Burning Word

Possession

by Philip C. Breakenridge

Beams of hazy sunlight stroked Christopher’s skin as he took his usual place at the window. The gently rustling drapes, a melancholy shade of mauve, fingered his thighs and calves carelessly like an inattentive lover. Peering out over the newly awakened city, Christopher inhaled the fragrance peculiar to a late spring morning in Vancouver. A lush, green aroma rich with the pungency of Japanese blossoms and lilac bushes clung to the air. Christopher closed his eyes, timidly inviting the quiet of the early day to wash over his nakedness. He envisioned what was ahead and shifted uneasily in the rigid wooden chair.

Christopher’s eyes flicked open, his body tensing. The familiar silhouette darkened the window across the way.

Suddenly, Christopher’s stomach churned painfully; a bizarre combination of reticence and excitement wrestled inside him. An icy tremor resounded through his body as his quivering hand crept up to explore the firmness of his own chest. It was still difficult for him. Christopher’s right nipple hardened under his fingertip’s chilly touch. He twisted it between his thumb and forefinger, conjuring a delicious sensation of pain. The sharply shooting twinges of agony freed him, releasing him from a disobedient body. Christopher’s escaped self hovered above, a shadowy apparition gazing down on a vacant shell.

Christopher felt the stranger’s anxious presence in the distance. It was time to begin.

Fiery streams of water consumed Christopher as the last traces of the morning ritual swirled down the shower drain. Numbness washed over him as he pondered the repulsiveness of being touched by hands other than his own: hands that had molested the bodies of other lovers, hands that had sweetly mussed the fur of filthy, dumbly-devoted house pets. The oversized washcloth resting on the edge of the tub invited him to scour away these thoughts, a foul grime slick upon his skin. He gripped the washcloth tightly, scrubbing until his pale, freckled skin flushed an angry red.

Exhausted, Christopher slid into a heap on the shower floor, swallowed by a thick, dank blanket of dewy steam. Consciousness slipped away from him.

The boy raised a bruised hand to block the sun’s fierce rays. The colorful shorts set his mother had placed out for him that morning glimmered in its bright beams. A tepid summer breeze danced on the backs of his spindly legs. He squinted, scanning the expansive greenness of the backyard. His eyes refocused as the formidable man came back into view.

His father crouched uncomfortably ten feet away on the meticulously-manicured lawn. He wiped away copious beads of sweat from his crinkled brow with a meaty, calloused hand. A sigh of exasperation escaped his mouth, unresisted.

“Okay, Tiger. This time I wanna feel it burn right through my glove.”

The freckle-faced boy grasped the baseball clumsily. He struggled to wrap his delicately boned fingers around its shape.

“Here it comes, Daddy.”

Using a madly hurled overhand pitch, Christopher threw the ball with all the might a six-year-old could muster. The boy’s miniature physique lunged forward as the fervent force of his throw sent him tumbling to his knees. For an instant, he cowered on all fours waiting for the call.

“You still throw like a girl. Get up. Let’s do it again.”

Christopher stared down at the grass wishing its fierce green blades would wind their way around his body and pull him down into the cool soil. Droplets of childish determination welled up in his eyes. They had been at this for four hours and he wasn’t getting any better. He was still a sissy.

“C’mon. Get up. Only girls give up.”

His father ran his hands through a coppery-colored brush cut and smiled smugly. His boy would thank him for this someday.

“I’ll show you how it’s done. I’ll pitch it to you. You catch it, then throw it back to me.”

The little boy stood up and brushed flecks of dirt off of his grass-stained knees, feigning the bravado of a major league player. He swallowed hard and braced himself for the impact of his father’s pitch.

“Are you ready?”

Christopher tugged at the ill-fitting leather glove that engulfed his left hand and nodded. His father didn’t hold back.

The force of his throw seared into the boy’s chest, throwing him onto his back. Christopher lay on the grass, winded, gasping for any faint wisps of air he could smuggle into his lungs. A raucous cough rattled his chest, bringing up with it a ghastly mixture of blackened blood and spittle. The putrid liquid oozed from the corners of his pink mouth and dribbled onto his chin. Christopher stared up at the awesome summer sky, a deliriously beautiful palette of soft blues. Its radiance mesmerized and comforted him as he floated upwards to embrace it.

Suddenly, the blackness of his father’s stern expression fell across the heavens, darkening the magnificent sky like an ominous eclipse.

An hour passed before Christopher felt composed enough to leave his sodden refuge. Stepping out of the shower, he wrapped a plush towel around his narrow waist. With a sweep of his hand, he cleared the bathroom mirror of steam. His estranged self stared back at him as he ran his water-pruned fingers through an untamable mass of wavy hair. The sun had already turned it a shiny carrot-red. The murky blue pools of his eyes reflected back a sad vacancy.

