Dead Tomcat

 

The shivering gooseflesh that trilled up his back was fading as Devil drove quickly to the Adams house on Clinker Avenue. It was the part of town that gathered the poorest homes. Homes with peeling paint, settled crookedly on deteriorating foundations, bearing boarded up windows as evidence of old injuries. Most of the yards had returned to the wilder age of the land, devoid of gardens, prickled with wild grasses, the only common marking on each being the path the families trod coming and going from their humble homes.

Devil had left Chance in his office but had brought both Constables Carl Rutledge and Will Smalls and parked two houses back from the Adam's home. Each lawman quietly exited the Buick patrol car and drew their sidearms.

"Carl." Devil said, pointing to the next house, "Get yourself into that yard and cover the back of the Adam's place. If Philip takes a mind to run, order him to stop and if he doesn't, shoot for his ankles. If he has a weapon, don't let him get close. Shoot him in the chest." then; "Will? You're with me."

Carl set off to post up on his position as Will followed Devil to the Adams' front yard. The picket fence was missing a few teeth and the gate had long ago fallen from its occupation and lay inside the yard amongst the tall grass like a beaten down diamond.

"Cover the front. Make sure no neighbour crosses on this side of the street. I'll head inside."

Devil made his way up the well-worn path to the low front porch. He cocked both hammers of his sawed-off and had a finger on both triggers. He'd left the pipes as they usually were; a solid slug in one for grizzly bears, bird shot in the other for rattle snakes. But if Phill Adams was armed and unruly enough to rush him, Devil would use the bird shot to blind him. If he kept coming, the solid slug would take him down.

Devil made the front porch and saw the front door was slightly ajar, the stoop and the porch boards bearing the witness marks of Amos' small bloody shoes as he fled the home. He waited and listened for a moment; the house was silent.

Pushing open the door with the business end of his sawed-off, Devil watched the front parlour slowly revealed; a small table with a flowerless vase, a threadbare red rug, a brick fireplace; the arm of an old green sofa.

Devil pushed the door open further, hearing the old hinges shudder. He saw the blood soaking the edge of the rug and spread wide under the sofa. Further open, he saw that Phil Adams was laying sprawled on the sofa, appearing to be asleep like the drunk he was.

With the door fully open, Devil stepped into the room, his sawed-off aimed at Phil, who hadn't moved. Phil, who wasn't even breathing though his eyes were wide and staring up at the ceiling. The front of Phil's plaid shirt was sopping with blood and the handle of a heavy carving knife stood proud where Devil imagined his heart was impaled by it.

"Gladys?" Devil called into the quiet house.

"In the kitchen." came Gladys' voice. It had the tone of a hopeless woman worn down to the nub by a wearisome world and a marriage to a horrible man. A vampire couldn't have drained the will to live out of her any more than her circumstanced had.

"Are you armed?" Devil asked and heard her give a short bitted laugh.

"No, Devil. Not anymore. I do believe you found my weapon."

"Will?" Devil called over his shoulder, "Get Carl and survey the crime scene in the parlour." Then he walked quietly into the kitchen, avoiding the pooled blood.

When he saw Gladys sitting alone at the kitchen table with her hands folded in front of her, Devil uncocked his sawed-off and slipped it back in his holster. Picking up a wooden chair so it didn't scrape, Devil set it down across from Gladys and sat facing her.

"Was he beating you again?"

"No. Not with his fists." Gladys said with that tired, creaky voice, "Just with his words. He hadn't got to the violent part yet."

"Explain."

"He was bragging about being with a woman named Greta. How young and beautiful she was. How she'd do the things I couldn't bring myself to do." Gladys shook her head, "I can't imagine any young woman being with a drunk who didn't have the sense of a rabbit and smelled like a hog."

"Greta is one of the Tumble Down girls." Devil told her, "Jessie would have made him take a bath first."

"That explains why the ring of dirt around his neck was gone." Gladys said, "I wondered about that."

Gladys sighed.

"I could take the beatings, Devil." Gladys looked up at him, "But I'd had enough of his tomcatting around and bragging about it. Made me doubt I was any good as a wife or a mother."

"What was he doing when you took the carving knife to him?"

"Sleeping."

Devil huffed out a breath; "I wish you were going to say he was coming at you. Then it could be self defence."

"It was self defence." Gladys said, "One more day of him and I'd have just given up and crawled inside my own misery and never come back out."

Devil could hear Will in the parlour snapping pictures of the crime scene with his Rolleiflex camera. and the skritching of Carl writing in his notebook.

"I looked it up in a medical book in the library."

"What did you look up?"

"Where the heart is." Gladys smiled and that smile sent the shivering gooseflesh trilling up his spine once more, "He was so deep in his drunkenness he didn't wake up as I counted down his ribs. The heart is just left of the sternum between the fourth and fifth rib."

Gladys looked up into Devil's eyes.

"I could feel it beating and I felt it lurch when I pushed that carving knife into him. Then it just stopped."

Devil took a slow deep breath and let it out.

