





                                                     THE CAVES

                                                      BOOK ONE










                               C COPYRIGHT 1995  by Carol J. Sweet all rights reserved.


This material may not be altered, edited, or in any way changed. You may print or distribute this material freely so long as the accompanying copyright notice is included and the file is not altered. This is an excerpt (preamble, chapter one) from THE CAVES BOOK ONE. The second book is available, and the third is in the works. 




                                                 




























                                                    PREAMBLE
                                                     ~ 1 ~
                                                June  15th 1996


   Ira Pratt stared at the squared board lost in thought. If he moved to the right he would surely lose two checkers. Maybe, he thought, as many as four. Moving to the left would not help either. There was really only one semi-safe move to make, and that was straight ahead. But even that move could put a hurtin' on his few remaining checkers, he thought. Nothing to do for it though, but move it, and see what happened. 
  He stared into the thoughtful eyes of the older man across the table, trying to read them. No good, he was a master at hiding his thoughts. His face was calm and carefully composed, not so much as a smile played at the corners of his mouth. 
  Ira gave in and decisively moved one checker forward and then leaned back into his chair, waiting to see what the older man would do.
  "Well, I see you have left me little choice, Ira," the older man said. He picked up one of his own checkers and carefully slid it forward as he finished speaking.
  "That was what I was hoping you'd do," Ira said grinning, as he jumped two of the older mans checkers.
  "No doubt about it, Ira, you're just too good for me," the older man replied. He smiled widely, and pleasantly, and then changed the subject. "How about we take a short break, Ira, maybe go for a walk. You must get sick of beating me all the time?" 
  "Well," Ira replied, "I kind'a get the idea you let me beat you sometimes, but sure, I wouldn't mind a break at all."
  "I would never let you beat me, Ira. It is a good thing we don't play poker though, I might gamble the entire kingdom away trying to beat you," the older man replied laughing. "Besides I have my reasons for wanting to take a break right now. I see it like this, if you and I take a break, maybe once we get back your concentration will not be so keen, and then maybe I will win one of these games for a change." He rose from the small table as he finished speaking. "Ready, Ira?"
  "Yep."
  Ira closed his eyes. He could have kept them open, and a few times he had, but the trip was unnerving enough without adding the visual aspects to it as well. Not that there was anything to see except darkness for the split second they would be traveling, he thought. Still...

  He opened his eyes. They had really only been shut for less than a second, but in that space of time they had traveled a great distance, or at least seemed to have. The small table that had been before him was gone, replaced by a lush green valley. A calm blue river flowed across the valley floor far below. He followed it with his eyes as it wound away in the distance.
  "It's beautiful," Ira exclaimed, "but will it still be?" ... he let the question trail away.
  "Yes it will, as will several others, Ira. But it need not be this place, there are so many to choose from," the older man informed him, "come."
  Ira blinked, and when he opened his eyes they were standing in a high mountain meadow. Wild flowers covered the meadow, and a large summer-fat herd of deer grazed peacefully among them. A large buck raised its heavily antlered head and stared at the two men, but perceiving no threat, went back to grazing the field.
  "This is also beautiful," Ira said quietly.
  "It only matters where, Ira, there are so many. There were even more, and there will be again."
  "I'll have to tell Cora about this place, and the other," Ira replied, still watching the deer graze.
  "You should, Ira. In fact there will be many things to tell her. Things she will need to know, Ira."
  "Tonight?"
  "Yes. The time is short."
  "I was afraid of that," Ira said slowly.
  "There is no reason to be afraid, Ira."
  "I know that. I guess I mean afraid, as in I wish it didn't have to happen."
  "I knew what you meant, Ira, but it is necessary. As much as I would wish that it was not, it is."
  Ira nodded his head slowly. "I know."
  The two men stood in silence for several minutes, watching the deer in the field. It seemed so peaceful to Ira, a good place to be, a good place to live, and that made it harder to accept that most of it would soon be gone. The older man spoke, breaking the silence that had fallen between them.
  "Would you like to look at some others, Ira?"
  "I believe I would at that. I think I'd like to look at as much as I kin before it's gone, I guess. Does that sound wrong?"
  "No, Ira, it does not, I too wish to look. . . Ready?"
  Ira nodded, but did not close his eyes. Darkness enveloped him, and a sense of speed. The absence of light was total, he could only sense the presence of the older man beside him as the traveled through the dark void.

                                                       ~ 2 ~

  Far below the small city of Glennville New York, Richard Pierce sat working before an elaborate computer terminal. He had just initiated the program that managed the small nuclear power plant hidden deep below him in the rock. A small hand set beside the computer station chimed, and he picked it up and listened. He did not speak at first, but as he listened a smile spread across his face. "Very good," he said happily, when the caller was finished, "keep me advised." He set the small hand set back into its cradle, and turned his attention back to the screen in front of him. The plant had powered up just as it was supposed to, no problems whatsoever, and that made Richard Pierce very happy. Two more days tops, he thought, and then maybe I'll get out of this dump.
  He supposed he should feel honored that he was even here, it was after all one of the biggest projects in the country, albeit top secret, but he could not help the way he felt. He was close to a mile underground, completely cut off from everything and everyone, and he hated it. If he had, had a choice, which he had not, he would never have come at all. But he had written the software that handled the power plant, as well as several other sections of the underground city, and that made it his baby. And there were a couple of small bugs, mainly due to the fact that no one had been allowed to know what the entire program was supposed to do. The way the rewrites were going however, it looked as though he would not be stuck here anywhere near as long as he had originally thought. And that was something to think about. He had begun to feel that he would never leave this rock bound prison, and wouldn't that be a real pain.

                                                     ~ 3 ~

  At a large gravel pit on the outskirts of Glennville, Gary Jones carefully maneuvered the wide mouth of the loader bucket over the dump box of the truck, and pulled back on the lever closest to him to release the load. Ain't this something, he thought as he slowly topped off the dump box, barely ten AM and we've already sent out twenty seven trucks of gravel to the base. 
Six men out sick, and another forty truckloads to deliver before five tonight. What in heck are they doing with all this gravel? he wondered. It was a question he had asked many times before, and still had not gotten an answer to. Uncle Sam paid well though, and on time to boot, so he guessed he probably shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth. He signaled the driver, and he pulled away with a whoosh of air as he released the brakes. Another dump truck lumbered up to take his place, and he pushed the questions out of his mind as he began filling the box.

