The Writtings of Shannon O'Day (in English and Spanish)

"Amnon, Amnon!" (a short story)

2010-08-16T17:15:00.000-07:00

“Amnon, Amnon!”
((A Shannon O’Day Story) (Late 1984 to1988))

Chapter One
(Homecoming)

It was the morning after Amnon had returned home from college; he had spent six-years away at Harvard gotten his law degree (now twenty-four years old, handsome, tall, dark eyes and square jaw, and broad shoulders, five foot eleven), and was hoping to get an early judge’s seat in Ramsey County, likened his father—now deceased, Judge Albert Finley, the elder, and he was out on the town with his younger sister Tamar—who had just turned eighteen (prom queen from Washington High School, a beauty and well developed since last he saw her), and was preparing for school, and Mrs. Finley, their mother—Eleanor Finley (madden name Hill, from a well to do family, from Summit Hill in St. Paul, nearby where she once lived in a large mansion—nearly connecting to her parents’ house, now a museum) all three had gone out celebrating his Law Degree, to the Blue Horse Restaurant and Bar, out on University Avenue. In a way, this was for Eleanor, a climacteric year, one son returns and one child leaves, but Tamar would not be far away, she’d be living on campus, at the University of Minnesota, but a few miles away, studying Psychology. The elder boy, Nathan, he was already a judge in Minnesota, twenty-eight years old, who had gotten into some trouble a few years back, called “The Black Sedan Case” in Minnesota, dealing with the death of Otis Wilde Mather, a negro from Ozark, Alabama, a friend to the O’Day family, in particular to a deceased man once known in the city as Shannon O’Day, a war hero of the Great War, so legend says.
During the whole evening, Tamar had hardly looked at her brother, had said only a few words to him, especially when he had demanded they dance together and him crushing his body against hers, like slamming a door into her face, and trying to persuade her to go out and have a night-cap after they took their mother home. He had smelled the heavy perfume she used, he liked it, but she remained quiet, pert near still, and she walked off the dance floor, not waiting for his approval. Amnon made no reply, and slacken his pace as she increased hers.
When they had gotten home, he kept her up for three hours talking of his affairs at Harvard, drinking glass after glass of wine, red dry wine, and how she had blossomed into a beauty, as they walked on through the mansion in the darkness, down the corridor to their bedrooms—he kept close to her like a puppy to his mother.
“Oh Amnon, Amnon stop!” she said, “stop thinking I’m one of your girlfriends at school, I’m your sister, everybody seems to know that but you.” He slid his arm around her neck, sliding it on and over her shoulder, pinned her against the wall, the light was dim above them, “It’s true,” he said to her, “I’m your brother,” and her quick reply was, “You’re dirty! Step back!”

It was now well into early hours of the morning, and the scent of her was still on him, transplanted into his pores, drifted steadily into his bedroom from hers, as if it was waves of flowers following him; he had rapped her, kind of rapped her, without much resistance beyond the shady side of “Amnon, Amnon, stop, please don’t”; whereupon, after it was over he retreated himself to tiptoe back to his bedroom, not necessary back, since he had not been there that evening—yet, but down to his room, around the corridor. From his bedroom window, he could see her bedroom—and there he stared for a moment looking at her laying there naked, as he had pulled her covers off for that very reason, in her bed still sleeping.
Tamer, mess about the kitchen nervously in the morning with her mother, as the servant waxed the living room table and chairs, dusting this and that, and the cook was making breakfast for Tamer and Eleanor, Amnon was still sleeping, it was 9:00 a.m., Saturday, they had slept in some.

Chapter Two
(The Deal)

In the meantime, Amnon, dashed about the city, talking to his father’s old friends, making connections, harassed the younger lawyers at the courthouse, in his old cold arrogant Finley fashion, and took a liking for Catherine O’Day, now thirty-seven years old, she owned Gus O’Day’s old Farm—farmhouse and cornfield and all, had also inherited $10,000-dollars from her father’s will, and Otis Wilde Mather left her a fish store down on Wabasha Street in the city, now dead, all those from the last generation now dead, all those I’ve just mentioned, I just mentioned were dead to include Mabel, she had quite a sum after adding it all up. And Catherine had known of Amnon from the parties Gus had in what she’d now call the old days, and when he had invited Old Judge Finley over, and his sons and wife for dinner. Shannon was seldom about. So it was an updated reunion for them both.
Tamer had went off to the University, but had made a deal with Amnon, that he should ask mother for a $5,000 advance, of his inherence, lest she tell her what he had done, raped her, kind of rapped her, but she’d make it sound more like ‘Raped’ not the second one. She gave him until the end of the semester, three months—this of course would ruin his career, and as cold as he was, so was she—it was a Finley to Finley genetic thing, I think. And Amnon had known the bad reputation his bother had got from the “Black Sedan Incident,” he nearly lost his judgeship: where the brute of a boxer had killed Otis—when in essence the was just supposed to scare him, which the case was still fermenting between the Courthouse and the Police Station, looking to get a second and more clearer statement from the accused, now out on bail on $10,000-dollars. And should the Finley’s name come up again, come out in anymore derogatory cases, it would for sure, stop his being appointed to any critical position, and do his brother harm—not to mention his family name. But he dare not go to his mother, lest he wanted to be taken completely out of the will—she was not of course an original Finley, rather a Hill, but being married to one for over fifty-years made her cold as ice or could be, and as for his brother, if he knew, he’d surely not assist him in a judgeship or job or anything, wanting to keep his distance.

He spent a lot of time with Catherine O’Day now, and at the Courthouse as an assistant for his bother, checking out cases, occasionally now and then going out with the guys for a drink—not his usual self, and spending more time courting Catherine, over ten years his senior. Actually, his mother was growing a little concerned, un-preventative in the sense of she was used to being, just the opposite—over protective.
“Mark my words mother, I have my reasons, I need to make my mark while I can, I’m nearly twenty-five,” as if he would store up the devilment in the mean time, only to display it sometime afterwards, whereupon once he got what he wanted, and got to where he wanted to go, he’d hold loose of it, and let his inners burst wherever it may. And then, anyone in the way would have hell to pay.
“Why, what is it that is driving you,” she asked him, knowing the first few days back he was so carefree, but that gay kind of look was gone, that happy go lucky look had disappeared for a serious one. And then worse turned to worse, Tamer was pregnant, and she wanted $10,000 to shut up.
“Well,” Amnon agreed, “If you want it, it will take longer,” and he got a reprieve out of that; meaning, five-thousand as agreed on before, which was in a week, and the other five in three more months, thereafter. Amnon leaned over the sofa at their mansion, and touched her arm “All this for one night’s pleasure?”
“I don’t see why you are so upset over it, it’s your child. I mean, it really is.”
“Oh,” he said “then I’ll just wait to see the birth certificate, before I give you the second $5000-dollars and if my name is on it, I won’t pay.”
She sat there rigidly, “You’ll pay until that child is eighteen years old, or until I get married.” She said indomitable.
“Is that so,” Amnon said, walking over to the piano, sitting down on the stool and starting to play, ‘Old Man River.’ Then commented, “Those psychology courses are really helping out I see!”

Chapter Three
(The Doormat)

The Child was born out of wedlock, and named Erskine Finley, in lack of knowing the father’s name, she told her mother she had gotten drunk and got Pregnant from some stranger at a college party. She ended up enjoying the grandchild, under not knowing the name of the father, for the following two years, during those days Amnon filled his destiny, and became a judge, and discovered pride once more, but not to any wild extent. And he made his payments as she had demanded $5000 every three months. Between his salary and playing the horses, living at home, it had worked out. Those days he drove a lesser valued car into town, and had less expensive habits, and gave up courting Miss O’Day, whom he was only courting anyhow for an escape route should he need one. Mrs. Finley, her growing belief what at last her youngest son had settled down, but something told her, it wouldn’t last. That he’d outwear this time and that old violent temper of his would flare up. Mrs. Finley being a true lack of optimistic outlook for young Amnon: Who even was quite fond of Erskine? She seemingly disillusioned herself by assisting him in every way she could to get him the best position at the courthouse, and in line for a future state legislative position. Yet is all, Amnon himself improved in his own ways, without perhaps even knowing, or wanting to, but through the snare he had created with Tamer, He had been so cleverly tricked, so he felt into this clandestine fatherhood dilemma. Tamer, herself was wondering how long before he’d grow out of wanting success at the price he was paying for it—monitory, and position. Mrs. Finley felt he needed a wife, but Tamer felt different, there went her support: perhaps Eleanor forgot: they both bled the same blood.

Then sowing-time over the following year—1988, Ronald Reagan was still president, Tamer had raised her support payments to $7000-per month. And she found herself with nothing to do, she had one year of college left, a free summer, and she was bored, and Amnon was taking interest in Miss O’Day again, and that bothered her. The summer was warm and hot, and she had gone into some kind of savage gloom over being a single mother. It was that summer, Mrs. Eleanor Finley pass on, had a heart attack. The family split up the $600,000-dollars equally, and only the mansion was left, and that had a 1.6 million dollar price tag on it. And Amnon was now engaged to Cantina O’Day. It was a sweet and sour summer for Tamer.

Chapter Four
(Impact)

Samuel Ingway a young lad of twelve years old, son to a foreman who works at a foundry on the East Side of town called Malibu Iron, had been down by the Mississippi River playing waking up tramps and hobos sleeping inside of the cave cliffs, right above the Robert Street Bridge, that crossed the River from St. Paul—he’d run up to them kick them here or there and run like hell; a car had been driven onto the first part of the bridge, going southwest, towards West St. Paul that is, and the car went out of control and had skidded and jumped over the side railing, and crashed rolled and crashed, halfway into the Mississippi River, and the man in the car was groaning, he was still alive, and he lay with his head on Samuel’s knees cussing, struggling to move his body, but he was pinned, and the boy just let him do as he wanted, with half opened eyes. The man looked up to the boy “Something busted in the brake line,” he mumbled—still half in a daze, “I’m not drunk or anything, I think it was… (and he went silent, as if he had a hunch….)” The boy held his knee up higher so his head would not drop back into the shallow water; he was liable to drawn otherwise.
“I hear the ambulance coming sir,” the boy said.
“You, who are you?” asked Amnon.
“Samuel, Samuel Ingway, I was just checking out the caves down here and I heard a crash and here I am. I can’t pull you out, you’re too heavy, I already tired,” said the boy, “but I’ll stay with you,” he said with a calm face, looking at the wet face from what had been in the water prior to his arrival.

“We better get him out of here,” said the first arriving police officer to the boy.
“Aint nobody else coming?” asked the boy.
“He you’re pay” asked the police officer, as they both struggled to pull him out and would have but couldn’t slide him completely out, his feet were crushed under a tone of iron and steel. So they both stopped, having him half way out: caught their breath.
“No,” said the boy, “He’s not my pa; he looks like a dead man to me,” added the boy.
“He sure does act like one,” said the police officer; and then he was.

Outline: 8-16-2010/No: 668

Peru, A Robber's Paradise

2010-08-16T10:45:00.001-07:00

Peru, A Robber’s Paradise

I’ve now lived in Peru for ten years, and have come to conclude this is a robber’s paradise; it is the freest country in the world to rob and not worry about a penalty. This is not a joke, it is reality, all you got to do is live here a year or two and you’ll be convinced. The laws are there but not enforced, for some odd reason—the government wants to look good but not do the work, the Government expects you to act or not rob, without enforcing the law and the laws are laughed at. No one pays them any attention, and the robbers are half the police force and the Mayors are on the take nine out of ten anyhow, and it just goes up the pyramid of authority, to the top.
The underbelly of the country is not built strong enough to withstand the assault of the robbers. It pays to rob in this country that is why everyone does it. The police come if you call them, an hour, or day or three days after you call them, depending if they themselves are not busy robbing. They take bribes on the streets as open as someone selling donuts, or ice-cream, and the government advocates they take bribes so they don’t have to pay them but $300-dollars a month. No robber expects to go to jail, and if by some off beat chance he does, he’ll not spend more than a day in jail, unless it is some congressman he robs from, and even that is unlikely. They robbed the President’s neighbour, and that was that, they never even looked into the case other than putting it on T.V., to let the public know how safe they were: meaning if the neighbour of the president isn’t safe, surely you are not.
It is not that the country is not doing well, or can’t afford to pay, but if you pay the police more, you can’t rob more at the higher level, you see, each level has there robbers, especially the Mayors office and the construction going on in Peru, all the house will fall when another earthquake comes, and everybody know it. If you’re asking where the concern for the public is, or National pride, or humanitarian folks are, they’ll tell you: that’s America’s job, we’re poor here, and we got to make ends meet. But when it comes to fiesta time, or drinking or special interests, they’ve got the time and money. It is like many places, they put there money were their interests are, they have it they just will not let go of it.

Not One Hooting Owl Left

2010-08-16T09:30:00.000-07:00

Not One Hooting Owl Left

(A Collection of four linking stories)

The Old Man
(Hullabaloo 1954)

(Part of the End) And so Shannon O’Day knew that very first morning of October, 1954 knew that Kent Peterson would be where he always was, in the wee hours of the morning, on that porch of his waiting for him to walk through the front gate to paint, and Shannon could no longer withstand, the moment and had simply come to that point that no longer could both breathe the same air in the same farmyard, in the same county, and same state, on the same day, and what he said pushed him over the forbidden line, the red line. And so lacking patience, and perseverance, to subdue his pride, to withstand his nagging, his persistence, he fell back on that right to defend it, the way he did in the war, the Great War, the one he earned a medal for killing his enemy, with his rifle, bayoneted, like Kent Peterson was to him now—the enemy. But the war was of course over—so he had claimed.
It began in the fall of 1953, or a year prior. Oh maybe not, perhaps it started in the summer of 1951, or even sooner, but it shaped itself into a hullabaloo between the two, when he was ordered to paint his house and barn, paint for fifteen days. It all stemmed from arrogance, intolerance and pride, and then destruction. It all started when they started to breathe the same Midwestern air, day after day after day, because he, Shannon O’Day, was not a contentious man, not like Kent, but he was defending his wimple rights, in the only way he knew how. So perhaps Kent made his own fate, destiny when he finally impinged on Shannon’s, if indeed he, or we can say that is what he did, provoking Shannon. This was all after Shannon’s wife left him, and Shannon had rented out a farm next to Kent Peterson, who was rich enough to have several Negro workers on his 400- acres of land. The problem was Gus, his brother was gone out of town, not around to help him out of this jam, he was down visiting Mabel’s parents in Fayetteville, North Carolina celebrating for a month their anniversary, their 35th anniversary.

(The Beginning) It was Shannon’s one and only horse. Not having much money, and trying to do what his brother did, that being: create a self-sufficient farm, an independent one, asking no favours of any man, paying his own way. He—the horse (called: Dan), had strayed off in fall, into the skeleton cornfields next to his farm, and there he was over by Kent Peterson’s place, and Shannon couldn’t feed him so he left him there; and lived the whole winter without him, let Old Man Peterson feed him, knowing he was feeding him. So Peterson fed the horse, knowing it was Shannon’s, the rest of fall, and through the winter—a long hard cold winter at that, and when spring came, Shannon went to get his barren horse, worthless horse, his twenty-dollar horse, but he was fat and healthy now.

(The Deal) According to Mr. Kent Peterson’s calculations, and the sheriff from Dakota Country, Sheriff Terry Fauna, who had asked a few other farmers what the horse was worth now, and they all agreed it was valued at $140-dollars, not the $20-dollars Shannon had paid, now that it was fed and exercised, and groomed. Thus, this was the price tag for Shannon to acquire his horse back, according to law.
Yes indeed, all this trouble over a twenty-dollar horse, that now would cost him $140-dollars because he wanted to fool or should I say trick, Mr. Peterson into feeding him, for a short fall—which ended up being—that and a long winter to boot.
“All right!” Shannon had said to Kent Peterson, to the sheriff, “I’ll work the fifteen days to get my horse back, peacefully, if that’s what all you folks want, and if that is what it takes, I guess I’ll have to do it, I went through the Great War, I can do this standing on my hands, I can withstand you all, likewise.”
And he, Shannon felt forlorn and defenceless he wished his brother Gus was back from down south, he could straighten things out, but he wasn’t.
‘If Gus was back,’ he thought, ‘he would have settled this issue with the horse, he knows the sheriff and Mr. Peterson,’ but he was too impatient. And so he agreed to work for Mr. Peterson the fifteen days, to get his horse back, lest he lose both the goat and the rope.

Shannon worked for Kent, on his farm, painted his house a two-story frame building, then his barn, all 440-square feet of it (and in-between painting he fed the pigs, milked the cows, brought the hay down from the hayloft: day, after day, after day. He had fifteen days to work off (nine days being spent on the house), and as he shifted from the house to the barn working from sunup to sundown, he watched the young men and girls from the city driving by drinking in their cars, and he’d stop painting the barn just to watch them: the couples, old people, children, dogs and cats they had inside their cars. The barn faced the highway, the cars all moving in two directions. He could even hear their radios on, playing music—loud music inside those passing cars. He followed each car with his eyes, with his night lantern to break the boredom of painting.

(The Barn) On the tenth day, he was still working on the barn, the day shifting to night, to dusk, he could hear the freight trains pass, which did almost at anytime throughout the evening, let alone the other passenger trains. So just by spending the evenings in this small barn, this barn of 440-square feet with only a little movement, he would hear maybe three or more trains before he’d quit work.
When his days and evenings were finished he’d walk past the old man, Kent on his way home, a two mile walk to his farm, as the old man sat in his dim rocking chair on his porch in the cool of the dark evening, an electric light on by his screened-in-door behind him to his right side, that led into the kitchen, where the bugs seemed to gather peacefully, with no restraints, worries or insecticide: no need to escape the death hand of fate, and Kent often wanting to talk to Shannon, for whatever reasons, but he never stopped long enough for the old man to get a syllable out, just kept right on walking, just like those bugs behind him, so he treated the old man, as if he wasn’t even there.

