I woke up the morning after Christmas and eased out of bed. My wife made me believe she was still asleep, like she always did although any move on my part to depart the bed never failed to bring her back to life. I moved as silently as possible to get ready for the day. She had awakened I knew, but I also knew she’d return to sleep in only seconds after figuring out that everything was okay and normal. I went downstairs to use that bathroom, which was considered my bathroom by both Mary and Julie. It was also Bozo’s adopted bathroom but only when I was in it. He only, however, sat or lay on the closed toilet lid while he made me believe he wasn’t there to watch or give me any company. I smiled as I shaved. He was a whole lot like my wife in temperament, as well as imbued with the same violent depth of Irish temper. Mary had come out of a dirt poor county in Ireland called Clare while Bozo had come out of a deep rugged and barren arroyo with no name that caused a similar response to survival in a world that was just as harsh but so much better disguised.
Paul’s transgression would not leave my thoughts. The future of the family, the coming move, money, life insurance sales, and even the beach patrol were all subjects that should have occupied my full attention. I looked down at my right palm after rinsing the leftover shaving cream from my face. And then there was the artifact, I thought, once more trying to rub the evidence of its existence from the altered skin of my hand. But, for some reason, it was Paul and his strange interaction with my wife that would not leave my mind.
I went back upstairs to get dressed for the day. It was a nothing day, other than going on back to the Dana Point Harbor construction area to meet some of Butch’s sub-contractors. Somehow, Lorraine Galloway had come into contact with Butch and pressured him to set up a meeting so I could try to sell them life insurance. The woman was seemingly wasted as a restaurant waitress or even owner. No sales meeting I’d been to so far had ever mentioned having a ‘bird dog’ like her as a foundational part of any new agent’s sales success.
When I passed the open door to Julie’s room I couldn’t help but notice the end of the big tall Estes rocket box sticking out from under the top edge of the blanket covering her, and Mrs. Beasley, of course. I shook my head. What kind of daughter went to bed with a rocket, and how could a rough war-tattered veteran like Gularte possibly know that the rocket would be not only a great gift for her but even more? It was an out-of-the-park home run with everyone.
Quite possibly I was the only person who, very silently, thought it was inappropriate as a gift for a developing young lady barely older than a toddler.
When I’d asked Gularte, before purchasing the rocket, about that he’d given me a strange answer, an answer I’d intended to ask Paul about, but that was before the incident with my wife. “Maybe for a regular little girl,” Gularte said, “but she’s not a normal daughter, she’s your daughter.” That response had stopped me cold. What did he, or it, really mean, about my daughter and me?
I got all my insurance papers and too expensive Texas Instruments handheld calculator and headed down to the car. Mary was quite used to the multiple careers, or jobs, existence I’d formed around myself after re-surfacing inside the American culture. She’d get up eventually, with Julie and Bozo, clean up around the house, make coffee and breakfast. If I didn’t return in short order, it would be off to the beach, where she and Julie spent most of their time when not at the apartment. When we’d looked at the house on Lobos Marinos Mary had spent all of twenty minutes inside, but then left to walk to the edge of the nearby cliff overlooking the ocean. It was a good six hundred feet down to the sand that ran on the other side of the railroad tracks. There was a tough-looking path that snaked all the way, set in between two cliff-edge homes.
“Not a problem,” she’d murmured. “We can do that.”
I had my doubts but remained silent. The deal was made, and the Lobos Marinos home was ours.
It was too early to head up to the marina, and the fact that Paul’s office at Straight Ahead was so close to that location only served to draw my thoughts back to him and a problem I had to solve since I knew I wasn’t going to be able to simply move on. Mary seemed fine, having recovered from her shock following the meeting, but I wasn’t fine, not by any stretch of the imagination.
The restaurant was empty, as usual at such an early hour, but my coffee was there, steaming away at my table before I even got through the door. Lorraine appeared from the back to welcome me and accompany me to my street-facing chair, although the view out the big window only held my Volkswagen as a central feature of any interest.
I understood Lorraine’s exuberance, which had to be generated by her knowledge that I would be speaking soon to a whole group of prospects and that she’d be sharing any commission that was generated from my sales to them if I made any. When she left me alone I was there with the empty street, no people about, and the soft glow of the not yet fully risen sun. I thought about Paul. What might Paul do if I showed up and mid-way through our session I took out one of my Colt .45s and asked him a question.
“So, Paul, since you’re a trained psychologist, would you explain to me, following what you did to my wife, and knowing in some detail all about my background, just exactly what you’re going to say to walk out of this office alive?” I shook my head to clear the thought from my brain.
That kind of behavior would take me back to when I ended up standing across the street from my surgeon’s home in San Francisco. I would be giving up my life, and possibly my family’s life, by taking his. I couldn’t do that.
My thoughts turned to the one-pound stick of C-4 I’d kept and stored for later use. I tried to clear my head. Blowing up Straight Ahead down the cliff and down into the marina construction area would lead to the same result, even given that I might be a master of deception and misdirection. Innocent people would die, maybe even Butch.
“You’re concentrating so hard,” Lorraine said, her voice coming from behind my left shoulder, “You must be preparing for the presentation you’re going to give those men.”
I physically jerked back. My thoughts jolted instantly into reality, just like my body.