The stranger had been coming every morning for over six months now. Christopher hated what his dark visitor made him feel. The detached connection that came with being watched was something Christopher both craved and despised. He was losing himself, a casualty of a sordid inner conflict. His carefully-constructed guise slowly peeled away, exposing a pinkish, tender sensualist flesh. Christopher craned his neck, bringing his face closer to the mirror. He poked at the finely etched lines tugging at the corners of his eyes. Maybe he was better off lost.

Christopher stared out into the faintly glowing blackness. The night air had an edge that prickled the flesh of his exposed chest. The pearlized buttons on his finely-tailored dress shirt were all undone. Its crisp cotton shape billowed on the breeze. Christopher summoned all the energy he could and directed it towards the shaded window. His eyes cautiously scanned the prodigious high-rise that looked especially foreboding after dark. The cold, grey building gazed back at him, its scattered illuminated suites forming a menacing grimace. Christopher focused on the dimly lit apartment across the way. Nothing happened.

He knew it wasn’t time yet. The shared addiction was precise and calculated. Christopher slid the frosted glass door back into place, shutting out the night.

Morning slowly crept up on Christopher. He awoke from a restless slumber and took his post earlier than usual. The familiar anxiety embracing him made the wait excruciating. Tiny beads of perspiration blanketed his body causing him to shiver slightly in the crisp morning air. A distorted collage pieced together with visions of other mornings just like this one spun in his head. The endless effort given to resisting the perversion of his own thoughts wore him down.

The masculine frame stepped out of the shadows, bringing Christopher to his senses. The stranger was already aroused. Christopher closed his eyes and laid back in the chair, balancing himself on the very edge. He gently ran his hands over the expanse of his chest. The stranger liked this – Christopher felt his approval. He lowered his hands, examining his rippled midsection with probing fingertips. He moved deliberately, pausing to feel each section of taut abdominal muscle.
Growing impatient, the stranger looked over his shoulder, into the black of his abode. Christopher gave him what he wanted. The stranger watched intently, fixed in the moment by an eerie stillness.

Christopher’s body convulsed with the force of his climax. He lay trembling, listening to the hurried pant of his own breath. He slowly peeled his eyes open. The stranger was pleased. The dark figure vanished into the obscurity of his apartment. Christopher was alone.

Christopher peeked through the sad drapes. Two dreary and vacuous weeks had passed since the stranger had stopped coming. The desertion had caused something inside of Christopher to short circuit, making the maintaining of his make-believe daily life unbearable. He was a fraud, a disconnected being, an unlovable abomination. Christopher had stopped leaving the apartment a week ago. The sour stench of his unwashed body grew thick upon the stale air inside. A dense, coarse stubble had claimed his smooth face. He ate only when the growlings of his belly demanded it; sleep came to him infrequently, in dreamless and gloomy waves.

Christopher’s robe slipped into a neat pile on the living room floor. He slid the balcony door open and stepped out into the midday rays, the sun’s brightness assailing his dulled eyes. He hoisted himself onto the wall of his balcony, his bare feet gripping the rough concrete ledge. Christopher closed his eyes and inhaled calmly. The thought of erasing a mistake was strangely soothing to him.

Christopher leaned forward, letting go of his balance. He simply let go.

The Drop

by Suvi Mahonen

The man stood waiting with his back to the desk.
It was dim in the room. Pale light struggling through the small barred window fell onto the tiled walls and floor. The shelf opposite the desk was stacked with dressings, rolled bandages and a large, rust-coloured bottle of iodine, to disinfect caning wounds.
I tried to swallow. Bile pooled at the back of my tongue but my throat was too dry to get rid of it.
The man took out a little notebook and pen from the pocket of his khaki shirt. His black fringe hung in limp strands over a forehead that was pitted in the middle with a bullet-hole-shaped scar. His dark eyes were sunk in deep hollows beneath twitching eyelids.
I searched his face for any acknowledgement of what he did, why he had me here. He remained expressionless.
‘Please step on the scales,’ he said.
I shivered even though it must have been at least thirty degrees Celcius.
‘Leave your shoes on.’
Warm sweat dribbled down the back of my neck as I stepped onto the scales in front of me. The man leaned forward and started moving the little metal weights that slid across the bar.
Clunk. Clunk. Clunk.
I turned my face away, clenching my teeth hard. I stared at the narrow examination bed. At the locked medicine cabinet. At the two guards standing watch by the door. And finally I came back to the scales.
The man clunked the last weight into place and stepped back for a moment to make sure the beam stayed even. I blinked. I’d lost more than ten kilos since coming to this place.
The man wrote my weight down in his little notebook. It was all very scientific. They used a system devised by the British in 1888 called the Official Table of Drops—bloody Peng had told me that.
‘It’s a manual for working out the length of rope,’ Peng had said. ‘It depends on your weight.’ He’d stopped by my cell, uninvited, after the pardon board rejected my appeal. ‘If the rope is too long, it rips your head off. Too short, you strangulate.’ He put his hands around his throat and made choking noises.
‘Okay,’ the man said. ‘Step down now.’
I stepped off the scales. My prison coveralls, damp from sweat, chaffed at the rash on the inside of my thighs.
The man closed his notebook and nodded to the guards.
‘You have any questions?’ he asked me.
I shook my head; I couldn’t speak.
‘I will see you tomorrow morning,’ he said.
I had no choice. The man was my hangman.

