too icky. Viral detective sounds better. Of course, I’ll have to get some new business cards printed that read:

Bobbi Heck

Private Virus Detective and Contact Tracer

For your peace of mind let me trace back your illness to its point of origin

Forty-two years old, but feeling twice that age, Bobbi Heck swabbed the inside of each of her nostrils and then deposited part of what clung to the cotton swab into the section of the testing kit built to house viruses, whether deadly, benign, or indifferent, all according to the instructions. Then she waited. For fifteen minutes, once again, per the pamphlet. When the results read Negative, she waited another ten minutes and read the results again.

Negative? Again?

Well, that’s a relief. I must be carrying just some run of the mill virus. You know, the type of virus that Mom and Dad used to call the 24-hour, 48-hour, or 72-hour flu.

Wham bam, thank you kind flu cooties of yesteryear. That was when life seemed so much easier than the 21^st Century version none of us seem to be able to escape. Wow, I just realized that I have lived more years in this millennium than I did during the last one.

How I miss you kinder, gentler versions of ailments that afflict humans everywhere, no matter how rich or poor or what skin color we carry around. Oh great. Now the doorbell is ringing. I knew I should have hung up my Sick. Do not disturb sign before I took that COVID test.

Ordinarily, I would check my security camera before opening the front door. But these times are anything but ordinary. Besides it’s afternoon, when the bell rings because a UPS, FedEx, the U.S. mail, or some other delivery service employee is letting me know their extra special delivery has arrived. For all I know, the Grim Reaper is standing on my doorstep to tell me it’s time to go stand before the Judgment Seat of Jesus.

What…

A lady old enough to be my mom is standing there. She’s wearing one of those Corona Virus protective masks that look like a bird’s beak. I sure hope my sign will scare her away. I’ll just wave it in her face before I tape it to the door.

“You’re sick?” she asks. Well at least her bird’s beak mask matches her voice. She sounds like an old crow down to its last hundred caw caws. “Have you lost your mind, young lady? Don’t you know L.A. and all of its surrounding communities have COVID-19 infection and death rates that are currently at record levels?”

I do an about face to hang my sign. And hide my rising anger. Then I extend my hand toward this stranger for a more formal greeting, which make her backtrack two steps.

“As you can see, you caught me at my worst. I really need to go back inside and lie down.”

“Before you do, I need your help…please.”

I study her outfit. It is one of the latest styles for pantsuits. But because it looks to be about a size too large, I’m guessing she bought it second hand at a Goodwill or Salvation Army store for a fraction of what it cost new. And the wrinkles her mask are not hiding tell me this poor woman has been around the block one too many times.

Now, tears are running down onto and underneath her mask. No way to know for sure if they are genuine or the crocodile variety because that huge mask is hiding too much of her face. For all I know, she is grinning underneath the mask because she thinks she can take me for being a fool.

I sigh. I shrug. I hold out both hands, palms up and shrug again. But either this woman has no clue about reading body language or else she’s just flat out ignoring mine.

“Please, Bobbi. Melvin said you’re the only one who can help me out.”

“Melvin? As in Melvin my mechanic?”

“Yes.”

My knees are getting wobbly and head is beginning to spin.

“Tell you what. The inside of my home is like a petri dish full of germs. I can’t afford a HEPA filter so you coming inside would be like playing Russian roulette for you. Why don’t we instead talk by phone? I’ll go back inside and stretch out on my couch before I pass out. You can sit in that lawn chair over there. I leave it out for better times when I can watch the sunrise.”

I try and hand her my phone but she refuses to take it.

“But how are you going to call me if you don’t scan my phone number?”

“Melvin gave me your phone number. I tried calling it two or three times after I went by your office earlier. All I got was your voice message.”

“My office? I had to shut it down about four months into the COVID pandemic because business dried up so much. Did Melvin give you my home address, too?”

“No. A nice lady who is the receptionist next to the office that used to be yours gave me your address. She said she only knew it because you had given it to her in case the post office kept on delivering mail to it.”

Thanks a bunch, Grace. I thought I explained to you how dangerous it is for private investigators like me to have their home addresses get into the hands of anyone, including customers. Too many wackos out and about these days. Guess I’ll have to drop by and explain it to you all over again after I get back on my feet. At least I don’t have to kick Melvin’s butt. That’s what I told him I’d do if he ever gave out my home address.

“Okay, okay, you win. I’ll turn on my phone after I lay down. Give me a minute and you can go ahead and call me. Just remember that this is your lucky day.”

“Huh?”

“If you had been a total stranger, I wouldn’t be helping you. But since you know Melvin, you’re a friend of a friend. Melvin was the one who taught me that you always help your friends out. Come Hell or high water, don’t ever shut the door in their face.”

* * *

Why are so many bells ringing? This is worse than the time in high school I had to memorize a stanza of Edgar Allen Poe’s The Bells. Not only that. I also had to stand up and recite it to our English class. I still wonder if my hamming it up was the reason our English teacher gave me a D grade for that assignment.

Oh. Guess I was dreaming about that again.

Hello, Bobbi. It’s 2022, not 1997.

It’s just my phone and the doorbell playing a duet for me. I stumble toward the front door while I answer my phone. It takes me longer than usual to answer whoever won’t stop phoning because I have to open the two deadbolts and lock for the door knob at the same time.

“Hello?” I finally say.

“Bobbi, would you please open your front door?”

The voice belongs to Melvin, my dad’s and my mechanic for as long as I can remember.

