Caleb's Public Writing Journal

Me Caleb. Me write good words.

Magical Realism

The Walking Dead

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The following is my response to today’s Daily Writing Prompt: “A bobblehead collector is talked out of suicide by a member of his collection.”

Saul burst into his home office and slammed the door so hard that all of the bobbleheads, occupying the nine shelves of the three bookcases lining the wall opposite of his desk, began wagging their heads. Although he was no longer crying, his labored breathing and high-pitched whines made it clear he could start up again at any moment. He paced in front of the door, pressing his hands against his cheeks until they turned white. He gripped his hair and tugged, wagging his head like one of the figures on his shelves.

Then he thought of something that stopped him altogether. He went to his desk, covered with papers and books, including Home-Based Business for Dummies, and pushed his swivel chair aside. He knelt down and opened the bottom right drawer. His face lifted when he saw what was inside. A weak smile appeared on his lips. He lifted out a long, black pistol, gripped tightly in both hands. His face was resolute. He held the pistol in front of his face to inspect it, pulled back the slide to load it, placed it under his chin, sucked in breath and—

“You need to reconsider,” said someone behind Saul. It was a coarse, calm voice, a voice that was both familiar and foreign.

Saul stopped crying, wiped his eyes and nose with his sleeve, then spun around to see who had spoken. There was only the shelves of bobbleheads. “Who said that?”

“Killing yourself, you need to reconsider,” the voice said.

Saul’s eyes widened. He looked at the bottom shelf of the middle bookcase and saw that one bobblehead was not looking straight ahead like the others. It was officer Rick Grimes from AMC’s The Walking Dead. His head was tilted back, looking up at Saul through hooded, narrowed eyes under the wide brim of a brown sheriff’s hat. He had a severe expression on his stubbled face and his hand gripped a poorly painted revolver at his side.

“Rick?” Saul said.

The bobblehead looked down, shook his head, then looked back into Saul’s face. “Yeah, it’s me,” he said, his lips not moving. “I don’t know if you’re looking at me with what? Surprise? Sadness? I’m just telling you how it is. You need to reconsider.”

Saul wiped the snot from his nose. He let his head hang down as his face flushed. “I’m just so tired and confused. I just can’t deal with it anymore.”

“Feels like there’s a lot of that going around. But whatever ‘it’ is, we all carry it.”

“I’m just not equipped to handle life anymore. I’m not a happy person, Rick. And the only thing that kept me going was the hope that I could make this business work, that I could make a better life for my family. But I can’t. I failed. The investors don’t want anything to do with me. They said there is no market for my idea, that it’s ‘underdeveloped.’”

“People out there are always looking for an angle, looking to play on your weakness. It didn’t work out, so what? You need to pull yourself together, not apart. What about Annie?”

“She’ll be sad for a while… But sooner or later she’ll realize how much of a loser I am and she will be relieved that she has the opportunity to find someone else while she’s still relatively young. I’m just an idiot. An idiot! I’ve just wasted six months of my life, of my wife’s life, put her through all that stress, put financial strain on my family, and for what? What do I have? My biggest accomplishment in life is this damned bobblehead collection.”

“You believe that? I’ll stay down here, we’ll talk as long as you want, but you forget about this killing yourself stuff. So it didn’t work out, so it was just another pipe dream. Maybe I—maybe I’m just fooling myself, but that doesn’t mean you should give up. We’ve all done the worst kinds of things just to survive. I killed my best friend for Christ’s sake! But I’m not sorry for what I’ve done, because it’s in the past, because I’ve changed. You can still come back. You’re not too far gone. You get to come back… And I know you can change.”

Saul sat back on his heels, slowly turning the gun over on his lap. “My wife says that I should take this opportunity to pursue my television blog, but how can I do that when Annie works fifty hours a week? I couldn’t live with myself knowing that watching T.V. and messing around on the computer is my only contribution. She says to find a way to make money at it, but obviously, I’m a horrible business person. I just want my family to be safe, to have some security, and I want to provide it myself.”

“Now, I need you to hear what I’m about to say. You are not safe. You need to fight for everything you get. You need to contribute to your family, but that doesn’t mean you can’t do that with your blog. You have the opportunity, right now, to focus your time and energy on the thing that will make you happy. Don’t throw that away because of guilt from the past, or the fear of the future. That guilt, that fear, they’ll try to use you. They’ll try to kill you. But you are not going to let that happen, because you are a strong man, you want to live, for yourself and for your family. Now you think about today—only today. You do what you need to do, and after that: what happens, happens.”

