Goose Hunting

Goose Hunting

         by Honkin' Hank the Hillbilly

                  If a goose sits on your head

                  demands the feathers from your bed

                  it's time to head down south for good

                  to live the kind of life you should

That Sunday, Milford gave himself over entirely to his inclinations and achieved the biggest origami he had ever met managed. He gave up the hobby from that moment on and never bothered with folding paper again. It was the Sunday of the raid on the dormitory. Girls of all sizes, shapes, color, height, scent, dress, length, bent, and even appearance, converged on the first floor and worked their way upwards, floor by floor, missing not a room, and purged it of offenders. The displaced boys, guilty of frequent misdemeanors over the years, accepted their lot and left for the city where apartments were not quite as affordable, but available nevertheless. But, too, that was the Sunday of the dinner party at which the mayor and the university president were caught insitu flagrante and expelled from their respective posts. These two married and raised children after, but neither has been heard of much since. 

          That Sunday, too, set off a series of events that have plagued our university town for two decades. I tell this to you now as one remembering the events that I participated in and had not a little to do with. My very appearance excites comments and incites rage. When, as I did, I also actively involve myself in the moment's public activities, terrible things can and do occur. I tend to keep to myself now for the most part, but it has taken me almost twenty years to fully understand the nature of my folly.

         The first thing that devolved from the events of that Sunday was the morning paper. At midnight, a party at which I was in attendance turned into a brawl that left two men's lives hanging by a thread. One of the young adults, Jose Phillipe, son of the respected Reeve, Joseph Philippe, later died on the operating table. His father was overwrought and took up federal politics shortly thereafter. The other men survived, but an observer may see him to this day wheeling himself about on an automated wheelchair in the Student Services Building confronting students with loud nasal noises and spittle in a sort of bellowing call for individuals to come attend to him. Members of the Christian Students Organization frequently can be seen for ten minutes at a time standing around his chair in quiet support. When they leave him to get back to their studies he calls after them in loud incoherence.  

         Later in the day, about 10 o'clock, those of us who had gone to the hospital to check on our companions, and were asked to leave by security, marched our way to the back of the pub on Hamlin since we were out of beer. We broke down the doors and stole a dozen cases of whatever beer we could lay our hands on and sat outside drinking waiting for the police to come, which they soon did. In jail, we sang songs such as "We shall overcome," and "Go tell it on the mountain," and "Llght the spot that stains my soul." Some of us were released and others kept. I got out. I think that no one at the police station wished to have to look at me for any longer than necessary. McKay stayed in, and he is in prison to this day for repeated offenses in the following years, ranging from petty theft two grand larceny. What he did the last time was steal a Cadillac that he'd been let to test drive. They found it in Alberta, and him in British Columbia. 

       We shot many geese on the University lawn that Sunday afternoon after we'd been released. With 22's, three of them taken from our father's basements, we walked up and down the university lawns and shot the birds. We were goose hunting and preparing for a major Beta phi Kappa wild meat cook-out that evening. We never did eat them. They needed cleaning and none of us knew how or felt like doing it that. The event that most astonished those of us who began to be aware that some sort of mysterious force was working on our local history was The sudden decision by the Provost, Mr. Alcock, to oust the subordinates in the administration and place on the board many of the parents of the malingerers who were responsible for the general malaise at the University in the past year. Grospbeck's father became the Don of Residences; Mr. Cruft, the stepfather of Grady Parkin Bangcock, was offered and accepted the position of Rector to the Anglican Diocese; Whisper Willowchuk's mother took over the Deanship of Ambri College, where so many of her relatives had held important posts; my father became head librarian at the Dorchester Music Llibrary and sat on the university board of directors from then on to his death sixteen years later; Mycroft Spenceretti, the father of the Vagina Williama, took on the responsibility of Assistant to the Treasurer and still holds that post all these years later.       The entire social edifice of the University, and so the town, crumbled and we now have to live with the effects of our actions. Never will we live down the fact that we caused it. We did to this town what was done to it and we all, except Raymond Slim, feel shame and guilt for having so deformed Slocum's future. I offer this letter as a public apology that, though late, may be of use to those who follow.