“Yes, how did you know?” I stuttered out, getting myself together.
“You’re one hell of a salesman, I’ll say that for you,” Lorraine went on, her voice cheery and uplifting. “Everyone you present to buys a policy, almost.”
I couldn’t help laughing out loud. Most of my clients hadn’t been really ‘sold’ anything. They’d been forced through coercion of one kind or another, even using tools that bordered on extortion, to become clients of mine. Chuck Bartok, Tom Thorkelson, and likely the entire staff of Massachusetts Mutual would no doubt be aghast at the tactics I used to ‘sell’ policies. And then, my thoughts turned back to Paul and I laughed some more.
“Paul needs a life insurance policy badly,” I breathed out, my voice softening but not so much that Lorraine didn’t hear what I said.
“Is Paul one of the men you’re making a presentation to?” Lorraine asked.
I held back more laughter, about to deny that until it occurred to me that I was going to make a presentation to Paul, but it wouldn’t be about purchasing a life insurance policy.
“Yes indeed,” I answered, realizing that, other than saying ‘good morning,’ I hadn’t told anything but lies since I’d walked through the front door of the place.
I left Galloways and got into the Volks backing out of the parking space. I proceeded east on Del Mar until stopping for the signal at El Camino Real. Taking a right would eventually lead to either the compound, the Coast Guard Station, or beyond to San Onofre. Taking a left would point my Volks north and would take me inexorably back to Dana Point, the marina, or Straight Ahead. The light changed and my body seemed to decide for me. The car turned left as if all on its own. I breathed in and out deeply as drove. Even before I went further into investigating the artifact further, or listening to a tape I knew I didn’t want to, but had to, and I had to handle the situation that had arisen because of Paul’s conduct. What was I to do once I got in front of him was a question I either couldn’t or didn’t want to answer.
Making it to Dana Point to sit at the red light of the intersection leading into the marina a partial solution occurred to me. I need the advice and counsel of a woman. A woman uninvolved, but aged, jaded, and without normal social limiting rules she would not be above breaking. If she was still there. She’d left in a heated rush days before, the yacht leaving its slip empty, but I’d heard that she’d returned for some unknown reason, either to meet with an important personage or to pick something up. The light changed.
Richard’s Mercedes wasn’t parked anywhere near where his and Cobb’s yachts were located, but, staring at them in relief, both boats were sitting quietly and seemingly unattended in their respective slips. I was relieved that she’d returned, wondering just how far I’d come in trying to accommodate such a strange and diffidently distant woman, that I’d be so pleased to see her back.
It wasn’t uncommon for Richard to park far from where he lived I’d learned. I also had no idea what Cobb drove if she drove at all. Both she and Richard conducted themselves in ways that were so arcanely secretive that they didn’t seem secretive at all. I parked as close as I could get to Cobb’s slip, right near the concrete abutment up from the gently lapping harbor waters. I sat for a few minutes, thinking about what to do. I had all the insurance papers. I knew Butch could gather his contractors at a moment’s notice but I wasn’t ready to meet with them yet.
I got out of the Volks and walked to the side of her yacht, noting that the cabin door was closed, as it always was. There was no sign of life anywhere around. I hopped aboard and went to stand at the door, bending down to knock, but not knocking. Cobb was a wild card and owed me nothing. I only felt I could trust her because she’d exhibited an ability to say nothing about practically anything. I was less than a gnat to her, but maybe that was in my favor.
The door opened and I stepped back in surprise.
“Enter,” a husky female voice intoned from within the cabin’s dusky dark interior. A wafting slight gust of flavored air pushed lightly against me as I stepped in and down to stand just inside the cabin confines. The aroma wasn’t of perfume or anything feminine. It was of cigarette smoke.
“Cobb? I asked, knowing the question sounded stupid, but not being able to see clearly into the cabin’s entire interior.
She straightened up to stand behind the single counter just a few feet from the starboard bulkhead lined with closed cabinet doors.
“Whom were you expecting?” she asked, blowing a breath of smoke across the counter toward me.
“I never know,” I answered, truthfully.
“Which means you’ve been here too often,” she replied. “Hunt’s dead and I’m probably on that same list, maybe a bit further down, so what do you want?”
“Help,” I answered, again truthfully, not knowing what else to say. The woman was so confounding, her strange staccato delivery like gentle but sharpened spears coming at me through brief dissipating clouds of smoke.
“Help, really?” She said with a brief laugh that sounded more like a grunt. “Help is what I give. It sure as hell never walks through that cabin door to
be offered to me.”
“You need help?” I asked with genuine surprise in the tone of my knee-jerk response.
There was a short silence between us, one in which she didn’t appear to take in or exhale smoke in my direction.
“Thank you for that,” she murmured. “I know you mean well but I think I’m well beyond hope of doing anything but leaving this country for good. Now, what is it?”
Her comment and question were spoken in a completely different tone than she’d used since my entry into the confines of her yacht’s cabin. She then walked around the counter, extinguished her cigarette, and took a seat on one of the many cushions that lined the interior of the portside hull.
