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While I monitored the reading of these stories during the radio broadcast I noticed that although the subject matter, content, and tone of the stories are quite different, they nonetheless share themes of loss and responsibility. After a story is complete and out of a writer's day to day life, he or she re-approaches it not as a writer,but a reader, and often sees things that weren't conscious decisions while writing. Very interesting part of the process.

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She wrote the stories in Are You a Survivor during and after her treatment for breast cancer in 2001 and 2002. The title refers to a question she was asked at a breast cancer support group the day after her diagnosis. She lives in Springfield, Massachusetts.

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Adam has been to Greenland.

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Sean's website is www.byseanferrell.com

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Friday, May 29, 2009, 7:30 am

We had a chalkboard in our dining room.

It took a while for me to realize that this was unusual. Even after going to lots of other kids’ houses, it still seemed fairly ordinary, until someone (no doubt someone chalkboard-deprived) asked me about it. Evidently not every family had dinner conversations that regularly – frequently – required charts or drawings to explain. We did, and so there was a big green chalkboard dominating one wall of the dining room at 1504 Harris Drive in Bartlesville, Oklahoma.

I’ve been thinking about that chalkboard a lot the last couple of days. I’m writing this on Friday, May 29. On Wednesday morning, I was in my office at the law school, packing up for the move to the deans’ suite for my new job. Along with packing boxes of books and decorations and toys, I took the chalkboard off the wall to move downstairs.

The chalkboard made the move with the family from Oklahoma to Minnesota back in 1983, but there was no appropriate wall for it, so it lived in the basement. I took it with me to college, and then it was with me in law school, and it was on my wall through my time in practice in D.C., and it’s been on my wall of my office at the law school since I started there in 2004.

I usually use the chalkboard-in-the-dining-room concept for laughs. But as I took it off of the wall of my office, and erased it – ideas for articles, explanations of torts doctrine from office hours, my kids’ doodles, and so on – I thought, just for a bit, about how the oddity of a chalkboard in the dining room had affected me. Not that I think it is exclusively responsible for, well, anything in my life except for some chalk dust on my clothes, but it is indicative of how we were raised: to ask questions, to learn, to challenge, to always – always – think.

On Wednesday afternoon (my cell phone “recent calls” listing tells me it was at 4:32), not long after coming home from packing the office and taking the kids to their violin lessons, I got a call from my mom, telling me that my dad has pancreatic cancer.

After a moment of shock, my reaction – and I expect the rest of the family’s – was to sit down and research pancreatic cancer. I (and I bet my siblings) found the Mayo Clinic’s site, we found the site about the chemo treatment that looked promising post-surgery (we don’t know as of this writing whether surgery will be an option), we probably all giggled, and then felt a little bad for giggling, at the name of the surgery (“The Whipple Procedure” – c’mon, you giggled a little too).

Back to the phone call, though. After telling me the news and a quick overview, my mom handed the phone to my dad.

After pleasantries and such and a brief acknowledgment of the diagnosis, he turned to what he was really wanting to talk about, which was not his diagnosis or prognosis – no, he wanted to talk about a global warming skeptic’s column that had been published by the local paper. As usual, he’s going through multiple iterations of a response to the column’s silliness, with challenges interspersed into the Word document. We talked about how best to try to get his response out there, where the author had gone wrong in his assumptions and his thinking, and so on.

Always think, always challenge. That’s what the chalkboard was about, at least in part. (To be fair, we also used it for messages.) That’s what he’s taught his kids and grandkids, to the extent that I have a graph on my desk from my daughter and him testing the widespread (but, they showed, wrong) notion that hot water freezes faster than cold water.

And thinking and challenging is what we’ll be doing with whatever comes.

Remarks at memorial service of Ves Childs • Bill Childs

I’m talking today both on my own behalf and on behalf of my brother Mike.

But I’m going to start with part of a speech that my dad gave when he was accepting the award as a distinguished alumnus of Southern Arkansas University; it’s one of his more thoughtful and philosophical commentaries. Here’s the excerpt:

We live between two golf courses and a lot of geese raise young right on the course.  (This is when they were living in Minnesota.)  The geese like the water and green grass… For the past few weeks those geese and several hundred others have been practicing flying in formation.  They start out flying three or four in a line and now they have worked up maybe fifty or sixty and they are flying in vees.

Have you ever noticed how one side of the vee is always longer than the other?  I found out the other day why that is so.

The long one has more geese in it.

When our preacher told that one, the Germans groaned, the Swedes laughed, and the Norwegians still haven’t got the point.

He liked starting remarks with a joke, and I figured I should follow suit.

One month and a day ago I wrote a short essay about growing up as part of the Childs family, and how that upbringing was going to affect how we approached Daddy’s diagnosis.  Two days earlier, we’d gotten word that Daddy had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. 

It stuns and devastates me to be standing here such a short time period later at his memorial service.  He died just over three weeks after his diagnosis. 

The subject of that essay is the same thing I’d really like to focus on for a couple of minutes today, but instead of focusing on how the way we grew up affected our process of going through his illness, I’d like to focus on it as his legacy – it’s a major thing I will remember about him, and that I know my kids and nieces and nephews will remember it about him too.

And it’s symbolized by the fact that we had a chalkboard in our dining room.

It took a while for me to realize that this was unusual, and that seems to have been true for Mike and Lisa too. Even after going to lots of other kids’ houses, it still seemed fairly ordinary, until someone (no doubt someone chalkboard-deprived) asked me about it.

Evidently not every family had dinner conversations that regularly – frequently – required charts or drawings to explain. We did, and so there was a big green chalkboard dominating one wall of the dining room at 1504 Harris Drive in Bartlesville, Oklahoma.  My mom says she bought it for him very early in their marriage when she realized how often, when asked how his day at work was, he would reply that “It’d be easier to explain with a chalkboard.”  So she bought him one.

The chalkboard made the move with the family from Oklahoma to Minnesota back in 1984, but there was no appropriate wall for it, so it lived in the basement of that house. I took it with me to college, and then it was with me in law school, and it was on my wall through my time in practice in D.C., and it’s been on my wall of my office at the law school where I teach since I started there in 2004.

I usually use the chalkboard-in-the-dining-room concept for laughs. And it’s pretty good for those.  Very few of my students grew up with a chalkboard, and it’s a nice icebreaker with them when they come in for office hours. 

But it’s also a good indication of how we were raised: to ask questions, to learn, to challenge, to always – always – think.

That was central to his being a father – Mike remembers building great real-world examples of scientific concepts, including building electromagnets (one is still around the house somewhere) and boiling water in a tin can, sealing it, and demonstrating atmospheric pressure through its consequent collapse.  We all did science fair projects that went well beyond the baking soda volcanoes.  It continued into adulthood for us, too,– he was a key editor and commenter on my scholarly work (which focuses on the intersection of law and science) and, maybe a little more mundane but still important, designed the treehouse that Mike and I built in my yard that you saw in the photo slideshow (which will run again after the benediction, by the way).  Even though his ataxia made travel difficult, stuff like that treehouse made it so he could be a nearly daily part of our kids’ lives over a thousand miles away.

Asking questions and challenging accepted thought was a big part of his marriage too, supporting Mother in her work for women’s rights and all of her other political work, and in her going back to graduate school in chemical engineering.  There wasn’t much conventional about their lives, especially in that time and place, but it worked, completely.

And it was obviously the foundation of his career – he loved telling stories about both challenging established scientific authority (with success) and about him being the scientific authority challenged, most notably by a junior engineer in his lab at 3M, who tried something Daddy thought would never work – and of course it did. 

(One of the things I love most is how much he relished telling that story on himself.  It was a measure of his own humility that he was happy to be proved wrong in that sort of situation.)

And it was a huge part of his retirement, whether in mentoring local entrepreneurs, or, more notably for me, in sharing his love of learning with his grandchildren; I can’t tell you how often one of their questions would be answered with, “That’d be a great question to ask Granddaddy.” 

Last week, I spent just a few minutes going through some of his old e-mail exchanges with my kids, and came up with a few examples of the questions he answered for them – every one with a thoughtful and understandable answer, often with a PowerPoint accompanying it.  (This was despite the fact that he was known in his Sunday School for asking unanswerable questions – there were lots of questions he could and would answer.)  He never ever spoke down to the kids, either. 