Aaron D McClelland

Penticton, BC

Author's Website

The Mailbox

Egbert Dolittle sat with his back against a fence rail staring at a mailbox sitting atop a skewed post across the dirt road. The road didn't have a name because it only had a single farm that ran from where he sat all the way to Cage Creek Road.

Two farms had once shared that nameless road.

Egbert studied the mailbox like it was a sculpture from bygone years, and in a way it was. The mailbox had a large dent in one side that squeezed its middle, turning its rounded top into a peaked one where the big dent was.

Hit by a bat, Egbert thought, by some selfish kid out for a bit of destructive fun.

He searched his childhood memory for a time when he'd done something like that. The only meanness he recalled with any cohesive recollection was the time he grew sick of his mama's rusty brown rooster chasing after him every day and pecking the backs of his ankles instead of rutting with the white chickens which was his job.

It seemed that every morning when he set out for his chores before school, that dang rooster would drop what he was doing and torment him like Egbert owed him money. Egbert couldn't remember ever doing anything to the rooster that would cause him to make a mortal enemy of him, but there he was every morning making his home-life a living hell.

Then came the day both rooster and boy would come to regret. When instead of running, Egbert turned and booted that rooster as hard as he could. Egbert felt the satisfying thump of his boot on the rooster's belly and the shocking squawk it made as it fluttered like a feathered football across the yard to land in a tangle of wings and taloned yellow legs. When Egbert looked down he saw the smudge of blood on the toe of his boot, and when he looked up he saw the rooster hobbling pathetically on one leg toward the safety of the henhouse. That was the moment he felt the sickness of shame that would linger in the pit of his stomach through the ensuing years.

The rooster spent most of his time that week cowered in the henhouse until his right leg healed up enough to carry his weight, but he walked with a limp for the rest of his life.

"Serves you right." Egbert would tell the rooster on mornings to try to make that sick guilt feeling go away but it never did.

Egbert wondered if the kid who bashed in the side of the mailbox felt any remorse. He doubted it. It seemed the world had got mean-natured when the clock ticked over from 1929 to 1930.

Egbert took a long draw of water from the war surplus canteen Mister Otto supplied to all the men at the Relief Camp. It was warm and stale but wet his mouth and washed some of the dried spit away.

He'd been working with a Relief Camp crew digging potatoes for a farmer named Al Munro who he once knew as a friend, but now passed Egbert silently with his eyes fixed on the dirt in front of his boots whenever their paths crossed.

"Hey, Egbert!" Al used to call out to him across the road before the depression hit.

"Hey, yourself, Al!" Egbert would call back, and sometimes invited him over for iced tea on hot afternoons, coffee in the colder weather after harvest. Sometimes they even shared a couple beers at the end of a long day's work. But now a storm cloud of forgetfulness seemed to hover over Al's head as he avoided making eye contact with Egbert.

The bent mailbox across the road had caught his eye for two reasons.

One was that he saw that deep inside it past the big dent was a bird's nest. He didn't know what manner of bird built it, but the nest looked fairly new and well structured, so he imagined it was built just this past spring and the new family had departed to live in the woods. At least the mailbox was some use after suffering its injury.

The other reason he noticed the mailbox was that it was once his. Its bright red paint had faded to dull brown and all that remained of the name Dolittle once painted in bright green was the letters D, L, and the two Ts.

He remembered his wife Alice teasing him the day he painted their name on the new mailbox, saying it looked like christmas.

"We own this farm now, Alice." he told her back then, "Every day is christmas from here on out."

That was thirteen years ago, back when the twenties roared, the Great War was a fading memory, and banks were so flush with cash they were begging people to come borrow some. Sure the bank owned half of his farm back then, but with access to Cage Creek through the small pipeline Egbert laid under the main road, the Dolittle farm did well.

Egbert diversified his farm by planting half his acreage in table grapes and the other half divided equally between melons, squash, and blackberries that were already growing wild in that corner of his acreage and only had to be encouraged to expand their territory.

Everything he grew he was able to sell.

Alice increased their profits on the grapes by producing a brand of grape jelly with 'Dolittle's Pure Grape Jelly' stamped on the lids that was locally popular.

Stores in Arawana, Penticton, and Summerland scooped up his harvested crops and all of Alice's jelly. To make it easier to sell his produce, Egbert had bought himself a used stake-side truck to provide free delivery, making him an invaluable resource to store owners.

The Dolittles earned enough to carry them with ease through the non-productive winters, making a good year-round living while paying down their mortgage as the rich growing seasons rolled past each year in the 1920s.

Because success perfumed the air of their marriage, Alice and Egbert sped together toward their dreams by adding a daughter in 1922, and in 1924 were gifted a second. Annie and Lucille had joined the unstoppable Dolittle train, and by 1928 Annie had started school, happily bouncing to town on the passenger seat while Egbert drove her to town and picked her up after school each day. Lucille was happy because she had Alice all to herself on school days.

The Dolittle farmhouse was an overfilled container of love, hope, and, dreams for the future. Alice spoke often of having another child for she wanted to give him a son.

"Daughters aren't so bad." Egbert would tell his wife, "They smell better than boys."

On Monday evening, October 28, 1929 while doing the books, Egbert calculated they owed slightly less than a quarter of their initial mortgage.