I sat down a few cushions away from her, more toward the bow taking a few seconds to organize my thoughts. Then I began. As quickly as I could I covered the reason I’d enlisted Paul to help in my recovery. I went over the things he’d done for me before coming to the incident. Finally, I told her what my wife had said to me about what had happened at the meeting. When I was done Cobb slowly moved to light herself another cigarette. That she hadn’t done so while I’d been deep into revealing some of my most personal history and then going into my marriage, I considered a silent compliment. She hadn’t stopped me and then sent me on my way out of hand, which I thought might have been a distinct possibility.
She didn’t say anything, instead getting up and walking over to an electronic complex set into the wall between the cabinets on the starboard side of the boat. At first, thinking the action strange, I prepared myself to depart, but I didn’t end up moving. Cobb returned as some music came from all around me, delivered by invisible speakers.
The song ‘Angel of the Morning‘ began to play, as it it’d been set onto her machine to be available at just the right time. The song was the song of my marriage, adopted by us when Mary lay so pregnant with Julie that she couldn’t roll out of bed without help. We laughed together every time it played and sang the lyrics without thinking about what they might mean. That it was playing now, after what I’d told Cobb was stunning, but I said nothing.
Cobb smoked her cigarette before turning slightly. “Listen to the third stanza, last three lines,” she said, turning back to wait.
I listened to the song, recognizing the singer, Merilee Rush who hadn’t done much since that number one hit. The third stanza came, and then the three lines:: “If morning’s echo says we’ve sinned, well, it was what I wanted now, and if we’re victims of the night I won’t be blinded by the light.” The rest of the song played out, and there was no additional music from the speakers.
“I don’t get it,” I said, after a few seconds.
“I had a man several years ago when that song came out,” she said, more to herself than me, looking at the far wall, her face expressionless from my angle of view. “The words, if lived, say it all. You don’t need to say or do anything to your therapist. Your wife says it all, you’re both ‘victims of the night,’ and she won’t be blinded by the light.”
“What about me?” I replied, feeling foolish as soon as I said the words.
“I know your past and your present,” Cobb replied, “And I’m sure from what you’ve told me, so does Paul. He’s waiting for your visit and he’s doing so in fear, uncertain if what he’s helped you gain in coming home has fully taken.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, befuddled by her strange answer.
“You are dangerous. You come across in physical appearance like an innocent child, filled with expressive playfulness and your verbal talents are similar. Yet, here you are, one of the most dangerous men I’ve ever had sitting inside this yacht, part of it because of life experience, part of it due to your ‘act,’ so to speak, and part of it because of your intellect and memory. You are made of coiled spring steel but you also know that such a condition can’t work to allow your long-term survival in this culture. Let Paul enjoy being one of your choices, which he recommended to you, to gain redemption.”
“And my wife?” I asked as if Cobb was some sort of a seer instead of a woman with a very secretive and shady past and present.
“Never met her but it certainly sounds like she’s your match in many areas. She can stare across the distance of a deep chasm and know what’s on the other side without going there, and never forget that you have lied to her throughout your relationship. You think that’s all you but, given what you’ve told me, she’s lied to you a good deal of the time too. In other words, you probably have a great relationship. What she heard may not be what she related. What she heard may not be what he meant. What she heard may also be shaped to fit into what she feels you need to know to continue without destroying everything, which you’ve thought of doing…which I’d think of doing.”
I got up and walked past her to the door. I looked down at her, meeting her deep dark, and unfathomable stare. I didn’t know what to say.
“You’ll need to think a bit before you act…about Paul, your wife, and a whole lot of other stuff both of us have on our desks.”
“Thank you,” I said, meaning it. There was a whole lot of stuff she’d given me to think about but my mind was now clearer when it came to dealing with Paul.
I left the boat and got back into the Volks and drove up to Pacific Coast Highway. The facility was only a quarter mile north up the hill. I turned and drove until I was able to cross the traffic and turn into the lot.
I walked through the Straight Ahead complex, once again having parked on the side to avoid anyone seeing and recognizing my Volkswagen and assuming that I was a patient of the rehab part of the facility. Paul’s office door was open so I stuck my head in before entering.
“Got a few minutes?” I asked him, even though he held a telephone handset to his right ear.
Paul looked at me, and we both knew. I wasn’t there seeking his assistance as a therapist. He motioned me toward the two chairs in front of his desk and I sat in the one closest to the northern wall. It’s the chair I always sat in. I had no fear of open doors or having to keep my back to the wall to be alert for danger. I’d learned very quickly, after getting out of the hospital in San Francisco, that living one’s life back home in the expectation of danger coming from anywhere at any time was no life at all.
Paul hung up the phone and looked across the desk at me without commenting like he was waiting for me to say something, which I wasn’t about to, following Chuck Bartok and Tom Thorkelson’s sales instructions to the letter about not being the first one to talk when a sale was on the table. Before talking to Cobb what might have been on the table was Paul’s life, but that wasn’t true anymore. Her words held a series of hard-learned truths that I didn’t fully understand but resonated deeply inside my thoughts about what had happened. What had likely happened?
“I suppose we need to talk about Mary’s visit,” Paul said, looking at me expectantly.
I remained silent, allowing some emotion to build but not wanting too much.
I thought of the Merilee Rush song, and how it was possible that life’s vagaries and unreal coincidences could land on us at any time. That Cobb would have the song, to use it as an illustration for something I’d not even discussed until arriving in her cabin, and then have that song as the only one that played when she’d turned the machine on…well, the strangeness of that was almost equivalent to the strangeness of the artifact, although not nearly as all-pervasive.