(Trains) By the time he got back to his farm, he grabbed a jug of whiskey out from under his kitchen cabinet, walked a mile to the train tracks, sat on the edge of an embankment, waited and watched for the trains to come and go, those coming from Chicago, to St. Paul, a few stopping in Stillwater Township first, about twelve miles away. The train itself, he liked to hear the four whistle blasts for a crossing, the headlights, the nosy engine, see the shadows of the engineer, and conductor, and fireman, and watch the slowing down of the coaches, the people in the late dining room car. The black waiters going back and forth with food for the rich: then the back lights of the train were gone as fast as they had appeared in a clap of an eye.
Between the long days of working for Peterson, and his hours of drinking after twilight, he became a fleshless, sleepless, foodless near mindless, empty man, a shell of a man, all over that twenty-dollar horse, that now was worth seven times that amount because he wanted to fool Mr. Peterson, in feeding him, for a short fall and long winter, because he couldn’t afford to do it. But Mr. Peterson, the old man, had fooled him, and fed him knowing quite well if he did, he’d get fifteen days of work out of Shannon.

(Frozen Anger) It was as if Shannon wanted to get mad, or madder each day he worked, and anger grew as often anger does when there is no release, when one doesn’t talk about the hurt under the anger, but he didn’t want to cause trouble, he knew he owed Mr. Peterson, and was determined to pay him back, even if he had to drain every ounce of blood out of himself. And he knew inside of his cup of anger, if it overflowed its rim, Kent’s life was at risk, and thus, it mustn’t reach that stage.

Day Fifteen

When he woke up, it was tomorrow morning, day fifteen.

(Rest of the Ending) It was 5:00 a.m., when Shannon got down to Kent Peterson’s farm a two mile hike from his, he was disturbed, as old man Peterson did notice, and Shannon being indifferent, he didn’t much care, said quietly, eating a biscuit, eating it steadily, standing on his porch, Shannon didn’t even notice him on his porch as he walked by, until he said,
“Looks like you had a hard night drinking,” never thinking he didn’t have time to plough and hoe, and get his ground ready for planting, on his farm, that perhaps that was on his mind as well, nor did he have a dinner, or breakfast, and his usual coffee, as the old man usually had simply slept away his afternoons.

(Shannon had taken from his army gear, the dull and rusty bayonet the one he had used in the army in the Great War, to scrape the old paint off the last wall of the barn and finished this last and fifteenth day of his penance, and bring home his horse; the bayonet almost as long as his forearm.)

“Now what?” asked Shannon, to the old man?

“You, you look like a zombie,” remarked the old man.
“I’m burnt out old man, shut you mouth and let me work my last day out.”
He then went over to the hedgerows and patches of woods to take a leak— concealed and undetected. But the old man followed him, was right behind him,
“You owe me one more day’s work Shannon, for feeding that horse of yours for the last fifteen-days,” still chewing on that biscuit.
Inflexible, was the old man, silent was Shannon, as he did his duty, and he thought: ‘Maybe if he worked today, and tomorrow that tomorrow wouldn’t be the last day either. Maybe there would never be a last day, period!’
He put his hand under his coat, his fingers around the handle of the bayonet, pulled it out slowly, his fingers already tightening and taking up the slack around the handle, ‘I’ll never satisfy him,’ he told himself, whispered out loud a second time, without thinking, and between the scream and the bayonet and its impact of the thrust for him to say to Kent, and for Kent to have reasoned with it: ‘I’m not killing you because of the fifteen days of work, that’s okay, I done reasoned that out, and not because you’re rich and have no limits, and sleep all afternoon in that hammock of yours, but because of that one additional day you added on.”

The case of Shannon O’Day never did reach the courts, it was said, (some years after the incident of Mr. Kent Peterson) someone paid the judge to dismiss it, and a check in the mail came from down south, for $10,000-dollars, delivered personally to the Judge Finley. And an eye witness showed up at the district attorney’s office, said, there was another man hiding in the woods, which had it in for old man Peterson, an old worker, and grabbed Shannon’s bayonet, and did him in. When Shannon was asked if he killed Peterson at the inquest, or not, he answered, “I rightly don’t know, I hadn’t had any sleep for days, or food, and when I woke up, I had a nightmare that I did, and the police was hauling me down to jail.”
Then the judge said, “We don’t put people in penitentiaries for nightmares, in this country of ours; inefficient evidence, case dismissed!”

Written 5-25 and 26, of May, 2009/ No: 406 xx
A Chapter story out of the MS “Not One Hooting Owl Left”

Chapter Two
Closed Out!
(Shannon O’Day, 1956-57)

When Gus O’Day and his wife had returned home, from Fayetteville, North Carolina, he heard about Shannon’s run in with the law, not to mention his reckless try at farming had ended, but “Thank God for that,” he told his friend Ronald Short, the county attorney.
Why in fact, Mr. Short was initially confused on the Kent Peterson murder he didn’t let it out, but the sheriff of Dakota Country, Sheriff Terry Fauna, never pursued the murderer, for his known inquisitive nature, he simply just let it go, again both Gus and Short were puzzled. It appeared it never needed the law to close out the case; it just did on its own, as if someone pulled the blinds down. Now instead of Shannon hanging out with Gus, because of his browbeating over wanting to know the details of the killing, what wasn’t brought out in court, wanting to know, what he didn’t know, or pretended he didn’t know, but he should have known, if indeed he did kill Kent, and he did of course kill Kent, but hanging out with Gus might bring things to light, and Shannon was alright with the results of the Court, so he started hanging out at Dickey’s Diner, he ate there before, he just didn’t hang out there, and now he was hanging out there, got to know Old Josh the cook quite well, and a few waitresses, and some young guy blind who played Ricky Nelson songs, and some little black lad who came in and tap-danced, called Zam Zam.
It was a Friday night, Shannon, he had left the Diner, leaned half one side of his body from head to toe, against the lamppost looking at the empty lots about, you would have thought he could of held his staring indefinitely. Then he stumbled on back to his apartment on Wabasha Street, by the World Theater, where he could do no harm to his-self or anyone else—to include innocent bystanders or perhaps all three.

This is when he changed course in his life, which was simply unavoidable—to be—a hazard if he hadn’t. He drank in Gus’ neighbor’s cornfields now, Mr. Orville Stanley (who had retired from the railroad, and had this hobby farm with his wife) Alice Stanley, their daughter, Nadine, and her daughter, Dana.
He knew them as well as anyone else knew them. So of 1956, he asks them without any troublesome interruption, if they wouldn’t mind him drinking among their corn stocks. And as time passed that summer, he’d drop a pint of moonshine whiskey into the old man’s mailbox and when they met and talked, he’d drop a pint into his hind pockets.
So now no one need bother to question Shannon over the murder and he didn’t get that browbeating from his brother, and the way he figured it: out of sight out of mind, or perhaps, what you don’t know, can’t hurt you, or possible, the concept of blood-kin being thicker than water, would not be tested under fire, as Mark Twain would have put it. And that was that, and that was all right with Shannon O’Day.
But it wasn’t the way Gus and that Country Attorney saw things, Mr. Ronald Short; and Gus was not to be as persistent as Mr. Short would be in the long run.
The next, Saturday, Mr. Short and the Sheriff Fauna, both friends, kind of friends, not bosom-buddies but lightly friends, had eaten at Dickey’s Diner, the sheriff believing, and telling Mr. Short in so many words: simple destiny was taking its expected course, and he shouldn’t get too reckless in taking advantage of destiny and poking his nose into the case anymore than he had already done, that Judge Finley, had made his decision, and he’d not take a likening should he take this to another level, other than curiosity.
Mr. Short knew, Finley had a short temper, and didn’t care to be questioned on his judgments, and in particular this matter of Shannon O’Day; and Finley had told his dear friend, Sheriff Fauna, not to let Short, get one whiff or light flash of the real picture.
Ronald Short did start to meddle into what Judge Finley thought was his business. Short feeling he wasn’t doing Finely no harm in the process but he was telling the Sheriff about his new investigation into the murder, and forgot that the Sheriff was a dear friend of Finley’s, more so than his.
“No,” he said to Fauna, “what baffles me is Henry Sears, the witness, the very one who saw some stranger kill Kent Peterson then runs deep into woods. And then after the court hearing, he up and leaves the state. I think Shannon had some money hidden, and paid Sears to lie?”

Judge Finley said to Sheriff Fauna, that following Monday morning, in the Dakota County Court hallway, “What in creation kind of County Attorney do we have here, a detective? Ask him if he has a license to snoop beyond the courthouse!”
So for that moment his trust and assurance in Ronald Short shined unsteadily, you could say. For that trying moment he told the sheriff, “Mr. Short could be the victim of pure circumstance, compounded…jest like any one else; if that darn boy don’t believe the old picture show, that he might slip in some alley, or be subject to some outrageous misfortune and coincidence that befall Mr. Peterson, and then we all can rest in peace. Matter-of-fact, if he says anything more about being a detective, burn his britches, and if that don’t work, well, the alley will do.”
Short still never had one second’s doubt that it had been Shannon who paid someone to lie for him, with the clear and simple color of money. But Shannon never had a nickel to his name at this time.
So all Ronald Short needed to do was find out where the money came from, or where the witness was, or work with Gus on Shannon’s guilt, and consciousness, realization to the killing. Anyone, either one would work. And this is exactly what he was determined to do, to pursue, and if need be, persuade, and he was not discreet, having the sheriff provide spies for him, thinking the sheriff was one of his respectable spies himself, with pride in his profession to catch the real killer, instead of chasing shadows, since any little child who could read the court files would have said, ‘hogwash’ to them, and would have known something was fixed.

In plain sight of half the city of St. Paul, evidently going home from the late picture show, nobody could locate Judge Finley to tell him about it. Anyhow, Ronald Short, had found somebody, someone he felt he could squeeze information out of, who called him, and said they had information he was seeking, and Short met this man, in an alley by the Diner, but there was someone behind hidden doors.
He never had anymore sense then to believe the sheriff was on his side, and he could tangle with the old Judge, and walk away as if nothing happened. Not to mention to try and question the witness, and assure him of no ill feelings, and he’d keep it a secret of his identity, but secrets are not secrets when two people know them, they are agreements.
Inside the Baptist church that Sunday morning, Short’s wife had the funeral, and of course Judge Finley and Sheriff Fauna were present, but not Shannon O’Day, nor his brother. They both even brought roses for his wife to lie at the coffin.

That was a lot of money, $10,000-dollars back in 1956. It could have paid for two small houses on the North End of St. Paul, matter of fact it did buy one, for the judge. And as far as the judge and the sheriff were concerned, the investigation was closed out. Forevermore; off the register.

Written 5-27-2009 xx No: 407

Chapter Three

The Judge’s Visit
‘Closed Out’ (1957)

Old Judge Finley told Gus in front of Sheriff Fauna, both visiting at Gus farm houe “Ronald Short could have become rich as a top attorney in Dakota County, provided he just didn’t die beforehand,” sitting in his kitchen on a white polished wooden chair one Sunday afternoon in 1957. The Sheriff chewing tobacco and the judge chewing a stick of gum, the judge looking about watching his wife bend over doing her chores.
“Life,” he said, “Your brother could have gotten life in prison” (thinking it was Gus who had sent him the $10,000-dollars from down south when he was visiting his wife’s kin, when it really was Otis Wilder Mather).
The judge and the sheriff were hungry for more money.
“How long has it been?” asked the Judge, “1954, wasn’t it?” said the Judge, as Gus was looking out the kitchen window at his cornfields.
Finley figured Gus was the only O’Day with that amount of money, or perhaps he borrowed it from his kin folks down in North Carolina, his wife’s parents, and he had influence to help Shannon. But as much as Shannon had hoped Gus would save the day, he never did. From 1954 to now, 1957, it’s been three years and we could open the case up again, implied the old the judge.
“Why would you do that?” asked Gus.
“What do you want me to do?” Asked Finley.
Gus didn’t know what to say.
“Okay,” Finley said, “what do I get if I don’t?”
Gus sat there a while leaning against the wall near laughing, thinking it was a joke. Then Finley, he told him: “I’ll take the same as before, $10,000-dollars. If that’s too high, I can take $5000-dollars in cash and the other in trade,” and looked at his wife “on an installment plan.”
The Sheriff sat there in a shadow, and just chewed his tobacco.
“Even if I had it, I’d not pay; the best you can do is getting him sentenced, and get twenty years yourself for blackmailing me.”
“Stop smirking around the bargains,” said the judge, “you’re the one who sent me the money right?”
“If I had ten-grand, I could have hired ten killers to kill you, not pay you nine times more than what it’s worth,” said Gus.
He didn’t even quite chewing his gum, “Then who?” said the judge.
“Well, well,” said Gus, Shannon really did kill that Mr. Peterson after all.”
“Let’s not haggle,” said the sheriff, “I know who it was!”
This time Finley stopped chewing long enough to listen.
“Who?” asked the judge?
“Who’s got $10,000-dollars to spare and give away to save a worthless drunk?” he remarked.
“Who?” repeated the judge?
“That there nigger friend of his, Otis Wilder…forgot his last name, but you kicked him out of the city once, and told him never to come back for burning my cornfields, will he’s too rich to kick out a second time.” And they all started laughing and passing along a jug of homemade wine.

No: 408/ 5-25-2009

The Sissy Lindbergh Affair (a Shannon O'Day Short Story)

2010-08-16T09:26:00.000-07:00

The Sissy Lindbergh Affair
(A Shannon O’Day Short Story)(1952-‘82) Independent Story

Alon Or, came to St. Paul, from Jerusalem many years ago. He was old even then, it seemed too many folks who knew him, and he was always old, and he lived to be 101-years old, total. But he was young at heart, spry as a young sparrow with new wings. And he married at the ripe old age of seventy-two, and that was in 1952, had a child, a girl, with a women less than half his age, twenty-two years old. And as we all thought back then, he’s got to be rich, and his wife put all his possessions and property—not sure how much that was, into her name thinking he’d soon die, and she’d inherit it all—that’s how we all thought anyhow, but it wasn’t quite true to the bone marrow, I mean we never really knew if he was rich, and if she did what I just said we heard she did, I mean, it was hearsay. But even before all this, we in the local bars that Shannon O’Day and his brother Gus hung out at, the Conley Island Bar, on St. Peter Street, to be exact, we all know Sissy Lindbergh, she had lived up the block from a few of the fellows in the bar, over in the section of town called The North End, on Granite Street. And those of us who were fathers and grandfathers who had bred children grown up, and had a little in the bank, and land that was paid for, and a car, she could be a ruthless young woman, one our wives wanted us to avoid at all cost, she was after a gold mine for myself, and for those I hung around with we were young fathers getting old but not well off (from tales told about her, she didn’t care if they were white or black or fat or thin, or old, she avoided the young good looking boys, she said they only had one thing to offer, and that one thing, everybody had, and we laughed about that. But again I must say, nobody in the bar ever dated her, so again it was all hearsay and could have even been a play of hers to make us think so, that she was promiscuous—who’s to say?”.
But out of respect for Judge Finley, Sissy being his niece, by way of his sister, and out of consideration for his long, long arm—in stretching the law anywhichway he wanted to, we treated her with kindness, and actually that is how she got her job at the bar, it is as always, who you know. So when Alon Or, showed up one day, one fall, chilly day, we believed it was just an old timer coming in for a drink, and he’d leave, that his life was worn out, he looked it—and we didn’t think he’d take a liking for Sissy an underbred brat, but they hit it off the first night, like white on rice. We were all surprised, no—not quite surprised, maybe dumfounded, yes, we were dumfounded, and in eighteen months, she was found dead, with a life insurance policy of $20,000 dollars, and he had went back to Israel, Jerusalem, apparently dragging that money with him to buy a new café or synagogue or whatever. There was none of us, who felt sorry, or who was sorry, because of the short lived marriage, but the death bothered us, and old Judge Finley was in an unpardonable outrage over it all. I mean, on the day she died it was said—not said, but learned, and then said, among all of us, she actually was crazed over that old man, that hate ridden old man who never smiled but when she poked him in the ribs, buried her faster than an eagle can fly across those cornfields of Gus’. On the day after she died, it was learned also he had already bought his train ticket, and boat ticket back to his home country. It also was leaned—without surprise, learned beyond the Sissy’s grave, the final blow you might say, learned he was already married to some woman in a city called Tiberias, near the Sea of Galilee. I mean, whoever heard of a city called Tiberias, no one in Minnesota, I mean Jerusalem, was—seemingly was, nearly was, another planet to us, and Tiberias was speaking Greek to us. Anyway, how she died no one knew for certain, they said she got a tumor in her brain so we couldn’t blame him for her death, but taking that little girl over to that country, we thought was another planet, was unforgivable. And the judge hired a mediator to deal with the legal part of it, making a formal demand he return the child to its rightful heritage, being an American. And this went on for years, the old man lived to be 101-years old, so you can guess how old the child was when he died, in that city called Tiberias, he died in the early 1980s, and she was in her late twenties.
But back in 1955, doubtless the request had been thrown into the wastebasket, and forgotten by all concerned outside of the United States of America. But Sissy’s grandmother remained intact, in contact that is, with Alon and her granddaughter. It was learned through her that he was—until his death, a good father, and he had no real plan to do what he did—(that his daughter was his only daughter, his wife couldn’t have children) but did it all the same, he was just a cold fish coming into town—he made no defense, refused no request by Sissy’s mother, and the child got to know the grandmother with a kind of a free flow of letters back and froth across the Atlantic, and a phone call every Christmas. And so we said among ourselves, when Alicia, showed up one day at the Conley Island Bar, with her grandmother, we said with only a glance, and taking it to be true, without a word said—watching Alicia move slowly like her father, and those cat like eyes of Sissy’s, “Here comes the fun again Miss Sissy’s back…” and we all yelled and hollered and jumped up and kissed her, and hugged her almost to death, almost breaking those sweet little bones of hers: but now we were as old as Alon was when he had first walked through those doors, and Sissy was so sweet and tender in years like her mother was when she had worked here, and we were all hoping, no not hoping, more like wishing, we were young again and she was like her mother, because now we had that paid for car, and house and money in the bank, but who knows, she’d probably not like that same arrangement her mother liked, and to be frank, we never knew what her mother was really like.