‘A Malay, a Thai and an Australian were on death row. The warden gave them a choice whether to be shot, hanged, or injected with the AIDS virus.’
Khee Boon occupied the cell on my right. He was a Singaporean who liked telling jokes. He only saw half his audience—those prisoners facing him in the row of cells opposite—but he spoke to all of us. Shouted conversations in Mandarin, Malay and English babbled between the bars. You got used to it.
‘The Malaysian chose to be shot. He died instantly.’
Khee Boon paused.
‘The Thai chose to be hanged. He also died instantly.’
I waited for the punchline.
‘The Australian said he wanted to be injected with the AIDS virus. So they gave him the needle. He fell down laughing. The warden wanted to know what was so funny. The Australian said, “You’re so stupid. I’m wearing a condom!”’
Everyone laughed. I laughed the hardest—until gagging on an inbreath, I realised I was crying.

Steel clanked as a cell door rattled shut. Restless inmates paced and sweated through another miserable afternoon, and in the guard’s office, the television yabbered in that high-pitched, whiny dialect I had come to despise.
I was sitting on the edge of my straw-filled mattress that lay on the ground, knees to my chest, playing Seven Devils Solitaire, one of the hardest solitaire games to win. Floor space was limited. Some cards were even arranged half under the bars to avoid the brown metallic water trickling from the leaking tap. I’d tried playing the cards on the mattress, but the stacks kept tipping on the hard bulges.
If I won I’d get a stay. My starting layout was promising. I had an ace of diamonds. I picked it up and moved it to the right near my foot. Spongy chunks of skin peeled in the cracks between my toes. I couldn’t resist the urge to scratch, to kill the crazy-making itch. Blood came away on my fingers. I went bare foot in my cell to try and keep my feet dry—tinea lurked in every crevice in this festering row of manflesh—but it was too humid. My feet were never dry.
Six of spades. I couldn’t use it. I put it on the waste pile and took another card. The game wasn’t going well. In a way I was lucky. I didn’t want to live here for the rest of my life. Every day the air was heavy with the stench rising from the open toilet hole, the mosquitoes at dusk, and the moans and mutters of men at night that never gave you peace.
Five of hearts! I had a chance. What was the point of trying to kid myself? I didn’t want to die. My hopes rose and fell like an imam praying.
Guards. Their heavy boots grinding into nubs of course concrete sounded threatening in the closed dimness, hard and unforgiving. One of the guards stopped outside my cell. Usually they counted us four times a day. Today they were checking on me hourly.
He nodded and strode off, slowly running his baton along the bars. Tonk, tonk, tonk, tonk.
I turned back to my cards. A king. I was going to finish my goal piles. I had to get an ace. One card remained in the stock pile. If it was an ace, I lived. If it wasn’t, I died. I picked it up and held onto it for a second. I still had hope. I turned it over.
Joker.