                                                     ~ 4 ~

  In Seattle Washington, Harvey Pearlson sat at his wide mahogany desk and talked quietly into the phone. 
  The pushily appointed office was located on the top floor of one of Seattle's most highly regarded newspapers. And Pearlson had worked his way up from the bottom, after starting as a carrier in 1934, sixteen floors below.
  "No," Pearlson said quietly, "I don't want to know. I just thought that maybe it could be handled in some other way." He listened for a few minutes nodding his head as he did.
  "Yes, yes I see, but?" he rubbed his eyes as he listened. "No I don't," he said emphatically, "I happen to like him a great deal, and if you give me the time. . ." The voice on the other end of the line cut him off, and he once again listened quietly.
  "I see," he said, once the voice had finished speaking. "No, I do understand. I won't, do you think I'm that stupid? Give me a little credit here, will you. You wouldn't even be aware of it, if I hadn't called you in the first place, for Christ's sake." He listened for a few seconds longer, then hung up the phone. 
  There was no reasoning with Weekes, he told himself, he was going to do what he was going to do. For Franks sake he wished he had never called him at all. Too late now though, he told himself, far too late. After all, he had done his best to swing Frank away from the story, but Frank Weil was not a man who could be easily swayed. And, he told himself, unless he wanted to find himself in the same circumstances, he had better just shut up and let it go. He reached over and thumbed the intercom button. 
  "Cindy?"
  "Yes Sir?"
  "I'm going to be out the rest of the day Cindy, and if Frank Weil comes looking for me before he leaves, you don't know where I am, correct?"
  "Yes Sir."
  "Anything important comes up you can reach me on my mobile, Cindy."
  "Yes Sir, Mister Pearlson."
  Harvey Pearlson picked up his briefcase and left the office. Whatever Weekes had in mind, he wanted nothing to do with it, and he didn't want to be available for any sort of questions that might arise either. It was bad enough that he had started the 
whole ball rolling, and he had no intention of sticking around to see where it ended up stopping. No, he told himself, the lake was the best place to be. The only place to be, and he intended to stay there until the whole thing blew over just as he had been told to. 
  He took his private elevator down to the garage area, walked across to his Lincoln, and drove out of the parking garage, turning right on Beechwood. He passed a hooker standing at the corner of the building, and thought just how badly Beechwood Avenue had gotten as of late. He would have to speak to the security people when he got back from the lake. Putting up with the hookers that had taken over the avenue at night was one thing, but broad daylight? Standing right in front of the frigging building? No, something would have to be done, and if the security people couldn't take care of it, maybe he'd speak to Weekes. After all, he owed him one now, didn't he? He pushed the thought away, signaled, and pulled out onto the loop. In an hour he'd be at the lake, and then he could forget about the whole mess, for today at least. He eased the car up to sixty, and leaned back into the leather upholstery to enjoy the drive.





                                             


                                                April 11th 1952
                                                     ~ 5 ~

  Ira Pratt drove the old tractor carefully down the side of the slippery hill. It had been raining for close to three days, and it didn't look as though it was going to let up right quick, he thought.
  The rain was causing all sorts of problems, and not just for him, he knew, but for the cows as well. The biggest problem, was the creek, and the only way the creek wasn't going to be a problem, was to unplug the thing.
  He sat on the tractor as it slip-slid its way down the hill, through the gray sheets of rain. Breathing a sigh of relief once it reached the bottom. For a second there, he had been sure both he and the old tractor would end up in the creek, but God was smiling on him today.
  He slipped the worn gearbox into neutral, and sat looking at the rush of muddy-brown water. The creek was a good four foot, he knew, if it was an inch, and he wasn't sure it was a smart move to try to put the tractor in that. She was sure footed, but so was a goat, and he'd seen more than one goat end up on its butt. But there wasn't nothing else for it. If he didn't move the trees that were clogging the creek, and flooding it out and over the banks, then he might as well just sit back and watch a couple more cows drown.
  Ira knew cows, pretty much anyhow, and every one he and Cora owned, were just as stupid as any other cow he'd ever seen. The cows didn't understand flooding, they didn't understand how the water could weaken the banks, and so, the big dummies just walked on down, just like any other day, and got swept away when the bank crumbled under their weight. Three days of rain, and four dead cows, and cows were stupid, but they weren't cheap.
  Ira sat in the pouring rain and stared at the creek. Normally, the creek was no more than eighteen inches deep at the most. Course normal wasn't what it was today, he thought, and wishin' it was wouldn't make it so. It was his own darn fault, he reminded himself, two of the trees that were clogging it had been there last summer, and hadn't he promised Cora he'd take 'em out before fall? He had, but he hadn't, and so here he was in the pouring rain, fixin' to half kill himself to get 'em out.
  Looked like the best way, might be to try and snag the biggest one right from the bank, he thought, as he shielded his eyes to peer through the rain. One thing was for sure, sittin' on the tractor and thinkin' about it, wasn't gonna get it. Reluctantly, Ira climbed down off the tractor and edged closer to the bank. The rain was coming down hard, but the section he stood upon seemed solid enough. "Probably what the cows thought," he muttered, as he moved closer.
  He walked back to the tractor, unwound a long section of chain from behind the seat, and walked back to the creek. The top of the bigger tree was sticking a good three feet over the bank, and he was glad that it was. He could see that the water was rising faster, and moving along quicker, and he had no wish to get any closer to it than he had to. Quickly, but carefully, he wound the chain around the tree, and pegged the links with an old bolt to hold them. Looks good, and solid as well, he thought, as he slipped the other end of the chain over the bucket. He really didn't want to try and turn the tractor around. In fact, he thought, as muddy as the ground was, he'd be darn lucky just to get it back up and away from the creek when he finished.
  He gave an experimental tug at the chain, and then climbed back up on the tractor, and carefully, without grinding the gears any more than he absolutely had to, shifted into reverse. He played the clutch out slowly, and brought up the slack in the chain.  
  "Well God?" he asked, looking skyward, "you keepin' a watch down here? I could sure use a hand about now, Lord. Amen," Ira finished.
  He let the clutch out a little further, playing the gas pedal as he did, and let the tractor go to work. The big tires spun, and then caught, and the tractor began to slowly back up the steep bank, pulling the tree out of the muddy water as it did. Ira released the breath he had been holding, and just as he did the chain snapped in two. Ira barely had time to register what had happened, when the old tractor flipped, crushing him beneath it as it did.

                                                        

                                                     ~ 6 ~
                                                 June 7th 1935

  Tomorrow, six year old Jonathan Duffany thought, as he lay wide awake in his bed, in the darkness of his room. Tomorrow, and we shall go and see the caves. The caves, just as Robert had last year, and he was sure he would not sleep at all this night. With such a great adventure to look forward to, sleep would surely elude him. 
  Robert, his older brother, had told him about the caves, but the telling of an adventure, and seeing it with ones own two eyes, were two entirely different things, he knew. This would be, well, this would be, ever so nice, and nothing would dare spoil it. 
  His mind crowded with glorious images, and although he was convinced he would never be able to fall asleep, he did, and did not awake until morning.














                                                THE CAVES: BOOK ONE
                                                THE INITIAL CONFLICT






















                                                         ONE




      "you 'fraid of the dark? ... Hope not"
                                          Cora Pratt.











                                    For: Doctor Ron Steed, and Karen Steed.
                                                       ONE
                                                      ~ 1 ~
      