So here are some of the questions I came across from Ella or Liam:

·      What is in onions that makes your eyes water? (that one got a full page, including a mention of Leonard Pike, a former student of his dad’s now teaching at Texas A&M)

·      Do fish sleep like we do?

·      Why do gymnasts in the Olympics use chalk?

·      How would you make an egg cracking machine where the egg rolls a little bit?

·      How do they make things glow in the dark?

·      What is fire made out of?

·      Why does hot air rise and cold air sink?

·      I put four pennies in vinegar and after two days they had blue things on them.  What is it?

·      Can water have no surface tension?

·      Can people make water?

·      How are crystals made?

·      How do people make elements?

·      What was before the big bang?

So. 

They were all pretty easy questions, obviously. 

But he loved to answer them; his joy was palpable in the e-mails.  I’m so sad that he can’t answer more of them, and especially for his younger grandchildren too, but I know they’ve inherited his love for learning and his curiosity.

One more little story about how he loved to teach the grandkids.  Ella and Liam were here for Spring Break a few months ago and Ella and her granddaddy did an experiment to test the long-standing assertion that hot water freezes faster than cold water.  They worked together to design and perform the experiment and analyze the data to reach a conclusion that, despite its persistence, the idea is wrong.  Last week – probably the day after Daddy died – Ella and I were talking about him, and she said that her best way to remember him was to never stop learning.  She’s got a fierce grasp on that idea and I think it’s a lot because of him.

And that’s the positive we can focus on today – or at least it’s what I’m going to focus on.  Countless people have learned a little more about the joy of learning and of asking questions from him, whether it’s people he mentored in his career, his friends in churches and organizations in the communities in which he lived, his kids and grandkids, or any of the myriad other people with whom he came into contact.  You can see it in Lisa’s work with the University’s inventors; you can see it in Mike’s work advancing technology with Intel; you can hopefully see it in my work teaching lawyers to be challenging and creative; you can see it in Ella reading constantly (even when that tries her parents’ patience) and her desire to be a paleontologist; you can see it in Liam’s love of math and learning; you can see it in Maggie’s curiosity, even when it leads to multiple bee stings; you can see it in Ty’s eternal questioning every day and finding new myths for MythBusters to test; you can see it in Kian’s taking things apart and putting them back together again (usually working); and you can see it in Hope’s exploration and learning.  And you can see it in Mother taking classes at the University and becoming a master gardener and all the rest.  That’s the theme I was trying to capture with the pictures in the slideshow, and I hope you’ll watch that.

His dad, our Poppaw, used to say that your influence for good is the only thing that lasts, and the influence for good that Daddy had is immeasurable.

I lost my powers on a Monday.

           If you’ve never been in a super fight, just know they’re quick and brutal. Mylast one happened on the roof of a skyscraper. Like always, my nemesis had thescheme laid out before I arrived.

           I approached the setup, chalky gravel crunching under my booted feet. It wassimple: girl tied to a pole, shotgun mounted on another pole and aimed at herface. My nemesis stood off to the left, watching.

           “It’s the fast man! But will he be fast enough this time? Get the girl free before the shot reaches her. Those are the rules of this game.”

           He held up a small red remote, like a cell phone.

           “When you move.”

           I was fast, you see. Or maybe fast isn’t right. I could slow the passage oftime around me, like a tiny dam in a rushing river. I moved normally, but everyone else was more or less frozen until I let time melt back into place.

           “Give it up, Brian. We can do this easy or hard.”

           This was normal hero/villain banter. He’d told me his name because I hadtrouble pronouncing his villain name. That gun was going off, but Brian knewI’d be able to get to her in time. That was the point; we do some variation of this dance daily.

           I couldn’t see his face behind the smoked glass of his helmet, but I knew hewas smiling. The girl moaned through her gag, but there was no danger. Iignored her, focused my mind instead, touched that strange power inside me.

           Brian twirled the remote like he was stirring a drink.

           “I’m waiting.”

*

          I take scraping steps up the stairs. Rats and roaches scuttle from my feet, butthey’re in no danger: I’m harmless now. The only light is from the cracked sputtering yellows that are still burning for reasons unknown. It smells like mildew and mold. It smells old. My tears are sucked up by the hungry grime on each step. This is a condemned building.

           There’s a vagrant on the fifth landing wrapped in a filthy green jacket. He lifts his head up from the cardboard box and blinks gunk from his eyes.

           “Hero?”

           “There is no hero here.”

*

           I moved.

           Brian hit his remote, expecting me to have the girl untied and clear before theshot left the barrel. Easy. Until I reached for my power and found empty space. Without warning, I was a man again. 

           There was a red cloud that glowed from the sun, a mars-colored cloud, perfectly round like the planet. The girl sagged in her restraints and I looked away because I had never seen violence like that before.

           Brian choked on his words.

           “I. I. You were supposed to.”

           He took tiny steps backward, away from the girl.

           “You were supposed to save her.”

           I fell to one knee and threw up. My ears didn’t ring because the wide blue skyhad swallowed up all the noise. The smoked glass of Brian’s face mask was speckled with blood, making it look like some kind of exotic egg. As I kneeled,his je tpack fired up, the low whine steadily building. The girl remained dead.

           I fumbled with my grappling hook, thinking to catch him and pull him back and make him pay. But my hands didn’t work, because I’m not really a hero. I watched him float above me and shake his head once and dart away to some other place. The white trail from his jet dissolved, leaving no trace.

           I untied the girl and laid her body on the gravel rooftop.

           Then I sat there for a while.

*

           I’m almost to the top now. Even though I haven’t been counting floors, I know the top is near. Everything has a fine layer of unbroken dust. Most of the trash has trickled down to lower levels, leaving my path clear.

My breathing comes faster; my cruel mind shows me the cloud of blood, how it seemed to hover in place for a single second before scattering in the wind.

I’m through the rooftop access and the sky is as blue and beautiful as it was a few hours ago. I think about how I don’t have to do this, how even heroes make mistakes. But now I’m just a man, and a man shouldn’t have to live with this kind of guilt. She was an honor student, two weeks from graduating with a full swimming scholarship. Her name was Allison.

The streets are empty on this side. I’m twenty stories up. This is selfish, going out this way. But I’ve always wanted to fly and my foot is on the edge now so I might as well go before I think about it too much.

Wind roars in my ears and my eyes gush tears and I feel a little bad.

I see the kidnapping ten stories through my decent. A black van with black windows and three men trying to drag a female into the side door. She struggles. She kicks and bites and punches. But they’re men; they’re strong. I watch for another story and wonder who is going to save her.

But of course I know.

My grapple gun is in my hands. The sun is a white-hot marble reflected on its mirror finish. The hook explodes skyward with a beautiful sound––suh-TING––and catches on the edge of the roof. The cord twangs, pulls tight. That’s also a beautiful sound.

I swing over the street and land on top of the van, blowing out the black glass.

I was never one to take the easy way out.

--

www.dankrokos.blogspot.com

DEATH WILL TRIM YOUR TREE

Elizabeth Zelvin

I sat on the floor in Jimmy and Barbara’s living room with a pile of blinking electrical spaghetti in my lap and ground my teeth. For this I’d stayed sober for 357 days and changed my whole life? Cursing the malevolence of circuitry, I began to

disentangle the single strand of tiny bulbs that I’d finally gotten to light up all at the same time from the rest.

“Think of it as a meditation,” Barbara said, perky as one of Santa’s elves.

“You wanna take over?”  

“I can’t. I’m making latkes.” Barbara does Chanukah along with Christmas. She showed me puppy eyes soft with regret.  Her feminism flies south at this time of year. Women cook. Men wrestle with the frigging lights.  

“Why don’t you run over to Broadway and pick up some that work?” Jimmy suggested. Computer geniuses supervise.

I growled low in my throat, sounding more like a pit bull than I expected. Jimmy took it in stride.  

“These lights are obsolete, anyhow,” he said. “With the new ones, if one bulb goes out, the rest stay on. Replace the one, and you’re back in business.”

“Thank you for sharing.”