No: 664 (Written: 8-6-2010)

Tick on a Clock (A Shannon O'Day Short Episodic Novel)

2010-08-16T09:23:00.001-07:00

The Synergy Group Recommended Reading (April 2010) pertaining to topics on Behavioral and
Emotional Health, the book: The Path to Sobriety…” by Dr. Dennis L. Siluk

Tick on a Clock
An Episodic Novel, taken from the Shannon O’Day, Independent Sketches

A Short Novelette of Eight Short Stories
Volume IV
Dennis L. Siluk, Ed.D.
Andean Scholar and Three-Time Poet Laureate

Parts in English, Spanish, Illustrated

Table of Contents

1—Almost Light
((A Shannon O’Day/Otis Wilde Mather story) (1953))
No: 663 ((8-6-210) (Part two to, “Cornfield Burner”))

2—Otis Wilder Mather’s Revenge
1955 (or, the Rick Nigger of Minnesota) Written 5-25-2009 /No: 405 xx

3— Yesterday
((1956) (Let the Dead bury the Dead)) No: 449/written: 8-5-2009...

4—the Farm
1957(The Death of Gus O’Day) the missing chapter to the Novel “Cornfield Laughter”
Written 5-1-2009 (VH)

5—the Pawnshop
((1959) (Recollections of His Shannon’s Mother and Father—1910))
Written 2-28-2009 •• No: 409 (revised and reedited, 8-2009)

6—Day of the Dead Horses
((1964) (Recollections of WWI, and the Dead Horses—1916-1919))

No: 412 (6-9-2009); Reedited and revised slightly, 7-10-2010.

7—the Half Tramp
1969 ((First marriage: 1922 to Sally-Anne; and the big win—Otis Wilde Mather))

Written: 5-12-1009∙

8—the Bluff
(1946, second Marriage, to Margaret-Rose)

“The Bluff,” a chapter story taken out of the Manuscript:
“The Half Tramp” written 5-12-2009

9—Otis & Galloping Horses
(1977, Otis’ dilemma) a two part story

No: 660 (8-4-2010) Written: as a pre-story to “The Black Sedan”
Leading up to Otis demise “Galloping Horses,” No: 661/8-5-2010

10—The Black Sedan
((or “The Unlawful Death Case of Otis Wilde Mather) (1981-82))

The Three stories that comprise: “The Black Sedan” area as follows: “Countryside Boxer,”
written 11-16-2009/No: 516 (in Huancayo, Peru); “The Black Sedan” written 01-17-2009, in Lima, Peru, No: 517;
and “The Corncob Pipe,” written 1-18-2009, No: 518, also written in Lima, Peru

(This is an episodic novel, taken from the Shannon O’Day, independent sketches).

Almost Light
((A Shannon O’Day/Otis Wilde Mather story) (1953))

“Does a dog dream?” No, better yet, does a wolf dream? And if so what’s he dream about?” asked Shannon O’Day, to his pal Otis, laying in his brother’s cornfields in the still of the night, in —(1953).
“I knows a dog sleep with one eye open sometime,” said Otis, “and I done saw him spooked in his sleep, so I reckon he dreams some.” Otis knew Shannon wasn’t really talking about a dog—or referring to a wolf, not really, not genuinely, nor was he just talking to talk, he wasn’t a talker per se, not a loose talker anyhow.
“I like seeing Gus and Mabel sitting in their lounge chairs out there in their front yard, watching the fireflies, and swatting the mosquitoes, listening to the stray hounds in the far-off distance—running in the wild. I like hearing the frogs at night, and the noisy owls.” He said.
He knew, Otis knew he wasn’t talking about nature per se, he saw the whites in his eyes—with the light from the gas lantern, that told him something. He looked carefully, stopped all his movements to listen to Otis. He looked through the corn stocks, towards the cozy small porch attached to Gus’ farm house, it was empty, and evidently Gus and Mabel had gone to bed.
“Aint nobody around over there by your brother’s porch I see, except some mice I expect, I reckon they all went to bed,” said Otis, parroting Shannon, unsure why he was, as if reassuring Shannon that that is what he saw also, what he deciphered from the scene. “I don’t know for sure, but that’s what it sure looks like, I reckon.”
It was as if—as if though Shannon wanted to say something, as if he was waiting for the right moment, to say something to remind Otis of something else. And on the other hand, Otis was waiting for Shannon to explain what he was trying to say, by not saying it, or what he meant by not saying what he was waiting to say.
By sunrise, both woke up to see Mrs. Stanley (Alice Stanley, Gus’ neighbor), looking out the window as often she did. All night Shannon woke up at strange hours, intervals to see how things were, drawing his concentric looks at Otis, and the farm house, as if expecting something, something anytime that might befall the tranquil evening stars.

All that day—they drank in the cornfields (as they had drunken all that previous day, and half the day before), it was the third day that is, and they often spent two to three days in a drunken spree. When noon came on that third day they walked down to the country store, a café and store molded together, with just an entrance between each other, and one gas pump outside in front of the store, and bought a loaf of bread and a half pound of cheese, sliced and two quarters of Windsor Whiskey, and went back to the spot they had been drinking to watch the birds drop down into the stalks of corn and disappear with the crows, a few sluggishly walked the ground got lost and ended up at Shannon and Otis’ little corner of the field, and flapping their wings desperately to avoid direct contact, zoomed to a higher level, to perch on top of the stacks of corn and observe from a distance, drying out the inner parts of their wings as if yawning.
They made their sandwiches and ate; Otis looked at Shannon, and watched, realizing Shannon was tugging at some thoughts, something silent, darkness behind that something silent. Otis waited a moment before he asked, “What is it? (Curious on what that something was)”

Shannon now had expected Otis to ask, so he whirled himself upward from a lying position, as Otis moved forward to listen; overhead the crow and a sparrow, and another funny looking bird, like a redheaded Mohawk, perched gazing downward as if to write—like a scribe, the details of the confrontation, the day was getting hotter and brighter, Stanley’s window was empty.
“I was worried last night Mabel might come out drunk looking for you to rekindle a candle, for old time sake,” said Shannon suddenly.
Otis dropped his sandwich abruptly, a tear came to his eye, he turned his face—his teeth shinned, he could feel the hurt, surge inside of Shannon for his betrayal, taking advantage of his sister-in-law, some—nearly some three years prior. Thus, he got up, kicked the dirt—again he kicked it, “It’s easy to forgive, but hard to forget,” said Shannon.
Evidently there was a level of trust lost, and that needed to be worked on, still worked on after three years, or the relationship, buried—once and of all, so life could go on for all involved. Otis didn’t say a word, just a “Yep.” And evidently that meant, it was worth working on.

Otis Wilder Mather’s Revenge

(or, the Rick Nigger of Minnesota)
(1955)

Otis Wilder Mather, had taken the $500-dollars Shannon O’Day had given him, back in the early 40s, invested it in Ozark. Alabama’s livestock and fish stores, and became rich, obliged to no man. Not that he didn’t owe a much obliged to someone. This was years later of course, Many a hard and wet and snowy and grey winter had come and gone in Minnesota, left between his visits to see Shannon O’Day, his truly one and only friend up in Minnesota. He even drove his brand new 1955 Ford sports car, Thunderbird; and owned his own meat market on Jackson Street and two more in Ozark, and one in Shanty Town, seven miles outside of Ozark, and of course those fish stores.
He no longer wore patched cotton overalls, rather tailored ones. They called him in Minnesota, ‘The rich nigger from Ozark.’
He’d walk the snowy streets in grey misty afternoons, passing over the Wabasha Bridge, looking down onto the Mississippi River, saying out loud to the Lord, “Eyes in a hurry Lord, cuz black folk dont even have a barn to live in nowadays, against the cold weather up yonder here (remembering those far-off days he had slept down inside the old Civil War sewer system, with dripping water from the perforated swollen wooden beams over head)” and folks saw he had very warm boots with fur on them, and a long coat, with fur on the lapels, and he’d hear them badmouthing him under their breaths, cussing him as he walked by, saying ‘nigger go home’ in the stormy winters, breathing in the cold mist, like them. They said these things, not because he was rich, because James Hill, who owned a railroad and lived on Summit Hill nearby, was rich, but because he was a negro, for his black skin being inside those warm garments, warmer than theirs, and their skin was white, and because Otis Wilder Mather was more devoted to work, and beef and cattle, and cows and calves and butcher shops than to humans—and those fish shops, even though he took care of his family well. They couldn’t believe a black man could obtain such wealth, cursing the fact that he did; his reprisal to the white race, his revenge, that hard boiled end of the stick, in every man’s soul that wants to slay the dragon, say back to those who belittled them at one time, say something that can’t be said in words, lest they hang you for it, but nonetheless be said in silent words, that should they try, they’d be tarred and feathered by their own doing, and their own kind: this is called getting even the only way, the best way, the one way he could get even, it was by success.
But he learned something from his one time accuser of wrong, Gus O’Day, that in slow incriminations over a long period of time, converted into wealth, that something’s were somewhat controllable and somewhat predictable, one being the love the white race had for beef. In addition to that, the love human males had for the cow, its milk and beef and the long subsequent years of their gestation of his products—and his personal love for those fish stores. This success was the only justice available to him for the wrongs man had done him in Minnesota, when they tired to convict him in 1950 for the burning of Gus O’Day’s cornfields, when it remained a mystery to the truth.
That was it. Prolongation—never stopping or hoping never giving in, hope no longer was deferred, he saw it in the white man’s eyes, ‘outrage!’ now the blow fell upon those who cursed and cussed him. The one who gave him the five-hundred dollars, he had dreamed when given that money, dreamt the imaginary purchase of a cow, and here he bought twelve-cows, and fed them a winter, then sold them plump, and for twice as much, and bought twenty-four cows and fed them another winter, for near fifteen years he did that, now he owned four meat markets, in Ozark, St. Paul, and Shanty Town, a few miles outside of Ozark, where the poor black folk lived—and a number of those small fish stores.

Yesterday
(1956)

Gus O’Day had not always been a Minnesota corn farmer. But the time when he had not been, his neighbors, or even his brother Shannon could not remember, it was more than forty-five years ago, and it was such a short period of time in his life that only the old men at the County Old Folks Farm could recall it, and to be quite honest, in 1956 (several months before he’d die of a heart attack), it was hard for them to even recall it, and most of them did not, because in that time he was not yet even twenty-years old.
He was a young man then, working at a pawnshop (His Uncle Hawk Gordon O’Day owned it, down on Wabasha Street by the Lyceum Movie Theatre, across the street from the World Theatre. Hawk Gordon was a man of a small figure, with red hair, always having greasy looking hands and shirt and face, wiping his hands constantly onto the back of his trousers—), he worked there at his mother’s request and done so voluntarily when asked, he even tried to persuade his mother (Ella Teresa Cotton O’Day) to let him do it alone, which she refused because after his father departed (dropped them off there one day), left them to do, whatever they had to do to survive, he knew this part of his life—with his younger brother but ten-years old—was a mere formally, and a fragment in the span of a life time.
So Gus did what he felt he had to do back in those early days of his life. Years after (after the death of his mother, and his marriage to Mabel Foote, and taking in his younger brother, and buying his farm), years after that, he still said it was the only thing he could have done, or do; that is, to put up with the situation, and the drunkenness of his uncle in which he was convinced his uncle was taking advantage of his mother, of which she insisted he remain neutral, because he provided a backroom for them to live in, some food—, of which he called it room and board.
Actually he did not overlook it, several months after his mother had passed on—that following winter, having saved enough money in the past two years for a down payment on a small farm, he bought it, and left that part of St. Paul, and moved twenty-miles outside of the city in what was then a remote section of the outskirts. He left his uncle with a taste of his fists, the night he left, and just like they had appeared one night from nowhere, he left the whiskey soaked uncle, the sole owner—promptly, and dignified, with a bill of sale for the farm in his pants pocket and his name signed to it.

The following morning, Gus woke Shannon and Mabel up, sat in the kitchen, at their square wooden table, and Gus handed them a butcher’s knife, and said, “I killed Uncle Hawk Gordon, five hours ago.”
Mabel half awake, who had been sitting drinking coffee at the square wooden table first, before Gus arrived, perhaps had been sitting there for those hours Gus had been missing from the bedroom, who’s to say, looked at the nine-inch knife, looked it over, as Gus had swayed—unnoticeable swayed it to and fro: she looked at that knife in his hands with a flat affect, “Let’s not jump to conclusions it appears no one took you into consideration yet.” And with the morning paper to prove it, she looked high and low, page after page, turned on the radio, station to station, end to end, not a word of the murder or the murderer, and with that she calmed her husband down, claiming the wrong he did was so far undetected on his part, and perhaps better left alone—until it smelled like fish in Denmark.
I can remember the odd and surprised look that Shannon had on his face. I grabbed the evidence, and it did not take but ten-minutes to dispose of it into the forty-foot well outside near the creek.
“We are farmers now,” Mabel said, “not storekeepers anymore.” And it would have seemed to an onlooker she had become unshakable to the incident. Gus’ voice was near silent, almost numb, she added, “There’s not going to be any court-trial over that guy, that redheaded whiskey drinking pervert, that rummy!” She insisted.
Only those words were harsher than the words she’d use in 1956. But even then, she’d confess, he got what he deserved. That the justice system would not consider the torment he caused his fellow man, and Gus’ mother, you’d have to be rich, or famous, or know someone—someone who could understand, and empathize, and someone who could do something about such a person, and there was no one out there like that, not even Judge Finley would have protected Gus.
“We all know in this country,” she said back then, “we all know from birth to death that justice—if you want to call it that, demands the culprit be given his rights over the victim, and it is seldom the everlasting price, mentally if not physically—or ever would be considered by the injustice system presently in place.” And as far as she could see, Uncle Hawk had only his own life to pay for the life he tormented, thus, his death, spares those who would have come before him, had he not died.

“I had felt at the time I had to take Uncle Hawk Gordon’s life from him in order to stop him from using people the way he used us!” said Gus. “I didn’t know back then it would follow me to my grave. And that is what I am talking about—somewhat talking about, not about a dead man per se, that died forty-years ago, or his character per se, nor his morality or the sexual acts he made my mother perform, that I saw from the keyhole, but that she was defenseless and he justified it in forcing the issue with our survival, and basing it on her performance. Of course, he never knew this; he slept sound with his bottle of whiskey in his hands each night, as he did when I killed him. Perhaps he’ll carry that bottle to his grave, if only I could put it there.”
“Yes,” said Mabel, “I’ve tried to tell you this for years, she, your mother had no choice in the matter that she was just trying to do the best she could do, with what she had at the time, under the trying circumstances she found herself in. And your instincts and beliefs made his death inevitable, and caused no one any misery, and perhaps better for humanity’s sake.”

Gus had been sitting at the same kitchen table, in the same room he had sat in forty-years ago, where his brother Shannon had sat as a boy…took in that deep breath of disbelief, and everything was so quiet you could only hear the clock ticking on the wall, that seemed to go throughout the room, as if in a bell tower.
“Well Gus,” said his wife, “at least after forty-some years you’ve stopped talking about it, and now at sixty-six it surfaces.”
“That’s right,” Gus said, then corrected himself, “I thought about it everyday of my life, every time I looked at that wall, I even replaced the clock so I’d not have to hear the same ticking.”
His eyes no longer bright, his face thin, his hair starting to whiten, his heart weakened, “Come here,” said Mabel. “I want you over here for a moment. Ask your brother to come over, you’re feeling way down, over that perverted uncle of yours. Shannon seems to perk you up!”

They were outside now, standing on the wooden stairs, Gus stepped halfway down, his hand on his wife’s shoulder to keep his balance, his eyes half shut too weak to keep them open any wider.
“Justice was accomplished for once, if you can’t bear looking at it that way, don’t look at it at all,” Mabel said.
“Yes,” said Gus.
“Then what do you want?” or expect?”
“I can’t help it,” Gus said, and he couldn’t. Yet for him it was like it happened yesterday, not forty-years ago. Then he heard a voice, it was Shannon’s, “Stop! Over hear!” (The voice said.) And Gus looked to the right hand side of him. He could hardly see Shannon. There he stood, bending over the railing, much older looking than he was, barefoot on his porch steps, with a haunting and fierce look on his face; his skin pale, like buttermilk; his hands shaking, as if having palsy of age.
“Come,” said Shannon “I got some homemade corn whisky, let’s sit in the cornfields and get drunk!”
“Yup!” he agreed “let’s get out of here and get off these porch steps, let’s go!” And they did.
His eyes were now eager, content and more than willing to let the dead bury the dead, at least until tomorrow, which today would be yesterday, after they finished that bottle of corn liquor.