The cobbled alley was walled in on both sides. A strip of sky divided the buildings; light flashed off jutting gutters, below that, grey.
Rod stood with the man at the back of the Chinese restaurant. The smell of fried duck, steamed rice and burnt garlic came from an open door.
I went up to them, fighting the urge to look over my shoulder. I knew there was no-one behind me; I was being paranoid.
Rod gestured towards the man.
‘This is Thanh.’
Thanh was a thin Vietnamese man in his late twenties with a small mouth and tufts of moustache sprouting around flaky lips. He wore rumpled black clothes—T-shirt, skin-tight jeans—and thongs in the middle of winter. Lizard tattoos coiled around his wiry brown arms. As he glanced at me, he raised an eyebrow, as if appraising my value before I was sold.
I took a step back; the heels of my Nikes struck the edge of the gutter.
Thanh reached into his pocket. He shook out a cigarette from a battered box, lit up, then crushed the box back into his pocket without offering a cigarette to us.
He looked at me again, then grinned, blowing smoke in my direction.
‘So you want fast cash?’
I turned away and cleared my throat to cover the cough. I could hear the street outside the alley, the idling and revving of inner city traffic, someone shouting, and the long hiss of a bus’s air brakes.
I looked back at Thanh and tried to concentrate on what he was saying. Details. How much cash he would supply; who would pick us up from the airport; the mobile number for a go-between in Kuantan who would facilitate the exchange; our flights back to Melbourne; and our fee for the job. Rod and I were going there together, but we’d return separately to protect the stock in case we were busted.
‘How long will it take?’ I asked.
‘Less than a week.’
‘What if we’re caught?’
Thanh laughed. ‘No-one ever gets caught in Malaysia.’
His laugh made me uneasy; I knew he was lying.
I didn’t want to be here any more. I should’ve been at home, studying for my exams. It was cold, but under my shirt my chest felt hot.
‘Let me think about it,’ I said.
Thanh’s face turned hard. He had eyes that told you not to fuck with him. ‘Let Rod know by tomorrow.’
I looked at Rod. He was busy studying a crack in the wall. Rod was my best friend; I’d known him for years. He’d got into serious trouble, and he needed this job. I’d agreed to help him, but now I wasn’t sure. The whole thing felt wrong.
I turned and started walking without bothering to say goodbye. The alley seemed to stretch further than before. My legs felt numb, like they’d been sat on for too long.
I wanted to go home. I could still back out; Rod could find someone else. I had to study for my TAFE exams. Eight months to go till I finished my course.

Rod made it home.

It was a grimy, windowless room with mildew staining the once white-painted concrete walls. Cigarette burns cratered both sides of the vinyl counter where prisoners stood talking to their visitors through the grille. The air was a taxi-driver’s armpit in peak-hour traffic: steamy and rank.
As always, my mother was there, waiting. Her hands gripped the steel bars; the expression on her face was eager, pained.
I scuffled over to her, my ankles tugging against the leg-irons that reduced my steps to an awkward little waddle.
She reached through the bars.
‘Benny.’ Then she started to cry.
In a way I was glad that she wouldn’t have to come here any more. The constant travel between Australia and this bumcrack part of the world had left her both broke and wrecked. She’d done everything she could to get my sentence revoked: paid for extra lawyers, harassed Federal Parliament, written to the Queen, given interviews to a media grabbing story after story about the young white man about to be hanged in an Asian jail. Now, I wanted her to rest.
She put her hands on my shoulders and tried to hug me. Our faces scraped against corroded iron. I whispered Sorry.
She squeezed me hard before letting me go. After a moment she searched in her handbag, pulled out a small white Bible, and placed it on the counter.
With a fierce smile she looked up at me.
‘We will see each other again.’
She meant in heaven and I nodded. I saw the desperation in her pulpy eyes, punctured cheeks, and the deep troughs around her sad, downturned mouth.
‘Next thing you know,’ she said. ‘You’ll open your eyes and see Jesus.’
I tried to hide my doubts as she spent most of our last visit talking about heaven. I didn’t want to take away from her reliance on God. It comforted her.
She wasn’t always this passionate about religion. A strict childhood loaded with rules had driven her to rebellion. By seventeen she was pregnant with me. My father was never around. I never knew who he was. Once, when I asked her, when I yelled at her to tell me, she said she wasn’t sure. After I was born she gave up drugs and eventually got a job. But it wasn’t until a house fire killed my grandparents that she returned to the church.
Now the church was all she had. She had no other family.
‘Look after yourself, Mum,’ I said towards the end of our allotted time. ‘You got everything ready to fly home?’
‘The people at the high commission are helping me.’ Then she started crying again.
I reached up with my shackled hands and touched her face.
‘I’ll be all right,’ I told her.
Her bottom lip blanched as her teeth bit down on it.
‘I love you, son.’
The back of my throat hurt. I wanted to say it back. I knew it was what she needed. But I couldn’t get the words out.
A guard tapped me on the arm.
‘Time’s up.’
My top lip curled into my gum. No chance remained for me to say it. Not with the hacks there, listening.