I didn’t bother asking so how come we were still using the old ones. I knew the answer: Barbara never throws anything out. I picked bits of last year’s tinsel off my sweater, grabbed my down vest off the back of a chair, and headed for the door.

“Bruce!” Barbara called after me. “While you’re at it, pick up a pint of sour cream.”

I could pretend I hadn’t heard. But I’d probably get the sour cream. As people were always telling me, AA interferes not only with your drinking but also with such cherished traits as surliness and willingness to disappoint people.

I headed for Manny’s Hardware over on Broadway. Manny was long gone, but the hole in the wall he’d founded in 1923 still carried everything you could possibly need, from the oddball size of screw to a giant silver samovar that had been sitting there for years. Or maybe they kept selling and replacing it, one samovar at a time.

In spite of its eight million people, New York is a small town. In the old days, I knew someone in every bar I stumbled into. Now, wherever I went, I saw someone from the program. AA meetings are better lit than bars, so the faces stayed with me.  

At Manny’s, I recognized the clerk.

“Hi, Tim.” I read the name off his shirt, greeting him as I would have at a meeting.

He nodded, giving me a half-smile to acknowledge that he knew me too but wasn’t about to break my anonymity by saying so. We said, “What’s happening?” and “Not much,” and then we were ready to talk hardware. I described the kind of lights I needed. He said they’d been flying off the shelves, but he still had a few boxes in stock. They never don’t have what you need at Manny’s.

“Give me a minute,” he said. “I’ll go in the back and get them.”

 Tim opened a door in the wall behind the counter. I could see a stockroom bigger than the shop. A half-open door in the rear offered a glimpse of one of those hidden New York back yards that visitors don’t even know exist. The tall, narrow space was lined with ceiling-high gray metal shelves crammed with merchandise and towers of giant brown boxes. He’d have a job finding one carton.

“I may be a while. I know we’ve got ’em, though.”

“No problem.”

Tim sketched a salute and dove into the storeroom, closing the door behind him.

I browsed the shelves for a while, decided I didn’t need a set of Phillips head screwdrivers or a non-stick pizza stone, and went out front for a smoke. The faint jingle of Salvation Army Santa Claus bells served as background music. The even fainter scent of pine trees from Maine and Canada stacked three deep on wooden scaffolding down the street provided ambience. I drifted off, thinking about nothing in particular. I was far away when a female voice broke into my reverie.

“They’re not closed, are they? If I don’t find red and gold tinsel, I’ll have a panic attack.”

New Yorkers.

I dropped the butt I held pinched between my fingers. Grinding it out with the toe of my shoe, I realized I’d stood there long enough to suck up and crush out four cigarettes.

“No, it’s open. The clerk went out back to find something for me.”

I held the door, which clanged the way shop doors do, and let her precede me into the store. She was a tall, thin woman with a white streak bisecting jet black hair like Cruella de Vil, bundled up in a faux fur coat with matching trim on her faux leather gloves. She lugged a bulging Zabar’s shopping bag in each hand.

“Yoohoo!” She bumped her way through the narrow aisle to the counter. “Can I get some service here?”

Tim did not appear.

“He’s been gone for a while,” I said. “Maybe I should go back there and take a look.”  

“Don’t mind me,” she said. “I love Manny’s. I could browse in here forever.”

Her eyes lit up as she spotted a cut-glass punch bowl on the highest shelf. I’d better get Tim back out here, or she’d be asking me to get it down for her.  

            I ducked under a hinged flap in the counter top, then opened the stockroom door.

            “Tim?” I called. “You’ve got a customer.”

            No answer. I marched down the narrow aisle toward the rear door. An open carton blocked the way. Christmas lights. I straddled it and proceeded to the door. It wasn’t ajar any more, though a strip of thin winter light still filtered in. I pushed it open with my shoulder and stepped out into the yard.

Tim lay sprawled face down on the concrete, to one side and a few yards beyond the back door. If he was dead, I didn’t want to touch the body. I’d rather keep my DNA to myself. But if he wasn’t dead, and I failed to help, I’d feel guilty. No more Jack Daniel’s to help me blow it off, either. I took a cautious stroll around him, hands in my pockets. The far side of his head, crumpled like a ball of paper, lay in an ooze of blood and brains. Too late for CPR, then.

I closed my eyes and took a few deep breaths until the desire to throw up subsided. I’d better call 911. To tell the truth, I would rather have walked away. But for the new me, that was not an option. As I drew my cell phone from my pocket, I looked around the yard. No handy two-by-four coated with blood and gray matter in sight. Tim had fallen onto concrete. The area wasn’t exactly a garbage dump. But recent litterers had left six cigarette butts, seven pop tops, and three candy wrappers within a foot of his outstretched hand.

I would have picked the litter up, out of respect for the abandoned body. But I didn’t think the police would appreciate it. I’d better make my call from out front, with the lady customer as witness. While I was at it, I could scoop up my own butts, hopefully before the cops got there. Taking one last look at the body, I saw a familiar-looking bronze coin half hidden by the sprawl of his hip. He’d gone outside wearing only a white T shirt and faded jeans. They’d pulled apart when he fell. I could see a bit of pale skin in between. It looked smooth and vulnerable.

I squatted and fished the coin out with my thumb and forefinger: a medallion with the AA triangle and “3 months” on one side, the Serenity Prayer engraved so small that I had to squint to read it on the other. The bronze was antiqued, so it wasn’t shiny. But it didn’t look worn, not as if it had been hanging out in somebody’s pocket for years. These “chips” were cherished in the fellowship. The only way you could get one was by staying sober for ninety days. Or stealing it off a corpse. I tucked the chip into the pocket of my jeans.

I went back into the store and out the front. Cruella was still there. I broke the news and said I’d call 911.

“I live right around the corner,” she said. She looked longingly at the pile of

shiny housewares and appliances she’d selected from Manny’s shelves and piled on the counter by the cash register. “Do you think it would be okay if I pop back home and get my holiday goodies into the fridge before they spoil? I could come back.”

“Please don’t go,” I said. “The cops might take a dim view of your leaving. And I would really appreciate it if you’d tell them you saw me go behind the counter only a few minutes before I found—before I called the police.”

“When you put it that way—oh, why not?” She put the Zabar’s bags gently down on the sidewalk and flexed her fingers. “I’ll stay. It’s Christmas.”

Shortly after that, the uniformed cops arrived, then two detectives, crime scene folks, and a parade of snoopy Upper West Siders who didn’t want to miss the excitement. It knocked the warm fuzzies from Cruella being nice right out of me. When the detectives asked if I’d known Tim outside the store, I lied. They took my address and told me where to report to be fingerprinted. Then they shooed me off the scene along with the nosy neighbors.

When I got back to Jimmy and Barbara’s, I told them what had happened and showed them the ninety-day chip.

“It’s evidence, Bruce!” Barbara’s voice soared into a shocked squeak. She kind of lost the moral high ground when she added, “Couldn’t you have picked up those lights while you were at it?”

“Don’t get your panties in a twist, peanut,” Jimmy said. “I’ll order some online.”  

 “Why did you take it, Bruce?” Barbara said. “Here, have some latkes.”

“I’m not sure,” I said. “I had some kind of goofy idea of protecting AA. I didn’t want cops busting into every meeting in the city to ask questions.”

“They’ll figure out he was in AA sooner or later,” Jimmy said. “The guy had a job and an apartment. At the very least, they’ll find a meeting list.”

“Okay, so AA was part of his life. But a chip on the scene makes it part of his death. I didn’t want them getting the wrong idea.”

“Maybe it’s the right idea,” Barbara said. “Maybe somebody in the program killed him.”

“Oh, come on,” I said. “Lots of people carry their anniversary coins on them all the time.”

“It wasn’t his coin,” Jimmy said.

“How do you know?” Barbara asked.

“You knew Tim?” I asked. Why was I surprised? Jimmy knew everyone.

“I go to the hardware store now and then,” he said. “I knew Tim from meetings. If he was alone in the store, we’d talk.”

“Still, how do you know it wasn’t his chip?”

“He didn’t have ninety days,” Jimmy said. “Last week, I went into Manny’s to get the new Christmas tree stand.”