The Farm 1957

“Yes, brother,” said Gus O’Day to his younger and only brother Shannon, “a man sees too much if he lives too long: a lot of fellows in a lot of situations.”
He was chewing the fat, chitchatting in a kindly tone with his brother on the porch steps of his farm, Gus’ wife, Mabel, sitting on a rocker on the open air porch. It was a cool evening, and Shannon had spent a good portion of it out in the cornfields drinking rum and whisky alone, as often he did.
“All this farm life gets to yaw, makes yaw tired I think, up the nose with rules and regulations, and if you don’t produce—brother, the government gives yaw money, and if you do, and they don’t want you to, because you might sell whatever you’re producing, and that is what they don’t want you to do—I mean, the government don’t want you to raise more crops to sell in the first place, therefore, you can’t sell them to anyone then, and you end up storing them in some bin— and they rot away or you eat them or the rat eats them, and of course it is too much for any two persons to eat; in any case, the government steps in to regulate the flow of food, so prices go up or down whenever the government sneezes, and if you don’t sneeze with them, you’re out of luck for that season, so you call them up and say: when you folks down there in D.C., going to sneeze, and how long is the sneeze going to last, you never say why! Because, then, they hang up on yaw and you got to call back and say your sorry, for asking why.”
“Don’t know how you put up with it, but I love your cornfields brother, I love the crows, and the smell of dirt and the yellowish-green in the cornstalks, and listening to the trains go by on those metal tracks, and even when the breaks screech, and one car bumps into another, I love it all,” commented Shannon.
“Yup!” said Gus, “we done made a bowl of soup out of ourselves on this here farm alright, now all we are, is recipes for the government, if they want stew with corn we plant corn. If they want stew with carrots, we plant carrots; if they want…oh you know what I mean, whatever their fancy is we do, and we’ve even learned to smile about it, and when drunk laugh about it—if you give them the chance they’ll squeeze blood out of a turnip, or put that last straw on the back of a camel that will break him to his knees. It’s not all for one or one for all, like in the good ole days, it’s dog eat dog days nowadays”
“Man doesn’t need a backbone anymore, brother,” said Shannon.
((Gus asks for a swig of Shannon’s bottle of whisky, and he hands it to him, and Mabel says, ‘Slow with it, remember your heart, you’re no spring chicken anymore, Shannon’s ten-years younger than you, so take it easy.”)(That was in the summer of 1957.))
“She likes to bug me,” said Gus to Shannon, “but as you were going to say brother?”
“Yup!” said Shannon, “a young man don’t need a backbone anymore, it’s us old critters that have them, I don’t know how big of a wrench it will take to loosen mine up, no need for it nowadays.”
“I reckon Shannon you’d be right lonesome out here just by yourself,” said Gus.
“I don’t rightly know what you mean by that, why you saying—what you saying?” asked Shannon, looking at his brother, then at Mabel.
“Your older brother Shannon,” said Mabel “Gus, he’s picked out his headstone already, matter-of-fact, the other day he picked it out, says he’s goin’ to need it real soon.”
Mabel lit the lantern, it was becoming dark, moved it over a bit by the two brothers sitting on the steps, shoulder to shoulder.
“Can’t see the steps,” said Gus, “my eyes don’t work much anymore, too many shadows in them, I move too slow, breath too hard, get tired too quick.”
“I need to get up,” said Gus to Shannon. Shannon nodded his head up and down, toward his chest, “Yes” he said, but it wasn’t that he needed to relieve himself; it was he needed to get more air into his lungs, his stomach. And he stood up, and held tight onto the railing.
“Nonsense,” said Mabel, “just sit on back down, the strain is too much fer yaw!”
“Honor, and pride and discipline,” Gus told Shannon, “that’s the recipe for a man, and to please God, and for maturity, you make a plan and count the cost and follow it through, like I did Shannon with this farm and taking you in at the age of ten, and like you did somehow in the Great War, you made it back.”
“I know all that Gus, and trouble is the best teacher, it always comes back to haunt yaw!”
“You know I got to go, got to leave yaw, couldn’t do it without seeing yaw one more time though…” Gus told Shannon in an almost whisper.
Shannon knew what he meant, it was Gus who had raised Shannon per near, he was always patient, calm, with him and figured if he ever wanted to know about God, his brother must had been a carbon copy of Him. He was a good model, and always kind of put himself in the background, he had a servant’s heart, but he could be difficult and at times prejudice. —Gus didn’t need to tell Shannon twice, he saw him holding his chest, leaning on that rail that extended from the first step to the third, the top one. Gus asked Shannon to stand up by him. Mabel had laid her head back, Shannon stood up, Gus leaned toward him. And here was two men kissing each other on the cheeks, each hugging the other showing outright love, without shame. He said his last words to Shannon, “It will be a long time from now to then.”
Mabel lifted up the lantern to see why Shannon O’Day was crying, a tall, lean, old man had stopped breathing.

The Pawnshop
Recollections of Shannon O’Day’s Father
(1959, as told by Shannon O’Day to Otis Wilde Mather)

Although I had been born at the time, I was only ten-years old when Gus my brother who was my senior—by that many years, was also old enough and big enough to remember it all, for it all to makes sense anyhow, him being nineteen-years old at the time. That is, it was Gus and Sally O’Day, my cousin, my father’s brother, Uncle Marty. They both—Sally and Gus were nineteen—nineteen years old at the time, both born the same year as one another, 1890. My mother, Ella Teresa Cotton O’Day, her sister Emma Betty Cotton O’Day, married my father’s brother. But Gus just called her Sally and dropped the cousin thing—he said it sounded too boneheaded, well, so did I when I got born and thereafter became ten-years old, and was old enough to reason it out. We all lived in the same city, St. Paul, at the time. However, I still hadn’t gotten old enough yet to fully digest it all, so this is what Gus knew and Sally knew until I got into my teens, and big enough for them to tell me about it, to where I could understand the complexity of it. And so when I say—we, I mean, all three of us, and the city of St. Paul to boot.
One day, one fall day, my father drove up an alley with Sally and Gus in the back seat, with some merchandise to sell at this here pawnshop, one his brother owned, my Uncle Hawk Gordon O’Day—sole proprietor, down on Wabasha Street by the Lyceum Movie Theatre, across the street from the World Theatre. Hawk Gordon I remember drove this big yellow Cadillac. He had kept the yellow beast for twenty-years.
Hawk Gordon was a man of a small figure, with red hair, always having greasy looking hands and shirt and face, wiping his hands constantly onto the back of his pants—Gus said he thought he was working on an old clock the day we arrived, a short kind of fellow, thin, and an unfriendly looking chap, with deep embedded eyes, in square ogle sockets, sunken deep into the pits of his tiny head, with a fat smashed-in nose, like a wino, with big pore holes in them, his hair sticking out everywhichway.
After that meeting, Gus and pa carried all those items he had in the trunk, and front seat, and backseat and on the floors, into the pawnshop, and mom and Gus and I, moved into the backroom.
“I give you six months and you’ll be drinking and drunk out on the street again, and back here looking for another handout…” Hawk Gordon told my pa, looking him up and left.
That was around the year 1909 or was it 1910? The first time ma even had met Hawk Gordon. He was shrewd, and pa was working for nickels and dimes wherever he could, whenever he was sober, but after pa left, leaving that very same day—we were all kind of in a panic, although we all got a warm room to sleep in, that’s about all I can say, Uncle Haw, he was a piece of work that’s for sure, if you know what I mean.
Prior to this, pa was spending his earnings on a dash of food, and a horde of whiskey and gambling, he barely seen us boys, and mom was expected to do work at Hawk’s store, and did work at his store, and apartment above it, and on the side some sewing for neighbours, and cleaning of other houses—just about anything and everything to make ends meet.
So pa didn’t know at the time he would go up to Alaska to work and drop us off at Uncle Hawk’s pawnshop, he didn’t even know yet he would ever consider it seriously. But he did tell Gus, talked to Gus about it, said: “I’d like to go someday to Alaska, but I’m not sure what to do with your ma and you kids.” It wasn’t a question, rather a statement, and Gus said, he didn’t say a word, pa was half cockeyed.
It was a nice thought to keep in mind, and to ponder and which he did ponder on, evidently, on and on and on, deeper and deeper until he did what he pondered on, but with pa’s drinking and all, he was going to hell in a hand basket, quick. Mr. Gordon wasn’t all that wrong about pa; no flies on him.
Pa and Gus got to talking a lot, in those days, I suppose because pa only went to 8th grade in school, spent much of his younger years drinking and travelling, and Gus sounded smart, and told pa he was going to buy a farm, and he did buy a farm in years yet to come. Pa was born in 1874, so at this time he was all of twenty-six years old, but looked twenty-years older.
He, pa, started to sell vacuum cleaners on the side for awhile, he said he sold them before when he travelled, along with doing some swapping and trading, he was good at that kind of stuff.
Pa didn’t like the South, he told Gus many a-times, he said he hung around and played cards with some nigger folks, down in Huntsville, Alabama. And the white folk got wind of it, and told him to get his ass out of Alabama before they hung him, which would have been by the KKK, and so the next day, and so when the next day came, pa was gone. It was a poor Blackman’s farm house he played cards at—trifling farmers, and pa seemed to get along with them folk quite well.
I asked Gus “What made pa go to Alaska?”
“I don’t know,” Gus told me, “whatever it was, Sally’s father Marty went with him.” Then Gus elaborated, “I suppose they thought Alaska would be more profitable and a man could make lots of money. Or at least more than at Hawk Gordon’s pawnshop, and what they found in Alaska, the first winter was one horrid winter, and knew nothing about its environment, its wildlife.”
Between Gus and his thoughts, his talking to me was vague at best on pa, and Alaska—at first anyhow. Some hidden grief maybe under his thin hair, and skin and hard skull bone, because when mom passed on and I moved in with Gus and his wife, to live until I went to War, the Great War, he got an official letter from the State of Alaska. And all that information about pa’s death was in that envelope; it took those officials over five-years, or was it six? I can’t remember—to get him that information.
“Oh ay,” I remember saying, “let me in on the secret,” I told Gus as he chewed his fingernails wanted to open that envelope up, but not opening it up, because once he did, he’d know, and knowing he was dead—for sure dead, was worse than not knowing and thinking he was alive someplace in Alaska drinking away like he always did, laughing and poking jokes at things that were not funny, and slapping the behinds of pretty young waitresses.

Mother died, worked herself to death when I was thirteen or near thirteen, or perhaps I was fourteen, I rightly can’t remember now, it was that simple, it was that there was not enough of her to go around, just too small for any human female package to hold together under such restraining circumstances, to hold onto forever, so much, and too much, life to deal with, she was doomed from the beginning, from the day she met pa, too much hotchpotch in life for that small framed woman—thus likened to a firecracker, she fizzed out.
I can’t say for sure, no gratitude from Gordon, just for her being his, off and on, mistress after pa was found dead, eaten up by hungry wolves, something Gus knew, but had no proof of until he got that envelope that one day from the State of Alaska. And Gordon being a male and ma in his space and time, and lonely and hurting, and trying to feed two boys, forever in a kind of despair, because she knew, and Gordon knew, there would never be enough of her of any one woman to hold onto grief, and no other men would ever do. That was what he discovered in time; Marty, he died of a heart attack that same year, in Alaska too, and mom of double-pneumonia.

Otis Wilde Mather:

“An’ that there yellow Cadillac, what’ll happened to it Shannon?”

“Every year or so, someone wanted to buy it I recall. It was a wild yellow, like a canary yellow: when Hawk Gordon died, it was put in his will to bury it with him. Well, his children got wind of that, and said ‘no dice,’ and sold it; Judge Finley said it was okay to sell it—after that, one of the kids went into his backroom in the courthouse and said “I’ll give you that 20% after I sell it at the city auction next week.”

Day of the Dead Horses
((A Day in the battle for Verdun, WWI, 1916) (A Shannon O’Day story))

The War and the Machine Gun Nest

(It is 1964; Shannon O’Day’s daughter Cantina is twelve-years old. She is with him for the weekend. They are out at Como Park, sitting along the banks of Como Lake. He often talks about the Great War with her, the one he was in as a young lad, and she always listens, but it is often a repeat, but nonetheless she listens to him, and today, Saturday, he is talking to her about it again, they have cool-aid and hotdogs, sitting on an Indian type blanket in the grass:)

Says Shannon to his daughter, Cantina (whose real name is Catherine O’Day, but he has called, a nickname), “I came, I saw, and I concurred, in the Great War…” then paused to look deep into her eyes, to see if she was really attentive, listening, “I was a man alone, like an island in the middle of the sea, entire of itself, like a continent, or part of one, that is how I felt in the war, especially in this one day of battle I had, and I had two days that were special in that 300-day battle—oh, perhaps more, but two that haunt me, one of victory, one of tragedy, both during the Battle for Verdun, in 1916, let me tell you about the first one, I call it ‘The Day of the ‘Dead Horses.’” She nods her head yes, up and down slowly, she’s heard it before, each time though she gets something new out of it, something he was fearful before of releasing, so she has learned to not show discontent for him bringing it up for the umpteenth time, she knows when his dead, gone forever, these will be her private stockpile photos of his trying days war and battle, ones he only shared with her, and only her.
Cantina knew—ever since he had come back from his war—some forty years ago, as Shannon called it, World War One, there was a sense of duty that remained in him. As if he should have died, but survived for some reason.
She knows, but she can’t put it in words, verbal words that echo, she knows: He sees no hope for triumph in the long run for mankind, but finds he can live a full life in the hours God has left him, as those before him have, and those after him will—he even told her once: “When will all this useless suffering stop, suffering for the sake of suffering, suffering nothing just to show mankind what it looks like, feels like, and start suffering for a cause—the war I went to, there wasn’t a crisis over here in America, that’s called a cause, or a reason. We had to go across the Atlantic Ocean where they created a crisis, telling everyone, the cause or the reason, it was to stop the suffering of our friends, so we could suffer with them, because Germany couldn’t make us suffer over here, in America; so how do like those apples.”
She also knows—and, has told herself this in so many words (talking to herself, thinking but not saying thoughts to her second self), saying only those things that are pleasing to him, because, she knows, he doesn’t fear death or solitude, never has and he finds love is possible, but everything for him is so loosely netted—and it wouldn’t do no good to argue the point—why create hurdles. And those horse, those damn horses, and dead damned horses, he remembers them well—all to well, and all too often. And these are some of her thoughts as she is sitting on that Indian blanket out at Como Lake.
“What are you thinking?” asks Shannon to his daughter.
“The way you might be thinking.” She says back to her father, and it actually makes him smile, what daughter would try to understand a man like him, a good and fine daughter, that is who, he confirms this to his second self, ‘She doesn’t judge him,’ he tells himself, ‘How funny, everyone else does.’
And so on this day, in 1964, in the park, sitting on the Indian blanket, here is the story he tells Cantina, I shall tell it in my own words, as he tried to tell her in his, and so Shannon O’ Day started his story like this:

