A Michael McKaybees Mystery

A twentieth century author names Mickey Spillane was best know for his mystery novels about private eye Mike Hammer. Mickey was a WWII Air Force veteran. He flew fighter planes, and was an instructor during the war. Before the war he worked with a couple other young men writing comic books. After the war ended he did the same.

Until 1947 when he decided he needed a thousand dollars to build a house. He wrote the novel “I, The Jury” and sold the handwritten manuscript for a thousand dollars. The book eventually became a best seller.

Mickey was a great salesman. He promoted his writing and himself whenever possible. As part of this image, he always wore black and white. A black shirt with white pants, or the opposite, and a white tie with the black shirt, and again the opposite. By the time he died at the age of 87, everyone who knew him would wear black and white to any occasion involving him.

He lived in Murrells Inlet, South Carolina in a house he designed that sat on the edge of the inlet marsh. His first house in town was destroyed by hurricane Hugo in 1989. Therefore the new house was built to withstand such storms.

Mickey was a cat lover. He feed every stray that found its way to his home.

Not long before he died, Mickey informed his wife that if he could find a way to return after he passed, he would and do it in a way that she’d know it was him. Several weeks after his death, a black and white cat appeared on the house’s marsh side porch. This was a cat that no one had seen before that day.

Since the door was always open to allow the many cat’s Mickey and his wife cared for to come and go as the cat’s wanted, the black and white, without hesitation walked into the house, climbed the stairs to the floor where Mickey had an office. Once there the cat took a pair of Mickey’s reading glasses in is teeth and carried them down to where Mickey’s wife sat on the porch. The cat then presented the reading glasses to her.

This is a true story.

Distressing thoughts don’t burn brightly when I step into the night. It’s welcoming embrace with blank grays and deep shadows surrounding.

Once I walked the night with no more attention than a commuter riding a train with an iPhone’s emotional extension between his hands, thumbs dancing their absurd irrelevancy, meaningful to none but he.

Yet after daylight extinguishes where is the commuter? Still tapping clicking, still searching for connectedness, meaning perhaps where such are brief wisps of moments passed.

The day belongs to him. The night is mine as I rise from my daily slumber. Few who are out when I walk the city cares whether I exist as I pass without acknowledgement. So much pleasure gained by pure anonymity.

The urge of hunger comes slowly as I welcome its return after days without a presence I’ve live with for so very long. The hunters took her. Now my hunt begins.

Rain ran down her face. Eyes staring at the man approaching her, she didn’t blink. She did not seem surprised. Instead seemed indifferent. She could’ve stepped under the awning to her left, yet waited. He stopped ten feet away. His face showed both recognition and surprise. He glanced over his shoulder as if hoping someone would appear. When he looked back at her, she stood less than three feet distant. He reacted as if he’d heard nothing. A flash of fear moved the muscles around his eyes, briefly narrowing them. Falling rain increased in intensity so its sound overwhelmed all else. He looked like he wanted to speak, or needed to ask an important question. Instead, he took a step back and looked down when hissing rain became unbearable pain.

“Why?” he asked not expecting an answer, not getting one.

Rain washed the blood pulsing from his hole in his chest, pushing it into the gutter, down the street drain. He watched it happened as his knees buckled. He watched the cobblestone pavement grow in size. He felt his head bounce hard off the stones as he died.

The rain fell harder filling the space where she had stood a moment earlier. The storm covered the street, the neighborhood, the city. She no longer felt the cold wetness, but instead stood before a roaring fire in a large stone fireplace.

Slowly, she removed her wet clothing, dropping each item onto a pile before the flames as a puddle of wet history grew around the cloth. Her bare feet showed redness from the cold, as did her hands and face. She leaned closer to the heat and breathed deeply but quietly as the warmth penetrated her flesh until she felt where she’d been, what she’d done had burned away.

Walking across the carpeted room, she pressed a small pin the shape of a seven-point star, that pulsed both red and green, into a socket inside a wooden box no larger than her hand. It clicked, began uploading data, then downloading her next assignment. She closed to box lid knowing she would not leave until fully rested, bionics recharged.

Perfect Spring Dessert: Classic Carrot Cake

By Saveur | Shine Food

Our version of the always-popular carrot cake is a potluck and bakesale favorite; the addition of crushed pineapple helps to keep it sweet and moist.