“Bruce didn’t even notice the stand,” Barbara said.

“Yes, I did. I noticed the tree didn’t fall down this year. Yet. Go on, Jimmy.”  

“I asked Tim if he wanted to qualify at the Thursday step meeting. He said, and I quote, ‘I don’t have the clean time. I’m only seventy-two days back from a slip.’”

“Then the chip must have belonged to the murderer,” Barbara said. “Bruce, you should have left it there.”

Oops.

            In the next couple of weeks, with some reluctant help from Jimmy and overenthusiastic help from Barbara, I trolled the twelve-step programs for gossip that might suggest a motive for Tim’s death. Tim was a well-known chronic relapser. He’d get a few months together and then pick up. So far, he’d managed not to lose the job at Manny’s. But the slips meant that he was perennially on Step One, admitting he was powerless over alcohol. He could put dealing with all his other shortcomings on hold. Like cheating on his girlfriend, Suzanne, whose tearful share I heard one night at a meeting.

“What was I supposed to do?” she wailed to the group of thirty or so alcoholics. “Break up with him every time he had a slip?””

 I heard a few quiet mutters of “Yes!” and “Go to Al-Anon!” The woman next to me said, “Stop going to the hardware store for oranges.” It’s what people trying to recover from addictive relationships tell each other.

“I told him I’d move in with him,” Suzanne said, “when he got a year together. I thought it would motivate him to stay sober.”

More mutters and a sigh or two from the folks who had mentioned Al-Anon.

“But he didn’t want me to move in. He said he wanted to leave his options open. Ha!” For a moment, the rage broke through. “He was seeing someone else, I know he was. And now he’s dead!” She broke down sobbing.

Afterward, Suzanne came over to the woman next to me. I eavesdropped, pretending to take part in the conversation of a group of guys I didn’t know, as they rattled on.

“In Al-Anon they talk about the three Cs,” her friend said. “You didn’t cause it, you can’t cure it, and you can’t control it”—“it” in this case being Tim’s drinking.

“I don’t get it,” Suzanne said. “I loved him. How could I not try to help him stay sober?”

They also talked about Tim’s infidelity. Her friend tried to give her some tough love about jealousy, possessiveness, and paranoia being shortcomings that could only hurt her in the end. That went right over Suzanne’s head as she obsessed about who the woman Tim was seeing on the side could be. She thought it might be somebody Tim had met at Manny’s, if not a program person. Her friend didn’t think it could have been a program person, but she got flustered in the middle of telling Suzanne why not. I understood. No alcoholic with good long-term sobriety would have thirteenth-stepped—the polite term for hitting on a newcomer—someone whose recovery was as shaky as Tim’s. And of course Suzanne had done just that.

She might have killed him. She was plenty messed up herself. And messed-up alcoholics have some predictable symptoms, including poor judgment, impulsive behavior, denial, and simmering rage that could blow any time. All it would have taken was an angry confrontation, a moment when she lost control, and a blunt instrument.

 We also found Tim’s sponsor, Malcolm. He’d been in the program for ten years or so, and Jimmy knew him. Jimmy reported back to us that Malcolm had talked mostly about his own moral dilemma. Did he owe it to society to tell the police what he knew? Or did he still owe it to Tim to protect his anonymity?

“What did he know?” I asked.

“He wouldn’t tell me,” Jimmy said. “And no, I didn’t try to pry it out of him. I told him that if his conscience was bothering him, he should go to the police.”

Barbara and I had a good time speculating about what Tim might have told Malcolm and nobody else. Sponsees are supposed to be completely honest with their sponsors. Maybe Tim had turned over a resentment list. The idea is that you’re supposed to let go all your grudges with the help of a Higher Power. But Tim, with his periodic relapses, could have made the list of resentments without being ready to let them go.

I uncovered one of Tim’s secrets when I ran into a guy I knew, Gary, in a church basement that hosted a lot of meetings. I was on my way to AA; he had just come out of a Debtor’s Anonymous meeting.

“Did you hear about the program guy who got murdered?” he asked.

Gary had never been Mr. Anonymity. If I told him I’d not only found the body, but also been the last person to see him alive, it would be all over the city in a week.

“Yes,” I said.“Did you know him?” Hey, if my Higher Power hadn’t wanted me to hear Gary’s gossip, I wouldn’t have run into him.

“I owed him money,” Gary said. “He got me a couple of power tools I wanted at a discount. I just started DA, and if I want to be solvent, I have to make a plan to repay all my debts and not incur any new ones. I cut up all my credit cards, but to tell the truth, I’m not so sure I can get by without them. Say, do you think now that he’s dead, that cancels the debt? It’s not as if he had a wife and kids or anything.”

“Ask your DA sponsor, dude.”

I had never been crazy about Gary. He’d just confirmed my low opinion.  Still, he’d opened up a whole new area of speculation. Could Tim have been stealing from his employer? Selling stuff out the back door? Maybe not while he was clean and sober. But when you’re getting high, you’ll do anything for the money to score. Maybe Gary wasn’t his only customer. Maybe somebody else thought a blow to the head was a good way to cancel an inconvenient debt.

By the day before New Year’s Eve, I hadn’t found the murderer. And neither had the police. They had come by a couple of times to go over exactly what I’d done, seen, and touched between the front door of Manny’s and the puddle around Tim’s head. But I could account for all of it. By now, they knew that Tim had been in AA. They’d probably  found the Big Book on his night table and program phone numbers in his address book. But I’d never given him my number. And they didn’t have probable cause to search my apartment. So I played dumb and shook my head politely when they asked me if I went to AA too.  

“Now what?” I asked Jimmy and Barbara. I picked a strand of tinsel off the tree and ran it through my fingers. “I’ve been to tons of meetings, and nobody’s raised their hand and said, ‘Hi, I’m Bob, I’m an alcoholic. I killed the guy in the hardware store, and I want to turn it over.’”

“Tomorrow is Amateur Night,” Jimmy said. He peered at me over the row of lights Barbara had run across the top of his computer monitor.

“So?” I had been only seven days sober and pretty fogged out last New Year’s Eve, but I knew that’s what sober alcoholics called it: the one night a year when all the civilians went out and got what they naively thought was drunk.

“There’ll be a marathon only a few blocks from Manny’s.”

He didn’t mean a race for runners, but round-the-clock AA meetings to help us get through the holidays clean and sober. I’d gone with Jimmy on Christmas Eve. We’d stayed for a couple of hour-long meetings. It hadn’t been boring. Recovering alcoholics telling holiday war stories can be very, very funny. Then I’d gone to sleep on Barbara and Jimmy’s couch with the Christmas lights, all present and accounted for, glowing softly, the tinsel shimmering, and the smell of pine in my nostrils. In the morning, there’s been stockings—Barbara had insisted—and presents under the tree. And between one thing and another, I hadn’t missed the booze.

“Did you get any clues at the Christmas marathon?” Barbara asked.

“No,” I said, “but I was kind of distracted.”

“Of course you were,” she said. “You were dealing with the holiday and having found Tim dead only a couple of days before, and it was the first anniversary of your Christmas hitting bottom in detox on the Bowery.”

Barbara never leaves anything to the imagination. But I could see the love in her eyes, so I responded with a token snort and left it at that.

“It has to be someone with anywhere between ninety days and one year sobriety,” Jimmy said. “More than that, and I don’t think they’d have gotten entangled with him either financially or emotionally.”

“Suzanne did,” Barbara said. “But she’s a total codependent. Can I come with you guys to the AA marathon? I do have boundaries, but it is New Year’s Eve, and I hate to get left out.”

Understatement.

            The meeting was packed. The holiday season was tough on the clean and sober.  There was an AA joke about the “threefold disease” being Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s. But everyone in this room tonight had made it through without picking up. As people shared, the word “gratitude” came up a lot. It didn’t even embarrass me much any more.

            Since the meetings would run all night, even people who usually didn’t raise their hands got a chance to share. We heard from guys with forty years’ sobriety and newbies who had crawled in after celebrating Christmas with a binge and blackout, like me last year. In the back, people milled around chugging coffee and scarfing down Christmas cookies. I grabbed a styrofoam cup of java and leaned against the wall alongside the rows of folding chairs, where I could see as many faces as possible. 