I was making my stand in a trench. I did not like this trench and when I saw it I thought it had a shape of a woman’s womb. But I had no choice this was the trench, and I selected it because it was as far away as a battlefield would allow it to be, away from the German artillery shells. But not as far away as the sound of automatic machine gun bullets could reach, banging away night and day, halting and then starting back up again, firing: our reactions at first were hesitant, uncertain, and then they’d fire again and again, to give my platoon of eleven men—me being number twelve, a nervous case of the jitters, and a light case of being shell-shocked.
There still was snow on the ground, frost for the most part, it had ruined the ground, made it muddy, chilled and hardened at night, when the sun sank, and when the horses came pulling wagons of supplies, jerking, and climbing, and staggering their way through the mud, and snow, hauling equipment, men pulling their bridles, and the rains pouring over their heads and shoulders, holding the horses by the mane, many had to be shot, and many got shot in the line of battle, and there they lay dead, where they fell, for the flies and the worms and the rats to feast on—hot guts pouring out of their stomach regions, warm blood burning and seeping into the soil.
The horses sometimes were used for barricades, if the battle took place within the timeframe allowed—and if the carcass were still plump, and not gutted by animals, and at times my men, as well as I, we shot over their bodies on occasions, their burnt hides, laying their with our hot muzzles on their dead flesh and firing at the enemy instead of within the trench, allowing at times for us to advance, knowing all that was behind us were empty trenches, in particular this one empty trench this day of battle, and so we used these dead horses, fifty shot in one day to advance from one point to another, giving, and this one day I had an idea, one that could take out that nest of machine-gunners, and give us some peace and quiet for awhile. Incidentally, did you know there were eight-million horses killed in World War One? (Catherine nods her head no.) I’ll bet you also didn’t know Germany and Great Britain each had a Calvary force of 100,000. (Catherine nods her head no, again.) Well in any case, this was the war to end all wars, but that was all bull, as we all know now. I mean we had WWII, and the Korean War, and now there’s something starting up in South East Asia again. Well before I get back into the story, I’ll just say, when we went over the top, we’d first chow down, go over the top and hit the deck and we never really expected to come back alive we figured the Germans would nail our coffin right there, we all figured we’d end up kicking the bucket, if you know what I mean? (And Catherine knew what he meant, by using all that war slang, especial, WWI slang, he used it so often in his war stories, she knew it by heart. Well, said Catherine “You’re not pushing up the daisies, correct?” trying to talk the same slang her pa was and he replied, “I’m not dead—right?” and then continued with his story :)
This day, this one early spring day—a humdinger of a day too, one of 300-days in the Battle for Verdun, in France, but a humdinger of a day nonetheless—an unusual day to say the least, once my eleven men had reached the enemy’s perimeter, now within pistol distance, there were several more horses laying dead thereabouts, we had succeeded in stealing foot by foot, to get to the edge of the enemy’s nest, and now behind those several horses we waited until night fall—I was so nervous I was almost a basket case—you know what I mean (“Almost going crazy” said Catherine.) yes, that’s it, and not knowing when the next shooting would start between them and us, and the enemy not knowing how close we really were, and how many had perished in the previous battle, which none had, we had ourselves a slight advantage, for the advance we were planning.
Of the twelve men, I included, we had reached the outer rim of the boarder where the enemy had their machineguns, two of my men were wounded—that ticked me off, Henry Sanchez and Elmer Boswell. Henry was from New Mexico a young lad of eighteen, and Elmer, was a man from Wisconsin, a son of a baker, he also was eighteen.
Henry had a leg wound, shot twice, in two places. And Elmer had an arm wound. All the men were very thirsty, and the wounds of the men were starting to stiffen, yet I, the only Corporal, and in charge was too close to victory to halt the operation—in the pink, as they say—it must go forward I told my men, wounds or not. Henry had told me his wound was very painful. And this brought on a severe annoyance to me—again it ticked me off, and I told the soldier, plainly told him, “You’ll have to endure the pain, or kick the bucket, because we’re not gong to stop now, and if you don’t shut up, I’ll put a sock in your mouth to boot, or if you have an aspirin, that might help, whatever you chose, make it quick, and if you can’t fight anymore, stay put, and if you can, continue to do as you were doing, but this is no longer debatable.”
It was no joke, reality, it was the mission first, not the men in particular, at this stage of the battle to be, and if nausea became deeper and deeper throughout the night for the two soldiers, they were considered no longer usable in battle and therefore, second in priority. That’s the way the Army thinks, the way we are taught, the only way to win a battle—what I didn’t want was a washout—I mean, I didn’t want to lose the advantage by retreating, giving up the ground we so dearly fought for.
I, along with the other nine capable men was spread out likened to the Little Dipper. Using the horses for cover, we simply waited; the horses were big like mounds linking the soldiers together like baseball bases, from one point to another, and we were ready and eager for the fight, to continue at our pace, we felt it was better than living night and day in those long trenches, cold and wet—rat infested trenches. I moved on my belly from one horse to the other checking my men to make sure they kept their steel helmets on, a few had bullet holes through them, a few had hammered them out, yet some of the edges were still unsmoothed.
When the shooting started at, 3:00 a.m., and all the helmets had been clapped, you could hear a few of those bullets banging against the helmets, and the heads inside of them swaying, the sounds were death sounds: mouth-draying sounds, spiting sounds, cracking sounds, mechanical sounds, machine-like sounds, desperation sounds, and then a final sounds—throaty voices saying, “No more, there are no more sounds from the nest!” Then when I looked inside the nest, they were all dead: all the Germans.
The dryness and fear I had in my mouth, and the agony in my gut, were on hold, as I looked in the nest among the bodies of the enemy, I had thrown in three grenades, men were laying flat on their faces, arms torn off, looking as if they were reaching—but reaching while unconnected to their bodies somehow, for more machinegun rounds I would expect.
I walked among the dead, I wondered, said to my second self my mind’s eye, or maybe my subconscious was talking to my awaken eye, who’s to say—maybe my subconscious was fed up, and just said—and I thought it when it said it: give it to him straight: ‘What were their last words inside their heads, their last thoughts, was it to one another, to the comrade next to them; to God, or their mothers or wives or perhaps children? Why am I not one of those dead?’
I said to Henry, as now he had taken and endured the pain, and simply held it at bay; he had ended up being part of the onslaught, now standing by my side I said, “It is better to die on your feet isn’t it, than on your belly? Rise and shine, we won the skirmish.”
Another man said in back of me, “Why should they die and not us?” He must have been reading my mind.
And of course, in days to come, that voice would die, in a trench, but I had no wisdom, or witty words for the older man, older than I by far, so I said not a word. But I was thinking—nonetheless, thinking, none of us kicked the bucket, none of us were pushing up daises, none of us got knocked off today, and in war you just live day to day: it’s early now, and soon would be first light, and I could take my men back to the General and tell him, if he didn’t already know, the machinegun nest was silenced, and we did it, and to give us all a three to seven day pass to Paris or someplace safe, and a good breakfast; and for Henry, the war was over, he’d go home, with or without the General’s blessings, and so was it for Elmer. And I’d get two replacements in a week or so.’
I looked around carefully, looked in back of me at the dead horses, in front of me at the machineguns, I looked at the mud where I had crawled, at the bodies I had killed, not one of my men died today, just two wounded, but this was a good day— so I felt, I knew there would be bad days also.

The Half Tramp
(The Years 1922-1932)

As told by: Mabel O’Day ((Widow to Gus O’Day, 1969) (Shannon O’Day had died in the Cornfields in 1967, as indicated in the sequel, “Cornfield Laughter”))

The Half Tramp

They—his mother and father had tried to instill it into their two boys, we all knew that in the family, I am speaking of fortitude, the heart and the will to endure, Gus and Shannon neither could answer them in logic or reason, or have explained back to them what they were trying to instill, but we all knew what they had instilled, what their mother and father had implanted, we always knew, and they had it, matter-of-fact, they had more than their share. And their mother knew—beyond her battered life—knew, beyond any doubt, and within their small lonely spot, forlorn spot on earth, which God and humanity gave them: she knew she needed to instill this before she was blotted out of this existence.
And it was this will, this fortitude that held him, helped Shannon O’Day, through those war years (the Great War), and it was that he was fleeing those memories because he was not going anyplace soon; he spent the following decade (between 1922 and 1932) as a half tramp, that is to say, somewhat of a casual tramp, between getting drunk in his brother’s cornfields outside of the city of St. Paul, Minnesota, and the bars and streets of the inner city, working part-time jobs as he could, in pert near every factory and foundry in the city, and a general laborer during a few summers working in the field of construction of building, buildings and houses. He even worked a spell in the South St. Paul, Stockyards, drifting from one job to another—for example, the hog kill, to the meat packing department, and to the Rose Room, where they burnt up the waste of the animals: drinking before and after his work hours, and finally getting fired from there. And back to the Gem Bar he’d go; now Ira Ingway owned it; where Sally-Anne, now his wife was bartender.

At twenty-five years old, in 1925, he could hardly bear to take a cold shower, feeling its needle like thrust of shooting out water on his sensitive skin; taking five aspirins to subdue his headaches and unsteady hands. But he could somehow afford to drink as much as he pleased in those trying years, particularly in the evenings, and on the weekends in his brother’s cornfields, or Gus’ neighbor’s. He did this of course with the knowledge of everyone knowing, because on Monday mornings, shrill cries of half drunken women followed him to his work which he had a hard time, at times a hard time, driving himself back even to the city, fourteen miles away, how he got to work from there, puzzled all of us. We all learned in time, he’d walk into work in some dreamless stupefaction of reeking alcohol from the previous night’s uproar, that was still pounding in his head—, in the afternoons it would die, and the recuperation process would start in full swing.

Ten-years of an insane desire to drink—Sally-Anne, made it through the first two; she had married him in 1922, and left him in 1924. In 1932, he still had that shrewdness, that luck and fortitude imported from Europe, by way of his mother and father, good Irish stock.

(It was his brother who had fetched him back—when their mother died, prior to his 14th Birthday, with a kind of abashed and thoughtful unshakability and brought him here, to our farm, and home in which he would live thereafter—until he went to France to join the military, to fight Germans. He had started drinking a little prior to this time with his brother, ten-years his senior, in those cornfields, not one in all those years had he failed to stop drinking, to my knowledge, not even during the war years I would guess.)

Of course all this drinking, required and took, and drained the character and strength of Shannon O’Day. At the Gem Bar, Ira Ingway, had bequeathed him credit, and a discount of 20% off all he consumed, if he agreed to patronize his establishment over the other bars—although an occasional stop at the Coney Island Bar, didn’t matter, and Sally-Anne, now married to Ira, didn’t care for that, but Ira had said, business is business, and since he was such a half tramp in drinking, she could keep an eye on him that way—better, so no harm would come to him. Such logic, but it worked. On the other hand, one could say, and many of us did say, Ira Ingway helped Shannon’s dig his hole. By and large, Shannon did drink there the majority of the times, and didn’t spend more than ten-minutes talking with his now ex-wife, Sally-Anne, per week, who was now of course much better off economically.
Sally-Anne, on the other hand lived in complete physical and mental ease and peace as she could devise with Ira Ingway and his bar. She would have had to agree, her life no longer required cash, it was all there for the taking, in the form of credit wherever she went: at the bakery, the butcher, the Emporium Department Store, you name it, and she had credit there.
She could have had servants, if she so desired, or wished to, but she never did, an old habit, a do it yourself thing.
So it would seem she had done right by her new marriage, and nobody blamed her for leaving Shannon, not even Shannon.
The question had come up among us, “Did Shannon think about Sally-Anne, thereafter?”
Shannon told me once, and he always added a little smartness to his dialogue, so I can’t say one way or the other where the truth lies, but he said, and he had a sense of humor of course in saying what he said, “Yes I think about Sally-Anne, when I take cold showers, and when I roll out of bed, in the middle of the night to get a drink of corn whisky, or when I drink out of the ordinary.” If this indeed was true, I was the only one he told. During these times he had a hard time distinguishing between reality and illusion, during those years.

Subchapter:
Foolish Years—1930s

It was hard on Shannon when he got jolted by his wife, first wife, perhaps the bitterest thing he ever had to face, and it all came about of course because of his lifestyle, his drinking, and his thoughtlessness. Even now, years later, when I think about it, I want to cry, if not swear or kick him in the pants. Yes, even now after all this time and he is of course buried six-feet under. I’m old now, and when I look back I know there will be no satisfaction in telling this, but I will.
To tell the truth, I feel a little foolish bring this up, but during the summer of 1930, Shannon brought a nigger named Otis Wilder Mather over to the farm, Otis, he said was working at a ranch, where people rented out horses, Hilltop Stables, they called it. I guess his job was as a helper all-around, whatever that means. Shannon thought it something disgraceful that one of his friends, in this case, new friends should take a job like that. Otis had been working at the stables for a long spell, some three years trying to save enough money to bring back home to his ma and pa, down in Ozark, Alabama; he had told Shannon in front of me (half drunk) one afternoon after coming in from the cornfields with him—each with a bottle of whisky in hand, “I gots to work there cuz there aint no other work to be git.” He was a big nigger fellow, young, big as a lumbering jack, you know one of those tree climbers, and cutters, he was only twenty-years old, and Shannon was thirty.
And they just got to hanging around the farm drinking, and Gus didn’t say a word, but it got on my nerves. And I told him so, and he said, “Mabel, I’m not mowing people’s lawns anymore, nor am I going to sell newspapers like I did when I was ten-years old, and I’m not cleaning any cistern out either. So what can I do but get drunk!”
Well, Otis had moved in with Shannon, and here were two lazy birds, sprawling bodies, cockeyed drunk every morning, in his little hotel room on Wabasha Street. And if anybody had the luck of the devil, it was that nigger, and Shannon was smart enough to take a chance.
They both kept a peachy time I’ll say that, I don’t mean any of that funny stuff, just drinking, and joking. And they took off one weekend, jumped a boxcar in August, of 1930, and Shannon took all the money he had left, some $500-dollars I heard, and he bet it on a horse Otis had picked out. And I’ll be damned if he didn’t win $5000-dollars, enough for a house, two or three years of wages. Otis was a fine nigger, like Shannon tried to be a fine brother-in-law, neither one ever stole a thing, or would steal anything, just get drunk a whole lot, swear a little, like his brother Gus, my husband. Shannon even told me once, he said, “That young nigger taught me how to rub down a horse, and can you beat that Mabel?”
He’d get so excited about it he’d even explain it to me in detail, “You wrap a bandage on a horse’s leg, you see, and make sure it is smooth.” And I’d say, “Yaw,” waiting for the next whatever he was supposed to do to the horse and Shannon would say, “That’s it, there isn’t anymore.”
“Gee whiz,” I’d say, waiting for him to say something else.
Anyhow, it left him with a lot of time to hang around and listen to horse stories from Otis as they’d yap in the warm air in the cornfields. He gave that nigger $500-dollars, and the next day he was gone, said he was going back to Alabama, to be with his folk. And Shannon gave Gus $1000-dollars. If he had any sense he would have bought a house. “Gosh almighty,” I said to Gus, “your brother was sure nice to us,” and that paid the farm off.

The Bluff (1946)
(Margaret-Rose Ramsey and Shannon O’Day)

As told by: Mabel O’Day (Widow to Gus O’Day)

And so Otis Wilde Mather took off to Ozark, Alabama, and he’d wait sixteen-years before he’d return to Minnesota, whereupon, he’d meet Margaret-Rose Ramsey, Shannon O’Day’s second wife to be.

(Mabel O’Day :) If I recall right, Otis Wilde Mather, that there nigger he liked Minnesota, come up from Alabama one summer, the summer of 1946, after the second war, and Shannon and that nigger gulped down some wine in the cornfield together, like they used to, he was now thirty-six years old, and looking for work. Shannon was forty-six at the time, and still working part time here and there, actually he gave had given $500-dollars more to Gus from that money he had won at the horse races a while back in I think 1940 or 1941, when they hit the jackpot for $5000-dollars. A bad year for everyone else, so it seemed, but not for those two, and so Gus took that as investing money and when times were good, Gus gave him some investment money back, and he hired Shannon to work known and then, when he wasn’t working. But Gus just wouldn’t hire that there nigger friend of his, said his neighbors would hang him if he did. But Shannon didn’t give a hoot; you know how a fellow is that way. I had figured that out by now how Shannon was and he was stubborn. But he was a mighty polite nigger I have to say that; he was so tall I couldn’t even touch his shoulders I do believe. I’m not blaming Gus any, but that’s jes’ the way he was. I was friendlier I suppose with Otis than Gus was being my mother was raised in the South, in Fayetteville, North Carolina, and father from Minnesota, mom and I kind of knew how to deal with color folk.
Otis and Shannon went to the Minnesota State Fair that year, and Gus and I tagged along, Shannon wanted to see the ‘Fat Man,’ he was 600-pounds of pure butter, and custard, if you know what I mean, ripples of fat like them there roller coasters, they have out there, I like the rollercoaster, and the merry-go-round, but never cared to see the fat man, what for, fat is fat, I got fat pigs on the farm if want to see fat…but I went along with it all, why not I told myself, it’s all fun. He even winked at me, and I blushed, but I didn’t tell Gus, had I, gosh Almighty, what then? I just thought, the nerve of this guy, and let it be at that. But gee-whiz, gosh Almighty, there I was.
Anyhow, the Minnesota State Fair, lasted ten-days, and Shannon and Otis, went back there after we had went there with him, by themselves, and met Margaret-Rose Ramsey there, brought her to meet me and Gus at our farm, and she wasn’t any mutt. What I wouldn’t have given for a stick of chewing gum, I had jes’ eaten some garlic bread, and Gus, he done smoked a twenty-five cent cigar.
Shannon introduced us to her, and we all knew Otis, and she told us her father was a manufacturer of wooden crates for vegetables and fruits, and their company named were: ‘Ramsey Crate Manufacturing Co.’
There was something in the way she dressed, in her designer style cloths, and I mean designer in the sense of creative; I bet it was all bought at the Golden Rule Department Store, or perhaps a personal tailor. And she had kind of pretty eyes, and the way she had looked at Gus, I didn’t like. She looked at me kind of strangely, as if I was out of place, or so I felt, and I guess that was because of my garlic breath, it did give an ore of dislodgment.
Shannon sat down on a chair by the kitchen table, she stood by his shoulder, Otis was there, and Gus and I; I couldn’t show her up for a boob, I knew that.
I suppose I made a fool of myself, sure I did, I said I came from Connecticut, and my father knew Mark Twain, because he lived there, died in 1910, but it all seemed to fit. Yet I still had my mother’s southern, Fayetteville, North Carolina slight of speech in me, that minor pronunciation, or blur accent, southern twang. Nevertheless, as I kept bragging, Gus and Otis, and Shannon all leaned over their chairs listening not believing what they were hearing, and what I was saying, and I could just imagine what they were thinking. And I don’t think Margaret-Rose was doing much believing in what I was saying. But I kept on a saying what I was saying—and Gus and Shannon were silent about the truth of it all, and Miss Margaret-Rose’s eyes were shinning and so I went whole hog and said he even helped Mark Twain, by giving him advice concerning some short stories, one on a frog. By gosh, what was I thinking?
As I look back, I guess what happened was: I got a-bragging in a way I never had before, and as she listened, and things dragged on, the story just kept coming out of me, a tall tale that is, and somehow we all got to laughing, and I felt better, of course she didn’t, because she thought I was making fun of her status. Otis was leaning against the stove at this time, and even he was laughing with those big white buck teeth of his, and big nostrils like a dragon. I could have kicked myself in the butt; my legs are not agile enough to do that though. If a person goes to hell for telling a fib, I’m going to go to the hottest spot they got I do fear.
After a while we sat there talking, like we had known each other for years and years, and I bluffed it through the afternoon, even if I sounded like a lame cow.

Subchapter
Bushel of Spoiled Eggs

As told by: Mabel O’Day (Widow to Gus O’Day)

1948-49

There was something else eating at me, during those few years Shannon and Margaret-Rose dated and married, as she did in 1948, and had their first daughter in 1948—

Shannon broke a few, perhaps more than a few, pretty girls hearts in his day, he was a handsome man, in his youth. But he, himself came out of a bushel of spoiled eggs. I loved him as a brother-in-law, and still do, but a rotten egg is a rotten egg, however you look at it, or smell it: on the other hand, I guess I was left alone on that way of thinking, likened on a deserted island, no one else quite thought the way I did. He was no Rudolph Valentino you know, but you’d think he was, always carefree drinking, getting lucky. There I was small boobs as I am, but Gus loved them and me. And when Shannon come over to visit me and Gus and they’d go off into the cornfields, to drink, and leave Margaret-Rose with me cuz she didn’t drink much, she wasn’t saying much, she had changed overnight, so it appeared, and I guess I wasn’t saying much either that day. My guess was I really kind of knew. She wasn’t stuck on me because of the fib, about my father knowing Mark Twain and all that. I’ve learned there is a certain girl you meet and if you click, you best make some hay together cuz they’re gone forever and forever in some other world and trying to be close friends with them is impossible, you might jes’ as well fall off a house roof and die.
Why she fell for Shannon is beyond my understanding, but he played her music I suppose and after we had supper that day, Margaret-Rose had to leave at nine o’clock to catch a train to Chicago, to see her father, give him the news she was pregnant. Shannon simply went back to his cornfields with Gus and Otis and drank another bottle of watermelon wine, something he picked up in the war he said, over in France. I think that day was a mad, happy and sad day.
“I got to go to the train now Shannon,” said Margaret-Rose thinking he would follow her, but he didn’t. When she left, she was crying but Shannon didn’t see it. She never knew nothing I knew, and when they divorced I couldn’t believe she was all that busted up.