  For Franklin  W. Weil, just Frank to his friends, June 15Th, 1996, had been a particularly hard day. 
  As he sat at the small, scarred, wooden table at Mikes Pub on sixth street, his thoughts turned inward, mulling over the same problem he had been mentally chewing, for the last several weeks. It always came back, no matter how far away he pushed it, it slipped right back to the front and began to hammer away at him.  But today, had been much worse. It had seemed endless as it dragged on, and he had been able to concentrate on next to nothing. He had avoided the office, and Pearlson, no sense compounding things, when he was so close to the truth, by chancing a confrontation with Pearlson.
  Pearlson was . . . Pearlson was, crap, he thought, it wasn't just Pearlson that had him so keyed up and anxious, it was leaving, and, he supposed, that was just as it should be.  
  The thing that had made it difficult to get through, was the pressure and anxiety, he always felt, when he was on the trail of a promising story. That and the stress involved.  
  It was not so much the stress his job placed on him, he had always dealt with that quite well, thank you. He knew what it was, and what it had been for several weeks now. All the late night telephone calls to his sources in New York. No sleep, virtually working around the clock; sifting through the information this source or another provided; sorting out truth from imagination, and getting to the facts, or as close as he could get to them. That, coupled with the fact that he had been the only one, save Jimmy, who believed it. And now Jimmy was apparently missing, so he could add the disappearance of a good friend to the growing list of worries that kept him up at night.  This was turning into a three ring circus darn fast, and he didn't like. Not at all.
  He was sure now, or as sure as anyone could be. But, who the heck would believe him?  Not his editor, that was for sure. He would not soon forget the day two weeks ago, when he had approached the subject with him either. It had been partly his own fault, Frank realized. He had not been as prepared as he should have been, he supposed. He had also possessed no hard facts, he reminded himself, and he had speculated far too heavily for Pearlson's taste. Even so, he was just as convinced as he had been then. In fact, more so. 
  Two additional weeks of digging into it, with Jimmy's help, had produced a wealth of information, and it was no longer just conjecture, as old man Pearlson had said, but a steadily growing stack of cold hard facts. 
  Pearlson had still laughed, and told him he should try writing fiction for a living. But there had been something else lurking just behind that laugh though, hadn't there? A hint of nervousness maybe? 
  Pearlson had also suggested, that just maybe Frank needed a vacation. And, things being the way they were, Frank had taken him up on the last suggestion. 
  Screw him, Frank thought, as he sat at the table and drained the last of his drink. . . Just screw him. 
  That was what had made his days so long and his nights so sleepless, he reasoned. All that knowledge . . . all the fear, of that knowledge. 
  But did he really know anything? he asked himself. And Could he really prove what he did know? Yes, damnit. . . and just as suddenly, probably not. He couldn't prove all of it yet, at least not entirely, he admitted to himself. 
  Not for much longer though, he told himself, the proof part of it was about to change. He had made plans to go to New York. Directly to the source, so to speak, and find out just exactly what was going on. No conjecture, no guessing, no screwing around at all. If Pearlson wanted facts, Frank would get them one way or the other, he had decided. And really, the suggestion to take a vacation couldn't have been a better cover for him to go under, he reasoned. 
  No, he decided, it wouldn't be much longer at all. Two weeks in upstate New York, and he would know for sure, and Frank saw no way that Pearlson could kill the story then. Not faced with cold hard facts. And if he did? he asked himself. Well, if he did, Frank reasoned, that would open up a whole new set of problems. Maybe Pearlson was involved somehow ... maybe not, but the whole thing had smelled of a cover up from the start, and if Pearlson cut the story loose, if he still placed no faith in it, then there had to be a reason, and maybe ... and maybe crap! If it turned out that way, then maybe it would be time to move on.
  He rose slowly from his chair, and fighting his way through the crowded table area, made his way to the bar.    
  "Gin, Mike," he said, once he had gotten the old mans attention, "no water just straight up."  He stared miserably at the juke box in the corner that blared incessantly, and silently urged it to fall silent as he waited for the drink. His thoughts, still clouded, turned back to the problem he was constantly turning over in his mind, when a glance at his wristwatch reminded him of how late it really was.
  He turned his attention back to the bartender. "Mike, I've got to go see the kid's and I'm already late," he threw a twenty on the bar, "that should cover the tab." 
  "What about this?" Mike asked, holding up the shot glass. 
  "You drink it, Mike, I really am late. I've gotta go," Frank replied as he started to turn towards the front door.
  "Hey?" Mike said, in a questioning manner. Frank turned back to the bar.  
  "Get some sleep, Frank," Mike said, "your eyes look terrible." 
  "Yes mother," Frank joked, "I will."
  Frank smiled to himself. They always played this game, and had been at it for the twenty years that Frank had been coming into Mike's. Mike seemed to think it was his duty to mother him, even more so since Jane had died. 
  "See you in a couple of weeks or so, Mike," Frank called as he stepped out the door. He glanced at his watch once again as he did. I'll never make it, he thought, no way.
  He resigned himself to the fact that he would more than likely be late, and not for the first time this week. He had already been late three times, picking up Christine and Jeffrey from the sitter. 
  Cora Pratt, the sitter, could pitch a real fit when she wanted to, he thought. "Well I'll deal with her when I get there," he mumbled to himself. Besides, he thought, tonight I don't have to pick them up, Just say good-bye for two weeks. 
  The heat assaulted him as he stepped out of the air conditioned comfort of the bar, and he winced. 
  Twenty seven years of living in Seattle had not changed a thing for him. He felt about the city as he always had. It was too hot in the summer, what there was of it, and too darn cold and windy in the winter. And it wasn't home. He still thought about it as a place he was only visiting. He never had gotten used to it, and, he knew, he never would.
  Frank worked the handle upward slowly, pulling the driver side door of the company car open carefully.  He had to, as this one stuck if you were forceful, and then he would end up crawling over the darn passenger seat to reach the drivers side. It seemed to him that he had once had this car when it was new. It was hard to tell though, as it was a pool car, and the younger generation of reporters in the press pool beat the heck out of all the cars. 
  "Too many hot-rod kid's driving the heck out of them," he said aloud, as he keyed the motor and pulled the big Plymouth out into the traffic. He headed out of the city, towards the suburbs and Cora Pratt. 
  When he reached the turnoff, from route five, Frank slowed the big car and swung into Cora's driveway. 

  The old farm, and the house as well, had been in the Pratt family for five generations. Ira Pratt, Cora's long dead husband, had steadfastly refused to sell any of the land that made up the small farm, and after he had died, Cora had adopted the same attitude. So in the midst of suburbia, the old farm house sat on its own eighty acre plot. It was sort of funny to Frank, as you could drive a short way in either direction and you would still be in the Wildflower subdivision, part of which was still a respected suburb of Seattle.
  The subdivision had simply been built around the property when Ira Pratt had refused to sell. Consequently the farm had become a boundary line of sorts. West Wildflower, was the poorer and run down section, whereas the eastern section, was well kept and quiet. In the middle sat the farm, and Cora Pratt. 
  Cora was a formidable woman, who, as far as Frank could tell, took no crap at all from either side. 
  When the "Uppity jerks,"  as Cora called them, on the east side, had sent a letter demanding that she cut down on the fertilizer her hired man used on the corn field, she had called in John, the hired man, and told him to use just a little more instead. They had of course "Taken her to the court's," as she had put it, but to no avail. The court had upheld her Commercial Farm Zoning, and the judge had told the "Uppity lawyer," as Cora had called him, that worked for the East Side Coalition, not to bother him with anymore groundless lawsuits, or he'd personally report him to the Bar Association. 
  Like wise when some of the, "Shiftless no-accounts," from the west side, had tried to steal some of her chickens, she had "filled their britches with buckshot."    
  Frank knew all this was true, because Cora had told him. She didn't want to "Mince no words" as she had put it, "lay it all out on the table," she had said. "Jess in case you get to hearing things and think I'm a bit funny, I ain't ...  I just protect what's mine." 
  That had been her little speech, on the day six years ago, when she had first begun taking care of Chris and Jeff. And, Frank had to admit, to her credit, she seemed to be just what she said she was, and no one could have taken better care of his children in his opinion. 
  Cora waved from the front porch swing as Frank stopped the car, and walked towards the white framed house. The scent of Lilacs in bloom came to him on the light breeze, from the porch front, where the bushes marched away in both directions, rail high.
  "Thought you wasn't coming to say good-bye to yer kids," she quipped. 
  "Sorry," Frank replied, "I got bogged down in traffic." 
  More like a couple of shots of gin, she thought, but didn't say. 
  "Yup, that traffic can surely be a bother in the summer, that's a sure un," she said aloud. 
  Jeff and Chris leaped down from the old porch and raced across the lawn, Frank squatted down and caught them both in his arms.
  "Gram ma Cora took us down to the orchard today daddy," Chris said excitedly. 
  "Yeah, and it was really bitchin,"  Jeff chimed in. 
  "Listen Jeff, I don't like that word, okay?" Frank chided. 
  "Cool dad, I forgot is all," Jeff replied. He looked sufficiently chagrined to Frank. It's the darn schools, Frank thought, as he hugged both of the children.
  Frank kissed Chris  Jeff had informed him last year that he was too old for kisses  and they both ran off to investigate the chicken coop for the fiftieth time. He handed Cora a check he had taken from his pocket. 
  "This should be enough, Cora, but I would still like to leave you a couple of blanks, just in case you need them," he said. 
  "Heck, I doubt like the devil I'll even use that," she said. "I grow all my own food, and the kids are better off with that, 'stead of that store bought stuff." 
  Frank nodded his head as Cora spoke. There was absolutely no sense in arguing with her. He had tried that before, and she always won. They talked a few more minutes, and Frank reminded her to call him if anything should happen. 
  "Frank, yer only leaving for a couple a weeks," she reminded him, "it ain't like you're going away forever." 
  She was right of course, so why didn't he feel like she was right? 
  "Don't fret so much Frank you'll give yerself ulcers," she said, giving him a stern look.
  Little late for that, Frank thought. 
  He called the kids back over and hugged and kissed them both  once more, despite Jeff's loud groans of protest.
  "Now remember," he admonished, "Cora will be calling me if you don't behave. Got it?" 
  "Yes daddy," Chris said solemnly. Frank raised his eyebrows at Jeff, "Jeff?"
  "Yeah, okay Dad," he replied, and rolled his eyes upward. 
  Frank stood, and after another quick peck on the cheek from Chris, he turned and walked back to the car, got in, and backed out of the driveway. When he reached the main highway he honked the horn, and waved to the children as he drove away from the old farm.
  He headed the car back in the direction of the city, his mind already returning to upstate New York and the secret that lay buried there. In the morning he would be heading out and hopefully he'd get some sleep tonight before he left. With so many things clouding his mind, at least he didn't have to worry about the kids as well. The kids were in the best place they could be, not with me, he thought, it might not be safe. He reached forward and turned on the radio for the drive, losing himself in thought. 