“What do you want to do?” Paul finally asked, going right to the heart of the matter. In many ways, coming from somewhere that was different, he reminded me of Cobb when he talked. There was no beating around the bush.
“What are the options?” I asked back, speaking softly and trying my best to keep hidden what Cobb had so easily observed about me.
“Right now I can’t think of any good ones for either of us,” Paul replied, resting his elbows on the desktop while crossing one arm and massaging his chin with the hand of his other arm.
I was glad to see that he was relaxing from possibly thinking I was there to cause him harm.
“I’m in the middle of some rather difficult circumstances, and I’m going to need advice, some of which I have already received but one major problem I have is that I can’t tell almost anyone what is happening in a few areas and you already know a considerable amount of this kind of stuff. Before I do anything I’m going to talk to Mary. If she agrees that this plan of seeing you again is sound then I’ll be back. The entire White House team is falling apart, although, mercifully, most of it is going down back in Washington and not here. The compound is beginning to look like an abandoned wasteland and I’m presuming that’s just going to get worse until there’s nothing left in San Clemente that will do much to prove that a controversial president once tried to get away from it all, and pretty much succeeded, while he had a residence here.”
“The passing comment I made to your wife, and I won’t try to minimize it, was a professional and personal mistake,” Paul said, his concentration on his situation maintaining front and center in his presentation.
“I understand,” I murmured, getting up to leave, although in truth I was a long way from truly understanding, I needed the kind of counsel I’d gotten before and I needed a place and person who was not a part of the rest of my life.
Paul stood and stuck out his hand.
I looked at him in surprise. We’d never shaken hands, but I held out my own.
When I got to the car I sat in the driver’s seat to think. Everything was happening so fast. Had the ‘new me’ become much weaker than the old me from the A Shau? I didn’t think so, but the games, movements, and involvement in the things that had been attracted to me, required that the old Marine Corps saying, often repeated but not necessarily often acted upon seemed to apply. If you can’t baffle them with your bullshit, then dazzle them with your footwork. Whatever happened between Paul and me would be up to me which made me feel both good and bad. I didn’t like the daydreams about ‘getting even’ that I’d experienced, and I didn’t want that kind of thinking to penetrate and bring negative results to my family.
I stopped at Butch’s trailer on my way out. He’d not stopped by my place on Christmas Eve although I’d invited him. He wasn’t in the trailer, however. The meeting with his contractors would have to wait until later in the week, after all, it was still Christmas week with plenty of other stuff going on.
When I arrived back at the apartment Julie and Mary were gone. I assumed they were at the beach. I decided that I’d had enough emotional adjustment to make in my day. The last tape would have to wait. I went downstairs to the garage, pulled out my six “D” cell Maglite from its wall hook, turned it on, and went to work. With the garage door closed and locked with a bar from the inside I was completely alone. The garage had no other entrance or windows. I left the light off and worked with the Maglite on. I didn’t want anybody passing by to notice there was someone inside. When Bob had revealed what his concerns were about the artifact, and with Gularte possessing the knowledge he had my decision to pull the box from storage was nearly automatic. Nobody but me could know where it was and having it in storage nearby wasn’t going to be sufficient to allow me to sleep at night. Hauling the box home on the top rack of the Volkswagen hadn’t been easy or particularly safe but somehow I’d gotten it there and then wrestled into the garage without, hopefully, anyone seeing what I was up to. Where the thing would go next was another problem entirely. With the coming move to Lobos Marinos and a real house, there might be more opportunity to hide it there…and then there was the coming relationship with the CIA. Maybe something would happen with all that.
The box was easy to open, and I was once again happy that there wasn’t some complex set of moves to make to get inside it. I put on a heavy set of rubberized asbestos gloves left over from the car work I’d done on the MG with Joe Beard and slowly removed the artifact from the box. There was no feeling of the object through the thick gloves, other than its extraordinarily light weight. I hefted and made my decision. One of the object’s characteristics that had been ‘burned’ into my hand was the scuff marks that seemed to cover its entire surface. Was the object so soft a metal that it could be ground away or sawed up? I wanted to know.
For Joe’s job, I’d purchased an industrial bench grinding wheel. The stone surface of the wheel was almost new since it was so hard that the light work required to do minor stuff on the MG hadn’t worn it down at all. Knowing that the sound of the grinder might give my presence away I turned it on anyway.
The stone took almost half a minute to come up to full speed. Without thinking anything else through I held the edge of the artifact to the outer edge of the whirling wheel. Instantly the stone was taken from my hand, a plume of smoke coming out from the inner surface of my right glove, as well as a larger one from the wheel. I rushed to turn the grinder off and looked around in shock for the object. I only was able to see it because it had embedded itself into the bottom edge of the wooden door and a thin plume of smoke moved upward from it.
I stripped the glove and threw it down. Its material had impossibly burned to the point where any longer exposure to the grinder with the object in my hand would have resulted in an injury a whole lot worse than the mere serrated marks I already had. I shone the Maglite on the wheel. Where I’d touched the artifact to it, the wheel was melted. The artifact wasn’t melted, although it smoked a bit, I guessed because it wasn’t hot. The object had somehow bit into the wheel a good half inch, reacted to that, and burned my glove and then the wood of the door.