RECIPE: CLASSIC CARROT CAKE

SERVES 12 to 14

INGREDIENTS

¾ cup canola oil, plus more for pan

2 cups flour, plus more for pan

2 tsp. baking powder

2 tsp. baking soda

2 tsp. ground cinnamon

1 tsp. kosher salt

1½ cups sugar

½ cup buttermilk

3 tsp. vanilla extract

4 eggs

2 cups finely grated carrots

1 cup canned crushed pineapple, drained

1 cup coarsely chopped walnuts

1 cup sweetened flaked coconut

½ cup raisins

8 oz. cream cheese, softened

8 tbsp. unsalted butter, softened

3 cups confectioners’ sugar, sifted

Marzipan carrots for garnish (see Making Marzipan Carrots)

RELATED: Luscious Layer Cakes »

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Heat oven to 350°. Grease and flour a 9″ x 13″ baking dish; set aside. In a bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt; set aside.

2. In a bowl, whisk together oil, sugar, buttermilk, 2 tsp. vanilla, and eggs; whisk into flour. Stir in carrots, pineapple, nuts, coconut, and raisins. Pour batter into prepared dish; smooth. Bake for 40-45 minutes. Let cool.

3. In a bowl, beat cream cheese and butter with a hand mixer until smooth. Add remaining vanilla and confectioners’ sugar; beat until fluffy. Spread icing over cake; refrigerate. Garnish with marzipan carrots, if using.

A gentle whisper drew her to the front entrance. Unaccustomed to fear she opened a door ornately carved with resting dragons surrounding a double stained glass window, and stepped into pale moonlight. She sensed a presence yet saw no one, looked in all directions and found she stood alone. Lifting her head slightly she closed her eyes and inhaled the delicate aroma of freshly cut roses. It filled her so completely a shudder shook her shoulders. When she opened her eyes she looked at her feet and saw the flowers lying as if dropped and forgotten.

Thought slipped away as she extended a forefinger and leaned to touch the delicate bruised petals. As she did, her pale nearly translucent green flesh glowed when she felt the blossoms’ dying energy. An inaudible sigh expressed her desires which transferred to the flowers. At first they began to shrivel and wilt. She blew a warm breath across them, watched the petals waver gently as they revived.

Smiling now, she lowered to one knee and placed an open palm on the roses. she closed her eyes, chanted a blessing known to only her kind and felt the flowers begin to grow. At first they quivered, then moved with intention. She lifted her hand and watched as roots appeared and burrowed into the moist dark soil. As she stood she held both hands palms down over the roses and the plant she’d encouraged grew upward covered with leaves and red buds.

         Like battle weary men dragging their souls through history as far back as the written word can transcribe the experience of their victories and defeats, we struggled against what we saw. The fight had not slowed as bodies mounded to block our access to each other. Why we continued to shoot, I couldn’t say, except that we knew nothing else. Or, perhaps, we were driven by the numbness, battle fatigue, and the shock that drives emotion into a pinpoint of existence too remote to ever be focused on in time to stem the flow of physical expression. There’s a place deep within each of us that blossoms to overpower sanity. That was what I witnessed the raw edge of the sane as they stepped into an inferno where normalcy shriveled under the heat of instinctual survival.

         Yet even while thinking such abstractions, I raised my weapon, pressed hard on the trigger and held it against the back of its guard until the clip ran dry. Then I scavenged a fresh clip off the remains of a dead comrade, wiped his blood from it, slammed it in place, chambered a round and fired again. I became an automaton, a man without reason, driven to live through the day at any cost to others.

         When the sun settled into the piles of corpses, gunfire slowed, but did not stop completely. The air smelled of those things known only to the men and women who have experienced warfare firsthand. You breathe each breath as a last, hoping to live to see another sunrise, hoping to find an end where peace is less of an illusion. Then you awaken and start again.

Copyright 2019 Gabriel FW Koch all rights reserved

Wandering through forests not yet tamed by metal dozers of economic promise, a falling leaf, a rustled branch, or sparkling water in a small pond I felt certain lay as an undiscovered find. Yet why remained elusive, like a shadow seen at noon not at midnight. I knew it would reappear at sunrise. 

Snow blown ice particles stung my skin and forced my eyes closed.

Well doesn’t that feel great, I thought bitterly, removed my wool-lined leather gloves, wiped my eyes, and examined the red door they had slammed in my face. The polished brass numbers seemed as cold as the ice. My attempt to reconnect with old friends ended abruptly.

I walked off the three-step porch, and stared up at the front of the gaily-decorated house. Holiday lights neatly outlined the structure sparkling under a thin coating of snow. I read again the large red and green lettering that stated Merry Christmas as if the day, Christmas Day held a special significance for the occupants.