“It’s hot out here. This drought is frying my brains. Please let me in.”

I open the door and there is Melvin. He grunts as he picks up a huge cardboard box with what looks like a crockpot in it. Two loaves of French bread are alongside it. Real food. It’s been forever. Because I don’t step out of the way, Melvin almost knocks me over as he hurries into my kitchen.

By the time I get there, the crockpot is on my kitchen counter and plugged in. The smell of chicken soup reminds me again that my last real meal was three days ago.

“You got the COVID?” Melvin asks as he forms a cross by joining his two index fingers.

“I’m good. My home test says I don’t.” I plop down into a kitchen chair.

“Well, that’s good news. No sense in me catching it and dying until I get you to take care of business for me. It would be nice to leave this world with at least a little bit less guilt nagging me all the way to my grave.”

“Huh?”

“I thought Wilma was already here to explain everything to you. She called and left me a message saying so.”

A blurry image of the woman wearing clothes not her size appears in my head.

“Wilma?”

“You know. Wilma Fernandez.”

“Oh, yeah. Now I remember her name. Forgive me, Melvin, but my mind is running at no more than 20 percent of normal. She seemed super paranoid about catching the Corona Virus from me so I talked to her by phone while I crashed on the couch and she sat outside. All I can remember is something about her son coming out here to L.A. for a visit and him getting murdered at some motel. She said she has already been to the cops but her son’s case has gone cold. She said you said I could help her out.”

“Meanwhile, people want to defund the police. Go figure. That’s it? That’s all she told you?”

I shrug.

“That’s all I remember, Melvin. I still don’t understand why you sent her to me. There are tons of other private eyes around L.A. I haven’t been this sick since I was a kid. I must have passed out while she was talking to me.”

“Yeah. She said you sounded like a zombie.”

Melvin stops stirring the soup he brought me. No doubt it has carrots, celery, onions, garlic, and rice mixed in with the chunks of chicken. Melvin’s secret recipes have revived me more than once.

“You got to understand something, Bobbi. It ain’t just Wilma who has a reason to want her son’s murder to get solved. I got some skin in this game, too.”

“But –”

“I was Douglas’s father.”

Melvin is avoiding my gaze. Probably because he’s embarrassed by all the tears starting to run down his cheeks.

“I guess I still am. Even though he’s dead. If only…”

I keep my mouth shut, a skill my dad taught me when he passed everything that he knew about being a private investigator down to me. It always amazes me how often being quiet is best. It doesn’t matter if I’m listening to a client, a friend, or even a stranger who I’ll probably never see again.

“…if only I had invited him to stay with me at my place instead of sending him back to that fleabag motel of his. Then none of this mess would have happened.”

* * *

Pow-wow of the Minds

After Chris returned to the Richmond farm, Hank Richmond suggested that Sunday was a good day for his best friend to visit Gray Wolf.

Half-Shawnee and half-white, Gray Wolf had avoided the removal suffered by most Shawnee from Ohio to reservations further west in the 1820s when his white father grudgingly took his full-blooded Shawnee common law wife and him to Kentucky. Now eighty, Gray Wolf lived alone in a rundown cabin about a mile from Hank’s cabin. While Hank described Chris’s dream of the deer that spoke to him, Gray Wolf filled his long-stemmed pipe. He lit it, puffed it three times, and passed it to Hank. The pipe continued in a circle between the three. Each time it went out, the host refilled and relit it.

A strange dreamlike state gripped each smoker.

“It is sad,” Gray Wolf said. “My brother wolves no more speak to me with their howling. They are all gone because the white man killed them in these parts. But sometimes I dream of them. They tell me they are crying to be heard when they howl.” He paused to puff the pipe. “Do you believe what the deer told you in your dream?”

“I…I don’t know. Am I supposed to?” Chris asked.

“That is for you to decide. But remember one thing. The deer came to your dream as your friend. If he had come as your enemy, he would have killed you with his antlers and sharp hooves. I once had a dream where a bear tried to slay me but my brother and sister wolves came and saved me.”

On the way home everything appeared to move in slow motion and be out of proportion to Chris. Colors seemed more vibrant. He wondered if Gray Wolf was a shaman and had cast a spell on him.

“Do you feel funny? Things don’t look right.” He pointed at the landscape.

“Sort of. Gray Wolf likes to mix hemp with the tobacco. He uses only the female plants and says it gives the tobacco a kick.”

A quarter hour later, Hank found only his wife Rose still awake.

“Out having a party time with your pal Chris?” Before her husband could answer, Rose continued. “I bet you two went on over to Gray Wolf’s place.”

“Uh, how’d you know that?”

“I can smell Gray Wolf’s marijuana all over your clothes and hair. How much did you guys smoke?”

“Probably about as much as the laudanum you down every time you take a swig of one of your tonics. Don’t you know those cures they claim to get people to buy that junk are phony? And just because they’re legal doesn’t mean they’re any good for you. Sometimes it seems you can’t get through the day without taking at least three or four drinks of them.”

Rose made a face at the man she sometimes loved to hate.

“Listen to Mr. High and Mighty. Next thing you know, he’ll be preaching a full-length sermon at me. What are you trying to do? Take our pastor’s place?”

She walked to the kitchen and found her favorite brand of legal tonic. Such brews had made older white women into most of their day’s opium addicts. She downed the remaining third of a bottle in two gulps. Twenty minutes later, she sprawled across the kitchen floor.

