ELMER FUDD
The other side. My neighbor, a really great guy who is in the investment business, was walking his dog near my house yesterday afternoon between snow falls.
The other side. My neighbor, a really great guy who is in the investment business, was walking his dog near my house yesterday afternoon between snow falls.
I stared up at the unlikely and ungainly monster of a loud propeller-driven airship. The Skyraider didn’t look like it could stay in the air, but there it was, orbiting dependably..
The Hertz counter was empty when Arch went in to get a car more fitting than Matisse’s Pontiac convertible. There were plenty of cars and Arch didn’t bother to try to negotiate rates. A hundred dollars a day for a Cadillac……
I finished my letter home, the light of dawn sufficient to allow me to see the paper almost as well as the lousy black ink from my cheap government ballpoint.
The rash guards weren’t so bad, Arch decided, wishing he had a vanity mirror to check himself out in. Like a wetsuit, but better because the thin elastic long sleeve top and bottoms held everything in without giving him a feeling of being compressed……..
Dawn would not come. Again. A slight change in the dead blackness of lower jungle life was the only clue that dawn was in the offing. I looked at my combat watch only to realize that I could barely read it anymore.
Arch was on the beach across from Hanalei, kicking sand, and listening to a small battery powered radio belt out House of the Rising Sun, when his life came apart at the seams. Fired from the CIA for cause, again. Unable to pay for the room…….
It wasn’t to be him or Arch Patton. It was only going to be him. Arch wasn’t a knuckle dragger and he’d never been one. You don’t fight a force of nature and when such a force materialized outside his room on the lanai the thing appeared…
“Stairway to Heaven?” Arch said, looking intently into Matisse’s eyes. “I don’t like the way you said that. What heaven or what hell are you talking about and what does it have to do with the word Haiku, General DeWare mentioned…..
Arch searched the house. The dog paid close attention, but never moved from his sitting position in the small great room, as if his view of the sandy beach and pounding surf beyond was not to be surrendered. There was nobody in the house.
Arch and Matisse hiked the quarter mile back past Sunset Beach until they came to Ted’s Bakery. Ted Nakamura ran the place and he knew Matisse from way back, or so Matisse claimed………..
Peeling the duct tape from Virginia’s face was like peeling skin from the surface of a Kiwi fruit. Virginia said nothing. Her eyes spoke for her and there was as much warmth in them as there is warmth emanating from the bottom of blue glacier ice……
Arch slept deeply for the first time since the classified file had appeared out of nowhere to give him his life back but also to offer him death once again, in a life controlled by unaccountable serendipity. He awoke next to the woman who lay just like he’d left her many hours before, with Harpo the Dingo lying across her feet…..
Why did we, as a country, choose to ‘toy with the system in here in America? What did we do when we made that decision? What will be the result of sweeping changes that are now going to reverberate back and forth across the country and then the world?
Arch waited, backing up slowly each time he was sucked toward the cloying grasp of a swelling wave about to break. He had to get it right. He picked up a slight ‘crumping’ sound that was different from what he’d been hearing, as the waves broke in front of him, one after another without let up
Somehow Amelia Earhart was a name that appeared to have some importance in Arch’s life. Once back inside Cynthia’s home Arch spread the file out so it could dry completely, and also to give him time to lay out a rough plan of escape from the island….
Arch took a seat next to Virginia who acted like he wasn’t there, staring at her upraised menu, as if it offered something other than common island fare. Ahi and Matisse sat across with General DeWare ……
Arch was stuck trying to cross a stretch of dark beach with a woman and a dog, with his rental car about to explode behind them. The dog was not going to fit under the blanket, that was for sure. Time was of the essence…..
Matisse drove the Bonneville with less than his usual abandon. The Sunday afternoon traffic on Kam Highway was simply overwhelming and there was no place to pass, illegally or otherwise, along the entire length of the two-lane highway……..
After the long climb up from Secrets Beach and arriving at the outer edge of the Princeville Resort parking lot, Arch took a few minutes to catch his breath. The sea beat up the dark cliff face from down below..
Atlantis led them down the stairs to the basement of the Princeville terminal building. The basement consisted of one long corridor with closed doors lining the walls on both sides. Mid-way down she opened one door and stood to allow them to pass.
Arch scrapped the idea of hiking in through the Waialua Forest. The topography was just too difficult. By the time he and Matisse were anywhere near the base of the stairs……..
Let’s see, a whole lot of people contributed to Jill Stein’s recount effort, thinking she was trying to bring some honesty back to the U.S. election system. She collected around nine million for the effort….
With fear and trepidation on his mind, Arch raced up the concrete and steel stairs to the entrance into Amelia Earhart’s Restaurant. Giving a large quantity of drugs to strangers wasn’t like slipping somebody a “Mickey” in an old mystery show on television….
“Crimson and clover, over and over” The song played over Fusner’s tactically stupid, but achingly home-calling radio. The lyrics just repeated. There was no real meaning, like the days and nights of my life in Vietnam.
Arch stared down at the little radio he held in his hand. A team player at the other end had asked for a communications check, apparently from Ringo. Arch was being given a chance to hold the enemy off or blow the whole thing completely…
Arch had never flown the particular model of Beechcraft they would be inside. He knew, whether he flew the plane or not, he was about to once again endanger the only three beings on the planet who seemed to give a damn whether he lived or died.
I had no idea how the attack into the tree line on the other side of the Agent Orange clearing would go down. Once more, as with each day’s move since I’d been in country, things just seemed to happen without a lot of..
Lihue was a small town, and the airport even smaller, so Arch presumed that everyone noticed almost everything, but nobody did much of anything. Doug was popular in his way, or he wouldn’t still be flying……
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