Margaret-Rose stayed in Chicago until after her baby girl was born. She wrote to me, and I wrote back to her, she asked how Shannon was, told me how the child was, that’s all she said. I suppose it was a chance to repair our friendship, a swell chance I got, but I was too busy too. Whatever kind of guy she was looking for, there wasn’t any such creature on God’s good earth. And me, trying to pass myself off as being a big bug, I never really cared to see her because of that; I was a little shameful about the way I acted.
And then after the child was six-months old, the train come in and she got off it, and Shannon met her and shook her hand, and she gave a little bow to me, and the baby cried like a baby does, “Gee,” I said, “what a lovely baby.” You know, like everyone does. “Did you ever see such a lovely baby Shannon?” She asked him.
What he said next I pert near fell over, or as if the train itself had run over me, what he said was “It looks like a raw oversized turkey.”
I wanted to go sit down after that, let Margaret-Rose deal with the hurt, and mend fences with Shannon if indeed that was their plan, but I said, “I bet if Shannon hadn’t a drink of booze today, he’d had said how lovely the child was.” But I knew Shannon, and that was another fib, not like the big Mark Twain one though.
He, Shannon said, “Those gosh darn eyes of her’s looks like they’re smashed into her forehead, what happened?”
“You’re a big fool Shannon—that’s what he is,” I said aloud, looking at Shannon and then Margaret-Rose.
“Did you find work Shannon?” asked Margaret-Rose.
“I don’t care anything for working or saving or shaving, I’m just a half tramp!”

Seven Months Later

Unfortunately I received one last letter, several months after that visit, where Margaret-Rose had written me, her mother, the child’s grandmother had taken the child out for a ride in the winter, while in Chicago, skidded on a road, and they both ended up in the hospital. The mother losing her motor function ability, and the child’s death; I told Shannon of the news, and it simply made him drink more, he never did make it to the funeral.

Otis (1977)

Otis Wilder Mather stood still within the deep cornfields on which one time he and Shannon O’Day drank. Flanked by the tall stocks of corn, as if walled in—the early morning sunlight fell lightly in faded thin like flashes, seeping through the gaps of the cornfield onto his exposed flesh, and upon the bamboo walking stick in his hand, and across the aging shape of his black face who paced to and fro, looking down— as if swimming in some unfathomable emotions, brooding and drooping eyes, childless, never married, Cantina’s new born child in Mabel’s house, Shannon’s brother Gus’ house, both long dead. Out of a window, of the neighbor’s house, peered old lady Stanley, Mrs. Alice Stanley (her husband now dead, died back around 1960, she now was in her mid 80s,her daughter Nadine now was near forty, Nadine’s daughter, pert near twenty-five), smothered with curiosity—she hadn’t seen Otis in nearly a year.
“Well, Cantina,” said Otis “too bad the baby isn’t white, you and the boy will be treated as if you belong in the stockyards.” And he chuckled.
She didn’t move any, just remained on the sofa with the newborn. Looking up at Otis, with a flat expression, with a youthful, no expression, a face gloomy, and sphinx-like, still worn, and tired looking, pale from giving birth but a few hours earlier.
Shannon was nearly a god to Otis, it now had been ten-years, ten long enduring years since his death in 1967, he was now himself, getting old, sixty-seven years old, he had been ten-years Shannon’s junior. He said loudly to Mabel, now owning several fish stores, between Minnesota and Alabama, “Sorry it wasn’t you.” He had always liked Mabel, although Gus never liked him.
“What kind of car is that?” asked Cantina.
“A car, just a car. A damned good car…why?” he remarked back to her, in a soft delicate way, his hand still holding the bamboo walking stick. “The car’s a Cadillac I guess,” he mentioned as if not wanting to mention it, or pretending he didn’t want to mention it.
“Oh,” said Cantina in a near un-hearable shallow whisper. “Yes, it looks like a brand-new car, a 1977 I bet?”
“Yes, that’s what it is.”
“Oh.” She said, as she glanced back out the window. No one could have guessed what she was thinking, but she watched him and watched him as he looked at the child, paced with his staff looked out the window into the cornfields—as if longing for those extended lost days, never to be rekindled.
“Here take this check, its $5000-dollars, do whatever you need to do to make your life better and your child’s, whatever his name is,” he said to Cantina, passing the check over to her in a frizzy like way, and walking out the doorway, as if in a trance, stepping down the few wooden steps onto the ground (leaning on his walking stick with more of his weight than he had before) with a crazy like look on his face, moving a lever in the bamboo upper part of the stick, which made a four inch blade extend outward from a hole in the end of the stick—a weapon as sharp as a razor, and took a bottle of whiskey out of the trunk of his car, and stood there holding the stick in one had and the bottle in the other, drinking and pushing the blade back into its little hidden compartment, its nest by way of the ground, looking into the cornfields: just waiting there, as the neighbor concluded it was who she thought it was, Otis Wilder Mather. The rich black man from Ozark, Alabama, that once was the bosom-buddy of Shannon O’Day, they were like white on rice, or one black pea and one white pea mixed together in a pod: and many a nights had they spent in the cornfields half cocked, and unable to walk. Otis remembered what Shannon had told him once, that life was no more than “A Tick on a clock,” that “to do what you’re going to do, or don’t do it at all, because waiting—if prepared is simply not worth the waste of the time thinking about it…” and then he added “and then life as we know it, is over” and so it was appearing to so, for him.

When Corporal Shannon O’Day was shipped over to France to fight the Germans, in those trenches, Otis then was only ten years old. Then when WWII, came along he didn’t go to that war either, he had something they called flat feet “I’m taking care of my family in Ozark looking after the things,” he’d tell folks who asked, and those who didn’t ask, but wanted to ask, and stared at Otis as if they were about to ask, Shannon O’Day would tell all of those “It aint none of your business why Otis is up here drinking with me in my brother’s cornfields and not in that stupid war those Europeans started over across the Atlantic again.” It’s how it was with Shannon O’Day, a thin, pale-ridden Irishman, with quizzical eyes, who looked about fifty when he was thirty, though it was known that he had married by the time he died a number of times, and only one daughter Catharine, born in 1947, two years after that war had ended and was never a grandfather as well, she was twenty-years old the time Shannon died, not thirty. Mrs. O’Day or Gus’ wife always knew better to stay out of Shannon’s drinking business, and he was just too lazy and idle, although Gus would try to help him out now and then, help him also with his drinking—a hopeless task at best, they said, everyone said knowing that his sole connection with life after the first war: that he didn’t give a hoot for much after that, but Gus’ farm that is where Shannon and Otis lay in the cornfields summer after summer, the first summer Otis was in St. Paul, he worked at the Hill Top Stables, and around 1945, Shannon borrowed him five-hundred dollars and Otis bought his first fish store down in Ozark, Alabama, that started him off, he never forgot it, fact that for years now Gus had allowed him to drink like crazy in the cornfields was due to Shannon getting mad if he’d not allow it, which Gus had purchased when Shannon was just ten years old, and raised him from then on, until the war that is. For a while in other years, Otis even lived with Shannon down in his apartment, the one he kept on Wabasha Street, away from Gertrude his wife at the time, who lived on Amenable Street, he had been living folks said—hearsay, in some caves, outer section of the sewer system, over by Rondo Street (a part, section made during the Civil War days, held up by old rotting timbers, wooden beams, some replaced with large stones and cement blocks, it kept him dry from the rainy days, and he could make a fire with no worrying about city code violations, or being spotted as a vagrant and put in jail, or being asphyxiate with smoke)—Rondo, being a street and district in St. Paul, know for the blacks; Otis, a bachelor in his decrepitude surroundings, no more than a open hole, less than a barn. So now it looked like he was doing fine in the financial area, aged somewhat, and seemingly a little sick, too much reminiscing, too many hardships to look back on, and that terrific ability to drink in the act of near dying.
Even the Stanley’s knew by observation, or heard by hearsay, much of what took place in those far-off days. That Gus and his kind, his crowd laughed at Shannon for taking Otis in as if he was a sparrow with a broken wing—and a nigger lover on top of it. And Otis knew it was not the first time they had laughed at him, calling Shannon: nigger lover, even Gus said that, I mean, he wasn’t called white trash, which would have been truer than nigger lover, I mean he just took a liking for Otis, and he did work: Shannon did work, once at a foundry and a few other places, just not steadily. They began to tell Shannon themselves down at the local downtown Conley Island Bar, the so called Group Gus hung out with, the likes Judge Finley,
“Tell that nigger friend of yours to stay down in Alabama where he belongs; you know which one, that war dodger!”
The drunker Shannon would get, the more redder his face got, the more angry he got, he then would look about the bar of white faces and bloodshot eyes and stained yellow teeth from smoking cigar after cigar, or cigarette after cigarette, behind the smoke, you could see where scorn prowled, and it was there from his extending square jaw bones to inside its marrow, and Gus knew Shannon’s blood was red hot, like a flaming sword ready to strike “I got to go on home now fellows, because I got a wife that wakes me up early to tend to those cornfields, I got to mosey on home now see you all later…” he’d say, and bring Shannon with him before he tore up the bar, bring him to his house on Albemarle Street if he could walk, or if not, to his apartment around the corner. Shannon usually got half cocked, but not all that drunk he was a professional drinker, I mean he could drink—seldom got sick like those armature drinkers—so he’d say, boast, pretending he was drunker, walking out of the bars, and if Judge Finley was there, he’d say to the old judge “Git out of my way fag, I like niggers better!” And Gus and the old Judge would just brush it off as if he was out of his mind.
“Niggers?” the judge would repeat; “You got a nigger lover for a brother Gus!” laughing now.
“Yes,” Gus would say. “I know, he looks after a big black one, but aint nothing I can do about it, he’s my brother.”
“Send them all back to the South, or to Africa!” the old judge always could be quoted as saying, as if it was his one and only phrase for the black race.
This was all true what Judge Finley said about Shannon O’Day, he did take care, watch over Otis like an older brother would, even when Gus tried to put him in jail for burning his fields, which he never burnt, and Shannon couldn’t say way, because had he told the truth, he would have exposed his brother’s wife to infidelity. So not knowing—even at the cost of belittlement, was better than telling him the truth, it was a matter of sorting out priorities, who got hurt the worse, or the levels of hurt, or where was the point of most damage.
But with Otis, there was this kind of devotion, not pride for prides sake, but devotion, for devotions sake, for Otis’ sake, it lifted him up from a depressing world that Shannon took his side—no matter what the cost was to him, he became much more than he ever expected to become because of Shannon’s outlook on him, not his own outlook—he couldn’t beat the white man to death physically, so he beat him to death with success. No one up in the Midwest in those early days would except him, permit him unabated to advance, it was an attitude among the whites: I aint going to give to no nigger—especially coming from down south, who avoided a war, the chance to settle down here among us good white folks, to seed money home to feed those little niggers back in Ozark, that was the way of thinking. “Aint no chance in hell, we’re going to do that,” old Judge Finley would confirm while half drunk in the bars, say it to himself or anyone listening, willing to listen—sober enough to decipher. Judge Finley had told Otis, a few decades back, nearly cussed him out in the courtroom, to head on out of town, and spend more time where he came from, than were he came to, meaning, Alabama and not Minnesota. Perhaps Finley’s mind—being a friend of Gus—knew nothing else would scare Otis away, yet the fact remained, Otis came back after years, and rekindled the friendship he once had with Shannon, oh, it wasn’t exactly as it was before, but between business and business he spent a whole lot of afternoons with Shannon drinking—of course no longer able to take drink after drink like he used to, and at this time he formed even a bond with Cantina, Shannon’s only daughter, otherwise known as Catherine. He watched her grow up, you could say. Even thought of himself as her uncle, for the time being, until she showed development, and after Shannon died, his heart would be quiet and proud he took such an interest in her, although after Mabel’s husband died, remembering her fling with him, he had never forgot it actually—he had a half lit flame for her, and she had a full lit flame for him. The only problem was, or so it seemed, was that humanity had created a curse for him, a black skinned curse, although times were changing, they were changing slowly in Minnesota.
“Your father was a fine proud man, a war hero,” he told Catherine, as if he was near god himself. And had he aimed to look like anyone white, it would have been Shannon O’Day.

“I know what they all say to one another,” he had told Cantina, a year later, after the child had been born. “I can just visualize it, live it all over for the boy: but I can fix it, not with money but I can fix it. Just like your father fixed things up for me. It has taken me thirty-five years, but I done it at last, I’m richer than a dog with a barn full of bones. Now that I think of it, I never did ask you, what did you named the boy?”
It had been a year since she had seen Otis, it was pert near the same month and day he had left, and now returned, but a year apart, the boy was walking, black as the ace of spades, and Cantina was as white as the empty space around the ace of spades.
While thinking, pacing between the kitchen and the living room, Mabel busy doing the dishes, and Cantina fumbling on the couch involved somehow with putting a new shirt on the boy, said “Otis Jr., his name is Otis Wilde O’Day Mather Jr.” In his head, in Otis’ head came a sound of screeching tires, until there was a sudden stop, “What?” he said.
He broke suddenly free, to think free. Thinking “How on God’s earth can this little boy grow up here, with a white woman, and how can Shannon O’Day’s daughter live with this scorn, a life time of scorn wherever they walk, this just wasn’t good enough for Shannon O’Day, not at all…” thoughts were galloping to and fro in his mind; and then Cantina look his way fumbled with the boy’s shirt, broke free of her attention span that she had on the boy: to ask, quite clearly ask, looking at Otis, lonely and droopy-eyed —ask explicable, beyond—and seemingly into his mind’s eye, “Just what is on your mind Otis?”
Suddenly she could see he was contemplating something, and the child knew something, he was looking at him with foresight, as if he realized that his father’s voice had entered a tomb.
“What’s the matter Otis,” she repeated; “The boy” he said, in a depressed, drunken astonishment, as if he had just figured it out. He seemed to watch an imaginary happening taking place—eyes towards the heavens, one he was going to duplicate.

Now it was getting toward twilight. His composure had completely changed, the boy was crying, and his mother was trying to breastfeed the boy, but he kept on crying no matter what. As it is often said, a child knows at six months old, knows his parent’s character to the point of controlling his parents, perhaps it is truer than fiction, but could it be controlled this evening was the unspoken question? Cantina’s face still puzzled on Otis’ previous behavior, and lack of candor: especially, his brooding, his sphinx-like face, now it was calm and collected “Do you want something to eat?” asked Mabel.
“I don’t want anything,” he remarked stern and straight, looking at the child, smiling at Catherine—but the child had some kind of foresight, intuition, something instinctive, as if its whole body knew what his brain couldn’t completely put together—a siren went off in his eyes—and it cried and cried, and moved and wanted to get away as if it was a little bird caught in the grips of a closing hand, closing fist.
“You should eat something,” she exclaimed.
This time he did not answer at all, staring down at the child—his walking stick in his hand, He turned the lever on the upper part of the bamboo, and the sun had completely been devoured by night now. “It wouldn’t be much longer, the child will be sleeping,” said Cantina, thinking the crying was driving Otis crazy. He couldn’t hear her, or the child’s cries, he couldn’t hear anything, or feel anything, no longer curious of what people might think now or then, but knowing how vengeful they could be in the future for his child. He could even hear what they were saying about him and his child and Shannon O’Day, his bosom-buddy, years in advance, the suggestion of believing afar into the fury man’s heart, their intent: Old Otis Wilde Mather with his hand tumbling at last he come to the conclusion, his child would not pay the same price for life he had paid: he screamed aloud like a madman, glancing at Cantina watching the child
“What are you thinking, going to do…!” she said.
“Nothing much! Nothing Much!” that’s what he screamed, as the four inch blade shot out of the end of his walking stick that no one seen—that he only felt it movement forward, thrust, its click into a solid and firm hold, and only he knew, could feel the extending weight at the end of his stick. His eyes were becoming indistinctly blurred, in the new born twilight. “Don’t worry any,” he said calmly, smoothly as everything became still, as if before a storm. He heard the galloping in his head again—“…horses: those damn horses again…” he complained, in a whisper, but he remained still. His hand firmly on the top of his walking stick, he stood up, faced the girl and child “Otis,” she said, as if thinking he was leaving.
“I’m here, I’m right here, don’t fret…” Otis said with a smile, a storm had started outside, and the lights went off. His left hand touched the child’s throat, “What are you doing?” asked Cantina in the dark.
Now he moved his right had swiftly with the end of the bamboo. He knew exactly in the dark where the child was, every inch of him, just as he knew every turn, every event in his life, every moment he and Shannon O’Day spent together. The room exploded with terror—but to Otis the horses in his head had now stopped galloping, and consequently, there was a wild relief.
“Otis!” the mother shouted; “Stop! Stop! Otis! Otis!”
But the tall thin, fuming figures crippled around the baboon couldn’t stop, against the frown and roar in the room, and the abrupt storm out side and Mabel frozen stiff in the archway of the kitchen. With the blade lifted, it opened up a wound around the neck of a glaring child’s eyes, without any cry, any sound, the mother passed out.