Vying For Scraps

Vying for Scraps

            Guy de Perpetual

C. L. Dodgson sat in his kitchen in Christ Church studying the picture of Alice he had that afternoon completed. Eleven o'clock, and he was still wearing his shabby muslin housecoat. Outside the rain entranced the footman who smoked his pipe under the shelter over the door, in no hurry for someone to need him. Wet conifer through the open French doors troubled Charles with his first thoughts of gin. Two magpie vied for scraps at the back door where Lorna would be readying the pantry for breakfast. Coffee had brewed, biscuits baked in the oven, the fireplace ticked neatly without flames, and Mother purred to be picked up at his feet. He would give up photography. 

          This likelihood had occurred to Dodgson walking home the afternoon Alice and her friends sat for him in Colonstone Ravine. He had spent much time moving the heavy equipment there by boat and had been worn to a frazzle by the effort, physically unrobust as he was. Each spring the winter's inactivity in classroom and study rasped away at him, discouraging and tentative as the recovery of youthfulness again turned out to be. It would be delightful not ever to bother with the physical weight of the business. Slowing strength and the fuss of massive cameras, however, figured only barely in his decision. Another factor of greater significance bore the responsibility and he knew with clarity the reason he must retire his hobby and equipment immediately. The Rev. Hulme would surely sue, Liddell might hire a thug to take some measure of revenge, and Wycherley almost certainly intended a social purge that would publicize the event and paint him black in the eyes of the faculty as well as his seven sisters, aunt Sep, auntie Lancaster, and grandmother Annie. Time had risen from its long sleep and spoken aloud the startling nature of his desires, spoken these for the first time, even to him.

        The event in Colonstone Ravine occurred unexpectedly. He had set up his 9 mm Leica on the short stand after slogging it through the gorse and Yorgish fern that choked the riverbank and made passage slow and maddening. Tired, perspiring, uncharacteristically short tempered, he had barked at the girls to behave themselves when all they were doing was playing in the water and threatening accidentally to fall in and muddy their pretty dresses. Their shoes already would need scrubbing, for mud showed up inevitably in outdoor shots.

           "Barefoot!" he shouted to Alice and Lydia. "You will have to take those shoes off now. I won't have them in the photos. And they were perfect for this! Auntie let you put on your best and she is so particular about keeping them clean!" Then he felt remorse and put down his camera and walked to the three girls where they stood sorrowful and sullen among the weeds, their backs to him. He spread a blanket and patted it and said he was sorry. They loved him and believed him and so they sat. He put his arms around them and hugged two of them to him. The third sat in his lap and put her head on his chest.

         "Tell us a story," Alice said, eyes mixed with the memory of his sharp tongue and the pleasure of his apology. He did. He told them about the wonders of Alice in a strange land where rabbits scolded children and water filled their shoes of its own accord. While he told it, attentive though they were, one of them, and then all of them, giggling, removed their wet shoes and placed them on the grass at the edge of the blanket. Their stockings were still wet and Dodgson mentioned this to them. Laughing, Alice said, "Let's take off those, too!" And they did that. Dodgson smiled and hurried to his camera. 

        "Be beggars ," he called. The girls jumped about and acted oddly, chanting, "We are beggers. We need bread. Please spare us a little soup. Our stomachs are so hungry." They held hands and danced in a circle, their little bare feet happy on the soft woollen spread. They looked towards Charles, laughing as they twirled, their dresses floating in the air above their knees. They all fell breathless in a heap and began to tickle each other. Charles asked them to pretend to tickle one another for a still shot. This was difficult to achieve. The action of tickling was too dependent on movement and actual doing.

          "Let's stand and take a photo with each of you being a beggar. That will also be very nice," he said. The youngest, Myrnette, stood first. "Undo your buttons a little, and show your shoulder as if your bodice is torn and you are poor," he instructed. She unbuttoned two buttons. The other two began to imitate her and did the same. They unbuttoned three and stood just off the frame taunting Charles. He smiled at them to reassure them that he felt no irritation anymore.

        "Lift up your skirt a little to indicate that you are standing in the mire of a fen and so are of the poor beggar kind," he called from under his hood. The two girls outside the frame raised their skirts a few inches, and then quite a lot, till their underwear appeared, visibly, white, startling against the lonely gorse.