Unable to revive Rose, Hank hurried to a back bedroom and awoke their first child.

“I got to take your momma over to Gray Wolf’s place. She’s ailing something fierce. I’ll be back as quick as I can. Okay?”

“Yeah, Daddy. Please hurry on back home.”

“I will,” Hank said as he tucked the sleepyhead back under the covers.

He walked to the barn and returned to the house with their two best horses. After laying a blanket across one horse’s back, he lifted his still unconscious wife and hung her limp body across the blanket. He tied her wrists to her ankles tightly enough to keep her from sliding off the mare’s back. But not tight enough to cut off her circulation to her hands and feet.

To cut their travel time, Hank skipped the comfort of a saddle. Instead, he rode bareback. Soon, the awkward procession followed the trail leading toward Gray Wolf’s home. The backbone of the stud he rode cut into Hank’s backside. At times, the pain made him almost lose his grip on the reins of the horse carrying his still silent wife.

Hank prayed until a dim light in the window of the room next to Gray Wolf’s porch brought forth a Thank You, Lord from Hank’s troubled soul. Sure, there had been plenty of opium dens back there in New York City. But moving back here to the hills of eastern Kentucky had left all that sort of addiction behind.

Or had it?

Hank wondered where his country was headed.

“Probably to hell in a handbasket,” he said aloud in lieu of a curse.

Gray Wolf met them with a lantern held above his head on the front porch.

“Why are you back so soon, friend?” asked Gray Wolf.

“Rose drank down all her remaining Kickapoo juice at once,” Hank answered. “Can you help me out?”

“Bring her over to the lodge.”

Gray Wolf stepped off the porch and led the way to the wooden structure he had built decades earlier. Then he had used it to purify his body. Now, he hoped using it could cleanse Rose to the point she could stop drinking what Gray Wolf called the white man’s firewater from Hell.

The lodge stood four feet high. Supple saplings had been bent to form a rounded top by burying their ends in the hard soil. A hide from a buffalo shot by his father covered the lodge’s only entry. While Hank untied his wife to carry her inside the lodge, Gray Wolf started a fire in the pit at the center of the lodge’s dirt floor. By the time Rose settled onto a second buffalo hide, the fire roared.

Hank went outside to water the horses at the creek running behind Gray Wolf’s cabin. He found an area where as much grass as moss grew and left the horses to graze. Back on Gray Wolf’s porch, Hank leaned his back against the rough logs that kept most of the weather from the cabin’s interior. Weary, he dozed.

The sound of Grey Wolf’s footsteps treading the porch awoke him an hour later.

“How is Rose?” Hank asked.

“She has sweated much,” Grey Wolf answered. “You could help by refilling my buckets with water from the creek. Much steam is needed from the rocks next to the fire burning by your woman. The steam will help her sweat the poison from her body.”

Hank stood to obey.

“But only your Great Holy Spirit can sweat the poison from her soul. When you return, we will pray.”

The Pitfalls of SRP aka Sibling Rivalry Problems

Facing life is hard. But it becomes even more challenging when you have one or more siblings that life introduces you to.

Take the first pair of siblings, for instance. Cain was Adam and Eve’s first son; Abel their second. Abel pleased their Creator but Cain did not. Although God warned Cain that sin is crouching at your door and that he could overcome it, the elder brother paid no heed. Instead, he lured Abel out into the countryside and murdered him. Lifetime disastrous results followed for Cain.

Hundreds of years later, Joseph faced an even worse form of Sibling Rivalry Problems when almost all of his eleven brothers wanted to kill him. Why? Because Joseph had foolishly told them and their parents his prophetic dreams, which foretold of his family bowing down to honor him. Only the eldest brother Reuben tried to save Joseph. But before he could rescue his little brother, the others had sold Joseph into slavery in Egypt. Just as bad, they drenched Joseph’s garment in blood, brought it to their father, and lied, claiming, “Joseph has been slain by a wild beast.”

The rest of the Old Testament is filled with Sibling Rivalry Problems, especially among the royal families who led Israel and its breakaway kingdom Judah.

Little has changed until this present day. During our growing up years, I and my two brothers and one sister endured our fair share of Sibling Rivalry Problems. I also saw such problems in other families.

But not until five years ago did I finally begin to understand the pain that SRP can cause. My father had passed away In Jordan, where he and my mom had lived the last sixteen and a half years of his 91-year life. I flew there and tried to help my sister with plans for our mom.

On the return flight of Aqaba to Amman to Frankfurt to San Francisco to Sacramento, fog rolled in and shrouded the Amman airport. We sat waiting in our assigned seats until the pilot informed us that our flight, along with the three scheduled before ours, had all been cancelled. I sensed something was up as far as God’s Divine Providence goes when the pilot told us that flights cancelled by fog at Amman’s modern airport “only happens two or three times a year.”

God’s Providence became even clearer when we were assigned rooms at the airport’s hotel. While many other passengers had to share a room with three beds and two other strangers, I and another passenger wound up in a three-bed room without the inconvenience of sharing it with a third stranger. My roommate and I got past small talk and into family matters. Turned out no matter how much he had reached out to his two brothers; they had shunned him. He had given up on any chance of reconciliation.

You could tell by the expression on his face and tone in his voice that he was wounded, bleeding from his soul because of the rejection.

All of which caused me to take inventory of my own Sibling Rivalry Problems. (Our brother John drowned while trying to save his friend in 1982, so that has left me with a younger sister and younger brother). It seems that the older we get, the more complicated life becomes. Plans get made, someone gets left out. Immediate family needs crowd out attempted reunions because of the hundreds of miles separating me from my brother and the almost two thousand miles of separation from my sister.