                                                      ~ 2 ~ 

  Cora Pratt let the old screen door bump closed behind her, as she herded the children into the kitchen for dinner.   
  "Jeffrey Weil!" she paused until he looked at her with a what-did-I-do-now-look on his face. ". . . Quit pullin' yer sisters pigtails, and go wash up for dinner," she admonished.
  Jeffrey put on his best, I'm-sorry look, and with his sister in tow, headed towards the bathroom at the rear of the house.   Christine followed her big brother, swinging her pigtails from side to side and humming a currently popular song as she went. 
  While the children washed up, Cora set about serving up dinner at the old trestle table, she had served her own children at years before. 
  She set out the plain off-white dishes Ira's parents had given them as a wedding present some forty years before. They were a little worse for wear, but the chips and scratches only served to remind her of that day so long ago, when life for her and her new husband was just beginning, and the world was still filled with all the promise of youth and dreams of the future.
  After she set the table, she walked across the old wooden kitchen floor, thumbed the worn latch on the root cellar door, and carefully navigated the stairs down into the cellar. 
  It isn't really a root cellar any more, she reminded herself.  Not since two years before when she had let her son, dig it out a bit, and put in the concrete and the new steps. 
  "Mom, I just worry a lot about you falling down those old stairs," he had argued, "and the last two years it's flooded every spring." 
  She knew he was right, but that didn't change the way she felt about it. It just didn't feel like the old root cellar anymore. All that flat concrete, and the nice little drain holes. It was pretty, but it wasn't the same, she thought.  
  Her son, Freddie, owned a small contracting business, and so two years before when he'd had some slack time, he had bought a crew of his men to do the work, and Cora had not stopped him. 
  Lordy they surely had made a load of noise, and an awful big mess to boot, she thought. Freddie had kept the old sub cellar for her too, and of course he'd put in the concrete down there as well, and fixed it up with a nice little door. 
  Problem is, she thought, this darn arthritis is so bad, I never have been able to pull that stupid door open.  
  Passing the small steel and concrete door, which was set flush with the concrete floor, she crossed to the shelves and picked out a jar of preserves. Christine liked Cora's preserves, and, she thought, it just might help to keep her mind off her father leaving for two weeks. She retraced her steps, and clutched the Ball jar tightly to her thin chest as she climbed the stairs back up to the kitchen.

  The old Pratt farm still had both of the barns standing, and although they were a bit leaky and musty, they were as solid as they had been the day they were built. The chicken coop however was the third one, and Cora and Ira had built it themselves back in the early fifties. The property had its own well, a deep one, that had been hand dug so long ago that Cora didn't even know who had dug it. One of the Pratt's, she knew. There were chickens in the coop, and she still kept a pig or two in the barn closest to the house.
  John, the hired man, kept the other barn for himself. He used it for storage mostly, but had built a small work shop in one corner and closed it off from the rest. John kept up the farm, and, of course, took care of the pigs. He also did the butchering every year for her, and in exchange Cora would give him half the meat. 
  "What the heck am I to do with all that meat, John?" she asked every year. Cora really didn't need it. When Ira had passed away the insurance had been there. The farm had never had a mortgage in all the years they had owned it, and the Social Security checks arrived every month in the mailbox. Besides, she was quick to point out with pride, her kid's took care of their own, just as she always had. If she ever did need something, they were there for her. She had also managed to save over thirty thousand in cash, which she had always kept in the root cellar, until Phil, her oldest, had discovered it, and convinced her to put it in the bank. 
  "I got all I kin use, John,"  she would say every year. The pretense was necessary, although Cora was sure it didn't fool John, he at least accepted it. John may have been the closest thing to poor there could be, but he was also a prideful man, and would never accept straight out charity. She knew, however, that John had six kids to feed, and odd jobs, besides working for her, were hard to find in this day. So John took the meat and fed his family, and kept the little workshop where he built the furniture he sold at the flea markets on the weekends. He kept the farm up real nice, she thought, and the least she could do, was make sure his kids got fed. He wouldn't take much in the way of cash money from her, so the extras she could get him to take helped to ease her worrying about it.   
                   