          "Girls!" Charles said, and jerked his head out into the daylight. "Are you teasing me?" he asked after a pause, with false scolding in his voice. He shifted his feet and put his hands on his hips in imitation of an angry nanny.

       "Yes we are! We are naughty girls and you can't do anything to us!" they called in high, squeaky voices, laughing and jostling each other. Then one of them pulled her dress off altogether and lay on the grass. The other two by now had gotten into the spirit of playful naughtiness and took theirs off, too. One, the least precocious of the three, removed her underwear also and stood there naked. She did a handstand, and then lay on the grass with her knees in the air. Charles said nothing, suppressing his feelings. Then Alice, too, and Miss Wycherley, quickly removed their clothes and ran about the camera and about Charles in this state. They entreated him and said, "Take off your jacket, Charles. Take off your shirt. Take off your shoes. Take off your belt. Take off your trousers. Take off your socks. Take off your underwear. Take off your underwear." 

       And he did that.

During His Last Sixty Years Wiley James Met Only Eleven People

During His Last Sixty Years Wiley James Met Only Eleven People

         Extreme-Dancing Douglas Riveter

Some men find city life dull, and the people dull who live there. They find themselves dull, too, when they imagine how it might be if they could reflect on their circumstance, take a new bearing, and change direction. Wiley James was one of those men who had grown, through constant constrictions at his place of work, weary beyond endurance of the city. He delivered auto parts for Piston Ring. His boss seldom showed up but criticized his employees when he did. 

          One day on Higgins, at Polluck's vegetable and fruit distributors, a grader left Wiley's car stuck in two feet of dirty snow. He shovelled it free. He stopped at home for some gear and a thermos and headed east along Highway One. He picked up his sled at Wharton's in Sioux Narrows. This took some time since he was alone. Back at the turnoff to Highwind Lake, he stopped his truck, backed up to a drift, and hauled the machine off. He drove his truck along the side road until he found a likely spot to leave it, hidden from highway view. A few minutes later he was on his way across the frozen lake to a cabin of which he knew. A man on Christmas tree island had some years ago lost his wife in childbirth. The cabin stood empty as far as Wiley knew.

         Islands drifted by in the snow-blowing white. A storm built. Shoreline looked faded and distant. Then suddenly near nearby and hazy. The roar of the motor muffled in the denseness of wind and snow. Soon in this purity of being Wiley felt only a floating of spirit and the rush of slow motion. All the sadness of the city lifted from him in those twelve miles. The skies above, as the snow below, and as the forest itself, contained only two colours, gray and grayer. The snow gray and graying blew with purity over his helmet. The trees nearby, waving past in silence, appeared from out of their hundred year placement in a gray of a slightly darker shade. His inward being itself turned to a welcome and cold gray that responded to nothing as much as the thought of a wood fire blazing and the glimmer of candle light on the old brown gloss of the log cabin walls.

        Christmas tree island came in sight, the sled slowed, the cabin materialized out of the gray light, the land lifted him out of the lake and then all motion stopped before the door of the dark abode. Wiley stepped off the sled. He heard the silence in the sudden noise of wind. He stood in the middle of her peace and strong being. Being here was. He mounted the steps to the veranda. He tried the door and found it locked. He felt about until he found a key behind a box of kindling. He stepped through the door and into the damn cold room. It was 5 o'clock in the afternoon. The day was drawing to a close. He saw the stove. He took kindling and placed it around a page of newspaper he fished from an inside coat pocket. He lit the match, which flared and gave his immediate surroundings light.The paper took, the kindling began to crackle, and then to flare and burn. He added larger wood chunks and rose to look around. This would be his home. Here he would be happy. A moose head mounted above the living room couch smiled down at him.

         At last the house was warm. It not taken two hours. The temperature outside was thirty below. Now he took off his jacket and sat on an easy chair in his shirt sleeves. He drank coffee and ate biscuits that he had brought from home. He spread butter and raspberry jam on them and dipped them in the steaming liquid. The wind returned from silence and become loud and insistent in his ears. He put some toilet paper in each ear to get himself acclimatized to the noise around him. In the city he had not heard a thing. Cars honking, traffic slowing, engines surgeon, twenty people talking aloud in a room, the TV blaring, all had been silent to him. Here, the creek of a bow above the roof drew itself into his ears like it had been shouted. At night he lay there thinking, considering Winnipeg, considering Calcutta. Nearby, a wolf howled. Its sudden presence made the hair lift on his neck. It called again and again and came to stand beside his cabin where it spoke twice more before disappearing.