The next day was Black Tuesday.

 News out of New York and Toronto screamed catastrophe, but for a time the stock market crash and the prolonged drought on the prairies left Arawana untouched. 

But each month when Egbert went to the bank to make his mortgage payment, he noticed the serious muted conversations and the lack of the usual friendly greeting. It appeared his own bank, so distant from the big stock markets, was sinking under the pall of what some were calling a recession and others a depression.

Egbert read in the papers that banks in the United States were failing, unable to pay out money evaporated from peoples's savings accounts because of the crash. He never read about a Canadian bank failing, but because the United States was Canada's biggest trading partner, the effects of US failures reached deep into Canada's economy. Its cold fingers even scratching their way into the Okanagan Valley.

The bank raised Egbert's mortgage rate at the same time stores offered him less for his produce. Even Alice's grape jelly soon dropped so low in what it could fetch that it cost her more to make it than she could earn by selling it.

After harvest time in 1930, Egbert had to take a job at Simpson's sawmill working the green chain, grading and sorting lumber just to keep up on his mortgage payments. By spring he was rising before the sun to tend the farm by lantern light, then working ten hours sorting lumber for Simpson. Some nights he could barely stay awake to drive home to a dinner of grape jelly sandwiches.

The Dolittle farm no longer smelled of success, it started to stink of failure and despair. Egbert and Alice did their best to keep things light for the girls, but could feel their love for each other creaking like a loose floorboard under the strain.

Through 1931 they eked by as best they could, selling most of their produce to the distribution companies who paid a tenth of what Egbert could get before the crash. He made a bit more selling to Gilbert Fruit and Vegetables, but they couldn't take much to sell under the awnings of their shack on Main Street, so Egbert would top them up on his way to work at the sawmill each morning.

1932 was the death-knell for the Dolittle finances when Randolph Waldo Simpson, cut the wages for all his sawmill workers from fifty cents an hour to a flat rate of three dollars a day. Three dollars for ten hours of back-breaking work. Thirty cents an hour could barely feed a man's family, never mind make a dent in a mortgage payment, so in desperate anger the men walked out and set up a picket line.

Simpson put ads in all the newspapers, and flyers in all the churches and soup kitchens advertising his thirty cents an hour and replaced his workers with scabs. The strikers stood firm on the line and wouldn't let the scabs into the mill, beating them with sticks if they tried to force their way through. It was the first time Egbert had ever done violence to another man.

Simpson retaliated by hiring a squad of gun thugs up from Vancouver who faced off against the strikers, each sporting short messenger's shotguns. The strikers armed themselves with torches, threatening to burn the mill to the ground.

That was the day Chief Ardolf was shot in the hip by one of the trigger-happy gun thugs, and it set off a riot in town. Windows were smashed, garbage cans upended, mailboxes set afire until the RCMP mounted squad was called in to restore order.

The next week the bank called in the Dolittle mortgage, saying no man who rioted in his home town deserved a mortgage or the farm it was liened against. Egbert begged the bank manager, pleading that he never broke a window or set fire to anything.

"You were part of a strike. You hit Bob Fletcher on the head with a picket sign when he tried to go to work to feed his family." the bank manager said, "You're nothing but a communist agitator."

Despondent, Egbert drove home to find Alice and the girl's bags packed.

"My mama sent us train fare to Vernon." Alice said, "We're moving in with her. My papa says you're welcome to come after you sell the farm if you can hold your temper."

"It'll go to auction." Egbert told her, "Pennies on the dollar. The bank'll take it all."

"I can't help that, Egbert. I'll not have my girls raised in poverty."

Though it broke his heart, he drove them to the station and watched the train take his family away.

He watched from the nameless road the day of the bank auction and saw his farm, his dream, go to the highest bidder for less than a tenth of its worth. The man who bought it was Al Munro, his one time friend and neighbour.

"Back to work!" called the work gang boss.

Egbert capped his canteen and stopped looking at his old mailbox. He climbed to his feet and picked up his shovel, making his way with the other men back to the furrows of ripe potatoes and took up on the row where he left off. 

Egbert got the job because he'd been a farmer and knew how to dig potatoes. You had to come at them from the bottom of the furrow, kicking the spade deep under the mounded rows and prying upwards until the clusters of spuds broke the surface. The men behind him had to crawl along between the furrows and pull the spuds loose from the roots and push them into the sack they dragged along as Egbert moved to the next plant and kicked his shovel deep once more.

It was mindless tiring work, but it was work. He sent half of what he earned each week to Alice in Vernon. He'd be damned if he'd be a slacker when it came to supporting his girls.

The day laboured on until the sun began to set and the field was cleared. Egbert hoisted his shovel onto his shoulder and walked with the others to start the long trek down Cage Creek Road to the Relief Camp. Back to a lumpy cot and stew so thin it would shame soup, a stale bun to sop it up.

And there before him was Al Munro, counting the men and paying the crew boss in cash for their day's work. As Egbert drew near, Al shifted his eyes to the ground.

"You can't even look at me, you gnawing rat, can you?" Egbert growled at his one time friend.