But somehow, the tougher things get, the more Sibling Rivalry Problems seem to fade away.

Thank God.

Another Saturday Night at the Gasthaus

The rooster in charge of the barnyard crowed as loudly on Saturday morning as the other six days of the week. Always strong enough to awaken Thomas Schmidt, no matter how hard he toiled the day before. Seventeen years old but with the build of a full-grown man, Thomas rolled out of bed and dressed. He made little noise.

Best not to awaken his two sisters. They might continue with their seemingly nonstop questions for him:

When are you getting married?

Is it really true that you are smitten with the Gasthaus owner’s daughter?

Why do you always argue with Father?

Will you be the first one of our family to go to university?

Splashing tepid water from a large wash basin onto his grimy face revived Thomas somewhat. His mother Marta’s breakfast, especially her dark, strong coffee, would complete the task.

“Good morning, Mother,” Thomas said as he sat down at the large walnut table that once had seated five children and their parents. With Thomas’s two older brothers married and gone, the table now felt more comfortable.

Snores from an adjoining bedroom told Thomas his father had made it home from his weekly Friday night visit to the Gasthaus.

“Did Father get home late last night?” Thomas asked.

Marta sighed, the kind known only to women who have been married going on three decades. “Of course. He stayed at the Gasthaus until it closed, which he always does. He smelled so much of beer and bratwurst and smoke that I called him a drunken cow. He seemed stunned for a moment. But then he shrugged and grunted. I think he was fast asleep before his head hit his pillow.”

As he gobbled down his mother’s fried eggs, sausage, and dark black bread, Thomas calculated whether to get as many of his chores finished before his father awoke and ate breakfast or to take them slowly and easily.

Best take it easy or Father will surely find other things for me to do. Then I shall be too tired to enjoy my time at the Gasthaus tonight.

* * *

Ludwig I ruled the Kingdom of Bavaria, homeland of the Schmidt family for hundreds of years. Its impatient younger generation wanted the states of the German Confederation to at last become a nation. They cared little whether it took a revolution. Had not both France and America had their revolutions about fifty years ago? Why did Germany have to be so slow about it?

* * *

“If I smell your mother’s schnitzel and potato soup much longer, I will pass out from hunger,” said Thomas’s father, Helmut.

Thomas stripped off his cotton shirt, now a darker color because of the sweat clogging its fibers than when he had put it on ten hours earlier. Having had a two-hour head start of working before his father joined him, Thomas could not contain his joy.

“Wonderful!”

He slapped his firm stomach as if it were a conga drum.

“Never in my lifetime has my stomach been so empty. I hope Mother made very large portions for us.”

“Are you going to the Gasthaus tonight, son?”

“Yeah. You go every Friday night. I go every Saturday night.”

“Do not tell your mother this but she and I had a talk about you. You know how wives can be. She has worn me down with her arguing to let you have more than one beer with your Saturday supper, if you give up going to the Gasthaus. She said you can have as many as want if –”

“I don’t go to the Gasthaus only to drink. I must visit there with all my friends.”

“Uh, yes. But she is afraid you will drink too much and make one of the girls from the village become with child and…” he punctuated his warning with a shrug.

Thomas stifled a curse. He knew [SS1] what was coming.

“…then you would have to marry her. Try to be like your older brothers. One married at twenty, the other at twenty-two.”

Thomas pondered how to answer. After a few moments of silence, he spoke.

“Okay Father, I will not make any girl with child until after we marry. I promise. But please understand that I have to the Gasthaus to spend time with my friends. While we all are at school, the teachers are so strict. We are allowed no fun.”

“I understand.”

Helmut sighed. “I’ll give just have to have another little talk with your mother about all this. Promise me one thing, though.”

“What””

“That you will pray for me that I will say the right words so that your mother can somehow stop her worrying about you all of the time. Of all our five children, she cares about you most of all. Maybe that is the blessing reserved for the child born in the middle?”

Or the curse, thought Thomas.

* * *

Not quite three kilometers from the Schmidt household, the village Gasthaus lay in wait in a central location for its surrounding farms. Thomas opted not to take an easy shortcut through the woods. Instead, he trod the dirt roads. As he walked, friends from his school joined him for what most of them considered the highlight of their otherwise dreary week – shedding their prim and proper German manners and traditions at the combination tavern and eatery.

By the time they reached the wooden hall capable of hosting upwards of 200 revelers, Thomas and his friends panted through parched throats. As always, it appeared to be another stag night. The girls and women the boys knew preferred to gather at one of the village’s three churches: Catholic, Lutheran, and Reformed.

During the Sunday morning services, it fell to the mothers, sisters, aunts, and grandmothers to jab elbows into the ribs of the males of their family who had drunk too much at the Gasthaus the night before. Otherwise, their raspy snores embarrassed all who heard them.

As usual, those Thomas’s age settled in at one of the long tables onto benches as sturdy as the decades’ old tables. The older men settled into smaller groups. The younger generation commented on the girls who served the beer. Their elders talked business. Some worried about slacking sales at their businesses. Others fretted about the weather, which is every farmer’s concern. Too much rain at the wrong time and the crop is ruined. Too little and withers and dies.

After an hour of many beers downed, the patriarch of the village raised his voice. Out of respect, everyone else quieted down.