                                                      ~ 3 ~

  Frank Weil pulled the Plymouth into the parking garage, and slipped it in next to his big red Electra, that was parked in its usual place in the garage. He didn't need to go to the office, and was only stopping to pick up his own car on his way home. 
  He had been planning this trip for a couple of weeks now, ever since Pearlson had unwittingly suggested it. It really did seem to be the only way to get to the bottom of things. After all, he had tried to approach the whole thing head on, but that hadn't worked out. If he needed to take vacation time to run down his leads and get to the bottom of things, he would. It wouldn't be the first time he'd done that. 
  When he had finished talking to his editor, and the old man had suggested that just maybe a little time off would do him some good, he had made up his mind. Pearlson hadn't suggested upstate New York of course, and if he had known that Frank was heading there he probably would have tried to stop him. Maybe, considering the way Pearlson had acted, even threatened to fire him. Going to New York would put him right in the thick of it, and the old man had made it quite clear how he felt about the whole thing. 
  In truth though, Frank could have cared less what Pearlson thought, and he would just as soon be on his own, and have the freedom to investigate the story his own way, without the restraints the paper would have placed on him. He had never believed that political ties should dictate what a reporter could or couldn't dig into, but his paper, like most others he had worked at, had those ties, and it was just understood that you didn't cross the invisible lines that were laid down, when those relationships were struck up. Invisible or not, Frank intended to cross them, and to heck with Pearlson if it ticked him off.
  Frank transferred his brief-case to the big Buick, re-locked it, and walked over to the small glass booth, where a young-looking, pimple-faced guard, sat watching the garage.  
  Up until last year, the booth had always been manned by Joshua Stewart. In fact, Josh had been there when Frank had come to work here. The tall, gray-haired, wiry old man, had ruled this garage like it was his own castle. 
  Last year, however, Josh had been killed when he had tried to stop a couple of teenage boys who were stealing one of the company cars. Both of the boys had got off with time in the state run children's home under a youthful offenders plea bargain. Josh had received a senseless death sentence at their hands.
  Frank had written the three line obituary himself, all the paper would allow, and only after Frank had vehemently argued for it, and he had considered it a sad end to a good man whose only life had been the one he had created for himself in his garage. 
  Now he had this little pimple-faced kid to hand his keys to, who always locked the glass booth, and wouldn't come out to chase the rats away, let alone the gangs of kids who made the garage their own after dark. 
  Frank passed the keys wordlessly through the small round hole cut through the thick glass, and then headed back to the car. 
  The kid held the place in the Play Boy magazine in his lap, with one shaking finger, grabbed the keys with his other hand, and hung them on the nearest hook.
  Frank wheeled the big Buick out of the garage, and into the inner city of Seattle. He passed a gang of kids at the entrance, who seemed to be amusing themselves by painting their gang letters on the side of the building. It would be gone by tomorrow morning, he knew, but right back again tomorrow evening. It was a constant battle, and one the buildings maintenance crew seemed to be losing. 
  Cars were regularly stolen out of the parking garage, or stripped where they sat, so some junky could use the parts as a trade for a fix. Frank was surprised that his company car still had a radio. It was only an AM jobby though, so most likely even the junkies couldn't find someone willing to buy it. He supposed that was the only reason it was still there.
  He didn't even bother to lock the car anymore when he left it for the night. He had at first, after Josh had died and the pimple-faced kid had taken over, but they had just smashed out the window, so now he left it unlocked and empty. Better to clean out the trash every morning, than to have the car tied up getting a new window installed.
  Frank honked the horn as he passed Arlene, and she waved back. Arlene had the corner at one end of the building all to herself tonight. It was of course early, and the runaways and other hookers that sold their wares here, wouldn't show up for another couple of hours.
  This section of Beechwood avenue had been taken over several years back, and was now the place to come to if you were looking for most anything. Young boys, and girls, and of course the usual selection of strung out prostitutes that sold their bodies for drugs. And it always hurt Franks heart, when he noticed that one of the kids had joined the ranks of the older, more experienced, hookers. 
  He couldn't count the times he had been approached by one or the other of them. You would think that the Aids virus would have cut sharply into their trade. But, as far as Frank could tell, it hadn't. 
  The runaways were always there, a never ending stream of them. Some moved on, but most stayed, and after dark had settled in for the night the cops wouldn't come down here, so they were mostly left alone to work the avenue, until daylight bought the working crowd back, and the night people did a quick fade.
  Frank hated it. He had tried several times to talk some of the kids into going home, or at least into going to a halfway house. They just stared with their blank eyes, and offered to perform whatever their specialty was, for a much lower rate. It seemed as though the pimps and the geekers held more sway over them than life itself. Of course they offered their own version of life, in a little plastic packet. As much as he hated what Beechwood had become, and what it meant, he still honked the horn every night as he passed Arlene. 
  Arlene looked out for the younger ones, and Frank had given her money several times to buy food for them. She was the only one they might listen to, and the only one Frank trusted to actually use the money for food, and not spend it on crack, or coke, or whatever new drug was making the rounds. At least that way the kids ate, sometimes. And, even though it didn't keep them out of every car that cruised the streets, maybe it allowed them to be a little more choosy, and stay out of the cars that they may never get out of once they got into. 
  Murders among the prostitutes were hardly, and never, seriously investigated by the police, and when a young runaway was found dead who was known to frequent the avenue, they were treated in much the same way.
  Frank nosed the car into the heavy traffic on route 5, and headed north towards Richmond Beach, leaving the crime ridden city of Seattle behind. When he reached the Oakwood exit he turned off onto Eastwood drive, and finally reached the large brick house he called home. 
  
  He had met Ron and Cathy Isly, the young couple that would be renting the house while he was gone, yesterday, with the Realtor. They seemed nice enough, and it's only for two weeks anyway, he thought. Frank had taken the check they had offered, and had given them the spare set of keys and reluctantly told them to treat the house as if it were their own. After he left in the morning they would be free to move in, and would have the house, and the beach, to themselves for the next two weeks. 
  They had both exclaimed excitedly over the short stretch of private beach, taken the keys, and left. They were a youngish couple, and Frank just hoped they didn't intend to have any parties, or take to the beach nude and tick off the neighbors. One could only hope. 
  Of course Brett Harrison, who was on the city council, lived just behind him, and Frank was sure he'd just fill his ears full when he got back. The nosy old jerk probably knew every time Frank farted wrong, and, Frank knew, had a regular path worn into his property where he kept track of things through the wooden fence that separated the two yards.
  Frank gathered the mail from the box on the way into the house, and as he did, reminded himself to leave a note instructing the Isly's to get the mail each day, and set it on his desk in the study. 
  He opened a thick manila envelope as he eased down into the couch in the living room. It was from Don Parker, the real estate agent, and contained the keys and contract for the house in upstate New York. It also contained a short note from Don himself. 
  Towns in upstate New York tended to look the same. At least that's what Don had said, and if anyone should know it would be him. Don had grown up in upstate New York, in a little town called Great Bend. So when Frank had decided to make the trip he had only made the one phone call to Don.
  Don's agency had contacted a Realtor in Syracuse New York, who had in turn contacted an agency in the small city of Glennville. With a little leg work that agency had found just what Frank had been looking for. 
  According to Don there were several houses to choose from in and around the small city, but the agency had suggested the house in Glenn Pines, and Don had passed along the suggestion to Frank.  
  According to Don the house was owned by a woman in Texas, and she had inherited the old brick estate from an uncle who had died some years before. 
  The house had been tied up in probate for quite some time, and she had only recently gained ownership. She would have preferred to sell it, and be shut of it. She had, according to Don, no intentions of ever living in Glenn Pines. But she had, however, sunk a great deal of money into renovating the property, and had decided to rent it in the hopes that it would sell quicker, and stay in better repair. It hadn't been lived in for over three years, but, Don had assured him, had been kept in excellent condition. Frank had finalized the details through Don, and the result was the signed and notarized contract along with the keys he had pulled from the envelope.

Frank picked up the note and read it.


        Frank,

         I thought I would send the keys along so you won't have to screw around getting a motel once you get in to Glenn Pines, (I had them Fed Exed from the Glennville office), as I told you the Glennville Office isn't open on weekends, (heck most of Glennville isn't). I did talk to Bud Farling at the office though, and he assured me that the utilities and phone are hooked up for you. The keys go to the new locks. The house never really had much in the way of locks, I guess, but I thought it might be a good idea to have them. 
  About the only thing I recall from living near Glennville as a kid, was that Shawcross guy who killed those two kids not far from here, and then after he was let out of prison went on to kill those hookers up in Rochester, (did you read about that?), so maybe locks are a good idea, even though it's a small town. I don't recall a lot about Glenn Pines. I do remember it as quiet though, and it's on the other side of the military base so it should still be as quiet as it always was.