Saul looked down at the pistol. He took a long, slow breath. He threw his head back and let all the air flow out of him. He felt lighter then, like something had gone, something had changed. He was full of an energy, ready to get started on something new. There was a soft knock on the door.

“Saul? Saul are you okay?”

Saul looked back to Rick, his painted face looking forward, like nothing had ever happened. But Saul thought he could see Rick giving him the slightest of nods. Saul dropped the clip into one hand, emptied the chamber, then replaced the pistol in his desk drawer. “I’m going to be just fine, Annie,” Saul said, “Just fine. I’m just thinking over what we talked about. I’m going to do whatever it takes to make it work.”

“That’s great news, honey,” Annie said through the door. Saul could tell she had been crying. “I’m sorry we got into it. I’m trying to make this better for you. I need to go to work. I’ll leave you to it. I really meant what I said. I love you. I just want you to be happy.”

Saul could hear Annie leave. “I love you too,” he said, more to himself than his wife. Saul got to his feet, went to the middle bookcase, and picked up Rick Grimes. He swept his arm across his desk, knocking the papers and books to the floor. He placed the bobblehead next to his keyboard, sat down, woke up his computer, and started typing. Now and then, he would stop typing, look down at Rick, tap his oversized head, and smile.

Writing Prompt: write a short magical realism story about loneliness

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Hello you. Here is a short story sketch I wrote about a Pygmalion-like character with some twists on the original myth. I hope you enjoy it.

Giroff spread the crinkling blinds and peered down on a group of friends passing under his window. His eyes were bloodshot and the flesh around them was swollen and an ugly shade of purple. He stared at the young friends—not so young, maybe not even younger than himself—laughing as they strolled, this one putting a gentle hand on that one’s shoulder, all of them slowing their pace for one who lagged behind, then all welcoming him with playful jeers as he caught up.

[Read more…] about Writing Prompt: write a short magical realism story about loneliness

Detective Jimmy Hallaren of New Mexico

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I wrote this scene sketch this morning to play with my sentence construction. I hope you enjoy the read.

Narcotics Detective Jimmy Hallaren sat in an early model Ford sedan, in the New Mexico desert three miles outside of Santa Fe, his .40 caliber pistol, unholstered, on the passenger seat, his bearded, cracked hand resting beside it, his dark eyes fixed on a dark patch in the road, irregular, like spilt oil that the sun had failed to raise from the dusty highway, a stain set all the more vividly in Detective Hallaren’s memory, set by a sin that a thirty-five year career of loyal duty could not cleanse: his violent, impersonal ending of a young man’s life; all in the name of a paycheck.

Detective Hallaren held a half-burnt cigarette out his open window, the butt between his first two fingers, nails turning yellower in the noon sun. He took a drag of the cigarette, letting the smoke linger in his greying hair, absorbing the aroma; a fitting stench. The police radio gurgled in his ears:

“Yo’ Jimmy,” came a man’s voice over the radio, “you bringing it in soon old man?”

Detective Hallaren lifted the .40 caliber and set it aside, revealing a thin paper pamphlet titled, ‘What Now?’ The author’s name was obscured, but appeared to be of Indian origin.

“Jimmy?” Asked the voice. “Are you there sir? I didn’t mean it about you being old, sir. We were all actually hoping to catch you before you left us for good.” Three or four other eager voices crackling over the speakers echoed the patrol officer’s sentiment.

Detective Hallaren caressed the pistol with his forefinger, then picked up the radio receiver. “Yeah, yeah, I’m here in the boonies; I’ll be at the station in a few; tell the boys I’m just reminiscing about the good ole’ days.”

“Tell them what?” Asks the voice. “Ten-one, you’re transmission’s a bit choppy sir.”

Glancing South, towards Santa Fe, low on the horizon, where the air wavers in the heat, Detective Hallaren saw a flash of green light, but, looking again, he saw… “Nothing,” said Detective Hallaren, “nevermind; I’m out on the eighty-four North; tell them I’ll be in soon. Just do me a favor and don’t let my wife do anything—over the top—at the station; I’m tired.”

“I’ll try sir, but your kids are in town. See you in a few sir; congratulations.” The radio scratched to silence.