         In the morning, hungry, not having brought food, he opened a can of peaches from the pantry, thawed it on the stove, dipped biscuits in the sweet juice and made coffee. Afterwords, he dressed and headed back across the lake towards his truck. He drove into Sioux Narrows and to the grocery store there. He bought bacon, flour, sugar, both evaporated and powdered milk, syrup, tea, coffee, yeast, and fishing line, and returned to his sled and across the lake to his new home. For two weeks he did little. He knew the pain of not working. Not working is man's hardest job in this Puritan world. Then he grew accustomed to the routine of living as he pleased. He set up traplines. He hunted. He fished. He ate and slept. This is how he lived the rest of his days. Wiley never returned to the dullness of city life again.

          

.

Spirits

Spirits

        by Douglas Three-fingers

Pow-wows came slowly into their being in this region. Pow-wows did not used to be pow-wows. They were only what happened after the war party returned victorious from some event of revenge, expansion, protection or assimilation. The liberal consumption by a community at one and the same moment of sweet grass, tobacco, pemmican, dog meat, horseflesh and other "sweet meats" indicated the event as an event. It happened much like other things happened. Stars came into view that had long that year lain underneath the horizon. The sun clouded over from the smoke of forest fires. Beaver gave up thick coats in wintertime. Men grew listless and asexual in springtime. Pow-wows were not one of these knowns. 

          When pow-wows first came into existence they were the continuation of these other events that already were. The same "sweet meats" under use and in exercise faced the event's motions. Males grew listless. Females aspired. Old ones felt the greatness of their years. Nothing seemed different from the old days. But all of it was. None of it was the same. Now the event had a name. Now it was an event to be spoken of. Now it was language and not thing. No war party had returned victorious. No warriors were missing among a returning raiding party. No women wept for lovers or husbands recently sent bravely on their way. No wise man sat speaking or thinking or dreaming, and upon whose spoken judgment death or life for the group would depend.

        The stone rings above the pictographs at Dryberry Lake showed them, the pow-wowers, the very being of the pow-wow's past. The hieroglyphs and pictographs held out to them, like food to a hungry coyote, the real existence of their ancestors and the fact that they were the descendants of a strangely foreign people though coloured like and set like and haired like those who had them preceded. Yet, they were now doing a pow-wow, not a war. They only looked at stones, not hauled huge ones into concentric rings. They spoke the, and wrote the, old codes, not lived them. 

       Do you wish to know who I am, to speak of these things? Do you wish to see where I sit, writing of such matters? And have you a wish for me to clarify my view of these items of thought so that my biases may be named? I am Douglas Three-fingers. I derived that name from my tendency to consume Seagrams or Jack Daniels or Glenfiditch or any  such fine liquors in notable quantities. I sit In a messy room above the Royal Albert Arms where I have been confined these many years. I am without ambulance since my legs were shot off at the Battle of Iwo Jima. I have no more visual view of the world about me than did that pathetic Bartleby, the Scrivener. A brick wall immediately outside my window keeps returning my thoughts to my reflections on love and life more so than on nature. As for my perception of such matters as pow-wows and past realities of First Nations peoples, I am not a clairvoyant, nor do I deem to understand social formations well enough to expect to influence thinkers about the ramifications of meditation on these same formations. I learned what I know and so see what I see as a result of having mostly no one to talk with these sixty years.

        The government through veterans' affairs provides a home service of sorts, and thus I receive the means to live.  Books arrive frequently from a public home reading program. The library willingly provides such materials as I request, if they themselves don't carry them. My drink comes from the government liquor store two blocks east on Main Street. A bottle a day is all that is required to keep up my spirits. (Once, however, when for a period of time my means insufficiently covered my expenses, I made my refreshment at home in the form of wine from kits purchased at a nearby wine-making store.) My hair has remained surprisingly dark. At seventy-eight I look fifty. I know that. My atrophied extremities notwithstanding, I am a man of handsome proportions and features. Though no woman has entered these rooms now for twenty years. The last time that I saw what a woman looked like underneath her apparel I was a fifty-eight year old man (looking forty!) dressed to the nines. Now, that is another story with which I shall regale you some day if you should choose to visit me again, my dear Agatha.