“A toast to the great Ludwig I, ruler of our beloved Bavaria,” said the elder as he raised his stein heavenward. Flushed with the potent alcohol deadening his inhibitions, Thomas stood and stumbled to the head of the table where the village’s oldest man held court.

“But when will the German states at last unite so we can be a nation?” Thomas asked.

The patriarch’s head jerked, as if his wrinkled and bearded face had been slapped. “Become a nation like our neighbor France?” he asked. “And where were you when Napoleon invaded our land and killed our people?”

Thomas hated how adults always seemed to turn any such questions as his latest to their advantage.

“I…I…” was all he could stammer.

“And where were you when the Romans carried our ancestors away from our homeland almost 2,000 years ago?” His forehead’s veins bulged as the old man slammed his stein onto the table. Beer erupted from it, slowly settling as foamy lava pouring down the stein’s sides. “Bah! How can I expect you to understand how the Romans forced our ancestors into being slaves? Do you even know where those slaves went?”

Thomas stared at his leather boots. “Rome?” he asked.

“Ha! Our ancestors ended up scattered throughout the Roman Empire. Some rowed the Romans’ ships used for war and trade. They were chained to their oars. If the ship sank, they went to the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea or Atlantic Ocean or wherever else the Romans sailed with it. Others toiled in the Romans’ fields or kitchens. I imagine the fairest German girls were sold as concubines or harlots. The lucky few German slaves who became gladiators could at least die an early death in one of those pagans’ coliseums.”

After the old man turned his fiery glare from Thomas to his beer stein, he blushed. He motioned for one of the pretty servers.

“Another round of beer for everyone, on me. It seems my stein has gone dry.”

Thomas used the distraction to slink out the door. The cool night air revived him somewhat. He joined the oldest and toughest boys from his school.

“Once again Thomas let himself be made a fool of,” said the largest boy, an oaf whose fists outweighed his brain.

The others snickered. Their glee stoked a fresh onslaught of taunts, which soon degenerated into Thomas being called various animal names. Being labeled Swinehund snapped Thomas’s will. Without warning, he punched the tormentors’ leader in the nose. Rivers of blood poured from the smashed nostrils. The bully screamed, cursed, and screamed again.

“I’ll kill you,” he yelled as he headbutted Thomas’s ribs, stomach, and intestines, sending Thomas to resting flat on his back, where he stared at the stars in the heavens and those caused by his pain.

After staggering to his feet, Thomas landed a lucky punch to the blowhard’s jaw. The five beers drunk by the bully earlier that evening became Thomas’s allies as they helped him hit the ground with a dull thud. When he did not arise, one of the boys ran to him and shook the still body. He held a hand high and waved it.

“Gunther is bleeding from the back of his head because it landed on a large rock.” He pointed a bloody finger at Thomas. “Thomas killed him.”

Thomas backpedaled from the throng who rushed to get a closer look at Gunther. Unable to produce movement or sound from the motionless body, one boy leapt to his feet. He paced in frantic circles with arms raised above his head.

“Someone go get the village policeman. Gunther really is dead.”

Thomas wheeled about and sprinted for the one place he might find refuge, even if merely temporary, from Bavaria’s legal system — home.

[SS1]

What Smells?

Curbside garbage pickup happened every Wednesday for residents on South Pinedale Avenue in Banderville.

It was also the day Cara Husky had to babysit her little sister while their mother worked her shift as a nurse at Banderville Memorial Hospital. Cara was glad her mom last month had cut back to part time work hours. But that still meant two twelve-hour shifts, one during daytime on Wednesday and the other on Saturdays, Sundays, or holidays, when Dad had to assume the role of babysitter.

On this Wednesday morning, Cara wished summer vacation would hurry up and end so she could return to a routine of high school while an aunt or grandparent took over Wednesday babysitting of Hope.

Not that Cara minded watching Hope.

But she often wished three year olds came with a switch to shut off or at least power down what Cara called an infinite supply of energy. All this morning Hope had toddled around both floors of the dwelling. After she had reached into cabinets, drawers, and bookcases, the house appeared as if a flood had washed through its interior and removed items from their intended places and left them strewn about the floor after the waters had receded.

It had taken two snacks, three children’s TV programs, and five stories before Cara could coax Hope into her room and sing her to sleep for a nap by humming lullabies. Her little sister tucked away in bed, Cara cleared a path from the bedroom she shared with Hope to the kitchen. There, a pile of dirty breakfast dishes and utensils waited.

“Ugh. Why does Dad have to always have his bacon fried to a crisp?” Cara wondered out loud as she rubbed a scouring pad on the bits of meat and fat that seemed to have melded onto a greasy cast iron skillet. Scrubbing it and the stainless steel pan in which half a dozen eggs had been fried in canola oil distracted Cara enough so she did not hear Hope awake and wander toward the front door of their split level home. Because of the summer heat, Cara had left the solid core wooden front door open, with only a screen door keeping out the flies looking for an opening to a supply of food and the buzzing mosquitos hungry and hunting for humans’ fresh warm blood.

The screen door sat ajar enough for tiny hands to open it as Hope pushed on its aluminum frame.

Once outside, Hope lifted her arms toward the fluffy gray and white cumulus clouds hiding the sun. Then she walked across the lawn to her favorite ball and kicked and rolled it until it became wedged underneath a row of bushes dividing her front yard from a neighbor’s. As she crawled under the green shrubs to retrieve her toy, Hope heard a familiar sound, one of her favorite ones, a gigantic green and white garbage truck bouncing and lurching toward the curb thirty feet from her. Its hissing air brakes widened her hazel eyes.