‘Do you really see heaven as a tangible place?’ I asked.
We were sitting on the hard slab of mattress in my cell, our backs against the knuckled wall, my feet bare, his sandal clad. It was dim but never dark on the row and in the fluorescent light coming through the bars I could see him nodding his head in that earnest, measured way he had.
‘Yes.’
‘Have you ever doubted?’
He was honest enough to hesitate. ‘We are human beings. We all doubt from time to time.’
That might have been true. But now was not a good time to have doubts as I sat here beside him, listening to the sound of sleepless inmates stirring in their beds, the muffled television in the guards’ office, and the steady tick … tick … tick of the metal clock. My guts felt like they were being twisted over a lemon squeezer.
I was terrified.
‘I don’t think I’ll make it.’
Father Cheng thought I was talking about heaven. He turned and looked at me with his lopsided eyes. ‘Remember John 3:16. For God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only son. So that whosoever believes in him will not perish but have everlasting life.’
Father Cheng had spent a lot of time with me over the last few months. He knew my struggles well. The shame. The fear. The heavy ache of remorse. He never judged me, never challenged the different beliefs I held, never felt it relevant to question me about my past. He was a genuine friend. We talked about a lot of things, not just religion. Some of my most comforting times in prison had been during our long conversations about sport. He talked badminton; I talked Aussie Rules.
‘I still have doubts, though.’
‘Then you’re in good company. Jesus’s own disciple Thomas doubted.’
I smiled. I was grateful for Father Cheng’s support, that he was here, spending the night with me in my cell. His duties included accompanying Christian death row inmates to the gallows.
When I asked him how many men he’d seen hanged, he refused to say. He simply put his hand on my shoulder and said, ‘You don’t need to fear death’.
But of course I did.

I sweated under the glaring floodlights. The smell of old vomit hung trapped in the air between the rutted cement walls and the low ceiling above me. Across the corridor, a hose lay heaped under a copper tap, with a wooden broom and an upside down metal bucket beside it. No tap was in this cell, only a small drain, to wash away the waste of past men.
From where I sat on a plastic chair, the only piece of furniture in the cell, I could see the gallows door. Steel shanks bordered the archway over the tall stone entrance. The door was metal plated, with rivets around the edge and a thick iron bar that was bolted across the middle.
Two guards stood outside the holding cell. Their shadows shifted across the notepad on my knees.
I was trying to write a letter but I was shaking so bad I could hardly hold the pen.
A loud clank made me jump. They were testing the trapdoor. We’d all heard the sound before, reverberating down the row on the morning of an execution, telling us the hangman had pulled the lever, or the gear as Peng called it.
I looked back down at the notepad again. I was nearly out of time. This was my last chance to write to my mother. To give her words of comfort. I wished that I had told her that I loved her when we’d said goodbye. I hated that I hadn’t. I wanted to write it down—tell her I loved her, let her know.
The pressure in the block was building. I heard the raised voice of a guard in the distance, the cough of a nervy inmate, and the metal gate at the end of the corridor clanging open and closed, open and closed.
I bit the skin on the inside of my cheek; blood oozed over my tongue as I forced myself to write.

Dear Mum,
I wanted to thank you for all the things you’ve done for me. None of this
is your fault. I’m sorry for the shame. I want you to know how much ——

In the charged air, the scraping sound was loud, harsh, like something heavy being dragged over concrete. I looked up. The gallows door was opening. Light from the death chamber arced out across the corridor.
I stared at the widening gap as a guard pushed the door towards the thick stone pillar. The guard bent down, then drove a stake into a ground socket to secure the door open.
He straightened up again, then moved to one side and stood at attention.
The row became silent as the hangman and his team filed out through the gallows door.
A moan that I wasn’t ready rose halfway up my throat.
I hadn’t finished my letter, telling my mother that I loved her. But I couldn’t keep writing. I had to stand up. I wouldn’t face them sitting down.
I put the notepad on the ground and got to my feet.
The execution team stood on the other side of the bars. The guards wore military uniform, their green pressed shirts tucked into high-waisted trousers, pistols at their sides.
Father Cheng was there as well. The expression on his face was sad, the time for smiles over.
I looked back at the hangman.
The same twitch was in his eyelids, the muscles in his face were drawn. His fringe was damp and shiny, combed neatly to one side. I remembered the bullet-hole-shaped scar that I saw on his forehead.
‘Benjamin Pearce,’ he said. ‘We have a warrant for your execution.’
I held myself still as he read out my hanging order. I stared at the steel bars in front of me with their flakes of rust, their tarnished grime. I thought about this life I had ruined. My home. My friends back in Melbourne. My mother. My dear, unselfish mother. As the hangman finished reading, I said a silent prayer for her.
The hangman turned and nodded to the guard standing beside him. The guard stepped forward with a ring of keys in his hand and unlocked the cell door.
The hangman stepped inside.
‘Ready?’