Square Off

Square Off

       by Big Ducat Dougie Duvet

Wilber and Piccadilly squared off over the girl. She officiated. She had started it. They fought in the Pavilion. Outside it was too cold and snowy. She wore a dress with a red cardigan over it. Wilber sported new running shoes of which he felt a bit smug. Pic divested himself of his t-shirt. He always wore t-shirts. They would take one blow each. Then, if they both still stood they'd each take another. And so on until one of them fell. I know this because I am Wilber's attorney. I have here before me the notes I made the day Wilber came to lay the complaint. As plaintive he deserves my support, but in fact I tend to believe Piccadilly's side of the story. 

       Ivy said go, they drew lots, Piccadilly struck first, a great blow on the top of Wilber's head. He fell like a log and never regained consciousness. He claims never to have regained consciousness. When he spoke to me he apologized for his inexactness. I wrote down what he said and read it back to him. He said it was different than that but it would have to do. Piccadilly stands six foot eleven inches and weighs two hundred and eighty-seven pounds. I keep my scale handy in case events require me to make judgments about a client based on his or her weight. Wilber tops the scale at one hundred thirteen pounds seven ounces. He smokes, drinks beer, speaks often of starting an exercise program one day and suffers from a bad cough that he cannot shake. The girl has a very pretty face. At two hundred and forty-three pounds, and six foot four in her stocking feet, she has caused many a man's heart to skip a beat.

        She proposed the fight and then, when Piccadilly had won, she walked over to him and dealt him such a blow to his nose that he fell over backward and lay there unconscious. Now they all live together. They stand a better chance of resolving issues that way. They don't have to wait for a convenient hour to speak but, unemployed all, and living on welfare, may take their jolly time to articulate their reasons and complaints any time of day, day or night.

The Stiffening of Her Legs

The Stiffening of Her Legs

       by Big Dong Reimer

                   an acquaintance of mine
                   became a homosexexual 
                   at the age of thirty and now

                   she is heterosexual again
                   married with a kid.

On the Yangtze River there is a place, apparently, where, when you go there they have to take you in. That's the difference between thought and knowledge. There are two kinds of unconscious, the forgetting kind and the memory kind. The memory kind, with a prodigious capacity for recall, and which can never be done with anything, is sick. The Chinese have a saying about this, too. They say that tanpan is not good for your digestion for it stays there and stays there, knotting things up inside until all you can think about is how to finally stop eating and get anorexic, and thus to control the whole show that way. A normal digestion would avoid tanpan at all costs. See, the anorexic (that entity with the digestive problems) thinks back unslakingly to all it has seen to discover if there or there or there lies its sudden error. It always finds the reason in part at every stop, at every little wayside picnic area, and sleeps nights satisfied that this time it has found the answer.

       Gonzalo loved his king because that individual ruled him and he, a loyal servant, had learned well at his mother's knee. He well knew the folly of an Antonio or Sebastian, talking others into crimes or being talked into it by others. Crime paid one with disreputability and that would never do for one able to imagine all new--clothes, skin, sky, land, mind--just from a dip in a strange sea. Why would it? "All new!" is a fine sentiment and a lovely feature of living to have arrived in one's thought. "Let us kill!" is a dreadful and "You are evil!" sort of thought to have come and to reside there. Gonzalo defended his king from onslaughts, at his bidding he threw books into the leaky bark of one subject being set adrift and unbeknownst to them living now on this very island, he called for the punishment of those guilty, he felt no guilt himself, and he divined the possibility of a brand new world here on this enchanted isle. Yes, we walk into the wilderness with Gonzalo and we do so willingly.