"I got nothin' to say to you." Al mumbled.

"You stole everything I had." Egbert growled, "You and the bank. Now I'm using a spud wrench for your benefit."

"I didn't start this depression. I didn't cause your troubles. I just look out for my family like all good men do." Al said.

Egbert wanted to unshoulder his shovel and blast Al in the side of the head with it. He could feel himself do it and wondered if Al would finally look at him if he did.

Instead, he walked on with the other men toward Cage Creek Road thinking about that old lamed rooster.

Aaron D McClelland

Penticton, BC

Author's Website

Excerpt from 'Crimes Would Pardon'd Be'

 Heart of Stone

Rufus Cox missed the Refuse Getter he piloted down alleyways when he worked as a refuse collection driver in Vancouver. The low-slung rear mount bucket made it easy for his partner to heft garbage cans into it without straining. That wide bucket could hold over ten cans worth before his partner had to activate the motors to lift the bucket and dump it into the large enclosed body from above. The two of them could work half a day before they had to drive to the dump down Grandview Highway to offload by opening the back hatch and tipping the entire dump bed.

Rufus enjoyed the shudder of all the refuse sliding out of the truck like a massive bowel movement as he drove forward and the truck springs lifted.

When he moved to Penticton where a war buddy had a job waiting for him, they gave him a Ford Model AA garbage truck that was no more than a low-sided dump truck, able to hold less than half the Refuse Getter could haul.

They also made him work alone, driving and stopping to hop out and heft the garbage cans himself.

Lifting the cans to shoulder height was heavy work and if there was any liquid in the can he ended up wearing it when he upended the can. It was filthy work, but better than nothing, which is what he had when he couldn't work in Vancouver anymore.

Rufus lost so much of his life when he left the coast.

He left behind a steady girl he planned to marry one day. She didn't understand why he quit his job nor why he wanted to move to Penticton.

"Because I don't have a heart of stone." he told her and she slowly shook her head and clucked her tongue, and thus did their love affair end.

This day, early morning found Rufus sitting in his empty truck near the Penticton train station drinking his morning coffee out of the cup that capped his thermos. It was Arawana's garbage day, so he was waiting for the morning train to pull out so he didn't have to play tag with it all the way up the hill as the rails cut a straight line through the winding road he had to navigate.

He sipped his coffee and watched the spiralling steam that leaked from the engine to lift and vanish like a ghost over the station roof.

During the war, Rufus had been an aircraft mechanic, stationed for a time with the Number 9 Royal Flying Corps, patching bullet holes in Sopwith Camels and replacing broken spars and restringing snapped cables.

His fellow mechanics would joke that they were the only soldiers smart enough to stay safe behind the lines and send their officers into the thick of the war.

Rufus had good memories of the war, even patching up the Camel of Flight Lieutenant Arthur Brown who one day shot down the Red Baron himself; Rittmeister Manfred von Richthofen of the Jagdstaffel 11 squadron.

It was a proud day for the 9th, and a proud day for Rufus who gave Brown a flying machine he could rely on.

When he returned home after the war he got a job as a mechanic servicing city trucks in Vancouver and found out he could earn more driving the new Refuse Getters with a partner perched on the back step doing the heavy lifting. The young fellow that rode on the back of Rufus' truck and hefted dozens of cans an hour was Clarence DuBois and they'd eat lunch together after stopping somewhere to wash their hands. Rufus carried soap and a scrub brush for their fingernails in a tin can on the cab floor. He'd learned about germs that caused diseases and avoided them at all costs.

Even though he rarely touched the garbage cans in Vancouver, he somehow managed to absorb the stink. So each afternoon after he rode the streetcar home to the room he rented in the rooming house on 7th avenue, he went straight to the shared bath to scrub the stink away before dinner. He was a considerate man who always washed down the tub before he returned to his room.

Most evenings in Vancouver, Rufus remained at home and ate a cold dinner while he listened to the radio, then telephoned his sweetheart Jinny after the dinner hour.

Saturday nights he'd pick Jinny up and they'd streetcar it down to Granville Street for dinner and a movie or sometimes went dancing in the flood of sound from Wendell Dorey's orchestra at the Commodore Ballroom.

Jinny Horner was a sweet and playful girl that Rufus delighted in and who he always treated with respect. It was his manners and the fact that he'd served his country in the war that earned him an honoured place at Mister Horner's dining room table every Sunday evening with Jinny sitting across from him. Sure they played around when they were out together; necking and fondling each other in theatres, dance halls, and during picnics in Stanley Park. But in front of her parents Rufus always treated Jinny like an untouchable princess.

Rufus believed he was in it for the long haul back then, knowing that once they were married all the promised delights of her lithe body would be his to enjoy, and according to Jinny his would be hers as well.

Mister Horner also hinted that when they wed he would find him a position better suited than a garbage man for his daughter's husband.

"Refuse Collector, sir." Rufus reminded him.

"A rose by any other name." Mister Horner quipped, leaning close and giving him a playful elbow nudge to the ribs.

Mister Horner never tired of that joke.