With a chisel and two steel picks, I pulled the artifact out of the door. The cheap set of fireplace tongs I’d replaced were nearby. Very gingerly I pulled the artifact from the wood, grabbed it with the tongs, and moved very slowly to put it back into the box. I then threw the straw-like stuff inside over it and closed the aluminum lid until it clicked. I sat on the box, directing my light toward the hole in the door. How would I explain that, unless I made a plug to put into it? Either way, I knew that my days of experimenting with the object had to stop or I was going to hurt myself badly, or worse. Once again, the object hadn’t obeyed the laws of science I knew to be true. There was simply no way an object, no matter what element it was made of, could literally melt a whirling stone wheel and then not have residual heat emitted in gobs. And then the only heat had been generated by the object itself but even that had been minimal. The wood was still smoking when I pulled the object from the hole, but the object itself could easily have been once again, handled without any protection…at least from burns.
Whatever was on the tape I was going to listen to was less of a threat than the potential of what the box seemed to hold in reserve, or at least so I hoped. I hung up the light, opened the door to air the place out, and then stood by for a while until all the smoke seemed clear. I had time to wonder about how I’d become so engaged with some of the most powerful people in the world and how the ‘toys,’ devices, and objects they ran into could cost a new guy his life. I was the FNG being put out on the point, time after time, and that thought didn’t make me feel comfortable.
Guys on the point didn’t live real long, or at best came home in pieces.
Who knew Cobb had you figured out while you are still trying to figure yourself out ??
Experience from Nam is still always in our thoughts, even if we don’t recognize it as we now try to return to civilian life without harming our future by our actions. Paul will will have to wait while he thinks things are cool. But are they really ??
Late to the reading of this chapter as I caught covid for the 1st time and it has my brain in a fog most days, getting better each day is what I tell myself !! 😉
By the way, you by now I’m sure, realize how blessed you really are to be married to such a wonderful woman..
SEMPER Fi
Thanks for the great comment SgtBob, and also the obvious fact that we both share the same understanding about Mary.
The recovery from Covid can be a bitch and not talked about much. The mental fog thing is maybe the worst part
because you feel like that’s it, you are always going to be that way…having lost your mental edge, so to speak.
Not so, but there it is. God gave this curse/blessing of a memory to me so no, Paul was not forgotten, as almost nobody
I have ever crossed tracks with has been. Cobb was a genius in her own right . Toe to toe with her was so vey
enjoyable, like being part of a very interesting script presentation…but better.
Thanks again,
and Semper fi,
Jim
My Irish wife wouldn’t have been nearly as civil w/Paul as Mary. I’d have to get a new councilor or face her wrath.
You got me hooked, again we are left hanging on the fate of the artifact.
Thanks for making the comment Phil, as I guess I don’t say that enough when I respond to them. I get taken up in considering the content
of the comment and not the fact of how much these all meant to me…and how they even effect the ‘fabric’ of the writing. I don’t really know how civil or uncivil my wife really was. I never discussed it further to this day with her, and not with Paul either. There were no marks apparent on either of them. The complexity of everything going on back then also didn’t call for the kind of responses that might have been applied should things have been more ‘peaceful’ or normal, if such a word can be used about any of my life.
Semper fi, and thanks,
Jim
Aside from thanking you I always wonder what I can say to contribute to the disourse.
As I read your response to Michael Orsinger the thing that popped into my head was that humanity is devolving and civilization is becoming much less civil.
Not very deep, just a spur of the moment observation.
Take care and enjoy Jim
Tim
As an anthropologist by education Tim, I must offer that civil, as in civilization, is an affectation of the way we want things to be,
not the way things generally are. We are inventing ourselves into the future, our imperfect presents and pasts working to serve as
broken foundations for that future we so crave. Things are actually more civil than ever in certain parts of the world…or what we call
the first or developed world. That’s not, by far, most of the world when it comes to the land occupied by the species. We are trying and cloaking
in deception that past and that present to allow our apology to be accepted in working toward that future. The apology is to us, ourselves, indvidually and as groups.
With the advent of such advanced communications, transport, and all the modern comforts, we now know so much more that we assume things are less civilized.
We just don’t do a very good job in remembering what we do know of the past, and never forget that we don’t know that much of what happed in the past.
Look forward, it’s getting better all the time. Perspective is such a bitch to angle into view, however. What you have written here is all about
the heartfelt trying that so many of us are doing and many of the readers writing, or simply reading, on this site are a very credible and poignant part
what I’m relating here. Thanks for the great comment that spawned this editorial.
Semper fi,
Jim
I am never disappointed with any chapter. You always rise to the occasion to make waiting for the next chapter a great expectation. I thought in this installment that you would use your strong arm tactics to make Paul buy life insurance with the implication that his wife would soon need it. You took the high road instead. Good for you.
High road? Not when it came to life insurance. If I even weakened to the point where I might give in to one of my rather violent day dreams of the
time, then the last intelligent thing I would have done prior to moving to action would have been to connect Paul to me by being his life insurance agent.
What if Paul made notes after I wasn’t with him? What if he made his girlfriend the beneficiary and then it came out he was propositioning my wife, however
vaguely. With my history of the time, I can only imagine how quickly suspicion would have turned toward me as the primary suspect.