Every week it performed the same trick, its magical illusion amazing Hope without fail. Down toward Earth would descend a huge metallic claw to clutch the 60-gallon plastic container full of stinky trash, anything that could not be recycled into new plastic or metallic containers or paper products or converted into reusable mulch. Up, up, up, the claw always lifted the container, no matter how full or heavy, before upending it, shaking it, and making its contents somehow disappear.

Hope was certain of the before and after condition of the garbage can because more than once she had climbed onto an overturned bucket next to where it sat on days other than Wednesdays and peered down into it to survey its contents. Every Thursday, it sat either empty or contained only a trifling of trash, the only confirmation necessary to assure her the truck’s performance yesterday had once again succeeded. Every other week, either the recyclables’ bin or yard and garden waste bin would also be empty.

Sometimes the magic truck rushed its pickup and a plastic bin would fall on its side as it returned from its journey toward the sky back to planet Earth. Even from her bedroom window, Hope had seen it had been empty as it rested sideways on the sidewalk. Often, Hope had tried to convince her parents and siblings to watch the weekly magic show with her, but they had all ignored her pointing finger.

Only her eleven-year old brother pretended to care enough to share her excitement. In response to her pointing and shouts of look, look, look! he had lifted her into a freshly emptied can and given her a ride inside of it to the side of their house. Then Cara had screamed at him until Hope came to his defense by beginning to wail, her preferred tactic to distract her older brother and sister whenever they fought.

* * *

After washing the dishes, Cara flipped on the television set and found a movie she thought adequate for her sophisticated tastes, maybe one good enough for her to review on her reviewer page at Amazon’s website.

Tired from a date the night before and not getting home until midnight, her father’s imposed curfew, Cara drifted off to sleep. While Cara dreamed about what August and being a sophomore might bring her way, outside on the front lawn Hope watched her favorite Wednesday entertainment.

After squeezing the overflowing trash can, the iron claw hoisted it skyward. Three quarters of the way up the truck’s side, the mechanism jammed. Hope’s mouth opened as the truck’s cursing operator exited his right side driver’s seat. Because he held a tire iron and his face resembled her daddy’s whenever he grasped such a tool, Hope scooted backward until her head touched the hedge.

The sanitary engineer climbed a ladder made of three-quarter inch thick rebar welded to the side of his truck until his face was level with the lid of the garbage bin. Then he banged on the metal chain that picked up and dumped the twenty-five to thirty dozen cans his truck lifted every shift.

“You better work now,” he said as his feet touched the concrete and he shook the tire iron at the part of his trucks always requiring the most repairs. He climbed back into the truck’s cab and pushed the control to activate the chain. When he heard the kind of groaning sound mechanical things make when their human operators expect the impossible, he leaped back onto the sidewalk and looked heavenward.

“Come on, God. Why do I always have to get stuck with the truck that is so messed up that it can’t even finish a single shift?”

He rolled the bin containing yard waste underneath the one dangling above hm. Next, he grabbed a seven-foot long one-inch thick piece of oak from behind the driver’s seat. Standing as close to the cans as possible, he thrust his long pointer to press a control in the cab to release the metal claw.

As the freed can dropped two feet toward the top of the plastic bin under it, the driver leapt next to them and squeezed the falling can in a bear hug as the one under it tottered from side to side. He stopped the lower can’s movement by letting it bump against his hip until it stood motionless. Then he lowered the can he held to the ground.

His orange coveralls and face drenched with sweat, the driver walked to the rear of his truck and pulled a two-liter plastic bottle of root beer from his protective clothing’s largest pocket. In between gulps, he dialed his cell phone. As he waved traffic around his vehicle and explained the breakdown to his dispatcher, Hope walked to the truck and touched the bottom rung of the ladder. It looked no longer than the ones she loved to climb at the playgrounds her family took her to visit.

Her leg and arm muscles were firm from the hours spent climbing monkey bars and ladders to their tallest slides. Soon, her feet rested on the next to last steel rung of the ladder. This allowed her to bend at the waist, her pelvis resting on the ladder’s top step.

Hope was surprised by the stinky assortment of fresh garbage assaulting her eyes and nose because she had assumed the garbage she had so often seen tumble from the cans somehow disappeared. After all, her big brother had said the trucks ate the garbage to give them fuel to rumble around town and out to the dump, where they spit out anything that gave them indigestion and next went potty if need be.

A sad looking doll, dumped from her next door neighbors’ can, looked to be reaching up to Hope, so she stretched down to rescue it. Her motion propelled her into a somersault, landing her atop 138 houses’ worth of weekly trash.

Having convinced his dispatcher by saying, “I can’t pick up another can because the chain’s jammed beyond me being able to fix it,” the driver threw his empty soda bottle high into the air and yelled, “Three points, he wins the game,” as it disappeared into the truck’s storage compartment for trash. He whistled as he headed toward the dump to jettison his not quite full truck. Then, it would be back to the maintenance shop to pick up another truck to finish his route.

“Looks like a little bit of overtime,” he sang. “OT for me, how sweet can that be?”

His song and the rumbling diesel engine next to him drowned out Hope’s alternating wails and sobs, which had begun when the truck lurched forward into gear. She wondered if the truck had already decided which of the three scenarios detailed by her brother would happen to her: consumed along with the garbage all around her to power the monstrous truck, burped out by the truck at the dump, or worst of all, becoming part of what came out of the truck when it went potty.