Clearly not, I decided, at least not beyond spiked eggnog and Christmas morning pleasures.

I wasn’t so old I could not recall the feeling, nor was I so young that I still believed that Christmas Day was all about me and me alone.

We often went to church the night before, Christmas Eve midnight service. I enjoyed the singing, the dark mystery of the manger scene assembled off to one side of the nave. Our minister wore a thick black and silver beard, smiled more than most, had a rich sonorous voice that filled the rafters with his words, although, the rafters hung low in the small ancient building.

No longer did I recall the sound of his voice, but I could still picture his face, his wide grin, which occasionally made me believe that he knew something vitally important and that the knowing filled him with a particular joy he alone experienced.

Recalling the church interior was easier. It was old dark reddish brown wood with a low ceiling, exposed hand-hewn rafters, and lighting that resembled rows of flickering candles hung overhead in small wrought iron candelabras.

Well they didn’t really flicker, but childhood imagination made it so on that special night.

The altar was simple, nothing ornate about it, as was the crucifix above. The simplicity made the sacrificed Jesus easier to examine, easier to accept as once having been a flesh and blood man with the courage many since envied but never achieved.

What I enjoyed most was the white altar linens with their rich resonant colors chasing the borders. Every season, each church holiday, new linens would appear. For me the purple of Easter was best.

At the midnight service, few of the normal Sunday congregation attended, but we did not care. Somehow that made it feel more intimate, as if the building embraced us, welcomed us for braving the cold star-encrusted night, the new snowfall and occasional ice to huddle within its ancient walls. From the basement, the sound of the furnace rumbled lightly underfoot as its uneven appreciated heat wavered between rows of pews.

I would sit in a pew alongside my mother, kneeling when directed by a phrase, the minister’s hand movement, while I touched the curved top of the scarred and varnished seatback, wondering how many people had felt that surface before I had. A deep scratch perhaps dug accidentally from someone’s ring as she turned to leave, seemed like a clue as to who was there in earlier times.

Once, I spied tiny initials grooved into the wood just beneath the seatback top, where it curled back, the initials were A.P.C. I tried to fill in the names, and finally gave up and made the three letters into a word, which I recited to myself for days whenever I recalled the moment of discovery.

The old faded red hymnals and songbooks felt rough, heavy with worn smooth edges. Some had small tears in pages at the top or bottom where the page met the spine. More than one person dog-eared corners at favorite songs, I guessed, and several book had names written on the inside front cover, or the rear cover along with “donated by.”

One name that stayed with me was James Matthew Tyler. I had learned in school that President Tyler had cousins who lived in the neighboring town back when he was alive. The family lived there long after.

Is this one of them? I’d thought, but never learned the answer.

After church, we returned home, made hot chocolate, finished decorating the tree with long strands of tinsel, flattening each one before hanging it so it individually moved in the air currents to reflect glittering light from the colored bulbs nearby.

Our tree was scrawny in places, which we turned to face the wall. When completed, all of the room lights went off. The tree’s lights sparkled with renewed promise bouncing off hundreds of tinsel icicles, filling the room with their hope, glowing with promise beneath the angel sitting at the very top. There was magic there and then. I knew it and believed it would last forever.

Backing down the sidewalk, I examined the windows, but did not see as much as a curtain shiver. No one inside cared who might be outside, or if they did, must’ve decided those who braved the elements on Christmas Eve were either insane, criminals or beggars.

God forbid beggars should ring a doorbell on Christmas Eve, I thought disgustedly, and turned to walk to the street.

God may not be dead, I added grimly, but Christmas, well that might be another story.

Wind continued to pick at my hair, flipping strands that hung loose from under my rolled navy blue woolen watch cap. I jammed my hands in my heavy coat’s pockets, and waded through ankle deep snow feeling icy moisture as it began to leak over the tops of my boots.

After my failure to gain entry, I realized I no longer had a goal. Strangers now filled the village that I once called my hometown.

They had taken the time to decorate for the holiday, but each house bore strings of white lights that resembled dangling icicles. White light silhouette Santa and reindeers stood like sentries on nearly every lawn. A few entry doors stood decorated, as large wrapped gifts with bows to obscure the peepholes these strangers felt were necessary.

I saw large balloon-like snowmen, kept erect by a pump that blew hot air into them, at the corner house where once my closest friend lived. The snow around it had melted like an ugly wound to expose the bleakness below.

I kept on walking hoping the wind might at least die down. My car sat parked down by the harbor, several long blocks away.

The best thing for me to do, I thought, is get away from this neighborhood.