Anyway, those are my conclusions today, not necessarily that I consciously came to at the time. As another shrink once told me when I embarrassed him by knowing too
much about the study of his profession: “You’re not nearly as intelligent as you are able to convince people that you are.” I immediately thanked him for
stating taht. I understood why he said it, but I also understood that you can’t really fake high intellect when called upon to exhibit it. You can shy away by remaining silent,
or you can use memory to cover a bit..but in the end? His intended insult was an unintended compliment.
Semper fi,
Jim
Semper fi,
Jim
A very revealing chapter! The strength of Mary, her worry about telling you about Paul reveals much about her and her intuitions about you. I she actually thought you would kill him she would have never mentioned it. Though in mentioning it she directed that you must deal with it. Cobb is every bit as brilliant as Mary and being that you were a cursory relationship to her, she gave you very sage advice. I believe she knew she could look to you in the future should her situation require it. How you handled Paul was brilliant! now you own him, he knows he was given a reprieve.You can’t blame him for being attracted to the same women you are, though, you can hold him accountable for his poor choices in not speaking to you about it.
This artifact wow, it intensifies what ever force is applied to it. The acceleration of gravity, friction, the moment of inertia applied tangential to the grinder, the heat. Every force applied to it outside of equilibrium appears magnified… it pushes back with that magnified force damaging/melting the wheel and burning the door. When the force stops so does the affect. Curiouser and curiouser ! You have lived in interesting times your entire life!
Deep, James, very deep. Yes to all of your conclusions, which is familiar territory for both of us. No, I could not blame him for being attracted to Mary too.
Many men have shared his feelings back then and also through the years. I was never naturally jealous, but I also wasn’t without a deep understanding that family
units are held together by private bonds and oaths of allegiance that, if broken, almost always result in the loss of the family unit. The artifacts ‘qualities’
bothered me to the core and those qualities have remained bothersome to me to this day. They did, however, make be much better accept the other things I was to find
along my travel and careers that did not fit into our structured view of either physics or reality. The speed of light isn’t the maximum speed of entropy in the universe,
but that’s only recently discovered and then quickly denied several times. The Mammoth and Mastodon carcasses found under the permafrost in Siberia died quick-frozen with
tropical foods int their bellies, twenty-five thousand years ago, which is impossible given our understanding of geology and whole lot of other stuff.. And so on.
Thanks for another great and provocative comment…and the compliment and confidence of putting it up on this site for me to critique.
Semper fi, my friend,
Jim
I always read your stories right away, as soon as you email them. You know what? I’ve never been disappointed. Your writing is so much fun to read, I really enjoy it. Keep it up.
Great compliment my friend! Fun is a great word to have associated with my writing and thanks for that smile at the end of this day.
I fully intend to keep it up.
Semper fi,
Jim
Jim,
What a chapter!
Yet again, I THANK YOU!
Jim and the alien “magic 8 ball”, figuring out what action concerning Paul (who rear is puckered up because he KNOWS he screwed up royally) and mulling retribution vs. offering/granting redemption, seeking out Cobb’s advice, still navigating the ever-dangerous and complex transition from being ‘AShau Jim’, the last tape still lurking in the background, the inconvenience of ‘real life’ mundanities (?) of selling insurance policies getting in the way of top tier things on your to do list of priorities.
I am beginning to wonder if Mardian gave you the “magic 8 ball” object knowing you would try to examine it every which way to Sunday and maybe he hoped it would be your demise because he knew you were involved in the sinking of the car.
Oh, and the comments by other readers to this chapter are quite eye-opening and very appreciated.
Keep on writing, Sir.
You cannot leave us here…
THE WALTER DUKE. Thanks Walter for the great compliment at the end of your comment. I will not leave you there.
The next chapter is already underway as long as God is willing and the creed don’t rise. I don’t think, and I didn’t think at the time
that Mardian had any use for his son at all, and that helped explain some of his son’s lousy attitude and worse conduct. Generally, people don’t see
danger when it’s right in front of them. America lives in a pretty protected bubble and I presume that Paul was also that way. Cobb saw it, but then
she was a world class predator all on her own. The best and most dangerous predators don’t give any warning at all, if they can help it…and also may go a long way
toward trying to prove themselves to be anything but a predator. Thanks for the great comment, as usual.
Semper fi, my friend,
Jim
Seems like you need Cobb more than Paul to find your way. And that “ball” seems to be stalking you, daring you to turn your back to it, which I don’t think you can. Will the last tape kind of tie it all together? Keep it coming LT, I really look forward reading this story of an amazing chapter in your life! Semper fi sir
It was, and remains, so hard to ‘go it alone’ out in the real world. We can retreat for brief periods, from contact with the social
order, but in truth, it’s simply too difficult, physically and mentally to move through life alone. Some buy on the TV this morning was blaming the inflamed weirdness of politically outraged anger and behavior on young men today. Seems that many young men don’t get any or enough sex. I started to laugh out loud, nearly spilling my coffee. Like that’s a brand new problem? Really? Older men can look backwards and even in high school and college, if you weren’t the football quarterback or other sports star, you simply weren’t getting any. That’s called sociobiology and that study of science is very valid in pointing out that both sexes value certain different things and unless there’s the opportunity to demonstrate value then there’s no nothing. Thanks for the great comment, and yes, I’ve always needed the wise counsel of wiser women. They know stuff.