       Wickenham Jones, a singer and a writer of folksongs, performed at the Winnipeg Folk Festival only once. He succeeded greatly, drew many spectators to his workshops, and presented to adoration and applause at the main stage event the second night of the weekend. However, he ate something at the Whales Tails Concession that turned his stomach and his mind and he consequently never returned to Winnipeg, though the artistic director implored and offered him double the seven hundred they typically paid average bands. He'd sat down to eat a whale's tail. He did also just finish a Thai chicken noodle veggie combo before this dessert. And as he sat he noticed two girls holding hands and mooning over each other near him, on the other side behind him of the picnic bench on which he reclined. They laughed in a girly way, touched each other's shoulders and hair, giggled at nothing, and dipped and turned and glanced about with a quotient of secrecy that showed to great affect all the coynesses of which they were capable. They were on public display, after all. He loved this scene. The softness and grace of slight women was never lost on him. It isn't on singers and songwriters. With two of these slim ones gracing each other, how could he help but watch and pray.

       Soon, however, he felt terrible pangs in his midriff and thought he would throw up. So as not to make the young waifs think that they were the cause of his indigestion, he hurried to the row of blue plastic toilets where he could jettison his food unseen. He came out when he'd finished and sat down by the fence in the shade to rest. The music from the different stages had grown loud and disturbing to his ear. Near him on the grass two slight girls were wrapped in each other's arms and moving rhythmically together. They seemed oblivious to their surroundings. Their dresses, of pale, sheer material, one lime green, the other lavender, had ridden up their legs in an unseemly way. Wickenham noticed this clearly. He thought about what to do but could and did do nothing. He lit a cigarette and simply watched them, this time not pretending not to. They were close, within a few feet. They never did ask him to desist and lay off. They continued to cavort until one or both of them experienced a transformation on the spot, which made itself plain by the stiffening of her legs and then the slackening of her arms and neck.   

       Wickenham noticed these goings on with disgust and compulsion. When he left the park the next day back to Louisiana where he lived on a farm and grew berries and raised domesticated possums, he not so much vowed that he never would return as he never did so, even when entreated with sincere flattery and forceful request by the artistic director of the event.    

TheTent in the Woods

The Tent in the Woods

     by Gaylord Sedgwick Reimer-Penner


        love is just a game
        and lovers all have names
        that's the part that leaves us feeling free



A young man who felt alien at home snuck out finally into wilderness territory to find a place for himself where society would not negate him. Here, nature provided him with a solid sense of self. Named plants and trees impacted his stay but little. The rivulet beside his tent contributed fresh water. Food came to him via his fish line. Traps and snares set out in fall and winter netted him enough animal for meat and clothing. A town some distance away served as a suitable destination on those awkward occasions when urgency drove him out from his serenity. A hive above a group of poplars in a granite cliff he accessed for honey now and then, smoking the bees into submission first, as he had learned from readings on the subject. Winter proved trying, but the other seasons promised and provided an abundance of delight and solace.
        Wesley Ryan Whitaker had taken to carrying a switchblade to school each day in response to the taunting of fellow students. His mother and father as well as his sisters and brother gave him no end of further grief mixed with no small measure of insult. Friends he had none, acquaintances few. Fed up with this cocktail of bitter medicines, he resolved one day to concoct his own future, put the knife aside, exchange humans for animals and generally reclaim that which had turned against him.
        He studied a map of northern Ontario for some days, imaging the particularities of this or that lake. Some suited his sense of a good name but lay too close to a road or town. Others offered a suitable bay and forest but stood isolate from any such larger bodies of water that might entertain the fancies of an adventurous spirit. Wesley settle on a large body of water accessible by marine craft only, remote, but not to the exclusion of the possibility of exit with a day's effort.
       He left in the Whitaker suburban on a Sunday when all the family slept, traveling in the dark along the Trans Canada highway past Richer, Hadashville, Spruce Siding, East Braintree, Birch River, Falcon Lake, and Kenora, and then turned south onto the #71 where he passed Rushing River, Adam Lake, Granite Lake, Luther Camp, Black River, Musky Lake and White Moose Lake. When he came to Old Woman Lake he parked the truck, launched his canoe and crossed the mile of weedy water to a portage. He did all this in the dark with the aid of a powerful flashlight. He carried his canoe and then his packs, three times altogether, a dark quarter mile into Highwind Lake.
         The night was quiet and fine with a light mist descending, but warm as toast. He arrived at the far end of Highwind and camped, again organizing his activities with the aid of a torch, on a sweeping granite shelf he had known he would find there. Next day, in the dawning light he moved his camp further back from shore so that it would not be visible to any passing stranger on snowmobile, boat or plane. And there he made his home for the next ten years.
       Seven times in that decade he left his home on a trip into Sioux Narrows, paddling over Highwind's six miles of open water, portaging, crossing Old Woman Lake, and then walking the ten miles into town. Here in the bank he exchanged his gold dust for money and then spent a week cavorting in the local pubs as well as taking in the fine dining and entertainment at Sioux Narrows' Pilot's Point. One morning on each of these seven trips would find him once more gratefully returning to his canoe carrying additional groceries and hardware, recrossing Old Woman Lake, rewalking his gear back over the quarter-mile portage, recrossing Highwind's miles of open water, and resettling gratefully into his routines at his tent in the woods.