First published in ‘Verandah’ in 2007

Address to the Greenville Senior Women’s Club 35th Annual Pedigreed Dog Show

by Summer Block

Address to the Greenville Senior Women’s Club 35th Annual Pedigreed Dog Show by the mystery writer H.L. Lemontre

It’s quite an honor to be speaking today as both a guest and a participant. I am asked to speak at a lot of dog shows by fans of my mystery series, but rarely do I get the chance to speak in my own hometown, and even more rarely do I get to speak at a show where my own dog is also a contender. Perhaps you’ll indulge an old woman if I tell you a bit about how I came to write the Fluffems series.

Readers are always tickled pink when I confide that I don’t like dogs. Everyone seems to find it quite simply hilarious. Journalists, too, love to quote the author of sixty-two books in the Fluffems the Softest Dog series as admitting that she doesn’t even like dogs! Well, I’m not trying to be cute, I can tell you that. I don’t care for dogs. I’m not trying to be funny. Everyone seems to find it perfectly hilarious that the creator of the adorable little white terrier Fluffems shouldn’t like dogs. If you ask me, dedicating your entire life to a subject in which you haven’t the least interest isn’t very funny at all. But I’m an old woman, so I suppose I see things differently.

Well, as I’m among friends, I might as well tell the truth. I started the whole thing as a joke. I heard about a series of mystery novels where a cat solves the mysteries, and it just seemed so ridiculous, and I thought, well, why not a dog? If a cat can solve mysteries. I started with my first one, Fluffems the Softest Dog and the Case of the Wicked Wicket, and it sold like hot cakes. I couldn’t believe it. It seemed so easy. After that, I settled into a routine, and before you know it, six books were done. The sixth was the most popular at the time, Fluffems the Softest Dog and the Case of the Purloined Pudding. It’s important to have catchy titles.

Anyway, I came upon it all quite by accident. I don’t like dogs, but I do like mysteries. Everyone enjoys a little light reading now and then, and for a woman of a certain age it’s better to be seen on an airplane with a decent mystery than a romance novel like you sometimes see women just reading right out in the open, which I think looks tacky. Some people have tried to find all sorts of literary meanings in my work, especially in the later books like Fluffems the Softest Dog and the Case of the Tempting Trifle. I think they just feel guilty about reading mysteries and want to dress it up to justify it to themselves. Like people that call any old thing art so they can go to galleries and look at smutty pictures in public.

But anyway, I like mysteries. I like their structure, and I like the idea that things should have a cause. I think people should take responsibility for things. And I’d like to think I have a logical mind. I was told that, as a girl, and I always did well at science and math, which after all are puzzles, like mysteries. I’ve come to look for mysteries everywhere. I don’t mean, of course, that I go around snooping through people’s medicine cabinets or looking for dead bodies, like that woman on TV. I just mean I like to look for clues, and the cause of things. Sort of a whodunit. I’m seventy-three years old, all my friends are dead, and I’ve never been married. I’d like to know who did that.

Of course, my own little dog looks very little like Fluffems. I copied the idea for Fluffems’ appearance from a greeting card sent to me by my sister, God rest her soul, who loved dogs and sent a card with a dog on it every year for Christmas. My own dog isn’t white or fluffy and he doesn’t have blue eyes. He’s a dachshund, and I introduced a dachshund briefly as a sidekick in Fluffems the Softest Dog and the Case of the Captured Cozy but a lot of my readers didn’t like it. They said it drew attention away from Fluffems.

It may surprise you that although I have never liked dogs, I do like dog shows. That is because I have always appreciated perfection. My own dog is really a superior specimen. I acquired him as a present from a reader, in fact. That was around the time that Fluffems the Softest Dog and the Case of the Daunting Dagger won the Poirot Prize for Best Mystery in a Series. A fan wrote me the kindest letter about my work. I get so many letters these days and my eyes are bad, I have a little Indian girl from the college who reads most of them for me, but she passed this one on to me, it was so nice. A gentleman fan—most of my fans are women—with very nice penmanship. He particularly liked Fluffems the Softest Dog and the Case of the Spilled Soup. That’s the one where Fluffems learns to ride a motorbike.

Well, I kept up a correspondence with this gentleman for quite some time. He was living in Virginia with his daughter; his wife had passed away. I believe he had once been a military man, but he loved a good mystery. He was the one that gave me the idea for Fluffems to use the computer in the later stories, to communicate with Mrs. Peale. I met him only once. He said he would be near Greenville to visit his other daughter, and did I want to have dinner. We went to the Ivy Room, which used to be a lovely place, but now they have one of those live bands that could wake the dead and the food’s not what it used to be. He ordered wine, and after dinner he insisted we drive back up to his hotel so he could give me a present. It was a dog. Can you imagine that? A little dachshund, with a ribbon around its neck. I thought it was extremely importunate to give someone a dog as a gift and I told him so, but he really insisted. I am too old, I told him, to start in caring for something like that. Later I found out his other daughter lives nearly fifty miles from Greenville. I suppose that was a clue, but I’m an old woman and I don’t much notice things like that anymore. He went on back to Virginia, I think his mind is going a bit now.