No: 660 (8-4-2010) Written: as a pre-story to “The Black Sedan”
Leading up to Otis demise••

Galloping Horses
(Part Two, to “Otis”)

To Otis, the shouts and screams were the loudest thing he had ever heard in his life, and they were now echoing in his head, and there were galloping horses in his head—again. The horses were pounding, and of course could not be heard outside of Otis’ head, and it continued to build, as he stood by his car, making not a sound. It was outrageous, unbelievable what he had just done. But it was too late to undo, to re-cross that bridge, to even re-build that bridge, the child, the infant was dead. He wanted to run. He figured he might. He had talked himself into doing so the night before. Thus, he expected to, and he expected everything to go as planned, and it did, except for the galloping horses inside his head. “Right after you do what you got to do to the infant, if it is born today, or tomorrow, you can run and escape back to Alabama,” he had told himself. “But you can’t run until you finish the plan.” He did that; he did all he had planned but run. His eyes were closed now, he was shaking, and he opened his trunk for a bottle of whiskey. He bent over to the outside foist, turned it on and washed his hands, and washed his hands, washed them for two hours straight. These were his vain attempts to calm down, clean that dirty sin. He knew the decaying corpse was still on the couch, he saw Mabel standing still in the kitchen doorway, her hands over her face, where Cantina was he didn’t know, he had been out by the car for a long time now, washing his hands for a long time, fell on the ground woke up (having had slept for four hours). He had prepared himself for the killing, and he knew he’d never forget this day, forget about what he did so if he was to be hung by the neck to die, so be it. His body and mind was empty, he was or had been waiting, thinking listening for the police, but they didn’t come. It was all too grotesque, nightmarish, and he wasn’t going to run.

The sound of the horse’s hoofs came steadily. He followed the sound as if it was in the air, and he was sweating. Then the galloping ceased. He stepped forward, his teeth grinding one on top of the other, nearly all of them. His lips dry, his hands sweaty half blind, a faint phosphorescent glare into the eyes of heaven—it was a dark heaven, it was 2:00 a.m., in the morning, he looked at the shape of the corn stalks—shadowy shapes like creatures of the night, perhaps it was just a possum, because there was an infant like cry, and he knew it couldn’t be the infant; after a time, he started slashing at his fingers, fingers to fingers, he found some silence. He walked backwards to the field. He was a large man, bumping everything on his way to the cornfield, drinking the bottle of whiskey gulp after gulf. At last he threw his bamboo walking stick over by a hollow stump, and fell suddenly beneath the corn stalks, crawling on his knuckles, faint in his head, the ground was damp; he snuffed at the dirt with his nostrils. Now he lay back glaring at the sky. He had never been so tired, so spent, so dark inside, he hooted like an owl, and passed out (Mabel, ended up looking for Otis—thinking, everything had gotten out of hand).
You can mark it, he never run.
“You can never tell what a man will do when in a pinch,” said Mabel, “what would Shannon do?” She sat on the top of her step that evening, in old trousers, and a collarless white blouse, smoking a cigarette. “He had no reason to run off,” she commented, “to run into those cornfields as if it was his sanctuary, as it was for Shannon.”
Cantina, her face lowered, beaten and worn, stained, shabby hair, “I got to say something,” she said, “but I just don’t know what!” And she wished she had not even spoken that.
“You’re better off without the child,” said Mabel, as if trying to protect Otis, “drinking makes you do strange things,” she added.

No: 661 (8-5-2010)

The Dark Sedan
((or “The Unlawful Death Case of Otis Wilde Mather)
(A Shannon O’Day, six part story))

A Countryside Boxer
((A Shannon O’Day Story) (Follow up to “Cornfield Burner!”))

Fall of 1979

One

In the corn growing farm business, Mrs. Mabel O’Day appeared to prosper (even after her husband and brother-in-law, Gus and Shannon O’Day passed on). That being, she soon eliminated all unneeded expenses, and presently she was out of the farming business, with a hired manager, Mr. Fitzgerald to run it. And we farm folk from that area, figured that we knew what the stepping-stone to the rise of her prosperity was due to. On the other hand we believed it was without a doubt—the evil that brought on Gus’ down fall—likened to the evil that brought on his brother Shannon’s down fall (both being the same evil), was due to, pure and simple, abuse of alcohol. All these lost hours and days, and years, have a bearing upon a man’s prosperity—we told one another—despite his hard labor, he needed a level and clear head, a healthy body; this he seldom had, if he ever had.
We saw Mabel O’Day every Sunday—those of us who went to church that is—saw Mabel behind the last pew in the church—fresh as a daisy—younger looking at seventy-nine than she was looking at forty-nine; having a rosy kind of rich coloring to her face.

Although Mabel was considered born plain, she somehow—now in her golden-years—brought with her that vast, calm impermeable loveliness. Listening with a slight smile to the corners of her mouth as the preacher preached, the collarless young preacher, of our local countryside church, who this one day gave a sermon on how life is but a flicker of light, from a bonfire—which was the Sunday before all this happened.
That’s why we seldom gossiped about her, when we saw her at the North St. Paul restaurants, or country store, or walking the concrete sidewalks of St. Paul.
We all doubted she was ever, had ever been close to anyone but Gus; for to do her justice we simply didn’t gossip about that—save her husband and Shannon O’Day we had enough to talk about. But there was still that vague, hazy, indefinable, if not intangible thing, a white and gray cloud over her head called Otis Wilde Mather, from Ozark, Alabama. Shannon O’Day’s close Negro friend, the very one Gus took no liking for. Tried to prosecute him for burning his cornfields down one year who had gotten drunk in the cornfields and somehow a fire started.
Certainly it was not his fault that the cornfields burnt to smithereens as it had come out in the court hearing, but we in the countryside felt that the idea of a Blackman visiting Mabel regularly, for a number of years now, almost habitually, something was fishy—that is to say, and I hate to say it, perhaps we were all missing something, perchance what it was, was that somewhere along the line, there had been some kind of adultery in the past with Otis and Mabel.
It seemed absurd at first, even perverted: we could have accepted it, had he not returned to making it more obvious, if not seemingly natural to do so, and now it seemed more logical to think so.
We didn’t try to guess or know her thoughts—not at all, those of us who saw her gaiety when with Otis, walking in the parks, sitting on the benches so close to one another, you couldn’t put an acorn between their thighs, and for hours on end—; hence, she was no longer fooling anyone. We simply said, “She’s not the woman she used to be,” whatever kind of woman or wife she was; now we really didn’t know. For here was a Negro man, with the deceased husband’s wife; a close and dear friend of ours, one of us you might say, and Otis an outsider and a nigger to boot. It was hard for us to make sense of.

Otis was very tall and very black, also very successful, who was from Alabama, who had moved on up to Minnesota a few times, and now it seemed he was more in Minnesota than Alabama, and perhaps thinking of staying on a long term basses in Minnesota, or perhaps even moving to Minnesota on a permanent bases and getting hitched with Mabel. He had never been married.
One afternoon he had just finished raking the front lawn at Mabel’s farm house, and started burning the fall leaves. He was smoking his corncob pipe. The very one Shannon O’Day had given him, when suddenly appeared a black sedan (Otis hadn’t notice the car), but he did the fellow walking towards him. The smell of the fire was rich, fresh and clean and the night part of twilight had just smothered the day part—and there was tranquility in the atmosphere, even the birds seemed to mellow down for the change over of day to night, and the rapid waters from the creek even reduced in sound.
The man approaching had no particular age, heavy boned and broad shoulders, big hands, boxer hands, a broken nose, and a cauliflower ear, a dark shirt on, and a black hat. His face was square and rough looking, he needed a shave. His face looked flat, to absolutely empty. His eyes bloodshot and he staggered just a slight. He seemed lipless, chewing tobacco. He looked up at Otis, about three inches—
“How much did the pipe cost you?” he asked.
“Nothing, it was a gift, why?” asked Otis.
“It must weight a ton for an old man like you to hold onto for any length of time?”
“It’s just a corncob pipe, it don’t weigh nothing!” Otis remarked.
“If it doesn’t then give it here, I’ve never smoked a nigger’s corncob pipe before!” the stranger told Otis.
Otis simply continued to look down at the stranger, still holding onto his pipe, then he heard an excruciating sound as if a bone, or bones cracked, a snap here and there, then Otis spit up and out of his mouth blood (it more like poured out), and with a half turn to his right—as the stranger now was walking back to his car, his back to Otis, never once looking back, he knew the damage he had done—Otis having been hit as if by an iron hammer, wobbled, his jaw and neck were broken, he fell onto the ground like boiler room explosion; and expired.

The Black Sedan

1981

Two

After Otis’ death (and the notifying of his brother: Banister Samuel Jackson Mather (born, 1942), Ozark, Alabama) Mabel built this invisible stone wall that seemed to encircle her—slowly and steadily enshrine her. But then it is always strange to what a simply community of farmers—their methods—what they will resort to in order to punish someone—anyone, dissimilar to them. It was as if there was some unseen force that seeped into the atmosphere and bombarded her; disabling her own level-headedness in business, as if she was working against her better judgment, the very thing that brought her, her prosperity. She fired Mr. Fitzgerald, the very one person, man that had he not picked up where Gus (her late husband) and Mabel herself left off and carried pert near the farm on his own shoulders, there would not have been a farm to farm. If anything, he showed high vision, and confidence and courage, where there was none to be found.
Her dream at first—after Gus’ death, and her brother-in-law’s death, Shannon O’Day—was not so high, it was no higher than a casual –common-day laborer’s. Just enough to get by on, eat, and pay for the gas to heat the farmhouse, and buy some feed for the chickens, and seed to plant with; because she didn’t hire Mr. Fitzgerald until the first months of 1968, after Shannon had died.
“She almost came to the point back in the late ‘60s, where she had to sell the farm,” I remember the sheriff had said that, he also told us folks she hadn’t paid her taxes, property taxes going on seven-years. And then we all said, “That damn midnight black nigger—Otis,” and then the last straw was seeing the nigger raking her leaves in the front yard, right out in the open for everyone to see, he must had been gloating, I mean what was next—god forbid!
And so Truman Quinn, got his son, Joe Quinn, the ex boxer, that couldn’t even read an 8th grade text book or the time on a clock properly, to throw a few punches his way. Oh, well, we never believed Otis would get killed over it all, our intentions were to intimidate him, drive him back to where he came from, Alabama. So when Joe hit him, Otis’ head spun to the right, like a dial flying off a speedometer, out of control—something snapped, and then cracked, Joe had broken his jaw and neck—Joe then turned about, came back to the car, we all left Otis there, right where he lay, all four of us in that black sedan of Finley’s, not even willing to see how he was, nor call an ambulance, or to notify his next of kin, we believed they lived in Alabama, and we didn’t want to become a suspect. Plus, it was a cold fall evening, we all wanted to get home, get settled in for the night. Mabel could do the proper thing.
We all assumed, Mrs. O’Day must have dragged that loose and heavy black body, inch by inch, foot by foot into her home, hoping he would open those dark eyes, and so did the sheriff.
“What in the hell happened?” asked the Sheriff to Mabel.
“I don’t know. I’m just telling you I found him this way, I just don’t know,” and she didn’t know, only four people knew, and three were in the car at the time, the sedan, the black sedan of Finley’s, and the other, the forth one was Joe, and had Otis lived, oh well, why speculate.
She had fired Mr. Fitzgerald, so he couldn’t say a word on the matter, and we four, shut-up about it—the burden was heavy enough, without projecting. Although we were afraid Joe would get drunk and spill the beans, start whispering something out loud about it, some night, and that something would float over to the sheriff’s office, and who knows where else, but it didn’t.
“You mean—” said the sheriff, “that as far as you know, you don’t know anything about this?”
She just nodded her head up and down, holding back, a flood of tears, so the sheriff said.
Up to that night I slept well, and so did Truman, and Joe and our Lawyer friend, George Finley Jr. (the son to the late Judge Finley). We all had been catching our forty winks or so—but now things appeared to be in disarray, you can bet I never slept a whole night through that year of 1979, I always felt I was on a pile of coals, hot coals.
In time we all did—or was able to—shut our eyes and mind to the issue of Otis’ death, as if we had washed our washtubs with Spick and Span (dirt free), and now we could all take a clean bath…
But that disappeared after Mabel died in 1981, at the age of eighty-one years old. She had done exactly what she had done a few decades previously, that being, when she dropped the lamp in the cornfields and burnt them all up; the very ones Otis got blamed for. She had fallen and smashed it on the floor this time, and the house went ablaze. She simply retired into a dim corner of the house, behind some of the junk in the pantry: junk Gus had left piled up before he passed on. Things for the car like bolts, and fitting, and so forth. She just kneeled there, touching those pieces as if sorting them out until the smoke and fire covered her like a foot inside a shoe, removing the last of life from her, tossing it—like a kick from a mule behind her, as if she never was.
That’s the way we all figured it was anyways. That’s how the sheriff saw it likewise. When he looking down on her, after the fire settled, chewing his tobacco as usual, checking his timepiece out as usual, and making out his report as required, the report read “No evidence of foul play,” likened to the report he made out pertaining to Otis Wilde Mather’s death.

No: 517 (11-17-2009)

“The Corncob Pipe.”
Winter of 1982

Three

Joe Quinn stood there with his huge broad, hulk of a body, with his hard square large fists.
“What are you up to?” asked Sheriff Donavan.
“Paw left up in the night, gone fishing I suppose, and it got cold here in the house, and things so quiet, I couldn’t sleep none last night. I spent the whole night trying to fix this here boiler Sheriff, what brings you out this way?”
“Can’t get enough steam in that big old boiler haw?” remarked the Sheriff.
“By the time I shut my eyes last night I could hear the steam shutoff, and I woke up myself chilling like a freezing pigeon. Then after a spell, I couldn’t sleep again.”
“Did you relight that pilot-light underneath the boiler?” Asked the sheriff (smoking a corncob pipe that looked as if it was the very one old Otis Wilde Mather had on the night he was beat to death, that appeared to catch the eye of Joe).
Joe stepped back into a dim lit corner of the basement where the boiler was, where the sheriff had seen him through a window of the basement where a light was on—he came to pay them a visit, was hoping to find Otis alone, knowing these winter months his pa did a lot of night and early morning fishing on the frozen lakes (there in Minnesota), he’d drill a hole in the ice, sit in his icehouse, and drink his beer, fish with his friends, and to him that was heaven on earth.
The Sheriff had simply opened up the outside door, walked into the house, and down the steps to the basement where Joe was (kind of inviting himself in, knowing they usually didn’t keep the doors locked there in the countryside).
“Boy, your pa’s got a lot of junk down here, but I suppose one accumulates it after a life time of miscellaneous collecting everything and thinking one day you’ll going to use it (there were valves and rods and so forth, piled here and there).”
Then the sheriff kneeled down to check the pilot-light, a piece of round metal (like a small cylinder) with a hole in its center, which lit the boiler, and its heating pipes above it, and he lit it, then saw the water gauge to the boiler, a glass flask, brass on the top and bottom, showing the water level, which was perhaps less than ten-percent filled, meaning the boiler was pretty near dry.
“You’re going to blow this boiler sky high,” said the sheriff, if you don’t refill it with water, cold water, not hot water—hot water will make it crack in this cold. The pilot’s lit now. Once it’s filled gradually heat it, do you understand Joe?”
Joe didn’t want to wait—he just wanted to turn the attached knobs on the water pipes to the boiler, to get it going, operating. Then the sheriff told Joe, “That’s what you got to do, so are you going to fill this thing properly, or blow us up to kingdom come?”
Joe glanced once more at the boiler, then opened its iron trap door, into its round like enclosure, then spat on it, to see if it was hot, and of course it wasn’t hot. Then he glanced again at the corncob pipe, “That corncob pipe sure looks like I saw it before,” remarked Joe, with a frown, “didn’t it belong to that there Negro from Alabama?”
“You mean Otis Wilde Mather?”
“I tends to my own business, I don’t know a thing about what happened to him—ain’t no trouble of mine.”
The sheriff stood there eagle-eyed, chewing his tobacco, and looking at his watch, “Tell me what you know about the unlawful death of Otis Wilde Matter? I’m just trying to get enough facts so I can close this –reopened case, his family from Ozark, Alabama wants a new, and improved investigation, they said the last one was the worse one they had ever heard of—I mean read. And to be honest, we didn’t do much look into. It’s that brother of his Banister Samuel Jackson Mather doing the asking.”
Joe had waited until the sheriff had finished, then said—blinking his eyes slowly, and taking in a deep breath—surprisingly said, “Okay, okay, just fix the boiler before paw comes home, he’ll have a fit.”
But the sheriff had already started filling the boiler with water—having had already connected a hose attached to one of the pipes to the boiler, and to the sick, turning on the water, opening up the valves to the boiler, and watched the water level in the glass tube rise, filling the boiler up to a half-inch below the top, allowing a free flow of water throughout the boiler. Then he turned the water off, by turning the two knobs counterclockwise, tightening up the valves, so the water would not drain back out.
“What then?” the Sheriff said.
Joe didn’t answer. He stood large and faceless, too quite, a little cold.
“Yes, yes,” Joe said, “we did it. I hit him, paw told me to scare him, so I hit him, and I guess I hit him too hard.”
Now the sheriff turned on the furnace and it lit up boldly.
“You got anything else to say on the matter?” asked the sheriff.
“No,” said Joe, relieved.
“You do as I say, unless you want to spend the rest of your life in jail (Joe nodded his head up and down, indicating he understood; he was tired of it).
“Who else was in that black sedan of young Judge Finley’s, Mabel O’Day’s neighbor said she saw a black sedan that night parked out by the fence, behind that large old oak tree, suspicious like, but hadn’t come forward with the information, knowing it was old Judge Finley’s son’s car?”
Grimly Joe named all four men in the black sedan, to include his self.