* * *

Ten minutes later, the increased volume of the television as a commercial break played woke up Cara.

She stumbled to the bathroom. After splashing three cupped handfuls of cool water onto her face, she went to check on Hope. Seeing only a rumpled blanket where she had tucked Hope in, Cara began calling her name, starting with one call in a normal voice every ten seconds. After a search of her home’s every room, Cara’s voice rose in volume and her calm calls escalated from “Hope?…Hope?…Hope?…” to demanding shrieks of “Hope! Hope! Hope!”

During her second search of the house, Cara noticed the front screen door was ajar. She dashed through the front entryway using enough force to pull the top hinge of the screen door from its aluminum alloy frame. As Cara’s feet touched the concrete steps leading from the front porch to the yard, scenarios flashed through her mind, all of them starring Hope as innocent victim because of a neglectful sibling: frightened and lost, kidnapped, run over by a car, molested, murdered. The images flashing through Cara’s mind stoked the two emotions controlling her – fear and guilt.

After quick searches of front and back yards showed no sign of her little sister, Cara did what many of her age had grown up doing: she pulled out her phone from her jeans pocket and sent a tweet:

Help. My three year old sister Hope is lost. I think she is still in the neighborhood. Help me. And don’t tell my mom or she’ll kill me.

Her tweet landed on 117 phones. Within three minutes it had been forwarded to another 538 phones. Ten minutes later, the message sat in the memories of 2,639 phones. Fifty-six volunteers descended on the Husky’s home. Their frantic knocks on doors within a two-block radius produced nothing, not even a report of a sighting of Hope.

Hearing the negative results, Matthew Hennessy took charge as GIC, Geek in Charge.

First, he posted on his Facebook page:

Missing: Hope Husky, age three. Last seen on the 1800 block of South Pinedale Avenue in Banderville. If you have any information, call….

Not sure whether his army of 1,351 Facebook friends, ninety-six percent of whom lived outside of Banderville, would prove adequate for the task, Matthew next posted on What’s Happening in Banderville?, a page where local residents chatted, complained, cursed, gossiped, and too often raged about politics, religion or life in general.

Matthew smiled as he watched the genesis of what he thought would be a case of one of his posts going viral. The first comments to it appeared on Facebook within seconds and did not cease until weeks later. Two minutes later, nineteen others had shared the post to their Facebook pages. The first comments were dramatic and short:

OMG. I hope u find her.

I started searching over here on the south side of town.

Have u found her yet?

Let me know if the searchers need any sandwiches.

On the way there with my dog Roscoe, best damn tracker in the state.

Have you called 911 yet?

The last comment sent Matthew to Cara to ask her the same question.

* * *

It had been a routine shift for LVN Tonya Husky, caring for patients suffering from pneumonia or the flu strain she thought never fully exited the older ones it invaded until they died. Patients of all ages, who had endured the uncertainties of surgery, had tested Tonya’s patience since her shift began. At least the number born at Banderville Memorial Hospital today outnumbered those who had died in its wards – so far. She was returning to her ward after lunch in the cafeteria when her phone rang.

“This is Tonya.”

“Hi, Tonya. I just heard the news. Is there anything I can do to help?”

Because I’m almost seven hours into my shift I’m not too good at recognizing voices right about now, Tonya thought. It would help quite a bit to tell me who you are. “Who is this?” she asked, in a voice she hoped carried enough irritation to keep this intrusion as short as possible.

“Racheal.”

“Oh, hi Racheal. What do you want to help me out with?” She hoped her friend had heard how Tonya had been drafted to serve as chairwoman of her church’s craft fair. As she listened to the answer, Tonya’s expression went from bored to hysterical. “Oh, my God! My baby? I have to get home right away.”

She dropped her cell phone and ignored its bounce and slide across the tile floor. Sprinting to the nurses’ station, Tonya slowed to a trot as she passed it. “My daughter’s missing. I have to get home right now.”

The charge nurse for the ward stood and tried to utter a reassurance, but her words bounced off the door to the stairway as it slammed shut behind Tonya. She descended three flights of empty stairs in twenty-two seconds and bumped into staff and patients as she bolted across the first floor for the hospital’s main entrance. Commuting to or from her worksite took fifteen minutes most days.

Tonya made this trip home in eight minutes.

* * *

Tonya Husky’s body shook as she grabbed her oldest child and rocked her back and forth. Her voice trembled even more. “What happened? Where is Hope? Why didn’t you…” She stopped when she saw Cara’s eyes grow wide as her head bobbed about.

Cara’s fears and worry for the last hour gave way to tears. “I’m sorry, Mom. I fell asleep just for a little while after Hope laid down to taker her nap. When I woke up…” Cara pointed at the house, the front yard, and then toward the back yard to try and communicate the extent of her hasty search. Unable to any longer take her mother’s fingernails digging into her bare upper arms, Cara tried to wiggle free from her grasp. As Cara collapsed onto her knees, she dragged Tonya’s vise-like grip downward until their faces were inches apart.

“No…no…” Tonya stammered, not sure which level of scolding her daughter deserved or if it could even penetrate what she considered the hardest head of their five-member family. A loud cough spun Tonya’s head upward.

“Excuse me, Ma’am. I’m Officer Jorgenson. I need to ask you a few questions. Can we go inside and maybe you can have something cold to drink to help you calm back down. I know you’re pretty upset because I chased you for the last five blocks here to your house and you didn’t slow down even after I put on my lights and then my siren.”