Semper fi,
Jim
I showed myself a wee bit of patience this time and waited until DanC had completed his usual outstanding work.
And I have to agree with Col. Homan regarding fitting in. And I wonder if I ever will?
Your “magic ball” truly intrigues me! As a scientist, although a biological one, it truly baffles me. Doesn’t quite fit in with standards we’ve established here on earth. Long term effects on one who handles it? Well, you are still here, so that would be a hard “no”. I hope some sort of answers are further along in your story line.
And you handled Paul pretty well. I am sure he was thinking that he’d signed his own death warrant! The waiting is sometimes many times worse than the actual result.
Thanks again for letting us into an important time in your life.
You sure as hell fit in here…and with me. I am so glad that you are messaging here as I have been thinking about the
severity of your health problems. Are you going to be ambulatory or are you going to be in a chair, or whatever? Does your
wife serve as your major caregiver and ‘suffering servant?’ Just idle curiosity since you have made a place for yourself in
my life and probably a good number of others who access this site to see what’s going on. Thanks, as usual, for the compliment
and your writing on here.
Semper fi, my friend,
Jim
James,
I just finished reading Sonia Purnell’s book about Virginia Hall. Wow!
Some minor editing suggestions follow:
She had awakened knew,
Add “I” before “knew”
She had awakened I knew,
He only, however, sat or laid on the closed toilet lid
“lay” instead of “laid”
He only, however, sat or lay on the closed toilet lid
Bozo had come out of a deep rugged and barren arroyo with no name but caused a similar response
Maybe “that” instead of “but” after “name”
Bozo had come out of a deep rugged and barren arroyo with no name that caused a similar response
box sticking out from under the top edge of the blanket covering her, and Mrs’ Beasley
Maybe period after “Mrs” instead of apostrophe
box sticking out from under the top edge of the blanket covering her, and Mrs. Beasley
The deal was made, and the Lobos Marinos home was in.
Maybe “ours” instead of “in”
The deal was made, and the Lobos Marinos home was ours.
I understood Lorraine’s exuberance, which had to be generated by her knowledge that I would be speaking soon to a whole group of prospects with whom she’d be sharing any commission that was generated from my sales to them if I made any.
/Lorraine won’t be sharing the commissions WITH the prospects. Let’s reword
I understood Lorraine’s exuberance, which had to be generated by her knowledge that I would be speaking soon to a whole group of prospects and that she’d be sharing any commission that was generated from my sales to them if I made any.
I physically jerked back.
Backspace to remove gap between paragraphs
listening to a tape I knew I didn’t want to, but had to, listen in, and I had to handle
“listen in” seems extra Drop
listening to a tape I knew I didn’t want to, but had to, and I had to handle
It sure as hell never walks through that cabin door to
be offered to me.”
backspace to close gap in sentence
It sure as hell never walks through that cabin door to be offered to me.”
doing anything but leaving this country for good. Now, what is it.
Maybe end with question mark instead of period
doing anything but leaving this country for good. Now, what is it?
sales instructions to the letter about being the first one to talk when a sale was on the table
Maybe add “not” before “being”
sales instructions to the letter about not being the first one to talk when a sale was on the table
I’m in the middle of some rather difficult circumstance
Plural for “circumstance” “circumstances”
I’m in the middle of some rather difficult circumstances
I’m going to need advice, some of which I received
Maybe expand to “I have already received”
I’m going to need advice, some of which I have already received
you already have a considerable amount of this kind of stuff
Maybe “know” instead of “have” after “already”
you already know a considerable amount of this kind of stuff
If she says this plan
OK but maybe “agrees” instead of “says”
If she agrees this plan
Whatever happened between Paul, and I
“me” instead of “I”
Whatever happened between Paul, and me
want anybody passing by and noticing there was someone inside
Drop “and”
want anybody passing by noticing there was someone inside
leftover from the car work I’d down in the MG with Joe Beard
Two words “left over”
“done on” rather than “down in”
left over from the car work I’d done on the MG with Joe Beard
extraordinarily lightweight
Two words “light weight”
extraordinarily light weight
so soft a metal that it could ground away or sawed up
Add “be” after “could”
so soft a metal that it could be ground away or sawed up
The material had impossibly burned
/Assuming the glove’s material
Change “The” to “Its”
Its material had impossibly burned
It wasn’t melted, although it smoked a bit
/Seems “It” is the artifact – although not clear.
Change “It” to “The artifact”
The artifact wasn’t melted, although it smoked a bit
artifact out of the door, the cheap set of fireplace tongs
Two sentences. Period after “door” Capitalize “The”
artifact out of the door. The cheap set of fireplace tongs
Blessings & Be Well
Thanks for a great edit Dan. I hope you don’t mind that I edited the edit a bit at the start, so as to accommodate the major change
in sequel you pointed out needed to be rewritten. Took care of that, thanks to you. Can’t thank you enough, as usual. What a gift
having you back!
Semper fi, my friend,
Jim
The ball is more than just a memory, but still remains like the ” Valley “, a Mistry and extremely dangerous . Now to figure it out? And wonder ” why me”! The wait is killing me !
Thanks Don, for the great compliment. It’s wonderful to have avid readers waiting for the next chapter.