Detective Hallaren continued to stare where the flash had been, two or three miles away, where the highway gently sloped, a small dust-devil rising up in its place. Then, like it had been there all along, a crude, yellow van appeared, screeching along the highway at high speed, swerving over the horizon. It was a boxy van, a DIY chop-job for sure; a Chevy truck, it’s bed replaced with a wooden hut, the whole thing hand painted a bright yellow, with black tinted-windows, and a black sliding window cut into the side like an ice-cream truck.

The van swerved so wide that it kicked up dust from either margin of the highway. The rig rattled and coughed so violently as it came that Detective Hallaren was sure its spine would snap any second. The van sped closer and it emitted a red flash that made him blink. A second later, green smoke poured from the windows of the van, accompanied by electric sparks and high-pitched whistles; the whooping spectacle, now no more than a mile from where the detective waited.

“What are you thinking buddy?” said Detective Hallaren, picking up the radio receiver. “Dispatch,” he said, “this is Detective Hallaren, do we have any traffic officers near my ten-twenty?”

The woman’s voice came clear and sing-song over the radio, “Ten-four, detective, units are on their way, now why don’t you ten-nineteen and start on enjoying that retirement? Good afternoon detective.”

Detective Hallaren took a long inhale, hand trembling, then flicked the cigarette butt onto the asphalt and cupped his hand over his quivering lips.

The van was less than a thousand feet out and coming fast; Detective Hallaren knew highway patrol would arrive in the next thirty seconds, and the driver would be long gone by then. But he gave up chasing petty speeders six years ago when they gave him the detective badge. He gave up the heart-pounding stops, the overwhelming questions of safety every time he stepped out of his cruiser; the beat up undercover sedan was a reward hard won. Four hundred feet; orange smoke now too? No front license?

Detective Hallaren felt a rumble in his gut; an explosion boomed from the van, just as it careened past him, horn blaring, a small wrinkled man at the wheel, black ponytail trailing behind, flailing his arms at the interior assailants, lips stretching wide, teeth chomping in terror, glasses fogging white, the cabin full of colorful gasses, white sparks, scattering copper coins and long, red and blue plumage all along the eighty-four.

Detective Hallaren picked up the pamphlet and flipped through it’s pages without pausing, then sighed. “Highway patrol will never make it,” he said.

Detective Hallaren holstered his pistol, crossed his safety belt, punched off his radio, jammed the gear shift into drive, and tore out after the mysterious yellow van.

To Save a Mother and a Village Part II

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This is Part II. For Part I, click here.

The young girl walked for many miles in the young hours of the first night, with only the dim glow of a jaundiced moon to light her way. An inconstant gale stirred the low plants of the plain, projecting suspicious shadows in the corner of the young girl’s eyes. In her mind she filled in the darkness around her with an imagined wilderness, tearing monsters, with only a fragile shroud of darkness between her life and the beasts that longed to rip it from her.

The night seemed to stretch on for days and days. Foreign whoops and growls pressed the young girl faster through the night. She held her hands out in front of her now. Her fingers dumbly curling and uncurling in the tangle of darkness around her. She walked faster. “I have traveled so far,” she thought, “I must be nearing the ends of the earth, and might soon crash into the great dirt wall that surrounds us all.”

She stumbled over uneven ground, able to keep her feet despite her speed, until a low-growing fungus swallowed up her bare foot, and twisted the young girl face down in the dust. She scrambled to reclaim her feet, scraping up the contents of her food bag that scattered into the grass. She secured all she could in her arms and tried to stand, then spilled them all over again, when — a screech blows through the young girl’s head — an owl swooping low overhead — and she is so startled, she allows herself to scream for the first time since leaving the black foothills; a short, aggressive expression that she silenced immediately. She gained her feet again, then dashed onward through the yellow night, uncertain if the night would ever reach its end . . .

. . . The first night did in fact end and, as the morning of the first day opened up, the young girl’s trembling skin began to calm. She cried out for the second time, this time in relief, as the sunlight chased away the false creatures of the dark. Minutes later, as the sun rose higher, the young girl became aware of another welcome sight; first the foot, now the slopes, and now, almost hidden in thin clouds, the peak of the High Mountain itself, where Hazarchereh; Goddess with Many Faces; hid away. Where the answer to her family’s salvation awaited.