         Glennville is a fairly good sized city. It has a mall, it begins with some animal name, I think. It also has a lot of fast food joints, (just perfect for those ulcers of yours, Frank) and smaller shops and stores. Let me know if the old Baptist church is still standing on the corner of the public square, okay? If you need anything give Bud a call he's a pretty good guy (I went to school at East Junior High with him). If you need me, give me a call. Enjoy.  Hug those kids of yours for me.
                                                                                                                                   
                                                      Don

  Frank set down the note and lit a cigarette from the crumpled pack in his jacket pocket. 
  Don had taken care of all the other details as well, Frank thought. He had located the Isly's for him, and had rented his house to them for more than what he'd had to pay for the house in Glenn Pines. 
  It had all seemed to gel together nicely. Tomorrow he would drive his car to the King County Airport, leave it, and catch the flight to Syracuse New York. There was an airport in Glennville, but Don referred to it as "Rinky-dink International" and had advised against it. In Syracuse he could pick up the rental car reserved for him, and make the hour and a half drive to Glenn Pines.    
  Frank extricated himself from the overstuffed sofa and walked to the small bar built into the corner of the living area. 
  He poured himself a two finger nightcap as he crushed the cigarette out in the glass ashtray that was there. From there he walked into the kitchen to rummage out another frozen TV dinner from the freezer, and when it was done he carried it out on to the rear deck along with a fresh drink.  
  Much later he turned in to try to get some sleep before he had to leave in the morning.
  Frank Weil was a large man, and at six foot five had been only two inches shorter than his current height when he had played basketball in high school. He stretched his frame out on the large double bed in the upstairs bedroom he had shared with his wife Jane, and reached over and thumbed the alarm button on the clock radio resting on the stand beside the bed, before he turned out the small table lamp. 
  He had resisted the urge to sell the huge bed with its brass head and foot boards. Janey had picked it out herself, and so in the end he had decided that he just couldn't let that part of her go. He had resisted it as steadfastly as he had resisted the recruiters back in high school who had tried to convince him to play ball for a living. 
  He was no longer the tall black-haired and green-eyed youth he had been when they had married. The gray hairs had seemed to appear overnight, and a few wrinkles had recently discovered his face and decided they liked being there, but when he slept in this bed the years didn't seen to matter. He was eighteen again, and he and Jane were just beginning a life, that in their youth, they had thought would last forever. 
  He had at first felt only anger towards the teenage driver who had taken his wife, and his children's mother. But time had bought a reluctant acceptance of her death, and with that the anger was driven out. There could be no room for it any longer, he had to think of the children instead. Jeff had only been two, and when he had looked into those trusting green eyes, framed by his own dark hair, he had known his grief would have to wait. His son needed him. 
  When he had been summoned to the hospital a grave gray-haired doctor had been waiting for him, along with his assistant. They had escorted him to a private office and the doctor had spoken, while his nervous young female assistant had clutched a clipboard full of releases and forms that needed to be filled out and signed. 
  He had thought that maybe she had been very badly hurt at first, but the truth had rested in the gray-haired doctors kindly eyes. 
  He had told him of the efforts that had been expended to keep Jane alive, and how sorry he was that they hadn't been able to, and how in the end they had taken the baby she had cradled in her womb for eight months, and allowed her broken body to die. Frank had been glad for that in a way. She had been so badly injured that the machines could not keep what had been his wife alive, and so there had been no agonizing decision to terminate her life. God had made that decision for him.
  He had named the tiny red-faced infant Christine Jane Weil. He and Janey had decided on the name together only a few short weeks before. The name seemed to suit the tiny infant, whose light blond hair, and hazel eyes, matched a mothers she had never known. She was six now, and the resemblance to her mother was startling. Even more so than it had been on that day he had stared through the glass in Western's maternity ward. Down stairs, he had known, her mother lay shattered under an antiseptic-looking white sheet. They had offered to let him see her, to say good-by, and he had felt as though it was a necessary thing. Even walked into the small room, but in the end he couldn't do it. He had simply stared at the sheeted figure and cried. 
  The funeral had also been hard for him. It had seemed impossible to rationally discuss the arrangements with the director. He had finally decided that the casket should be closed, even though the funeral director had assured him that it could be open. He just hadn't been able to face it. He had decided instead to remember her as he had last seen her, full of life, and on her way to pick out the nursery furniture she would bring their child home to; not laying in a casket, plastered over with thick makeup to hide the devastation the accident had caused.
  He had never picked up the car from the wrecking company either. Bill Wilson, of Wilson Wrecking, had stopped to see him at the office some three weeks later about the Volvo wagon. It had been paid for, so he had simply told the tall man in the grease stained coveralls, that he would send him the signed title in the mail, and that he could dispose of the car as he saw fit. Bill Wilson, who had towed more than a few fatal wrecks off the road, had readily agreed, and Frank had never heard from him again concerning the wrecking bill, or the car. He had never seen the wreck, not even in court when the young man had been tried and convicted of manslaughter, and they had shown several pictures of the bloody wreck. Frank had refrained from looking at them. He had no desire to see it.
  Jeff had doted on the giggling blond-haired sister Frank had brought home from the hospital. It seemed to Frank that Chris had helped them both get over the grief of losing Jane. 
  Frank had met Cora Pratt at Western, where he had taken to spending most of his free time waiting to bring Christine home. Cora had been a big help as well. She had been volunteering her time at the grief counseling center there. She had lost her husband, years before, and had eventually overcome the grief and loneliness by volunteering her time to others who had similar grief to deal with. Her wrinkled old face and kind gray eyes, along with her down-to-earth mannerisms and speech, had helped many before him to see that there was more in the years yet to come in life. And, in Franks case, there were two beautiful children that needed him to face that life with them, she had told him.  
  When she had asked him how he intended to raise them by himself, he had thought it was only polite interest, or maybe a reminder that it was something he had to give consideration to.  For Cora though, it was much more than that. She had become as attached to the children as they had to her, and when she had offered to watch the children while Frank worked, he had accepted. He had grown to admire her, and several times he had arrived at the hospital to find her there, and waiting to take Jeff off to the children's wing to play, while Frank spent time with Chris. Jeff and Cora had developed a close relationship in those weeks, and Jeff had taken to calling her Gram ma Cora.
  Chris had grown up with her, and had called her Gram ma since she had been old enough to speak. The arrangement had worked well for Cora and the children, and Frank had never felt anything but at ease with it. Cora had left the volunteer position, and Frank had been dropping the children off at the old house since then. 
  She had raised them well, Frank thought, and with that thought drifted off to sleep, and dreamed of the young wife he had held and made love to in this very bed. He loved her again in his dreams, and held the woman he had never wanted to let go. His eyelids flickered in his sleep and tears leaked from the eyes they held in the darkness.  
               
                                                      ~ 4 ~
        
  Cora Pratt came awake in the old house, sitting up in the pine bed she had shared with Ira for so many years. She had been dreaming the same dream she usually dreamt, when she could remember her dreams that is. 
  She was in the old carriage with Ira, the same carriage he came calling in, in every dream, and they were traveling the road into a young and much different Seattle. The road was a narrow dirt track, hard packed and rutted, from the many carriages and wagons that traversed it. And the first time she had dreamed it, she had thought it odd that he had not come in his fathers old farm truck, as he had really done all those years before. The old carriage, even back then, had been nothing more than a rotted curiosity, behind the old Pratt house. It made little difference though, in fact, to Cora, the old carriage seemed to belong, much more than the old farm truck would have. They were talking, as they rode along, about the farm and how much things had changed since Ira had died. 
  The dream did not seem unusual to Cora, it had started out the same as it always did, and had at first, given no hint that it was about to veer off from its usual path. There were certain things she had learned that they could not discuss, and so she forced herself not to mention them, or ask about them. It didn't seem to bother Ira if she spoke of his death, or more properly put, the fact that he was dead. But the one time she had tried to ask him about the other side; what it was like, he had gently shushed her, and told her they could talk about anything they wanted but that. And if she pressed it, he might not be able to come back. She had never mentioned it again. 
  
  Tonight she had been dreaming the same familiar dream once again. She could smell the dried sweat on the horses, and the leather of the harnesses. Ira was sitting beside her. A young and virile Ira, the young man that had said, "I do," so many years before. She sat beside him telling him how the children had grown, and, "Wasn't' Freddie just doing fine with his own company and all?" 
  Ira had allowed as he was, and told her of how proud he was of the way the children had grown up. She was looking at her hands in her lap, tears in her eyes, listening to Ira's voice. It was sometimes all she wanted to do, and she secretly wished that she could just go on dreaming and not have to ever wake up again. . . 
                