“Are you going to give me a ticket at a time like this?” Tonya let go of Cara and wobbled as she stood.

The officer sighed.

“No. You must be the mother of the one who the dispatcher radioed us about. I just need to help you find your missing daughter, okay?” The cop started to walk to the front porch. “Maybe you should come inside, too,” he nodded at Cara after he saw a van from a local television station pull up to the curb. “It’s getting a little bit crazy out here.”

* * *

Fourteen blocks away, Art Pagan lifted the lid to what he called the best compost bin known to man because it has wheels and didn’t cost me a single cent. The gasses created from grass clippings, weeds, leaves, coffee grounds, and kitchen scraps knocked him backward, as if one of his friends had landed a punch to his jaw after both had had too much alcohol.

“Woeee, Jethro!” He imitated Uncle Jed, his favorite character from the television situation comedy The Beverley Hillbillies. “That sure has got to be some right powerful mulch. It’ll make Granny’s garden turn into the Garden of Eden for sure. All that’s left to do is give it one last shot in the arm.”

Art popped open a twelve-ounce can of his favorite beer and poured the brew on top of the steaming, smelly mulch. “I read in one of them there organic gardening magazines that baptizing mulch with beer gets it to cooking big time. I love the smell of rotting vegetation in the morning!”

Art slammed the lid to one of the eighty-gallon heavy duty gray plastic refuse bins the city had provided to all its residents. Into it supposedly went all yard waste, but no pet litter, meat or dairy products, disposable diapers, or other toxic materials, according to the instructions studied and adopted by the city’s Environmental Protection Department.

Art checked the date he had painted onto the can’s lid and smiled. “It’s been cooking for four weeks now. Should be ready to spread around starting sometime next week.” The sound of his phone ringing in his den sent Art inside.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Art. The radio just said they are really biting up at Lake Tuckahotha. Let’s go.”

Art’s plans of applying his freshly brewed batch of compost around his eleven fruit trees evaporated, replaced by visions of large, plump bass being reeled into his friend’s boat. “I’ll pick you up in ten minutes. We’ll take my camper and your boat. Let’s stay through Saturday. By then, the lake will be crawling with boats and the fish will all be hiding.”

“Quit jabbering and get on over here before our wives find out and try to talk us out of it like they always do.”

* * *

An hour later, when a breeze blew past Art’s compost bin and through an open window, his wife Nancy’s nose twitched. She had agreed to tolerate his mulch making only if he had all of it out of the bin by tomorrow because she needed it in an empty condition so she could prune her rose bushes. But he had run off to go fishing instead.

“You snooze, you lose. You fish, you wish you hadn’t instead of doing your chores,” Nancy said as she wheeled the bin to the curb fifteen minutes before the truck picking up yard waste turned onto the Pagan’s block.

Some of the smoldering batch of table scraps and yard waste had reached 172 degrees after sitting in full sun inside the closed container for twelve hours a day for weeks. It landed atop a pile of gasoline soaked newspapers, used to clean up a mess from a neighbor’s garage and which then had been tossed into his yard waste bin because of his overflowing trash can. Forty minutes later, Art’s steaming mulch ignited the newspapers as the truck holding them turned onto a bumpy, rutted dirt lane leading to the county dump.

Its driver had heard tales of garbage trucks catching on fire, the legends always taking place in a large metropolis, where anything and everything transferred from cans to the trucks, including dead bodies.

“Help! Help! My truck’s on fire.” She waved her arms as she fled the flames, which had spread downward to the branches, bushes, and weeds, until her truck’s container looked more like a volcano than a sanitary receptacle, the term a bureaucrat had coined.

* * *

The dump’s superintendent’s 911 phone call alerted six members of the nearest volunteer fire department, four of whom responded. By the time they arrived clinging to their fire engine, an ancient model handed down by the U.S. Forest Service, the fire had consumed all of the flammable material inside the truck’s bed. A smoldering mixture of ashes and embers remained.

It took five minutes for the fire crew to drench the residue and another five trying to convince the driver to dump her load “right here on the dirt road so we can make sure it’s completely out before we leave.” After reminding the driver of how Smoky Bear always ordered campers to drown their campfires, stir what remained, and soak them again during the public service announcements starring him, the driver obeyed.

Satisfied after every drop of water from their 1,200 gallon tank had been applied to the gooey mess, firefighter Sondra Tighe coiled one of the hoses used to fight the blaze. The glint of the setting sun’s rays reflecting off of something about 150 yards away turned Sondra’s head.

Must be a piece of metal or glass, Sondra thought. A minute later, another reflection from the same direction seemed to now be a little closer.

And moving.

She ran to the truck and grabbed the binoculars donated with the truck. What appeared to be a dirty, crying child filled the instrument’s field of vision.

“Angel, you my angel?” were the first words firefighter Sondra heard after sprinting to the tired, hungry Hope, whose silver colored hair clip had caught a descending sun’s final light for the day.

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Short stories about ordinary people and their sometimes unusual experiences. All contents Copyright, c 2015 Stroble Family Trust.

A Tale of Two Thanksgivings

November 22

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Bobbi Heck: The Case of the Wacky Whacker Part Two

Bobbi Heck: The Case of the Wacky Whacker Part One

Pow-wow of the Minds

The Pitfalls of SRP aka Sibling Rivalry Problems

Another Saturday Night at the Gasthaus

What Smells?

What Smells?

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