Despite the depression, Rufus' future looked bright in Vancouver. Even if Mister Horner''s hinted position never materialized, Rufus was well-liked by his bosses in the Vancouver yards so his job was secure. No matter how poor, the city would continue to generate tons of refuse every day that had to be hauled and buried. And a future with Jinny and the promise of children and a home of their own shone before him like a perfect scene on a movie screen.

But that was then. That was before he knew he could no longer love her.

"You wanna buy some Mary Warner?"

Rufus turned his head and saw a scrawny man standing at his open driver's door window, his teeth gone bad and breath stinking. The man had that punch-drunk look of a man who'd been up all night.

"What?" he asked the man, thinking he might be a pimp.

"You know. Giggle smoke. Goof butts."

Rufus got it then. The scrawny man whose face was cratered with healed up measles scars was trying to sell him marijuana.

"Not interested, bud. Take it on the arches." Rufus told him.

"How about some smack? One sniff and your day gets a lot dreamier."

"I'm going to give you a smack if you don't bugger off."

"Come on, man. I know you wanna."

Rufus reached down and pulled the door handle like he was about to get out and slap the man silly.

"Okay! Okay! No need for violence." the scrawny man screeched as he hobbled away on disjointed stork legs, muttering to himself; "People today, all they turn to is violence. Some giggle smoke and smack would turn the world right."

Rufus had seen a lot of drug dealers in Vancouver, but this specimen was his first in the Okanagan. He relatched his door, wondering what other human garbage was going to find its way up here.

Rufus looked up as he heard the steam engine chuff and the couplers stretch and bite as the morning train dragged itself out of Penticton station. He watched it slowly pick up speed as it passed the nose of his truck on its way up the cut toward Arawana. Rufus sipped his cooling coffee and lit a cigarette as the train made the the slow curve and then watched the caboose shrinking away from him, pulling a hushed silence behind it like a wake. He had to give the train a head start so it was clear of the road he had take so they didn't meet each other again and again at crossings like square-dance partners.

A few more minutes of peace with coffee and a smoke before he took the first lid off the first can of the day.

The first can was always the hardest.

Rufus drove his truck up the winding hill road after he capped his thermos and squeezed the ember off his cigarette onto the pavement. He liked Arawana because he only had to attend the houses and businesses in the town's oblong core.

The orchards, ranches, and some farms up the hill all had compost trenches and burn barrels. Many of the other farms had pigs that ate food scraps. But the close homes in town dragged their garbage cans to the curb if they didn't have an alley, so Rufus always started on Strayhorse Road, the highest stretch of houses in town. He appreciated home owners who clustered their cans together with their neighbours' to save Rufus shoe leather.

Dropping his truck in neutral and ratcheting the parking brake, Rufus donned his gloves and walked to the first cluster of cans. Grabbing hold of the first lid he took a deep breath and pulled it loose. It was like pulling off a bandaid; fast and clean and get it over with. The can was three-quarters filled with food waste, crumpled paper, and ash from a wood stove. Rufus blew the air from his lungs and relaxed, relieved that no horror awaited him inside. He carried it to the dump bed of his truck and upended it.

Then on to the next and the next and the next, placing the empty cans back where he found them and never mixing up the lids as he put them back like hats on children.

Each can got easier to uncap as his day progressed, the repeating memory of his muscles making his work a thoughtless routine and allowed his mind to relax its grip on the horror that lived in his troubled mind.

It had lived there for these past two years, vivid and dreadful like none in his history, like a tolling bell calling the faithful to a funeral.

That memory was born on a spring day and because it was Vancouver it was raining. Rufus drove the Refuse Getter down the alley behind  Prior Street in Strathcona like it was on rails, moving slower than walking speed so Clarence could lift and dump the garbage cans from each side of the alley. Rufus was counting the cans so he was prepared to stop and let his partner activate the lever lifting the rear mount bucket and dumping the collection into the bed.

The routine of that morning was about to unravel like a battle-torn flag in a gale.

Rufus heard the clatter of a lid being lifted then dropped, then Clarence's shrill shout. He hit the brakes and checked his side view mirrors but couldn't see Clarence, but he could hear him.

"Jeezuz! Oh sweet Jeezuz!" Clarance shrieked, "Roof! Roof! Sweet Jeezuz!"

Rufus pulled the stick shift out of low gear and rattled it in neutral then yarded on the brake lever. Leaving the truck idling, Rufus opened his door and jumped onto the slippery cobblestones and ran to the back of the truck.

Clarence had run out of voice by then and was sitting in the puddled water along the centre of the alley, pointing a suddenly palsied hand at one of the three garbage cans.

"What is it?" Rufus asked, but Clarence could no longer speak.

Rufus walked to the suspect can and lifted off the lid that sat askew from Clarence dropping it.

Inside, on top of all the garbage was a baby. It was curled on its side the way babies do when they sleep. But it wasn't sleeping. Rufus knew that at first glance. Its eyes were half open, its skin was mottled pale blue and grey, it wore no diaper, and was wrapped in no blanket.

It looked like a newborn.

Someone had thrown a baby in a garbage can and walked away, and that image burned itself in Rufus' memory like an unwanted photograph.