“Tomorrow,” one guy said, “the civilians will all be making New Year’s resolutions—and breaking them within a week or two.”

Everybody laughed.

“I don’t make resolutions any more,” he said. “I live one day at a time, and it works for me.”

 A pillar blocked my view of the woman who spoke next. I was wondering if one more cup of coffee would make me hyper, so I didn’t hear her name. But I tuned back in when she said, “I made my ninety days right after Thanksgiving.” I started to work my way around to where I could see her as she went on about how things happen the way they’re meant to happen. “Sometimes life doesn’t come out the way you expect,” she said, “but maybe it’s for the best.”

I saw the white-on-black hair before I saw her face. It was Cruella. For the best, huh? For her, maybe, but not for Tim. She must have been the other girlfriend. She’d met him behind the store before she came around the front to use me as her alibi. Once I told the cops, they’d find someone who’d seen her. They might even find the murder weapon. They sell a lot of stuff at Zabar’s. But not blunt instruments.

                                     Lucky is AnotherCountry

>   Johnny Sid's fingers hadn't bled so bad since he was twelve years old and first picked up his uncle's battered old Martin guitar.

>   He'd set the instrument down three weeks later, no longer an apprentice, nearly a gifted-master, nearly sleeping with it like a woman, though he didn't know about such things at that age.

>   By then, of course, calluses had begun to form on the tips of his long, slinky fingers, and there were deep valleys in the tips that the cold metal strings fell perfectly into.  He had remade himself from the inside out.  The guitar had changed him in ways he could never imagine, and he could not stand for the 1953 Martin to be out of his sight.

>   Hisuncle heard him plucking away one day, shook his head, muttered something about"gettin' his heart broke by that damned thing," then walked away,casting a scowling look at Johnny as a sequence of smooth notes echoed out ofthe house.

>   Hisuncle never asked for the guitar back, and Johnny Sid never offered it-but nowhe knew what his uncle meant:  His heart was more than busted in two, andhis body was raging with a powerful, eat-you-from-the-inside-out disease, andhe couldn't even play a song to make himself feel better.

>   Thedisease was the family disease.  The family curse.  The taste ofwhiskey, of anything fermented; wine, gin, even beer, was more than a whisperor hidden shame.  One drop set off a fire storm like a spark on the sideof a July mountain in California.  Before it was all said and done, therewould be nothing but ashes left in the fire's mean wake; blackened limbs,smoldering dirt, death without the screams.

>   Some of the Sids were reborn, refortified,  found Jesus or Ghandi or Buddha-but most died, even took others with them in twisted metal car crashes, or other alcohol-induced accidents.

>   The hardest to stomach for Johnny was the fire that wiped out a city block, Art Deco buildings, namely a movie theatre, the Madre Rise, that was the historical center to his home town, gone in an instant, and two firemen, too, that battled the fire-dead, flattened by falling, flaming, rafters.

>   Johnny Sid saw one of the fireman's daughters once at the grocery store not long after.  Her eyes were hollow and dry, like all of the fluid her body had ever held had been drained out of her.  He wanted to tell her he was sorry for what his father had done, but his courage had been drained away just like her fluids-the shame was his now, out in the wide open, a field of sin passed from one generation to the next like a forty acre farm.  He'd dropped the Zero candy bar he'd gone to the store to buy, a stale white chocolate nougat,and ran home to his guitar.

>   The song, Judy's Eyes, was his first recording five years later, a number one hit.  Life was never the same.  He could have anything he wanted-andhe did.

>   Most men would have stuck the cold end of a handgun in their mouth, ended the pain,ended the battle, when everything went south.

>   Johnny's uncle did-eventually, years later, fearing a different wasting disease, when watching the skin drip off his bones was obviously too much for him to see inthe mirror day in and day out.  He'd ended it on a cloudy day in a corner lot behind a Catholic church on Wilmont Street.  One second, one quick thrust of a finger, like the strum on a C chord, and an explosion of gun powder and a cold, metal bullet conquered the cancer and all of the shame being a Sid carried with it.

>   None of the Sids were Catholic.  No converts there.  So why he chose the location was a mystery.  Maybe it was just a random choice.  Or like Johnny, maybe his uncle hoped for a bit of forgiveness and redemption in the end.  Maybe there was purgatory for some, a stopping off place before rotting in hell.  A chance to eventually fly up instead of down-if you believed in second chances and angels.

> ***

>   Deathwas no stranger to Johnny Sid, that was a given.  He knew his life wasticking away.  His heartbeat was a metronome without a conscience or anounce of emotion.  He was at the end of his days. Nearly every ounce ofhis energy was used up, wasted, spilled in some way or another that could haveprobably been foretold from the beginning.

>   He'dconsidered taking himself out, like his uncle, but he was a coward, couldn'traise the gun to his lips.  The taste of metal had never appealed tohim.  Maybe he should have coated the six inch barrel with whiskey.

> If death hadbeen a constant companion, then bad luck rode shotgun and bad choices sat inthe back seat, mocking him.

>   Hisfirst manager slipped him a contract and stole his publishing rights androyalties out from under his nose.      What did he know aboutbusiness?  What did he care about suits and ties when somebody was goingto pay him to play the guitar and sing?  What did he care about lawyersand agents and copyrights when he could punch all the radio buttons in hisshiny new red Caddie convertible, and hear his own voice swooning out of thespeakers?

>   Hehad an appetite for the honey glaze of his own voice and the cooing of leggyblondes itching to rub the sheets.

>   Whatdid he care?

>   Hehad more of everything than he ever dreamed possible.

>   Thecrash was quick, hard, and came out of nowhere.  One day the radio wentsilent, just quit playing his songs.  A new invasion. Mop-heads. Screaming guitars plugged into the wall.  His Martin became quaintovernight, and Nashville was too much for him, even then, before they kickedwestern into the ditch, leaving country to stand alone as a twangy reminder ofwhat it once was.

>   JohnnySid had nothing left.  Didn't own a damn thing.  Zero. Zilch. Too eager, too willing, to give himself away, knowing no other way to do whathe did-sing and play guitar.  He wasn't the only one left high anddry.  There was plenty of blame to go around.  Plenty of sad storiesto compare to.

>   Has-been.Was-then.  Outcast.  Drunk.  A wasted talent.

>   He'dbeen called a lot of names, but nobody, at least not until the day the girl withthe stringy dishwater blonde hair lugged her guitar into the hole-in-the-wallshe'd tracked him down to, had ever walked up to him and said, "You're myDaddy.  What are you gonna do about it?"

> ***

>   Shesaid her name was Lucia Doreen Palmer.  Everybody called her Lucky,though.  Lucky Palmer.  She had a tattoo on her ass to prove it,Lucky in a fancy scroll under a palm tree.  Johnny Sid declined when sheoffered to show the tattoo to him.  He wasn't interested in the promise ofparadise.

>   Hecould tell two things right away just by looking at her:

>   Number1-Lucky Palmer was a stripper's name.  He doubted Palmer was her real lastname.  The girl carried herself like she was a magnet to a dancer'spole.  Her clothes fit loose, and what was underneath was probablylooser.  Her mother probably had the same look, though Johnny couldn'tplace her.  He'd played a lot of strip joints in his time, took advantageof strippers when the offer came around-and the offer did come his way for along time.  Even after his quick fall, he still had his looks; a lion'smane of hair, a bad boy twinkle in his deep blue eyes, a swagger full ofpromise that was worth a memorable night or two.

>   Alittle bit of fame and the ability to hold a note went a long way in thosedays.

>   He'dlost interest in skin, in anything but Johnny Red these days. Strippers weretoo young, he was too old.  The need and the plumbing were justgone.  He was ticking off time, waiting to die.  His body told him hewas close.  He missed playing though.  He sure did.

>   Number2-Lucky Palmer was a Sid.  A result of one of his many drunken tanglesthat no doubt had ended badly, if it had ended at all. The union had probablyfaded away as he drove on down the road, just left, on to the next gig, thenext stage, the next dive that would pay him in cold, hard cash and the all thewhiskey he could drink.