The Curse of the Ring of the Deadly Viper

The Curse of the Ring of the Deadly Viper

       by Double Glasses Reimer

you sniveling piece of pumpkin pie

The wind shifted sharply as they rounded Danger Point. Chet called for more windlass. Danny tried to play it out but the ropes caught and for a second their sails billowed uselessly. Fear gripped Danny's heart and his hands fell weakly to his sides. At that critical moment, however, he remembered what his father had always taught him, that in the hour of need the Lord can be depended upon to care for his children. Chet fell to his knees, praying with real conviction, and found himself suddenly strengthened enough to rise and tackle the sails once more. He shouted out encouragement from the foremast and soon they had their small ship plying the waves with the stout heart they all knew she possessed.  

       "Say, Joe, nice dreams?" called Chet to that sleepyhead tousling his own hair as he was wont to do when he first entered the world of the waking. Frank, on the steps below him, pushed at his brother, wanting to see what the chatter was about. He wore a nightshirt still, the one Fenton Hardy, his father, had presented him from his own extensive wardrobe. He'd purchased it in Istanbul on assignment there many years ago, an assignment of such a secret nature that he still would not discuss it, even with his sons to whom he entrusted most of his clandestine dealings.

       "What happened up here?" he suddenly shouted when he noticed the debris littering the upper deck. Frank was Joe's older brother and spoke always with an authority that the younger sometimes resented. Branches and bracken lay awash along the rails; bird feathers and flotsam had the deck resembling a nuisance ground.

       "We'll fill you lazy dudes in over breakfast," Chet laughed and instructed Danny to set the course straight ahead and tie the wheel in place. They filed into the hold for a bite of the fine food Fenton's cook, loaned to them for this trip, prepared with a good will each morning. The currents now less noticeable and the winds decidedly decreased since they'd rounded Danger Point, their sleek yacht rose and fell like a seagull on the briny in the stiff breezes off Cataraz. The sun shone down with a benign countenance. All seemed well. An hour from now, however, their strong backs and quick minds would be required of them against a threat far more fearsome than the waters had been.

       Fenton Hardy had made them a loan of Samuel the cook for a reason that he dare not tell his sons. He knew of the wildness of their project but also of its connection to evils greater than the boys had imagined. He battled within himself whether to let them go or even to alleviate their surprise on discovering later just what they were dealing with. But, his professional duty came before family needs. The agency had informed Fenton of the menace to the entire nation--nay, to the world--of the Ring of the Deadly Viper. Somewhere, off the east border of Spain, a group of gold diggers had set up a missile base with which it meant to disrupt the lava flows of the Kinley Range and divert its hidden wealth into a secret valley of which they alone knew the location.

       The accumulation of wealth in and of itself concerned the agency less than the possession of weapons of such massive destructive power as to be able to burrow far into the earth and there set off blasts enough to cause quakes and start and stop lava flows. Such activity threatened the fragile seismic stability the Pacific's tectonic plates. And, nations along the Pacific Rim might themselves be ready to employ nuclear weapons against the threat if they became aware of it, this threat of the villains busy in the remote Spanish mountains. Samuel was to keep an eye on the situation and inform Fenton at once if the boys came up against trouble they could not handle. An old hand at such encounters, with youngsters of great intelligence and experience already, despite their youth and boyish appearance, Samuel had willingly agreed to accompany the expedition, and he cooked with a hearty will the food that would prepare them most effectively for the onslaughts ahead.