Well, my apologies, I do run on a bit sometimes at these speaking engagements, and I know there are many dogs here to put through their paces. Who would have thought when I was just a girl getting high marks in science at Greenville High that I’d be back here today with my own little dog and a shelf of stories. Well, I guess it’s a mystery.

Note: The piece has been published online before, but only on my personal blog, www.thefoghornmagazine.com, and can be removed upon request.

Biography
Summer Block has published essays, short fiction, and poetry in a variety of publications, including
McSweeneys, Small Spiral Notebook, Tarpaulin Sky, DIAGRAM, the San Francisco Chronicle, Monkeybicycle, Stirring, ALARM, Identity Theory, January Magazine, and Rain Taxi. Find her work at www.summerblock.com.

Grandma Scott’s Funeral

Everybody called her Grandma Scott, but Eliza Scott (nee Lingstad) was nobody’s grandmother. The Scotts didn’t have children. Eliza was the eldest of three sisters, and she treated her younger siblings’ offspring with grandmotherly affection. My mother fondly recalled spending several weeks each year at the Scott farm helping to tend and feed the animals and taking baskets of food and water to the fields for the threshing crews at harvest time. She and her older sister Nora helped Grandma Scott make the sandwiches for the noon meal for the workers. And every morning she and Nora were dispatched to the barn to search for eggs deposited in secret places by the Scott’s brood of laying hens. My mother said there was nothing like having fresh eggs for breakfast. Eliza’s sugar cookies, as big as dinner plates, were a special treat as well.

I was five years old when Grandma Scott died, and I vividly remember the day of her funeral. The family gathered at the farm and traveled from there to a small country church for the service. After the funeral, a meal was served for family and friends at the farmhouse. I don’t remember a thing about the church service except that it was long and tedious, or so it seemed to me, but I was used to that. Every Sunday I attended church services with my parents, and that year I had begun Sunday School.

I remember what happened afterwards, however, with searing clarity, thanks to my second cousin Joy Ann, a precocious and unpleasant seven year old whom I passionately disliked. I had experienced her treachery at a previous visit to the farm. We had been playing in the barn, and I found an egg in the corner of a stall, picked it up, and promptly dropped it. When we returned to the house, Joy Ann reported what I had done to the women in the kitchen. I heard no more about the incident, so I guess my mother did not think it was a grievous sin, although I had a few anxious moments while awaiting the outcome.

My mistake the day of the funeral did not have such a happy ending, and once again I had my obnoxious second cousin to blame.

After the funeral, they brought the casket back to the house and placed it, open of course, as was the custom, in a small sitting room next to the parlor. After the meal–a repast of homemade bread, an escalloped potato and ham hot dish, carrot sticks, celery, and Jello–the gathered guests went into the sitting room, one by one or in small family groups, to pay their last respects to the dead.

I went in with my parents. I stared at the white and powdered face of the small figure in the casket. It didn’t look like Grandma Scott at all. Her nose with its gaping nostrils looked like some monstrous bird’s beak.

Later, it was my mother’s cousin and Joy Ann’s turn. When they returned to the parlor, Joy Ann, smug in her tartan jumper and shiny, patent-leather shoes, had a rapturous expression on her face. To my surprise, she was smiling. She approached me and said, “Oh, isn’t it wonderful? Grandma Scott is sleeping so peacefully!”

When I had digested this, I replied in a loud and scornful voice, “She ain’t sleeping. She’s dead!”

There may have been a few “is nots” and “is toos” after that, I don’t remember. What I do remember is my father, a very large man, swooping down on me, picking me up and covering my mouth with his hand.

Painful as it was, I learned a valuable lesson from that incident. What I learned is a truth that has smoothed the path of life for me many times in the years that followed, and that is that honesty is not always the best policy.

That night, on the way home, I got back at Joy Ann. My mother’s cousin asked if they could ride back to town with us, and of course my parents said yes. Joy Ann and her mother sat in the back seat, and I sat between my parents in the front. It was after dark when we headed for home. After some initial chit chat, our passengers fell silent. As we reached the outskirts of town, I looked over my shoulder to see if Joy Ann and her mother were asleep. Joy Ann’s head was on her mother’s shoulder and her eyes were closed. Of greater interest, however, was the fact that Joy Ann had the thumb of her left hand in her mouth. I turned around and reported what I had seen. “Joy Ann is sucking her thumb,” I said.