>   Damnedif he couldn't remember Lucky Palmer's momma.  He bet it was loads offun.  Memories like that were golden, all he had to hold onto wheneverything else was without an urge.

> Looking atLucky Palmer was like looking in the mirror, a youthful image of himselfstaring back at him coldly; expectant and demanding.  He wondered if shehad the taste for whiskey, what her curse was, then decided he didn't care tofind out.

>   Sometimes you see what you want to see.   Immortality had never beena consideration.  Until now.

>"Honey," he said, "I ain't nothing but a big bag ofdisappointment. You got a look at my face.  I figure that's what you beenlooking for, so you probably ought to get on to where you're going. Life's short."

> It was lateafternoon in the tavern, nobody there but the regulars.  The band startedplaying later, after the sun stumbled down out of the sky, and Johnny had knockedback enough free whiskey to be able to stand the sound of his own voice. Sometimes the band would ask him to sing.  They knew he couldn't playanymore.  Felt sorry for him.  It was worth a two dollar shot ofwhiskey.  Sorrow didn't go down near as easy as a note that hangs in theair like a first date whisper.but it still held some currency.

>   Acloud of blue cigarette smoke hung over the bar, a baseball game on the TV wasbeing played by ghosts, the sound down low, the score even, 0 to 0.  Itcould have been Babe Ruth back from the dead for all Johnny knew.

>   LuckyPalmer put her nose an inch from his, breathed in his breath, exhaled it with ascowl, and said, "Ain't gonna happen, Old Man.  It's me and younow.  There's no place left for me to go."

> Johnny believedher.

>   Shesmelled musky, like the other side of sex, afterwards, after the fun of it hadbeen forgotten-if there had ever been any fun about it in the first place-andthere was nothing left but stains.

>   "Nomoney here," he said.  "Got nothing but bad debt and time tospend, and there isn't much of that left, either."

>   Luckypulled back, squared her shoulders, and smirked.  "Money's not myworry."

>   "Whatis?"

>   Shegrabbed the guitar case, and thrust it toward him.  "I can pluck it,but it won't sing for me.  I got things to say."

>   "Youhave to love it."

>   "Really. Is that what you call it?"

>   "Yeah. You got to love it.  Tell it secrets you never tell anybody else. You know how to do that?" Johnny Sid asked.

>   "Iknow plenty about secrets."

>   "Ibet you do."

>    Heopened the case, saw the guitar, looked back up at Lucky Palmer and shook hishead, remembering.knowing full well, now, who the girl's momma was.

> He should haveknown by her eyes, they were different than his, brown, the color all creationsprings from, the color of dirt and bread, the color of Judy's Eyes.

>   "No,"he whispered, slamming the case closed, refusing to touch the guitar.

>   "Yes,"Lucky Palmer said.  "Now teach me, Daddy.  Teach me just likeyou did her."

> ***

>   Hername really wasn't Judy-It was Doreen, of course.  Doreen Larson. Johnny Sid's father killed her father.  It was an accident.  No onewas supposed to die other than himself in that Madre Rise fire, but they did. Bad luck rode shotgun with more than one Sid.  A suicide gone wrong wasone note worse than just a plain old suicide.

>   TheLarson's got a hero for their trouble, a big city funeral in a small town, athousand firemen from all over the country marching to a silent band, theirsteps in unison, like a metronome.  Johnny heard that heartbeat whereverhe went, especially when he heard a siren.

>   Doreen'sEyes just didn't sound right, so Johnny gave her a new name, a blankslate.  She gave him a daughter for his trouble, an ex-stripper cravingfor the spotlight just like he had.

> At the moment,he figured it was all a bad deal.and he couldn't help but feel an old rage, anold hate, that reached deep into his heart, into his memory, into his boyhoodhome, and grabbed hold of his father, and gushed a lifetime of blame on him.

>   Thevenom of hate was worse than the worst hangover he'd ever had. Just seeingDoreen's guitar made Johnny Sid feel like he'd never be able to pull his headout of the toilet ever again.  There was no way to empty to himself ofthat grief or heal that broken heart, that he knew of.

>   He'dspent a lifetime trying.

> ***

>   LuckyPalmer was persistent, so Johnny Sid made her a deal.  Meet in the bar attwo in the afternoon, buy him a whiskey, and she had him for an hour. Just her, him, and the guitar.  After that they went their own way.     No more than that, no less.

>   Jerrythe barkeep could have given a crap less.he was just glad to sell a drink attwo in the afternoon, and the music was a relief from CNN.

>   Johnnycouldn't bear for her to see the squalor he lived in; a rust-stained bathtub,creaky floors and walls bound by nothing more than years of grime and dirt, akitchen infested with cockroaches, most of whom he was on a first-name basiswith.

>   Andhe didn't want to see what Lucky Palmer turned into after the sun burned itselfout.  He was sure the creatures of darkness more than welcomed her intothe fold.

>   Ifshe was his blood daughter, his child, he wanted no part of the imagination orreality she danced in after the fall of darkness, after night came to tease himwith another rehearsal for dying.he knew what he was, and he was sure, he knewwhat she was.

>   Justan hour a day was more than he thought he could give to her.at first.

> ***

>   "No,"Johnny Sid said.  "Like this."  He slapped his knee softly,consistently.  "Like a heartbeat.  You know?"

>   Ithad been a week.  Johnny could tell Lucky Palmer had been practicing, butnot enough.  The grooves in her fingers were deep.but she hadn't bledyet.  Her fingers weren't so sore that the only thing that would make thembetter was sliding them onto the  cold, metal, D string, and hitting astrum and a beat that was her own.

> It was hertiming, though, that frustrated him the most.  She lacked the instinct,the ear, so distinctly that he caught himself looking at her in the shadows,apprising her profile, just to satisfy himself that she was truly his own fleshand blood.

>   LuckyPalmer looked at Johnny Sid blankly.  "It takes time," he said.

>   "Idon't have time," Lucky answered.  Her attitude spewed insolence,lost patience, like a demanding child in a supermarket asking for a strawberrylollipop instead of talent.

>   Neitherwas cheap.  One came from experience, the other from the ancestors andchemistry.  The recipe might not be in Lucky's veins. That would be ashame.  But she helped passed the days now, she sure did.

>   JohnnySid had something to look forward to, a reason to shave and give himself abath.  The sky was beginning to look bluer on his walks to the tavern, thebird songs louder, more of a symphony than an achy tale of woe.  His backstopped hurting, and he smoked half as many cigarettes.  The cancer hadn'tbeen cured, but it had been smacked upside the head by a human antidote, areaction inside his brain and heart that could not be manufactured and putinside a pill.  He refused to call it by any name, but he knew what itwas, he sure did.  There was no use jinxing it by whispering a word likehope or love out into the world.

>   Afteranother week, he forgot about dying, the need to, or the wanting to.  Allhe could think about was that girl, that sunshine-headed girl, Lucky Palmer,and her sweet, soft smelling skin, clumsy fingers, and dancers legs.

>   Hervoice was velvet, too, red velvet and fancy curtains that belonged in a big,old, Art Deco theatre, each note hanging on the rafters for a second longerthan they should have.  What she lacked in timing, she had in soul, tenfold.

>   Itdidn't take long to figure out she knew what she was talking about on thatfirst day-she had secrets to tell, she had a song to sing.

>   Findingit was the treasure hunt now, pulling it out of her lungs and mixing it withthe metal strings and old wood branded by C.F. Martin himself.

>   JohnnySid knew that song of Lucky's wasn't no fable.  It was a ballad.  Aballad of pain and searching that ended with the discovery of a man who heardmusic just like she did.  He was the only one in the world who could teachher to sing that song, and they both knew it.

>   Beautyhad shined a quick, bright light into his life, a lottery of blood and promise,a passion to give something of himself he didn't know he had to give afterbeing so washed up with himself for so long.  He should have known,though, being a Sid and all, that beauty.and luck.never lasted long when theyshowed up out of the blue.