       They dined today on Spanish sardines and toast and drank coffee imported from Germany. When their hunger was satisfied--all except Chet, whose appetite was an endless source of marvel among them--they stretched out on their bunks for a brief respite. They were all too aware that the next leg of the journey would require all their strength. A few minutes later a resounding "huzzah" from near the launch brought them all to their feet.

       "What was that!" Danny whispered. The boys raced to the deck and froze. Beside their ship loomed a vessel of such gigantic proportions that it made their boat seem like a skiff in comparison. It bristled with soldiers holding automatic weapons, all pointed at them.

       "Anzaitolic croajva ta slit maijolivic blie!" shouted a sailor in a voice that left no doubt about his mood.

       "Pardon me?" Frank replied, hunching up his shoulders to indicate that he did not understand. The commanding officer motioned toward Frank and shouted an order to his men. Ropes were flung over the side and twenty sailors swung down to them in an instant. The intruders tied the boys' hands and hustled them toward the ropes. The men above hauled away and soon the quartet stood aboard the dangerous vessel. No one had thought to look below decks where Samuel had hidden himself in a cubbyhole he had discovered in the kitchen under a counter. He stayed there, and when the other ship left he radioed Fenton the terrible news. What transpired next will have to wait till the next installment of "The Curse of the Ring of the Deadly Viper."    

The Jism Trail (cont'd)

The Jism Trail (cont'd)

       by Dan Gerous

the trail leads home

the trail leads home

i will no longer roam

despite the drive

despite the drive

i'm glad to be alive

hell's gate is past

hell's gate is past

i'll see my home at last

i'll never leave

i'll never leave

my wife again to grieve

she'd love to leave

she'd love to leave

her man at home to grieve

. . . frontiersman who knows little of the culture to which he comes and carries with him a harpoon instead of rifle. Barbed wire indicates unwanted technological advancement into a peaceful world better experienced in its sparsely-populated, free-range-animal-and-human thereness.

       Laconic surpasses garrulous, with the proof of that being the hero drawing his gun regularly on the talkative one who, as a consequence of speaking when he should have been shooting, finds himself bloody in the dust (with a chicken pulling at a vein in his neck) instead of standing over the one there in that condition. Heart attacks and cancer never plague cowboy mankind and come into their force in those who mistake the city for a place to live. Children do not speak, and seldom are seen except when happened upon dead and mutilated by the rampage of outlaw band or Indian war party. The smoking remains of a log cabin and the knowledge that the loved little ones lie there in the charred remains, with burned gingham dresses and singed slingshots, tell the reader all he ever will or needs to know about their silent existence. Adults appear complete with girlish figures already formed and manly muscles firm and broad, indicative of a commendable potential for the strength under fire soon to be required of them.

       Wesley became conscious, too, of the scarcity of money in the world, how many no-good patriarchs had it at their disposal, and how some few generous patriarchs had it in banks in large cities and with which they had purchased great tracks of fine ranchland. Most members of the roving society, in contrast, lived from hand to mouth, owning a six-gun, a single set of clothing, and enough coin to purchase a satchel of tobacco to have to hand

       Music came by way of a single instrument in the hands of a shortsighted farmhand and then it would be a guitar or a harmonica. Occasionally a piano graced a wealthy, good rancher's parlor, but these were only said to have been played at a time when no member of the cast of domestic workers, busy at any given hour, were present to have heard it. Organs, mentioned once or twice, belonged in churches, but since church-going remained a staple in the lives of all, yet never actually saw itself in the act of happening, they played insignificant roles in the lives of the ones one intended to be.

       When Wesley died the Wild West died, too. Guitars are now played by so many. I, myself, belong to a bluegrass quartet and play a wonderful vintage C. F. Martin D28. Ladies smoke cigarettes almost more regularly than men do. Children call out their needs into the middle of adult conversation. The lonely individual earns our pity rather than our respect. Long guns no longer stand at the ready in glass cupboards. Indians, First Nations Canadians, pick wild rice, perform marriage ceremonies, act as legal judges, and in all ways participate in the promotion of social groups. Dresses now seldom contain any gingham. Tobacco pipe smokers have left the country. Wickedness in patriarchs can be found or seen hardly at all. No one reads Zane Grey. It has been years since I considered cracking a Western mysrlf.