  "I love you still, you know,"  he said. "If I could be with you I would be honey" . . .  "It's not much longer now though, and you'll be able to be with me . . . if you still want to be." 
  She lifted her head and looked at him with surprise. 
  "It's all I do want Ira, don't you know that?" The dream had veered away from the familiar and safe path it usually took, and Cora didn't know what to think or expect next.
  "I do honey, I do," Ira replied.  "I know it ain't been easy on you, but it'll all be worth it. Here it ain't the same. You don't have to spend yer time doing thing's you don't want to, and we kin ride this carriage any darn where you want honey." 
  She looked into his eyes, "Ira honey, I'm an old dried up woman, and you're still a young man. . . It won't be the same!" 
  "Sugar, you hush now. . . You ain't neither,"  Ira told her. "Don't let life fool ya, take a look yerself," he said, magically producing a small oval mirror from his pocket.    
  Cora looked at the pretty young face reflected in the glass. She knew that face was her own, even though she hadn't seen it a long time. 
  She let her hands roam across her face and down the front of the simple dress she wore. Could it be true? she asked herself, as her hands felt the firm young body she had saved and taken to her marriage bed.  
  "Oh Ira," she cried, "it's true... Oh it is true. But, Ira it's a dream," she cried.  
  "No it ain't, honey,"  he replied firmly. "It ain't, and it ain't ever been."  
  "I didn't want to go. I wasn't ready," he told her. "And, it ain't what folks think! You don't have to go. Mind you, I've seen some just give up and go, but you don't have to 'less you want to..."
  "... God ain't some mean jerk that just sits around and hurts people, Cora.  I've met  him, and I like him too, honey. He's just the same as you and me, 'cept he ain't exactly a he, I think. I don't know what he'll be for you, but for me he sort'a reminds me of my dad, and I know this sounds kind'a weird, but he's a darn good checker player too. Beat me three out'a five just last Sunday."
  Cora looked back at Ira. 
  "Ira you best be careful what you say. If you weren't already dead, he might just decide to smack you in the head with a lightnin' bolt for that un." 
  "He ain't gonna, Cora. I ain't kidding, and you know me well enough to know that."
  Cora looked into those young eyes, and saw no trace of a smile at all. What he had said suddenly became clear to her. 
  "Ira!" she exclaimed. "You said it won't be long! How do you know, did He tell you? Is it something to do with that ache I been feeling when I pass my water?"
  "Not so much told, as showed, honey. Like I said it ain't like you think it is here. You got a cancer, honey, but don't fret none, you ain't never gonna feel no pain from it, and it ain't what's gonna bring you here either. It's just time, that's all. Nothin' last's forever, 'cept God himself, and it's time for things to change. Now listen to me, you got a lot to get done, and I got to tell you some things you need to know."
  Cora listened as they bumped along the dirt road in the open carriage. Towards the end of the seemingly endless dream, Ira had made her promise to do the things he had asked, and she had. Ira had stopped the carriage, after pulling off the dirt road near an old gnarled apple tree, and they had climbed down to sit under its shade and finish their talk. When he had finished talking, and received her promise, they had made love in the sweet grass under the tree. He had left her then, telling her to be strong and patient.
  "Cora," he had said, "I do love you, it seems even more than I ever did. Be strong and I'll see you on the other side."  He had turned away, leaving the old carriage behind, and began to walk slowly down the old road as she had watched.
  Cora had known in her heart that there would be no more dreams. He hadn't needed to say it when he had finished their talk. She felt it was right though, and the sorrow she felt now, she knew would be swept away once they were together. She had watched him, as he walked away, until he vanished in the distance, and when she had called out to him, she had come awake sitting in her bed...  
  ... She heard Jeff cry out down the hallway, and left the security of her bed to check on him. 
  "I miss dad a lot, Gram ma Cora," he said. "I had an awful dream that woke me up."                                                                                                   
  Cora held him, and soothed his fears as best she could. He couldn't remember the dream, and, Cora thought, that was just as well. She rocked him in her thin old arms until he slept and then  laid him back down into the bed and covered his sleeping child's body.
  How will you ever make it, she wondered. She kissed the sleeping boy, and shuffled back to her bed where she drifted off peacefully to sleep. She dreamed no more that night.
  
                                                      ~ 5 ~

  Outside, the wind flowed in and around the old farm and its out-buildings, seeming to speak to its old wooden friends as it passed them by, and the house and the barns, creaked their responses as the wind traveled through and around them. It continued onward touching and caressing the earth, as it found its way through the dark country side. 
  It whistled through the West Wildflower subdivision blowing garbage and litter out of the gutters, and from the sides of the rundown brick tract houses that lined the streets of the once popular suburb. Before it paused to watch, it caught and toppled the steel trash cans on the side of the West Street Superette, causing Willie LeFray to drop the crowbar he was using to break into the steel door with. 
  Willie was in a bad way to begin with, and the sound of the cans falling had caused his already shaky hands to release their sweaty grip on the bar. 
  This was pretty risky for him, as the cops still came down here sometimes, and he just bet they'd kick the living crap out of his black butt, if they caught him breaking into a white owned store.  
  Willie picked up the bar and continued to assault the door until it finally gave in. 
  He pulled the .25 auto. with its cheap plastic grips out of his waist band as he entered the store. The hand that held it shook badly as he tightened his finger on the trigger. 
  
  Tim Mathers had awoke to the sound of the screeching metal, as Willie had pried the door open, and was now crouched low in one of the dark aisles waiting for whoever was breaking into the store to step inside. 
  Tim had bought the store from old man Sweet just last winter. The old man had given up on the store and the neighborhood, and moved to Florida. 
  "I'm just to darn old to fight these kids anymore," he had said, "if it ain't shoplifting, it's break-in's. Seems like every night." 
  He hadn't hid the truth, and really it would have done no good to do so. Tim had grown up in West Wildflower himself, and so had known what it was like. Even so, he felt that maybe that gave him an edge, being as he was a Home-boy, maybe not so much in skin color, but definitely in spirit. Besides, it wasn't like the kids carried guns around here, he reasoned, all that crap pretty much stayed down in the city. 
  Tim Mathers was a big man. Well over two hundred pounds, and a couple of loud mouthed kids didn't worry him in the least. 
  What did worry him was the insurance. Or, more accurately put, the lack of it. The insurance companies had black-listed the entire West Wildflower subdivision. Insurance companies could do pretty much what they pleased, he guessed. Either way it made no difference, he could not get any of them to write even a simple policy for the store.  
  He'd had no serious problems yet, but just the other night the church on the opposite side of the street had burned to the ground. The next morning he had stopped to talk to Reverend Jamison, as the tall frail black man had stood crying, clutching a smoke blackened Hymnal to his chest. 
  Most everyone Tim knew, thought it was probably a couple of ticked off Crackers from the city, just trying to scare the black folks. Tim didn't know. But, no matter who it was they wouldn't burn down his store without a fight. 
  So Tim had taken to spending his nights at the store, and  damned if it didn't look as though it had been the smart move to make, he thought.

  Willie inched forward into the store, still rattled by the cans that had fallen outside. His fingers gripped the cheap pistol urgently, his nerves frayed, his mind on edge. When he turned into the middle aisle, a dim figure arose from the darkness, and his finger squeezed convulsively on the trigger. 
  Tim Mathers never heard the shot that took his life. Nor did he feel the tug on his body that flipped him over, to remove the wallet from his back pocket. Willie paused only long enough to kick the lifeless man in the head, as he ran from the store and down the block towards King Highway. Sirens were just beginning to wail from faraway as he reached the highway and flagged down an approaching cab. 
  