> ***

>   Theweek turned into a month, and a season changed.  Summer became fall,autumn, the first whisper of seclusion, but Johnny Sid and Lucky Palmer paid nomind to the chill riding in on the wind.  They held on to their days likelife rafts in the ocean.  At two o'clock promptly every day, Jerry thebarkeep turned off the TV, and Lucky Palmer pushed in through the front door. Johnny Sid sat waiting in the corner for his drink, which was mostly water now,the thirst for burning alcohol replaced with the desire for clarity.  He'dlost his taste for whiskey-a feat that surprised him because of itseffortlessness, and his ability to pass up the desire without a single thought.

>   Theynever asked about each other's night, didn't talk about their troubles or achesand pains.  There wasn't time for that, and they both had silently agreednot to let the outside world into their corner.  It was bound to happen,though, no songs get written without a few bruises or cuts.  No goodsongs, anyway.  On that day, Lucky Palmer had both-bruises and cuts, toofresh to scab over, too dark to be covered with make-up.

>   "Whatin the hell happened to you?"

>   "Don'tgo getting all paternal on me."  Lucky opened the guitar case, andwinced in pain like she had a broken rib or two-a match on the inside for theoutside, for the black eye and the gash on her right cheek.

>   JohnnySid stood up.  The table squeaked on the linoleum like a scream, likefingers on a chalk board-only with flat out anger.  "Who did this toyou?"

>   "Sitdown, old man.  It's not your fight."

>   "Whoin the hell says?"

>   "Ido.  You gave up that right a long time ago."

>   "Ididn't know about you."

>   "Youwalked away."

>   "Islipped away.  I'm here now."

>   "Youwouldn't have stayed."

>   "Imight have."

>   Theywere yelling.  The inches between their faces were nil, daylight couldn'thave passed through their noses, though they weren't touching, and if theywould have been standing outside, their breath would have been steam.

>   "Idon't need you to fight my fights," Lucky Palmer said.  "I don'tneed you for anything."

>   JohnnySid sucked in a deep breath, swallowed his anger, his fear, and whispered afterstaggering back down to his seat, "But I need you."

>   LuckyPalmer turned her head like she'd been slapped, her words tangled up in thesmoky air of the tavern, and the path that led her there.  Anger didn'tflash in her eyes.  Recognition did.  They had the end to theirsong-and at that moment, like a perfect duet, like the most in tune symphony inthe world, they both knew it and set to work to grab a hold of what lingeredbetween them.

>   Thehour came and went.  Dusk turned to night.  The band came in to setup.  Jerry turned the TV back on.      And when they werefinally done, a piece of paper with words, chords, and notes scribbled in blueexisted with both their signatures.

>   Thetitle of their song was: Lucky is Another Country.

>   Shestuffed the paper in her back pocket, packed up her guitar, and headed for thedoor.  She opened it, took in the darkness, then turned around and walkedback to Johnny Sid, kissed him on the forehead, said, "Thank you,Daddy," and walked out of the tavern.

>   Johnnydrew in a deep breath again, his eyes welled with tears that had taken alifetime to create.

> If he had knownit was the last time he'd ever see Lucky Palmer, he would have ran out the doorafter her, wrapped her in a hug, and dragged her back home with him.  Buthe didn't know.so all he did was sit there for the rest of the night, theirsong playing over and over again in his head.

> ***

>   Threedays later, two policemen came into the tavern showing a picture around. Jerry the barkeep pointed back to the corner, where Johnny Sid satwaiting.  He had known something was wrong after the first day when Luckydidn't show up.or, he thought, more than likely, Lucky had got what she cameafter and ditched him after they'd put together the song.  Seeing thepolicemen walk into the tavern, grim looks pasted on their stone faces, madehim wish for certain that he had been ditched even though he knew it wasn'ttrue now.  Something was wrong in a bad way, in a Sid way.

>   "Yeah,I know her," Johnny said, after looking at the picture, after a chill ranup his spine.  It was a post-mortem picture.  A morgue picture. Eyes shut.  Pasty skin.  Even in black and white, a horrible deathwas obvious.   "She's my daughter."

>   Thepolicemen looked at each other with a quick, surprised, glance. One of them,the younger one, said, "Can you come down to the station, and answer somequestions for us?"

>   JohnnySid shook his head yes.  "We'd just found each other.  I don'tknow much about her, but I'll help any way I can."  He started tostand, but his legs felt like jelly and no bones.  He fell back into thechair, the picture of Lucky Palmer floating to the floor. Everything went blackas he passed out from the shock.

> ***

>   Therewas plenty of evidence.  Lucky had been stabbed seven times in thechest.  A taxi driver had heard a ruckus in an alley across town, saw ayoung man fleeing with a bloody shirt.

>   Thecops weren't sure whether she had been robbed, or killed by somebody sheknew.  Johnny Sid told them about the cuts and bruises. They put an APBout on her boyfriend.once they knew she had one.from asking questions aroundher apartment complex.  She had a driver's license, a debit card, fourteendollars, and a piece of paper with a song written on it.  The fourteendollars pointed away from a robbery. The name on the driver's license was DianaJones, but that didn't surprise Johnny.  He'd always figured Lucky Palmerwas her stripper's name.

> ***

>   Thefuneral was more suited for a pauper than the daughter of a famous musician,even a one-hit-wonder, but there was no money for anything else.  Apriest, the two policemen, and Johnny Sid braved a cold, hard rain, standing ina Potter's field.  After a few sacraments were said, a sigh taken, a nodgiven, the gray cardboard casket was lowered into the ground.

>   "We'llbe in touch," one of the policemen said, the older one, the one who hadquestioned Johnny Sid as if he were a suspect.  Good cop, bad cop.  Heknew the routine, didn't take offense to it.

>   Johnnykicked a clump of dirt into the grave, and a thud echoed off the casket,upward.  "She had talent, that girl.  It's a shame, a damnshame."

>   Bothcops agreed.  The boyfriend was still on the run.  Last seen wearinga blue jean jacket over a bloody T-shirt.  Gone.  Just gone. LikeLucky Palmer.  Johnny just wanted the killer found and brought tojustice.  He hoped he lived to see it.

>   Thecops hadn't pressed him too much about proving he was Lucky's father, and thatdidn't occur to him until they handed him the key to her apartment, said hecould dispose of her belongings, what there was to dispose of.  She didn'thave much.  It probably would have been a different scene if she was a richgirl, had a stash of money hid away. But that wasn't the case.  Bad luckhad followed Diana Jones to the grave, just like every other Sid Johnny hadever known.

> ***

>   Theapartment was sparse, downtrodden, similar to his.  There wasn't muchthere that interested him.  Just the guitar, and a couple of cassettetapes he found on lying on a clunky old recorder.  Lucky had recordedtheir song, playing the guitar.  He wept when he heard her voice, thewords they had made together.

>   Henever went back to the tavern, couldn't face that corner.  But he was gladfor the time he spent with Lucky.  He still didn't have the urge todrink.  His pain was dim, and other than being saddled with a grief he hadnever felt before in his life, he was in better shape than he had been in along time.  He owed Lucky Palmer a lot.

>   So,he mustered up the courage to do two things.  First, he sent off the tapeto one of his old producers, and hoped they would hear what he heard, that theywould listen to it in the first place.  And second, Johnny knew he had togo home.

> ***

>   Thecops had not been able to find Doreen.  But it didn't take Johnnylong.  He knew her haunts from the old days, knew if he sat in front ofthe spot where the old theatre was, that Doreen would wander by to pay herrespects to her dead hero father sooner or later.  It was his luck that itwas sooner rather than later when she showed up.  The air was gettingcolder by the minute, almost too much for him to take.

>   "Doreen?"Johnny whispered, when he saw her.  He stood up like the old man he was,gaunt and creaky.  His clothes hung loosely off his frame, and it took allthe strength he had to pick up the guitar case.

>   "Johnny? Is that you, Johnny Sid?"

>   Henodded.  "I have some bad news."

>   Doreenwas well-dressed,  A red wool coat kept her warm, and shiny new blackboots adorned her feet.  Her hair was white at the temples, blending toblond, and perfectly coifed.  She stiffened at the announcement, and didnot try to embrace Johnny like an old friend or lover might.  "Whatis the matter?"

>   "It'sLucky.  I mean Diana.  She is dead."

>   Doreenturned her head.  "Excuse me?  Are you drunk?"

>   "Ourdaughter.  She is dead."