The young girl sat on her heels and surveyed the land, watching from what little cover the low grass provided. Almost straight in front of her, skewed right, she spotted the shimmer of rising smoke, then just below it the tiny hut itself. Green smoke drifted up through an opening in the center of the roof. “He is our people,” the young girl muttered. “He builds as we build . . . But I have never seen such strange colored smoke — what’s this? Movement at the door?”

The hut’s flap whipped back from the wrinkled arm that punched from within. Soon after the arm was followed by the rest of a crooked old man; he was baked black, without a scrap of dress on him. The young girl saw the man’s skin was deeply scarred — too intricately patterned to make out at this distance — markings that, if she knew the strange man, she might have asked to read. This is not her village though, and she did not know this man. She waited, breathing softly as sleep, and remained very, very still.

The old man blocked the sunlight from his eyes and looked out to the plain in the young girl’s direction. “He couldn’t have seen me, could he?” She saw then that the man did wear something. Around his neck; half-hidden beneath his tangled gray beard, a small leather pouch hung on a cord. It was spotted with red splotches like dried blood. Upon seeing this, she gasped. She had heard of such pouches worn by Spirit Men. The old man ran a few meters here, stopped to call out for the hidden persons to show themselves; ran a few meters there, then stopped again. All the time, he made sure to secure the gruesome pouch fast against his chest.

The young girl’s heart pounded, but now it was the loudest noise she made. She sat very still and quiet, covering her mouth and trying to work out what to do. Eventually, the old man gave up his search, then disappeared in his hut. From inside came the sound of metal clanging against metal followed by a low, gutty blast and a gush of blue and red smoke from the roof. The man reappeared. In one hand he held a long spear fixed with a copper head; in the other hand he wielded a strange curved blade. The young girl did not recognize these terrible weapons, but the sight of their malignant design sent her trembling so violently that the grass around her cracked, she tried to recover and fell onto her bottom in the dirt. She looked up quickly, hoping the old man had not seen. When she looked, she saw the old man’s yellow eyes, looking directly into her’s.

For a moment the old man and the young girl stared at each other. The old man shouted something at her, gesturing with the spear, but the wind swept the words away before it reached her. It was most likely a formal challenge. Maybe if she did not answer him. Maybe if she ignored him, he would just . . . leave her alone.

The old man held his hands to his mouth and called out in a way the young girl understood, “Turn back at once!” he said. “You must not go near the mountain! Turn back at once, or face certain death!”

The young girl did not budge. The old man started towards her with his weapons raised. The young girl’s mind went numb with fear. She gripped the knife that hung at her elbow, then stopped. “No,” she said, “don’t be stupid. Your family doesn’t need a stupid girl. But what then?” The old man advanced at a slow march. Could she make it into the slopes before the man could catch her? Her arms were still heavy with food and water jars; could she afford to leave anything behind? She did not think so. Then what? The young girl tried to force herself to find another way, but the man picked up his pace now, and the time for deciding was over.

The young girl bolted. She ran like a fox with a tail of fire, toward the mountain at a long, evasive angle around from the old man. The old man threw vicious shouts and curses at her as she passed, held up his spear, threatening to release it on her, but she did not stop. She could not fight this stranger and she could not return home without the answer. But she could sprint like a gale wind in a storm when she needed to, and now, more than ever before, the young girl needed her swiftness to escape the old man. And she might have done so, were the old man just an old man.

This is the second part of the story sketch ‘To Save a Mother and a Village’. I wrote this sketch today and yesterday. I hope you enjoy. If you are still interested in hearing the rest of the story, please let me know on my site or on Facebook so I can judge how to spend my practice sessions. Thank you for reading; I write for you!

Cheers,

Caleb

Is there any work for a young not-a-witch?

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Please enjoy this sketch I wrote this morning. And for those who celebrate it: Have an observant Memorial Day.

EDIT: You can read the next segment of this story here: The Wich of Ramí

“I’m sorry dear, no work here.”

“Move ’em on! Move ’em on!”

“Get quick, or get the stick you little gypsy!”

“…Not a gypsy.” The child says.

“What did you say?” The walrusine man says.

The child lifts her face to meet the mustachioed butcher’s; for an instant the deep orange tendrils that frame the child’s face seem to be real flames to the man; he backs into his chopping block and sends a fine slab of porkum into the dust. “I said, I’m not a gypsy. Gypsies steal; cheat. I’m no gypsy.”