Rufus couldn't remember if it was Clarence or himself who found a telephone and called the police. He couldn't remember if it was the police or the firemen from Firehall #1 who arrived first. He couldn't remember answering the questions the police asked him but he was sure he had. He couldn't remember the driver his boss sent down to drive Rufus and Clarence back to the city yards, nor the streetcar ride home after he was given the rest of the day off.

After seeing that discarded dead baby in a garbage can, Rufus' mind was tangled with questions that he couldn't answer; Who was that baby? Was it stillborn or was it left in a garbage can to die cold and alone? Did the baby's mama not want the baby? If she didn't, why not walk the extra block and leave it on the doorstep of the firehall and ring the bell before running off? Or did its daddy do this horrible thing? Did it come from one of the tenements lining Prior street? Or from one of the hobo jungles that had sprouted in downtown parks as the homeless and unemployed migrated to Vancouver?

Much later in the day he remembered calling Jinny and her meeting him in a park. She said it was awful that someone would do such a thing, but didn't know why he wanted to quit his job. She didn't know why he suddenly wanted to move away from Vancouver. She didn't know why he was letting someone else's bad behaviour affect him so much.

"Because I don't have a heart of stone." he told her and she slowly shook her head and clucked that perfect pink pointed togue, puzzled by his words.

"It's just a dead baby, Rufus." she said, rubbing his back.

And in that moment he knew he no longer loved Jinny and never could again.

'Just'

It was ironic that the only job his old war buddy in the Okanagan could find for him was as a refuse collector. But a job was a job and he doubted people up here threw babies away in the trash.

Aaron D McClelland

Penticton, BC

Author's Website

Nest Of The Basilisk

Basilisk: (bæz.ə.lɪsk) - also know as the Serpent King, is a mythical beast with lethal breath and gaze, whose nest can be located by the scorched earth surrounding it.

A basilisk can only be slain by seeing its reflection in a mirror

Almost 20 years ago I read about a woman who arranged her own sexual torture and murder. She had met her killer in an online chat forum and willingly arranged to meet him at a hotel room far from her home where he made her final wishes come true. Her body was discovered and her killer arrested within 48 hours.

The police and public were horrified, even the administrators of the chat forum that catered to torturous fantasy roleplay and sexual death were quick to respond with a public statement, and instituted a rule that members found to be trying to make such arrangements would be permanently banned and the encounter sent to the FBI.

Fast forward to three years ago; I set out to write a novel about the incident and interviewed many participants in the online chat rooms. I was surprised to discover that the people who indulge in this fetish aren't the slavering maniacs I imagined them to be. The range pf their personalities and education level spans the width of society; students, professors, professionals, sensualists, and yes, some semi-literate thrill seekers.

I framed the story within a patient/psychologist relationship, and as it unfolds the psychologist begins to suspect his new patient is an emerging serial killer. The more his patient reveals about himself the more the psychologist believes he is a powder keg of murderous intent. Along the way the psychologist follows the breadcrumbs his playful patient leaves for him and becomes obsessed with what he finds.

Nest Of The Basilisk is a grim psychological horror, one that has taken me two years to work up the courage to publish.

Look for it in late October.

Aaron D McClelland

Penticton, BC

Author's Website

Caravan Dreams

Quinn listened to the ghosts in the deep on every run. Her mama had taught her how. Once Caravan Dreams threaded its assigned departure lane; once the fore and aft disks spun up and the hole flashed open before the prow and the ship shuddered forward then jerked hard, straining the dampeners; once the stars blurred from ultraviolet to red, mama showed Quinn how to sit quiet in the whispering ship and open the comm wide in the range below military and cargo frequencies and put on the headset. Then she would hear them. Voices lost in time. The voices of the ghosts who plied the vastness of space long before Quinn was born. Long before Caravan Dreams left space dock to take their family past the stars.

Now Quinn runs the feed through the ship-wide sound plates so she can hear them no matter were she is. The voices driving Baz to his bunk below her own, his pillow pulled tight over his sensitive ears. He didn't like hearing from the dead. But Quinn did.

Though foreign and responding to call signs and names long slipped from memory, the voices reminded Quinn that Caravan Dreams was once a family long-hauler, its throat packed tight with cargo, its belly filled with brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles and cousins. A ship always alive with voices, family posted to all six watches meaning someone was always asleep, someone awake, someone eating and laughing, someone watching newsies or dramas in the rec hall.

Quinn couldn't sleep without the sound of voices in the ecosystem of Caravan Dreams giving her comfort, even if they were voices of the dead.

"Who was Gagarin?" a young Quinn asked mama after listening to the ghosts.

"He was a Russian man. The first in space." mama told her.

"What system did he visit?"

"Sol. Only Sol." mama said, "He only orbited Earth."

"Sol Prime."

"Yes, Sol Prime.

"It's dead now."

"Not completely. Some humans survive even today."

"But Auntie May taught us it was destroyed in the war by. the nukes."

"The cities died and most people, but some still live."

"And fight."

"Yes, they still fight. Now off to bed, Quinn.

"Yes, mama."