>   Doreenstepped backward, an incredulous look hardening on her face. "Ourdaughter?  What are you talking about?"

>   Itwas as if the world around them stopped.  Johnny Sid could hear hisheartbeat, could taste a foul bit of bile rising in the back of histhroat.  He opened the guitar case.  "Is this your guitar? The one I taught you to play?"

>   Doreenpeered from her spot, unwilling to step an inch closer to Johnny Sid. "I sold that old thing in a garage sale last year."

>   Johnny'sknees nearly buckled, but he forced himself to remain standing.  "Younever had a daughter?"

>   Doreenshook her head no.

> ***

>   Therewas nothing to do after that moment but to walk away.  Johnny Sid's wholebody ached.  He had no explanation for what had happened to Lucky Palmer.

>   MaybeLucky Palmer was a fan, and figured the only way to get close to him was tomake up a story like she had.  Maybe Diana Jones was just a figment of hisimagination, a sprite from another world set on tormenting him for all of hisearthly sins.  None of it made any sense. Why would somebody do such a thing?he wondered.  It didn't take long to come to a conclusion that was simpleand sure.  He had something Lucky Palmer wanted, and she got it.  Butshe gave him something, too.  She was a thief who gave hope in exchangefor a song.

>   Hewould have gladly given everything he had to her even if she was just astranger.  There was some irony in that thought, but Johnny Sid was tootired to consider it.

>   So,he walked down to Wilmont Street, to the Catholic Church where his unclecommitted suicide in the parking lot, lugging the guitar case and Lucky'sfourteen dollars  as he went.  They were his only worldly possessionsnow.

>   Hewent inside, sat down on the first pew he came to, and waited for whatever camenext.  It was all he knew to do

> ***

>   Ifthere had been a radio on, and Johnny Sid had been sitting outside when theweather turned warm, he would have heard a song blaring from a set of speakers,that was familiar, as a car passed by the church.  But it wasn't tobe.  Lucky was another country for Johnny Sid-not a song he could hang onto.  It was a foreign country with a metal gate, locked tight as a drum,and a long line of folks just like him, were waiting at the border to get in.

>

> THE END

>______________________________________

> Larry D. Sweazy

> WordWisePublishing Services, LLC

> www.larrydsweazy.com

> 317-773-9809

> larrysweazy@prodigy.net

COMMONSENSE

            Buford did not have time for such foolishness; he had important things to do. But Mawas not seeing it that way, at all.

            Sometimes,Ma just did not listen to reason.

            "But,Ma, if I don't get over there soon--" he began, kind of hoping she'd letit go before he had to finish, because he couldn't really think of anything suitable, anything that she might allow was good enough cause to let him out of what was looking to become a rather sorry chore. It wasn't like he could justcome out and tell her that Skeeter had said that the pike were biting, and that he, himself -Skeeter!- had got three hits just that morning, because Mawouldn't really understand how that was important.

            Andit was.

            "Buford,don't you start-- don't you even start. You're going to help Deputy Lennox, andyou aren't going to give me any more trouble about it."

            "But,Maaaawwwwwwww--"

            "Don't you 'but' me. Don't you do it. Don't you 'but' me one more time, Buford, or sohelp me...."

            At least Ma was gracious enough to let it hang like that, and not get all specificin front of company. And Buford had to give it to Lennox-- the lawman wasgracious enough, in his turn, to seem embarrassed for Buford, and wasn't looking at the scene directly, but off into the cypress, away from the house.

            Buford'schest collapsed, and his shoulders dropped into a slouch.

            "Yes'm."

            Maseemed satisfied that persuasion hadn't taken too long, and so didn't gloat orrub Buford's nose in it or anything. "That's a good boy. Now you go and helpthis here polite deputy, and get them poor people back to where's theybelong."

            "Yes'm,"Buford repeated, contrite.

            Thedeputy must have decided that this was an opportune time to rejoin theconversation, such as it was, and chimed in, "Thank you, ma'am. And thankyou, Buford. Your county and the sheriff's department does offer you up theirthanks for your kind service."

            Bufordresisted the urge to spit into the ferns at the base of the porch, so insteadopted to just stare at the back shed, with his lower lip hanging out.

            "Sohere it is, Buford, like I told your ma: Apple Richards took these tourists outinto the Damp, three days gone by. Says this young couple told him they wantedto go camping, see some trees. So he took 'em out. So he says."

            Buford'supper lip curled. He knew Apple Richards. "So he says."

            Thedeputy nodded. He knew Apple Richards, too, which was why he was out talking toBuford. "So he says. And a day ago, we get a call from the lady's sister wayout in Texas. Says she was supposed to hear from the lady the day before-- thatthey were only going out overnight. That was the plan. And when she didn'thear, she got twitchy, and called us the next day. Yesterday, that would be.Normally, okay, that wouldn't be too much, but late last night the tri-countyemergency services center got a Nine-One-One call from the gent's cellularphone. Just long enough to affirm it was the man, on his own phone, calling forhelp, but not long enough to place it."

            Bufordgrimaced. This was certainly sounding like a chore. And one that might takesome time, too. "And you talked to Apple Richards? How did you know totalk to him?"

            Thedeputy nodded. "Wouldn't have, if Claire Sandrant hadn't heard from DwayneMermer that he saw some tourist-types talking to Apple Richards around thattime."

            Whichmade sense to Buford: Dwayne and Apple Richards and a few others in the areamade some good money, most years, taking touri' out into the Damp. Recentyears, even more than usual; folks wanting to see trees and wet plants andsuch, for no good reason Buford could fathom, because they never seemed to fishor hunt, but just stomped around looking at stuff and saying how pretty it was.It was all "Nature in her green majesty," and other such nonsense.But this year had been bad for the lookers, and if Apple Richards got some, andDwayne knew about it, Dwayne would be right jealous, and would be carping aboutit to just about everyone in the world. And Claire worked over at the sheriff'soffice four days per week, so she would have heard about missing folks andknown enough to put it all together. Claire was kind of sharp.

            Thedeputy was still talking. "Apple Richards says he took them out, threedays gone by, and that he was supposed to pick them up yesterday. Says he wentback to pick them up, and they weren't where he'd left them. Says he reckonedthey'd wandered off, looking for other trees to look at, or whatnot. Says alltheir stuff was gone, and that they'd left some tracks he'd followed, but onlyup to the water-- says he looked for an hour, shouting and whatnot, but thatthey didn't come back, and he couldn't find them."

            Bufordgrunted. Only Apple Richards would think to hide behind a story which made himout to be the worst tracker for a hundred miles. The man had no shame.

            "Sayshe came back home-- says it wasn't his never-mind if some fool idjits want togo and get themselves lost and drowned and et. Says he did his part."

            Bufordmade a face that was almost a smile. "Apple Richards says a lot."

            Thedeputy did smile, but it was grim. "That he does. But it don't saymuch."

            Bufordnodded. "He say where he took 'em to?"

            Thedeputy nodded in reply. "The Holler. Back end."

            Bufordturn to Ma. "If I find these folks, and get them home, can I get tofishing with Skeeter?"

            Maturned her nose up. Skeeter had that effect on most people, sometimes includingBuford, even. "Well-- I suppose so. You just better get them people first,and don't worry about Skeeter and his fish 'til after. Hear me?"

            Bufordcontained his glee, not letting it show on his face. "Yes'm!"

            Andthen he was gone-- took off to find them. The quicker, the better.

            Bufordknew it was pointless to believe Apple Richards-- only the sorest idjit woulddo that. But he also knew that while Apple Richards was mean, and worthless,and tough, and shameless, and trash, he also felt pretty sure that AppleRichards wouldn't go so far as to actually kill anybody, active-like. At least,in an unprovoked state. Apple Richards, to Buford's mind, was one of them bulliesthat had a certain streak of cowardice in him, for damned sure.

            Thatwas not to say that Apple Richards was above leaving a couple of city peopleout in the Damp, there to starve and rot and get swallowed up by whatever theyhappened to run across. No, he certainly wasn't above that. Because then itwouldn't be any fault of Apple Richards, now would it? Nope-- it would be thefault of the Damp, and who could help that?

            Thiswas how people like Apple Richards thought, and Buford knew it.