“Gods,” the butcher wipes his wide boiled nose with a blood-soaked mitt. “You’re a damn witch!”

The girl looks around and marks not a few passersby marking her. A conspicuously armored man with a stack of papers in his hands scans the crowds of traders and thieves from atop a stack of wheat barrels on the corner. She pulls her blackish-blue hood over her hair and offers the butcher a wide-eyed plea for calm. “I’m not a witch either, please sir, I can’t afford attention.”

The butcher takes a breath and squeezes his eyes. He pats his hands along his sides, then his face, and finally his crotch. “All right then, but no tricks for Al’Qohr hear? My ole man was, how to call it, trans-mong-ri-fied? by one of you. But you’re just a little witch…Why, you’re no bigger than my daughter. A might bit handsomer too.”

“Please sir, do you have any work for me?”

“Work? No, no work. I can’t afford to pay myself child—what are you doing working at your age? You can’t be more than thirteen?”

“Thirteen and a half.”

“Ah! Exactly my daughter’s answer…hm…yes…well, I tell you what,” the butcher lifts his great gut over the counter and releases it with a groan as he frees himself from his merchant stand. “Why don’t you come along with me child? I’ll…I’ll see what we can find you for work right?”

The girl pulls her cape tight around her chest and considers it. She meets the man’s flat-gray eyes but senses nothing. She looks away. Then to the ruined pork in the street. A creaking gurgle shakes its way from her stomach. She looks back to the man and nods.

“Good, good,” the man says. “Let me wrap up the meat, Maritai’if will make a good stew of it. My daughter. Would you like that?”

The girl nods again.

While the massive man loads his wares in the back of his carriage, the girl waits by the poor beast whose job it is to bear him. The ass’s back stands no higher than the girl’s head, but its face is half her length. Its coat is grayish cotton spread over molasses; patches rubbed bare and bleeding where the bull-flies bite. She lays a hand on its snout and closes her eyes.

“Ready now—den—what was your name?”

“…”

“Right, well if I’m going to help you, it will be easier for me to find work for a girl who knows her own—”

“—Issau.”

“Issau. I see. Yes. Issau.”

“You pronounce it well.”

“I hadn’t realized…But that doesn’t matter. Here, into the cart.” He makes a step with his hands and bends down.

“Why not ride in front with you?” Issau says gesturing to the driver’s bench.

“I think, if you want to avoid attention, you’ll want to ride back here. Now up we go.” Issau climbs into the splintered bed among the bleeding sacs of meat. “Try not to breathe through your nose right?” the man says. Then he throws a green tarp over Issau and the whole back of the wagon.

Issau listens for the man’s footsteps; traces them to the front of the wagon. When the weight of the man rocks the bed, she allows herself to relax and breathe. The stink really is formidable. And still, she found herself lapping it into her senses and fading to sleep under thoughts of a warm meal, a bit of help, and blessed safety.

The voices of men whispering excitedly wakes Issau from an unpleasant nap. She is still in the darkness of the wagon, but they have stopped.

“Fifty rupas! you’re mad!”

“Fifty, yes, fif-ty.” This is the butcher’s voice. “It says right here, look for yourself.”

“You’re a fool if you think Lord Raa’ja’naa will pay more than ten rupas for a little witch.”

Issau gasps and covers her mouth to stifle the high whine that follows. The voices stop.

“Men!” The man who spoke with the butcher says. “Teja! Ekr’al! Bohr! Get the girl. Take her to Lord Raa’ja’naa.”

Heavy heals click on stone floor and echo off stone walls as the men approach. “Oh no,” Issau whispers, “we’re inside.”

“Hey-hey-hey,” the butcher bellows, “this poster says ‘fifty rupas for witches alive, ten rupas dead,’ what do you think I am?”

There comes a soft laugh that pricks Issau’s spine. A crashing report is followed by something like the butcher’s porkum slapping the ground. “A worthless meat man. Now get that little bitch and let’s get our reward. It’s nearly sundown and I’m itching for a drink.”

Issau hears the men closing around her and she begins muttering to herself.

“Take her alive, I’ll not have ten rupas for her.”

The tarp snaps away and the evening light pierces the window slits in the tower and hint at the dark silhouette of the small child.

“Sir,” one of the men says, the tallest of the three, dark and leather-face, with the same golden helmet topped with a metal spike that the other men wore. “It’s a child.”