Aaron D McClelland

Penticton, BC

Author's Website

The Pitfalls of AI

There is a stirring within Twitter's #WritingCommunity about AI replacing human authors, some decrying the extinction of the craft. The Writers' Guild of America is threatening a strike over the studio use of AI. They've discovered that the studios are taking the scripts they have written, and asking chatGPT and other AI text generators to come up with new plot ideas / character arcs, and then not paying the writers.

I don't ascribe to this doomsday thinnking. Writers translate life to words, AI researches and mimics

In the dirty-thirties, when John Steinbeck witnessed orange grove owners bulldozing tons of fresh oranges into a pit and covering them with lye to keep the price of oranges high, and they did it in front of starving migrant children. He saw a story that had to be written.

He bought an old WWI ambulance, tossed a mattress and coffee pot in the back and traveled from migrant camp to migrant camp listening to the stories told by the Okies. He absorbed not only their stories but their existence as well and won a Pulitzer Prize for Grapes of Wrath.

I recall one detail he wrote of that stuck with me; on a cold morning he approached a woman in a camp who was cooking breakfast for her husband and grown son. He asked if he could warm himself by her fire. She welcomed him to. He described stepping forward and reaching out, and when he felt the heat on his hands he shivered, his body acknowledging how cold he really was. An AI could only copy that, never create it with 'personal' experience.

I think the true danger of AI is the further dumbing down of future generations as they rely on AI to think for them. This past week I've heard two young reporters on NPR pronounce the word 'important' as 'impor-unt', telling me they've only heard the word spoken amongst their peers and have never read it.

The United States has led the way in anti-intellectualism for two hundred years, with each generation becoming more ignorant than the last, and look at the shit-show their country has become.  Image these borderline cretins relying on AI for thought, and when that happens how a generation can be steered to any nonsensical mindset if a government weaponizes a central AI;

"War is Peace"

"Freedom is Slavery"

"Ignorance is Strength"

Oh, how they will love Big Brother.

Aaron D McClelland

Penticton, BC

Author's Website

From 'Crimes Would Pardon'd Be' - a Devil Brigham Case File

 A Butt-Shot Bishop

Deacon Fraser had sat quietly praying in the private hospital room beside the snoring Bishop for almost an hour before his superior awakened with a series of snorts, coughs, and moans.  It had taken Bishop McClure a few moments to collect his awareness that he was still in his hospital bed twelve days after suffering his injury.

As a fledgling priest, Deacon Fraser had been loaned to Bishop McClure to assist with his recovery and to act as private secretary during his convalescence.  He was intimidated by the often loud and demanding McClure, but served humbly in the grace of the Holy Mother of God.

"Archbishop Linus sends his prayers for your speedy recovery after the grievous assault on your earthly body, with the fervent hope that your pious soul is unrelenting in its service to our Lord, Most Reverend."

"Is that what he hopes?" McClure sputtered, "Arrogant man, the Archbishop, taking the name of one of our saints."

"It is said that when attaining a higher station, a new name represents a new life in our order, Most Reverend"

"I know what it represents, you young fool.  I was speaking to his character."

"Of course, Most Reverend." Fraser bowed his head.

"Oh, I am weary of lying on my side all the day and night to nurse my injury." McClure sighed, "I am weary of the food they bring me, weary of the rough hands of nurses who bathe me, weary of it all.  God, give me strength and relive my pain."

Fraser crossed himself and kissed his crucifix.

"What news of the savage who tried to kill me?" McClure asked,  "Is he in chains?"

"Not as yet, Most Reverend.  I spoke with Sergeant Brightworth today as I do every morning and he reports their best tracker is still on the hunt."

"It's been almost two weeks!" McClure shouted, then farted and winced.

"You are still in great pain, Most Reverend."

"Of course I'm in pain.  As you would be with this wound.  I was shot in the back by a filthy indian set to kill a white priest."

"Yes, Most Reverend." Fraser answered, wondering if the buttocks were considered part of the back.

"When the savages are caught, I want the boy transferred from the Inkameep school to St. Joseph's in Williams lake.  They know how to deal with reprobate savages there.  I'll contact the Headmaster myself and recommend daily beatings until that filthy animal is subdued or in the ground."

"He is just a boy, Most Reverend." Fraser said, aghast at the violence the Bishop espoused.

"He is no more than an animal.  Sired by animals.  Raised by animals.  And if he fails to renounce his filthy culture and come to the Lord and rise to the status of a Canadian citizen, he will be put down like an animal." McClure sputtered.

It is his pride that speaks such venom, Fraser thought to himself, shame from his wounded buttock.

"Have you met with the so-called Chief of the tribe?"

"I have, Most Reverend.  He expressed his deep regret of the attack on your Holy self, and wishes you a speedy recovery."

McClure snorted with derision.

"He also does not believe that Ruff, the young man who travels with his grandfather and cousin, fired the shot as he has always been a good boy who has assimilated with the Naramata community."

"Indians lie, young Fraser." McClure said, "It is a well-entrenched nature of their breed."

"I'm not sure, Most Reverend."