I might no make any money at this but I do enjoy the popularity of the work and the comments on here.
Semper fi,
Jim
We operate in a world where most do not know who or what walks among them…however we are inhibited by the environment need to operate in.
PTSD is not about being different but the effort to fit in.
Colonel Homan, somewhere down in deepest Florida, one of the few places you can still go and feel young, you are no doubt thinking about
bombing someone or something too. So there. You live with the same inhibitions, as you use the word. Thanks for the usual apropos
comment and the compliment of its writing.
Your friend,
Semper fi,
Jim
Jim
]
Your writing moves me, makes me feel and think,
Lets start wit:
And it won’t matter anyhow
If morning’s echo says we’ve sinned
Well, it was what I wanted now
And if we’re victims of the night
I won’t be blinded by the light
The 70’s time of sexual uncertainty?
She’s speaking from the night before. “I know what’s going on, I know we may feel differently in the morning, but I’m happy here and I want to take that risk. I promise to let you go gracefully, if that’s what you want, but maybe the day will be just like the night and it’s going to be OK.”
No commitment- hard for Catholic boys like us to feel comfortable with this one night of love
Wow
Ok, first I have come to the conclusion Mardian “gifted” you the artifact to show you things aren’t what the seem and dangerous things must be put away,
AShau Jim cant be that Marine in the world- no place for it. We learn that when we come back often because the Marine creeps out and we get in doo-doo or we ruin relationships. We cant trust just anyone so we got confused and frankly scared ….. we had to learn new survivals skills that didn’t include blasting some fucker with a45
We knew survival but not the survival in the world made us feel uneasy
The FNG was learning and it wasn’t fun. I often was so tightly controlled I missed life’s clues
There’s a wall ten miles high and fifty miles thick between those of us who went and those who didn’t, and that is never going to come down. That’s the terrible legacy of Vietnam. James Webb expressed in Fields of Fire. When one of the book’s protagonists returns home from Vietnam to pick up his Harvard education where he left off, he is asked to speak at an antiwar rally. He berates his fellow students, “How many of you are going to get hurt in Vietnam? I didn’t see any of you in Vietnam. I saw dudes, man. Dudes. And truck drivers and coal miners and farmers. I didn’t see you. Where were you? Flunking your draft physicals? What do you care if it ends? You won’t get hurt.” Webb gave voice to the derision some Vietnam veterans felt toward those who didn’t serve.
So I had the fact I was there. Was that bright?
I do not know but it is survival.
Great suff
I am never sure, with your comments Richard, whether they’re met for me or for the readers who pore over them, or is it pour?
Neat stuff and stuff to think about as I proceed. Mardian disappeared into the sunset and although I was to hear from him in the that future,
I never met him personally again. AS for being Catholic. That priest in Hawaii said it all when he walked out in the middle of the confession
I was finally willing to make. He tore off that purpose sash, looked at me, and said: “I can’t hear any more, Your confession can only be made to
God.” I was hurt at the time and shocked but got over it to cogitate and decide that he was right. Out went confessing to men. Out went the rest of
the religion as well. I now have my own relationship with God, as must have been His wish. Thanks for the writing in such earnest interest and care
my friend and the compliments, of course.
Semper fi,
Jim
Will the real James Strauss win please stand up Your doing a great job of hiding him You also deal with the mental and emotional scars from the war that we can relate to Good job
The real guy. I wish I had had a better grip on that back then…and, in fact, wish I had a better grip on it now.
If we get to know who we really are on this planet, well, it’s only happening because your on your death bed whispering ‘oh shit’
to whichever god you decided to gg- with before buying the farm. Thanks for the comment and compliment!
Semper fi,
Jim
Will the real James Strauss win lease stand up Your doing a great job of hiding him You also deal with the mental and emotional scars from the war that we can relate to good job
Hey, a repeat, thanks for the attention!D
Semper fi,
Jim
Intriguing as usual, but still trying to figure this out as to fiction based on fact story or some fact, some fiction or all facts? Knowing how our government acted back in those days I really don’t know. Waiting to see how this turns out as there is a lot of facts here. You have me guessing!
In today’s world of Internet and television communications, not to mention cell phones, the declaration that something is true or real, coming from the source is almost meaningless. Credibility has gone away for almost everyone everywhere. That angst response by nearly everyone is the quietest and most secret psychological condition penetrating deep into the culture. You must decide about your own ability to believe. I love the song lyrics to Rod Stewart’s Reason to Believe. What is it that you want? What is it that you need. How do you want things to be and go? None of those questions are for me to answer. Thanks for the sincerity and straight from the shoulder comment.
Semper fi,
Jim
She had awakened knew, but I also knew she’d return to sleep in only seconds after figuring
* awakened I knew
set of rubberized asbestos gloves leftover from the car work I’d down in the MG with Joe Beard
*car work I’d done on the MG
Thanks for the help Don! Even before Dan gets to it. I need all I can get!
Semper fi,
Jim
Times that try man’s soul!
THESE are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. That sentence is taken from Thomas Paine’s screed written back in 1776…and the unwritten part that deserves mention is that, as humanity continues to develop and civilization (as we try to define it) spreads, these times right now are always going to fit right into Paine’s conclusions.
Semper fi,
Jim