“Then she really shouldn’t be a problem,” the leader says. “Especially for three soldiers of the great Lord Raa—”

A greenish glow suddenly envelopes Issau, glows bright greenish-white, then bursts out in an ethereal sphere that soaks everything in the chamber.

One of the men yelps. All of their eyes widen and they stand perfectly still. After a few seconds they look at each other. Then each quickly pats their sides, head; crotch. They sigh, then scowl at the girl. “That’s enough of that fancy light trick little witch!” The men level their pistols on Issau. “One more show like that an—”

The explosion is intensely bright and bursting with orangish black flames and screeching cries from unseen mouths. The cart blows to splinters under Issau but she remains in the air where she sat. The screams of the men are swallowed by a growing grumble from deep underground. Rotten meat, disembodied pistols and officer caps, the mule, and the men themselves along with their leader, begin to revolve around Issau. Her eyes flash open. They are black; her face is blank; her tongue flicks out ancient phrases; her lips do what they can to keep up. In this instant the whole world is cries of terror, fire, and pain. Then all at once the great tornado halts. The men hang, no longer rotating, suspended among the debris and stone bricks. Finally, a terrible sound like tearing open a hole in the knee of your pants, followed by snaps and pops that ascend until at last, the very bodies of the men are ripped to strips, along with the porkum and everything else in a half mile, and Issau is alone once more, at the center of it all.

Don’t stop here! Read the next segment of the story here: The Wich of Ramí

A Game of Flap-Dragon

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Hard soles clop along the sidewalk stirring up gasoline vapor and sweet oak. A pair of once-black leather bootees with no laces, their vamps deeply worn, shuffle along the cement. A pewter mug, tied through its handle by silk thread, rolls and flops against the holed sides of a gray wool coat with each sway of the hips; its contents shake like a lazy maraca.

Six steps up from the sidewalk, a group of three young men recline at different levels. The highest of the men pushes his palm into his eye socket and rocks his head; he groans. “Will you two shut up about the damn bet, it’s payday now, we’ll settle it tonight.”

The percussion of the walking man slows with his gait; then resumes tempo a moment later.

The men on the lower steps curse and the bigger of the two cracks the other on the knee with a plump fist. “Screw that! Not waiting until tonight; I already beat this punk, I’m not spending any more on drinking games.”

This time the shoes stop. One brings up its toe, taps the cement twice, then returns to grind debris into the ground. The shoes turn about. The small man wears a greenish hunting cap, whose earflaps peel up and button on top, revealing the most outlandishly large sideburns the Newberry Townhome residents had ever seen. The rest of his face is bare and smeared with dirt; a pair of thick ovoid glasses teeter on his crooked nose; behind them: yellow eyes. He pulls back his cracked lips to offer the young men a yellow smile. “You boys say something about ‘debt’?”

The men, no younger than twenty five, but comparatively infantile to this ancient apparition, hesitate. But after checking with each other’s expressions, the man on the top step tosses his chin at the old man. “What’re you lookin’ at bro?” The other two laugh.

“I’m sorry I thought I heard someone talk about paying ‘debts’?”

“What the hell? You spying on us? weirdo, get out of here!”

The old man takes two gentle steps to reach the base of the stairs. He caresses his chin with a knob-knuckled hand, adorned with three crudely made rings and sooty fingernails that jut irregularly, and three heavy rings that could have been gold. “Oh, I’m afraid you have it wrong, boys. You see, I’m somewhat of a game man myself, and a bit more of an authority on settling debts. And it sounds like you fellows are in need of…impartial council?” Another yellow smile.

The men check ranks again. The large man stands and chews on the inside of his cheek. “Yeah, alright, I just want to make this clown see that he’s beat this time.” He begins with the name of the game, ‘flap-dragon’, in which the players must peck flaming raisins from a cup of brandy and hold as many in their open mouths as they can before having to extinguish the fire. The other two interrupt with explanations and corrections as he speaks.

As they explain, the old man dips his fingertips into the cup at his belt and draws them out, fingers powdered red, then rests the hand in his lower back, thumb hooked through the belt. He creeps a foot up the first cement step. “Yes, fine, fine, that’s all fine my boys, I don’t think we’ll have a problem here. No sirs, I believe we’ll end this before noon—but! there are just a few ground rules we need to go over before we do…” Now he did not smile.