With a nod, I turned onto a dark side street. Well, it wasn’t dark but compared to where I had just been the difference was significant.

Only two or three houses wore Christmas decorations. None looked like their neighbor. One had strings of large colored bulbs draped around windows, a fence, and one evergreen tree to the right of its narrow white front door, which had two small windows set in the top. Behind the windows, yellow-white light flickered invitingly.

The second house had smaller colored bulbs, but twice as many as his neighbor as if he wanted to make up with volume what each bulb lost in glow. He had decorated two skeletal maple trees on the front lawn. One sat on either side of the sidewalk, which approached the entryway.

The third house had a candle in each window. I stopped to count and reached twenty-four before seeing the huge lit tree inside the house. It sat behind a high bay window, round and fat in the middle, tapered to the top where an angel treetop sent rays of light outside as if somehow the golden light it created was meant for any person fortunate enough to pass by during the night.

I didn’t know how long I stood watching, nor did I hear the side door open, footsteps crunching along a snow, covered walkway.

“You’re early,” I heard a deep sonorous voice proclaim.

“Early?” I asked without looking at the man who spoke.

“Yes you are,” he said, and I heard something in his voice that quivered emotion deep in my chest.

“Midnight service doesn’t begin for another twenty minutes,” he added kindly.

I spun around, shocked and delighted, stared at eyes that still twinkled but did so now above a silver and white beard. His face seemed the same but age had remolded him with the skill of time and his experiences.

I felt speechless, and my plight must’ve been obvious to him.

“Come, you can help me light the candles. And we’ll need to turn up the heat. There should be some warm cocoa ready too.” He reached out and placed his hand on my shoulder, moved it just enough to cause me to react by turning to follow him, which was when I saw that the side road I turned onto led directly to the old church I once attended as a small boy.

As I walked into the building behind him, the odors and sights sprang back from the distant past, and became the present.

He flipped on the lights, which dimly illuminated the entire building, and as we walked along the aisle, I quickly glanced under the edge of one pew back and smiled when I saw the initials A.P.C.

“Merry Christmas,” I whispered to my past, my present, and laughed lightly when I straightened and struck a match to light the first candle.

Copyright December 20, 2009

Written in memory of all who are no longer with us this Christmas (25 Dec. 2018)

Perhaps the title reads like I mean to dwell on living in the time you’re alive. I do and don’t. The latest online fad is assuming that we who live in the twenty-first century know how people who existed any time before us lived and thought. We know how they felt about everything even though most of us don’t know the same about ourselves.

We don’t and cannot know without entering a time machine and going back in time, staying there long enough to become a member of whatever society or culture we end up in.

Slang was different, language usage was different, education, if there was any, was different. There was little or no health care. A trip to the dentist might mean seeing a local barber to get a tooth pulled. Not many were drilled and filled and if they were it was done with a pedal operated machine. Books were a luxury, supermarkets didn’t exist, no indoor plumbing or electricity. Toilets were called outhouses and toilet paper, tissue paper did not exist.

The average American lives today as the wealthy lived fifty or more years ago. However, no one then wasted anything. Inheriting meant having items you wouldn’t or couldn’t obtain otherwise. Everything was repaired. Torn clothing was repaired, darned, patched. Shoes were re-soled. Automobile and truck tires were “recapped”.

No one even twenty years ago would’ve considered living with a digital device dependency. People valued thinking for themselves. Making decisions based on a variety of facts and information they sought and learned.

But the high life of today is taking a winter song written during WWII and assuming the lyrics have a hidden reference to rape in them. They do not!

“Baby It’s Cold Outside” isn’t about rape.

In the 1930s, 40s, saying that line, “Say, what’s in this drink?” was a standard way to try and blame something else for whatever dumb thing you said or did. It meant “O boy, is my face red,” if you were using it to apologize for a gaffe. Whoever you say it to knows that, in fact, the drink isn’t strong, and that you’re admitting it was your own gaffe. In the dating situation of the song, it means “It’s improper for me to stay, but I want to stay, so I wish I could blame the drink.”

Assuming you can imagine what an adult’s life was like during the war is ludicrous at best and insulting at worst. Hell the majority of men were overseas fighting to create a world were you can condemn a song written at that time to entertain the women who stayed behind wondering if they’d ever see the man they loved again. Assuming you think that rape culture was rampant then, well honestly give it a rest. You’re beginning to sound paranoid.

Today we seem hell bent on altering or eradicating history in all its forms. If that continues then the future will become a world of Pete and Repeat.

Good luck and good night.