“Shush,” my mother said.

Miracles

My barber, Frank, is the world’s most talkative human being. He is a tall, skinny man with straight blonde hair, big ears, almost no chin, and the bluest eyes you’ll ever see.

Frank is smart, forthright with opinions on an endless variety of subjects, and unburdened by the handicap of a formal education. When you sit down in a chair in his shop, you never know what else you are going to get in addition to a haircut. Last week it was a lecture on Intelligent Design.

“I get a kick out of these religious folks,” Frank offered after he had draped me with an apron and wet and combed my hair. “Trying to sneak God into the schools by the back door.”

“I’ve been reading about that in the newspaper,” I said. “I heard that the President put in his two cents worth on the subject yesterday.”

“Yes,” Frank said. “Did you read the story about it in the Chronicle today?” he asked.

“No,” I said.

“You know what the folks in the Department of Education in Sacramento call Intelligent Design?” Frank asked.

I confessed that I did not, which pleased Frank no end.

“‘Creationism Lite,’” he said. I could see his reflection in the wall mirror, and he was grinning from ear to ear.

“It’s not that I think it’s a dumb idea; I don’t. There’s got to be something out there running the show. It’s just that I think God could have done a better job. I mean, why did he have to make two headed cows and babies joined at the hip? Why did he make Republicans?”

“Well, you’ve got a point there,” I said.

“I mean, they should call it ‘Design for Dummies.’ That would make more sense.”

“So you really think there’s something to it? Creationism, or whatever else they’re calling it now?”

“I do,” said Frank. “I’m not a Christian. I don’t go to church. Natural selection makes sense to me. I just think that somebody or something had to start the ball rolling. I don’t care what you call it. God, Allah, The Great Spirit, The Big Enchilada–it makes no difference to me. What gets me is the feud that’s going on. The Darwinists and the Creationists calling each other names. Is there anything that makes less sense than a couple of experts with Ph.D.’s arguing with each other?”

I didn’t answer, but that didn’t put an end to Frank’s harangue. He was on a roll.

“You know what Ph.D. stands for, don’t you?” he asked.

“Doctor of Philosophy,” I said.

“Piled higher and deeper,” Frank said.

“Seriously,” Frank continued, “why can’t they just say look, science is science and the Bible is poetry, beautiful words and a hell of a good message, and let it go at that? Nobody really knows what’s what, so why not stop fighting and get to work on doing what we’re supposed to be doing, making this a better world.”

“Frank,” I said, “You’re a philosopher.”

“Damn right,” he said. “I mean, does anybody really know what happens when we die? Is there a heaven or a hell? I don’t know. Do you?”

“No,” I said.

“Did you hear the one about the priest who died and went to heaven?” Frank asked.

“I don’t think so,” I replied.

“Well, he opened his eyes and looked around, and the first thing he said was, ‘My God! It really is true!’ The guy who told me that story is a priest.”

“I don’t know, Frank,” I said. “I think I have to go along with Darwin on this one.”

“Let me tell you a story,” Frank said. “I know a guy who’s in A.A. He’s one of my customers. He said when he first got into the program, he was one of those, whadayacallit, not an atheist, somebody who doesn’t believe in God but doesn’t disbelieve either?”

“An agnostic,” I said.

“Right,” said Frank. “Well, anyway, this guy said he knew he was in trouble when he joined AA because they told him that to quit drinking, he had to believe in a Higher Power. Somebody or something had to remove the obsession to drink because nobody could do it by himself.”

“Is that how it works?” I asked.

“Yes,” Frank said. “That’s what this guy told me. Well, he hemmed and hawed around for awhile, and then he had an idea. ‘What happens if I cut myself?’ he asked, and he told himself that he could put a bandage on the cut, or if it was bad, he could go to a doctor and he would put in a couple of stitches. Now, in a week’s time or maybe a little more he could take off the bandage and the cut would be healed. Did he do that? The doctor? No. There was a healing force, some kind of process of nature, which enabled him to recover from the injury.

“So this guy said he reasoned that if there was a healing force for wounds, maybe that force could also cure him of his alcoholism. So that became his Higher Power. And you know what? It worked. The guy was into the shop the other day, and he told me that the day before he had celebrated his AA birthday. He has been sober for fifteen years.

“So some unseen power cured him?” I asked.

Frank nodded. “It was pretty strange,” he said. “One day all he could think about was having a drink, and the next day the obsession was gone. It was a miracle,” he said.

I asked Frank if he thought his friend was telling the truth, and he said oh, yes. No doubt about it. “I believe in miracles,” Frank said. “Don’t you?”