  Roderick Fletcher, Fletch, to his buddies down at the cab stand, was found dead in his cab the next morning in a trash strewn alley near the cities drug district off Beechwood Avenue. 
  According to an article in the next mornings paper, the "as of yet unidentified assailant," was thought to have been involved in a similar killing earlier in the summer. The police weren't positive however, and so were seeking leads from the public. 
  It was estimated that the killer had only made off with a small amount of cash as "Mr. Fletcher" had only just begun his shift. The small article had appeared on the back page, under an advertisement for a new topless car wash that would be opening soon on Baker street. There was no article concerning the killing of Tim Mathers in West Wildflower.
 
                                                     

                                                   ~ 6 ~
    
  Down on Beechwood Avenue, the tired and dirty-looking kids walked the street, or stood waiting in the doorways, along side the older more experienced prostitutes, who had themselves been some ones children once. The warm summer wind continued its journey over and past them, pausing here and there, as it wound its way to the coast to speak of the things it saw to its old friend the sea. The waves listened, and seemed to murmur agreement as they reached their whitecaps into the air, as if to ride with the wind through the night.

                                                   ~ 7 ~

  In a small cramped office in the downtown Federal building, Jonathan Weekes stood staring out the window at the lights of Seattle, thinking.
  He walked back to his desk and thumbed open the brown manila folder laying on it. The file represented the sum of the agencies knowledge, of Franklin Wilson Weil. No parents, wife dead, ditto for the wife's parents. Two children, one boy, one girl. 
  Most of his youth had been spent as a ward of the state of Texas, after his parents had been killed in a traffic accident, when he was ten years old, in June of 1956. No great loss there, they had both been borderline alcoholics. The old man had been driving, and had slammed the car into a utility pole at better than seventy miles an hour. Franklin, and his infant sister, had been the only survivors. Franklin Weil had apparently worked his way through college and escaped the poverty of the slums of Houston Texas, receiving a degree in journalism.
  There was also the sister, Rebecca. No known address though. She had been adopted as an infant, unlike Franklin, but had run away from the adopted parents at the age of thirteen, and had not been heard from since. He had run her Social Security number, no hits though. If she was alive, and Weekes doubted she was, she had never used it, nor had she ever tried to contact her adopted parents. 
  Weil seemed to be a loner, and Pearlson had pretty much confirmed that. Weekes had done a background check anyway: Credit checks, club memberships, it had turned up nothing at all. He gave to the usual charities, had never tried to contact or search out his sister; although Weekes was pretty sure he had no idea about her; he had been in a coma for two weeks following the accident, and had remembered very little when he had awoke from it: He seemed to be just what he was, a loner. And the one friend he'd had, that he had confided in, had already been taken care of.
  The folder was quite thick, but to Weekes the material that mattered could be reduced to one paragraph. He knew about the New York project, and therefore he knew too much.   
  Jonathan Weekes could have give a darn about the whole project anyway. Wasn't it pretty much over with? he asked himself. His operatives in the Middle East had assured him that no threat could be taken seriously at this stage, and that in a matter of days the former Russian missile bases would be in the agencies hands. That would end the threat permanently. But, he supposed, Weil could screw the whole works up in the meantime. He pulled out the top sheet that had been delivered less than an hour ago and reread it.
  
     #438901  RE: Upstate
               Determination follows.
               Authorization : BLUECHIP; 290
               Folder # 17794 
               TERMINATE SAME.
                                                     End.

  Weekes slipped the paper into the shredder sitting beside the desk and picked up the phone. He spoke forcefully to the voice at the other end for several minutes, and then replaced the receiver.

                                                      
                                                     ~ 8 ~

  In an old farmhouse, in Glennville New York, just outside of the military reservation, Tom Jefferies set the receiver back on its kitchen wall hook. He had made the only call he had needed to, and set things in motion as Weekes had ordered. He hadn't worried about using the scrambler, as to anyone listening it would have appeared as though he were only discussing the dairy operation at his farm. He was sure however that the message had been clear, and had no doubt as to what the results would be.

  Alan Johnson had been sitting quietly at the main booking desk at the Glenn Pines Police Department when the call came in. He had been casually toying with the idea of going up to D block, where the female prisoners were held, to see what might come up. The phone call had pushed that idea out of his head momentarily. 
  He had agreed with old Tom Jefferies that the new Holstein he'd bought probably ought to be put down, and, "wasn't it a darn shame?" and, "yes I'll take care of it myself as soon as I can, and Blah Blah Blah."
  He had hung up the phone, unlocked and opened his bottom desk drawer, and removed the folder on Franklin Weil, along with the surveillance photos, and the transcripts of the calls that had been made on Weil's behalf, to Bud Farling's real estate office. 
  It won't be that big a deal, and I won't even have to get my hands dirty at all on this one, he thought. 
  Alan Johnson had been sheriff for only two years now, but he had been on the CIA payroll since he had become a deputy in the Glenn Pines police department, several years before. 
  He picked up the phone, punched in the short series of numbers to activate the scrambler code, and spoke for nearly twenty minutes before he replaced the receiver. 
  The man on the other end of the line assured him that the problem would be taken care of discreetly, and quickly. 
  Alan Johnson hitched his belt up over his sagging gut, as he left the Booking desk to make his rounds. 
  Maybe I will take a look around up on D block after all, he thought, see what pops up. He chuckled to himself as he climbed the stairs up to the jails main floor.  
     
                                                     ~ 9 ~

  Deep underground fifteen miles to the east, lights blinked on in a wide long tunnel. The long glowing tubes shone down on a steady procession of military vehicles, delivering their loads to project Bluechip. 
  Guards stood, with fully automatic weapons, at the glass booth at the end of the tunnel, that barred entrance to the project. Drivers exited the vehicles there, turning them over to the never ending line of armed soldiers waiting to drive the vehicles past the booth. The drivers needed only to step across the roadway, and pick up an empty vehicle for the ride back to the base. 
  Very few of the drivers were even curious about what lay beyond. In fact most knew that it could be unhealthy to know, and didn't want to. 
  Carl Weston, a young recruit who had just dropped off the third truck of his shift, was one of them. 
  "I don't care, don't know, and I don't want to know," he was quick to point out to any of the new guys who asked. Besides, he reasoned with himself, it's easy darn work. Just drive the frigging trucks back and forth all night. No sense messing it up by asking questions. 
  He had done a little peeking into this load though. The curiosity had been eating at him, so he had just snuck a quick peek under the tarp, to see what it was he was hauling. Nobody would ever know, he reasoned. 
  He jumped down from the cab of the Peterbilt, handed the keys to the waiting soldier; crossed the blacktop, and hauled himself up into the Mack that sat idling. 
  Maybe two more loads before my shift ends, and I'll be back to the base in time to get cleaned up and go out for awhile, he thought, as he drove away. Wonder what the special is down at the club tonight? And, what the heck are they doing with all that computer equipment I been running tonight anyhow?  he shook his head as he drove away. Who cares, he thought.   
  "Not me," he said, answering himself aloud in the empty cab of the truck. "Not me."

  Ten minutes later, when the Peterbilt with its broken micro seal arrived inside project Bluechip, a burly sergeant was dispatched to show P.F.C Carl Weston who did care and why. 
  Carl Weston never did make it to the club, or anywhere else that night, and his body never did turn up. The next morning he was officially listed as AWOL. After that, word got around, and none of the remaining drivers did anything but drive the trucks back and forth. It looked like Carl had been right, knowing could be a bit unhealthy.

  In a dark corner of a small farm in northern New York, the moon shone down on freshly turned earth. The cornstalks rustled and whispered in the night wind.