"I am sure.  You haven't worked with savages as I have.  They are a pack of liars, thieves, and drunkards.  Next you meet with the Chief, inform him his tribe will be held financially responsible for my hospital stay and Doctor bills, plus a fifty percent tithe to the Church for this vicious attack."

"They are a poor people, Most Reverend."

"And will become poorer until they learn to be Canadians instead of Godless heathens.  This is a Christian nation founded by good and powerful men and the sooner the indians accept that the better off they'll be." McClure told Fraser, "Invite him to bring his elders to Mass in Arawana and ask Father Urban to devise a sermon that illuminates the joy of servitude to the Church."

"Yes, Most Reverend." Fraser bowed his head once more.

Deacon Fraser was troubled as he walked to the train station to ride up the hill to Arawana and meet with Father Urban and fulfill the task set by the Most Reverend Bishop.  

His childhood placed him in New Westminster, a young member of Saint Peter’s Parish.  He'd been a timid boy then – as he was a timid man now – terrified of the chaotic and rough play of other boys his age and even those younger.  He never got the hang of sports, nor unravelled the mystery of arithmetic, and didn't understand the unpleasant humour of his peers, but like all boys he ached to excel at something.  Young Fraser found it in the Church.

His Parish Priest took pity on this frail timid boy and encouraged his obsession with the history of the Church by allowing him free access to the Parish library.  Fraser would spend hours in the dim room, tucked in a nook under the single window with a heavy tome splayed open on his legs.  He was fascinated with Eusebius' writings on Peter the Apostle, one of the three earliest pillars of the Church, along with James the Just and John the Apostle.  Peter had formed the Jerusalem ekklēsia, and led the early soldiers of Christ to convert the heathen Jews and Muslims to the true faith.

Reading Church history filled young Fraser's mind with images of struggle and triumph and he began to imagine himself as part of a great spiritual army, fighting a war to save all men's souls.  While most of his peers took their delight in the cheaply printed comic books of the era; The Yellow Kid, Little Orphan Annie, and lusted after Fritzie Ritz, Fraser was shaping himself to be a Church historian and ached to be part of a Holy Army.

At the age of seventeen he took his vows and sought out mentors in the Catholic hierarchy, and met then Bishop Garrison who would one day ascend to become Archbishop Linus.  Garrison fostered Fraser's greatest passion and appointed him to be one of his secretaries, setting him the task of gathering modern writings of noteworthy Priests in British Columbia to carry the tradition of the Church's recorded history forward.

Fraser had at last found his place in the world, compiling and cataloging sermons and writings that inspired and represented the current efforts of the Clergy to save the souls of human kind.  These men were the newest generation of the Soldiers of Christ and Fraser set a life goal to become one of them.

It was while at this duty that Fraser came across the Sermons and writings of a Priest named McClure – a man who had journeyed deep into the southern desert lands of the province to bring the word of God to the savages who'd lived for generations without the blessings of devotion and prayer.  McClure spoke of lofty battles against the savagery and superstitions held by the heathen natives, turning them from their false gods of land and wind and water.  Away from believing in the pagan spirit world and that animals had souls.  He spoke of the delight reaching their children and turning them away from the ways of their tribes and toward the light of the Saviour.

This was a Holy man pulled from the pages of the Church's early historic writings, a man destined for greatness, perhaps one day being Canonized to take his place beside Saint Peter,  Saint John the Baptist, and Saint James, son of Alphaeus.

Reading further writings about Father McClure, Fraser found him to be a kindred spirit; another boy shunned by his peers, failed at school, but finding his path in a Church library to become a crusading member of the Clergy.

So when Archbishop Linus told Fraser of how Bishop McClure barely survived an assassination attempt by a heathen indian and was hospitalized with a grievous wound, Fraser grew alarmed.  When the Archbishop said the Most Reverend Bishop required a secretary to assist him during his recovery, Fraser was elated to volunteer and travel to the wilder lands of the Okanagan to fill that position.

It was Marcel Proust who cautioned his readers to never meet one's heroes, for the man Fraser met was not the man his writings portrayed him to be.  Bishop McClure was not the Crusader of Christ Fraser thought he was, who he met was a bitter man filled with anger and spite with a near bloodthirsty lust not to save the indian soul, but to punish it.  

Speaking to other local Priests, Fraser learned that they fell into three categories in regard to the Residential Schools run by their order; those who were ignorant of what happened there, those who were disgusted by abuses at the hands of the school's Priests and Nuns on the children, and those who saw them as prisons more to punish godless children than to save them.

Deacon Fraser's entire belief system and been challenged then shattered in the past week as Bishop McClure's secretary, and worse; given the parallel his life held with the Bishop's, he wondered if in time, he too would become bitter and hate filled.

As the train pulled him up the winding track to Arawana, Deacon Fraser wondered if Father Urban would be amenable to including the Local Indian elders in a celebratory feast of fellowship in the Church as well as a sermon.  Saint Lawrence's feast day was approaching and Fraser thought it apropos to honour him.  The irony that Lawrence had also been a Deacon when he was martyred was not lost on him.

Aaron D McClelland

Penticton, BC

Author's Website