For the Back of the Book

The Folklore of the Midwest is enriched by the eleven stories in this volume. The portrait of a Negro and white friendship, cruel insincerity, pure devoted genuineness, as only Dennis L. Siluk, three time poet laureate, can reveal this understated and dramatic interaction of such a relationship. Ranging from a novelette length, these tales bring to life, in majesty and dreadful conditions, a cherished gallery of characters, already know to the reader of Mr. Siluk’s books; in his best narrative voice. These are stories of Shannon O’Day, who survived a drunken father’s abandonment, along with WWI, but never escaped its influences; of his brother Gus, his farm life and those notorious cornfields; and his bosom-buddy, Otis Wilde Mather: from Ozark, Alabama trying to start a new life in Minnesota; and Mabel O’Day (whose infidelity once hidden, comes to life again); Cantina (or, Catherine) Shannon’s only daughter, and her new born; and Old Judge Finley with his ramping and raging of what is a long career in a tempestuous old man’s last years on earth—seeking his nieces child from abroad; all taking place in the heart of the breadbasket country, corn country, and the grim ending of this saga.

This is Dennis’ 44th book, 4th Volume of Natural Writings. He lives in Peru and Minnesota with his wife, Rosa; back picture is of the author meeting the President of Peru, Dr. Alan Garcia, in Lima, 5-15-2010 (whereupon, Garcia greets, and examines Dr. Siluk’s Poetic and cultural books on Peru).

The Black Sedan

2009-11-30T15:15:00.000-08:00

((or “The Unlawful Death Case of Otis Wilde Mather)
(A Shannon O’Day, four part story))

Parts one thru four:

Cornfield Burner
A Countryside Boxer
The Black Sedan
&
The Corncob Pipe

“Cornfield Burner…!”
1950

Part One of Four

“What proofs have you Mr. Gus O’Day?” ask Judge Finley.
“I told you the nigger got into my cornfield, was drunk waiting for my brother Shannon to show up and he was the only one there!”
Judge Finley hesitated looked at Otis Wilde Mather… “But that isn’t any substantial proof!”
“I told him, warned him not to go in there without Shannon my brother, I knew he smoked that damn corncob pipe, and drank,” said Gus O’Day.
“Shannon, he tells me, your honor, it be O.K., ef-in I goes in dere and waits fer him,” said Otis.
“Who told you that you could talk Mr. Mather, shut up until you’re told it’s your time to talk, you hear me?” said the judge.
“Yessum,” said Otis, and then nodded his head up and down.
“And this here is the man you’re talking about, right Mr. O’Day?” and the judge waved his hand for Otis to standup.
“Yes sir, your honor, that sure is the man who burned my cornfields…” said Gus O’Day, adding, “He’s a strange one, but my brother likes him for some odd reason, comes from down south and causes trouble up here.”
“But you don’t have any real proof,” said the judge, “you can see that, right?”
“Bring that big black nigger up over here, he’ll tell the truth, or else!”
Otis was still standing, big and wiry, in patched trousers, dusty and dirty, and ripped along the ridges, they were too tight for the six-foot six, man, some 220-pounds. With deep dark eyes, unkempt hair, gave him a wild look, yet he was not an uncultivated man per se. He noticed all the white males’ grim faces in the courtroom. And here was a short white, gray haired judge, past middle age, with small gold rimmed glasses ordering him to stand and be accountable.
Otis’ body appeared to be stiff, from sleeping in a cramped jail cell overnight. This was not a court of judgment, just a fact finding court that being of a preliminary hearing to see if it was a case to be taken to court, or could be settled out of court.
Otis, didn’t seem to look at anybody in particular, he just stood there blankly, like the Tower of Pisa.
“What’s your name, boy?” asked the judge.
“Otis Wilde Mather, sir,” said the big Blackman.
“Where is your hometown?”
“Ozark, Alabama, sir.”
“Did you fall to sleep in the cornfields and with a lit pipe, burn Mr. O’Day’s crops to smithereens?”
“Nope. But I done drank some whisky your honor and I done left my corncob pipe at Mr. Shannon O’Day’s apartment, sir.”
There was no sound in the courtroom, you could have heard a dime drop had one dropped; it was absolutely hushed, everyone waiting for the Judge’s decision on the matter.
“So you’re saying you’re not guilty of this crime, is that so Mr. Mather?”
“Yessum your honor, dhats waht I is sayin’ cuz I dont rightly know how dhat dhere fire got a burnin’”
Gus’ face exploded with anger “Damn nigger!” he yelled.
“Case dismissed,” said the judge, adding “I can’t even find you careless, Mr. Mather, but I suggest you leave this city and go on back home where you belong, down to that Alabama place, and right quick. And if I ever see you in my courtroom again, you’ll be in the workhouse faster than you can say Jack Johnson.”
“I aint a-goin’ to stay,” said Otis, “dont care fer this place anymore…”
“That’s enough,” said the judge, “get on your way now, out of my courtroom, case dismissed!”

Shannon O’Day had appeared somewhere in the crowd, saw Otis, and then walked out of the courtroom with Otis, gave him some chewing tobacco, they both had smiles on their faces, everyone else had a grim face.
Out on the courthouse steps were several women, farm folk that lived around Gus’ place, repeating: “Cornfield burner! Cornfield burner!”
Said Gus to his brother Shannon outside in the courthouse, “Brother, you got to learn to stick with your own blood!”
Shannon didn’t say a word, he knew the truth, and the truth didn’t come out in the courtroom, and he knew who had the truth, and if it did come out, Gus would hate him for it. So Shannon just stood behind other folks and listened, and figured, ‘We’ll see what tomorrow will bring.’

Subchapter
The Secret

Shannon gave Gus $500-dollars, every penny he had, it was a gift given to his wife from her father, now separated from Margaret-Rose. Gus took the money saying to his wife, Mabel, “I hate to take it but I got to plant again, I imagine I’ll remain friends with my brother, even if he likes niggers—he didn’t burn my cornfield up anyhow, I know that! And I’ll owe him heart and soul until I pay him back.”
Then Shannon showed up at the door, hugged his brother, and they were like two happy hogs again.
“I have some work to do with my new man,” said Gus, “Albert Fitzgerald, we’re going to replant as soon as possible.”
And he left the house.
“Come with me,” said Mabel to Shannon, and they went outside, to make sure no one was listening.
“Yes,” said Shannon.
“Otis,” she mentioned, and then paused as if it was Shannon’s turn to speak.
“I’m supposing he’ll be fine, he’s going back to Alabama on the 7:30 p.m., train this evening.”
“You know I’ll owe you body and soul for as long as I live Shannon!” she said.
They walked up to the burnt cornfields, to its edge, it was a warm day, and as Shannon looked over the field, it was as if he had lost his lover, but he always had his friend’s farm to drink in, right next door to Gus’ place.
“You saved our marriage,” she told Shannon, as he stood foot solid looking at her, she was a nice looking woman, more plain than pretty, but she kept herself up, she wasn’t fat or too thin. Then he turned about, saw her farmhouse, perhaps this was the first time he took a good look at it, and the rose bushes, the wooden gate that was closed tight in the front of the house, the creek that run in the back of the house, and to its side, Gus and Mabel had put a lifetime of work into their marriage, and this farm.
It was a land of small farms, and cornfields, it was his world as well as Gus’. It brought him peace and joy. For no reason he could put into words, his mind being too liquefied from booze for deep thinking, yet he knew Mabel and Gus were safe from divorce now. And her dignity untouched and the buzzing wasps from the courthouse were put to rest, no longer capable of stinging his family.
Shannon knew this was the only way to stop sorrow, certainly raving jealous rage, iron like anger, it would have changed Gus forever, had he known the truth…

Shannon remembered his Negro friend was shouting: “Miss Mabel! Miss Mabel! You-is drunk, go-on back to your house befer youall git us in trouble!”
Gus was passed out in his bed, in the house. And Shannon had just taken a bath in the creek. No one seeing him, not even Otis, still waiting for him to show up, and here he was watching it all, pert near all.
He saw Mabel, in a thin, near see through nightgown, more like a slip, laced around the neck, thrashing like, trying to wipe booze off her lips and face and chin, with the palm of her hand.
After it was all over and Mabel no longer on her back, she stood up, shook herself clean, and headed on back to her house.
Shannon, now looking at Otis, “I tole her no, but…” he said to Shannon, cockeyed and loopy, as Shannon just shook his head.
“I heard yaw!” said Shannon, “now will you please just go away,” he told Otis, holding his breath, and Otis did.

Mabel had carried a kerosene lamp (paraffin style house lamp) the kind where the knob protruding to the right adjusts the wick, and hence the flame size—carried it outside with her, and now was carrying it back towards the farmhouse—heading out of the cornfields, it slipped out of her hands, and she fell a few feet from the fire that had now started, it had started almost instantly when she dropped the lantern—the glass had broken, and the fire escaped, and Shannon could do only one of two things: stop the fire by putting it out with his shirt or pants, or put Mabel back into her house, into her bed with Gus before Gus woke up to find out what all the fuss was about, and hope Otis could find his way back to his apartment in the city, in the dark, but he’d have to let the cornfields burn if he did that. And we all know what he did—what he felt was the lesser of the evils. He did not speak again to Otis until that day at court. He had never seen a man, white or black sweat so hard, as Otis did in that courtroom. But then, who wouldn’t under the same circumstances.

5-12-2009 ••

A Countryside Boxer
((A Shannon O’Day Story) (Follow up to “Cornfield Burner!”))

Fall of 1979

Part Two of Four

In the corn growing farm business, Mrs. Mabel O’Day appeared to prosper (even after her husband and brother-in-law, Gus and Shannon O’Day passed on). That being, she soon eliminated all unneeded expenses, and presently she was out of the farming business, with a hired manager, Mr. Fitzgerald to run it. And we farm folk from that area, figured that we knew what the stepping-stone to the rise of her prosperity was due to. On the other hand we believed it was without a doubt—the evil that brought on Gus’ down fall—likened to the evil that brought on his brother Shannon’s down fall (both being the same evil), was due to, pure and simply, abuse of alcohol. All these lost hours and days, and years, have a bearing upon a man’s prosperity—we told one another—despite his hard labor, he needed a level and clear head, a healthy body; this he seldom had, if he ever had.
We saw Mabel O’Day every Sunday—those of us who went to church that is—saw Mabel behind the last pew in the church—fresh as a daisy—younger looking at seventy-nine, than she was looking at forty-nine; having a rosy kind of rich coloring to her face.

Although Mabel was considered born plain, she somehow—now in her golden-years—brought with her that vast, calm impermeable loveliness. Listening with a slight smile to the corners of her mouth as the preacher preached, the collarless young preacher, of our local countryside church, who this one day gave a sermon on how life is but a flicker of light, from a bonfire—which was the Sunday before all this happened.
That’s why we seldom gossiped about her, when we saw her at the North St. Paul restaurants, or country store, or walking the concrete sidewalks of St. Paul.
We all doubted she was ever, had ever been close to anyone but Gus; for to do her justice we simply didn’t gossip about that—save her husband and Shannon O’Day we had enough to talk about. But there was still that vague, hazy, indefinable, if not intangible thing, a white and gray cloud over her head called Otis Mather, from Alabama. Shannon O’Day’s close Negro friend, the very one Gus took no liking for. Tried to prosecute him for burning his cornfields down one year who had gotten drunk in the cornfields and somehow a fire started.
Certainly it was not his fault that the cornfields burnt to smithereens as it had come out in the court hearing, but we in the countryside felt that the idea of a Blackman visiting Mabel regularly, for a number of years now, almost habitually, something was fishy—that is to say, and I hate to say it, perhaps we were all missing something, perchance what it was, was that somewhere along the line, there had been some kind of adultery in the past with Otis and Mabel.
It seemed absurd at first, even perverted: we could have accepted it, had he not returned to making it more obvious, if not seemingly natural to do so, and now it seemed more logical to think so.
We didn’t try to guess or know her thoughts—not at all, those of us who saw her gaiety when with Otis, walking in the parks, sitting on the benches so close to one another, you couldn’t put an acorn between their thighs, and for hours on end—; hence, she was no longer fooling anyone. We simply said, “She’s not the woman she used to be,” whatever kind of woman or wife she was; now we really didn’t know. For here was a Negro man, with the deceased husband’s wife; a close and dear friend of ours, one of us you might say, and Otis an outsider and a nigger to boot. It was hard for us to make sense of.

Otis was very tall and very black, also very successful, who was from Alabama, who had moved on up to Minnesota a few times, and now it seemed he was more in Minnesota than Alabama, and perhaps thinking of staying on a long term basses in Minnesota, or perhaps even moving to Minnesota on a permanent bases and getting hitched with Mabel. He had never been married.
One afternoon he had just finished raking the front lawn at Mabel’s farm house, and started burning the fall leaves. He was smoking his corncob pipe. The very one Shannon O’Day had given him, when suddenly appeared a black sedan (Otis hadn’t notice the car), but he did the fellow walking towards him. The smell of the fire was rich, fresh and clean and the night part of twilight had just smothered the day part—and there was tranquility in the atmosphere, even the birds seemed to mellow down for the change over of day to night, and the rapid waters from the creek even reduced in sound.
The man approaching had no particular age, heavy boned and broad shoulders, big hands, boxer hands, a broken nose, and a cauliflower ear, a dark shirt on, and a black hat. His face was square and rough looking, he needed a shave. His face looked flat, to absolutely empty. His eyes bloodshot and he staggered just a slight. He seemed lipless, chewing tobacco. He looked up at Otis, about three inches—
“How much did the pipe cost you?” he asked.
“Nothing, it was a gift, why?” asked Otis.
“It must weight a ton for an old man like you to hold onto for any length of time?”
“It’s just a corncob pipe, it don’t weigh nothing!” Otis remarked.
“If it doesn’t give it here, I’ve never smoked a nigger’s corncob pipe before!” the stranger told Otis.
Otis simply continued to look down at the stranger, still holding onto his pipe, then he heard an excruciating sound as if a bone, or bones cracked, a snap here and there, then Otis spit up and out of his mouth blood (it more like poured out), and with a half turn to his right—as the stranger now was walking back to his car, his back to Otis, never once looking back, he knew the damage he had done—Otis having been hit as if by an iron hammer, wobbled, his jaw and neck were broken, he fell onto the ground like boiler room explosion; and expired.

No: 516 (11-16-2009)

The Black Sedan

1981

Part Three of Four

After Otis’ death Mabel built this invisible stone wall that seemed to encircle her—slowly. But then it is always strange to what a simply community of farmers—their methods—what they will resort to in order to punish someone—anyone, dissimilar to them. It was as if there was some unseen force that seeped into the atmosphere and bombarded her; disabling her own level-headedness in business, as if she was working against her better judgment, the very thing that brought her, her prosperity. She fired Mr. Fitzgerald, the very one person, man that had he not picked up where Gus (her late husband) and Mabel herself left off and carried pert near the farm on his own, there would not have been a farm to farm. If anything, he showed high vision, and confidence and courage, where there was none to be found.
Her dream at first—after Gus’ death, and her brother-in-law’s death, Shannon O’Day—was not so high, it was no higher than a casual –common-day laborer’s. Just enough to get by on, eat, and pay for the gas to heat the farmhouse, and buy some feed for the chickens, and seed to plant with; because she didn’t hire Mr. Fitzgerald until the first months of 1968, after Shannon had died.
“She almost came to the point back in the late ‘60s, where she had to sell the farm,” I remember the sheriff had said that, he also told us folks she hadn’t paid her taxes, property taxes going on seven-years. And then we all said, “That damn midnight black nigger—Otis,” and then the last straw was seeing the nigger raking her leaves in the front yard, right out in the open for everyone to see, he must had been gloating, I mean what was next—god forbid!
And so Truman Quinn, got his son, Joe Quinn, the ex boxer, that couldn’t even read an 8th grade text book or the time on a clock properly, to throw a few punches his way. Oh, well, we never believed Otis would get killed over it all, our intentions were to intimidate him, drive him back to where he came from, Alabama. So when Joe hit him, Otis’ head spun to the right, like a dial flying off a speedometer, out of control—something snapped, and then cracked, Joe had broken his jaw and neck—Joe then turned about, came back to the car, we all left Otis there, right where he lay, all four of us in that black sedan of Finley’s, not even willing to see how he was, nor call an ambulance, or to notify his next of kin, we believed they lived in Alabama, and we didn’t want to become a suspect. Plus, it was a cold fall evening, we all wanted to get home, get settled in for the night.
We all assumed, Mrs. O’Day must have dragged that loose and heavy black body, inch by inch, into her home, hoping he would open those dark eyes, and so did the sheriff.
“What in the hell happened?” asked he Sheriff to Mabel.
“I don’t know. I’m just telling you I found him this way, I just don’t know,” and she didn’t know, only four people knew, and three were in the car at the time, the sedan, the black sedan of Finley’s, and the other, the forth one was Joe, and had Otis lived, oh well, why speculate.
She had fired Mr. Fitzgerald, so he couldn’t say a word on the matter, and we four, shut-up about it—the burden was heavy enough, without projecting. Although we were afraid Joe would get drunk and spill the beans, start whispering something out loud about it, some night, and that something would float over to the sheriff’s office, and who knows where else, but it didn’t.
“You mean—” said the sheriff, “that as far as you know, you don’t know anything about this?”
She just nodded her head up and down, holding back, a flood of tears, so the sheriff said.
Up to that night I slept well, and so did Truman, and Joe and our Lawyer friend, George Finley Jr. (the son to the late Judge Finley). We all had been catching our forty winks or so—but now things appeared to be in disarray, you can bet I never slept a whole night through that year of 1979, I always felt I was on a pile of coals, hot coals.
In time we all did—or was able to—shut our eyes and mind to the issue of Otis’ death, as if we had washed our washtubs with Spick and Span (dirt free), and now we could all take a clean bath…
But that disappeared after Mabel died in 1981, at the age of eighty-one years old. She had done exactly what she had done a few decades previously, that being, when she dropped the lamp in the cornfields and burnt them all up; the very ones Otis got blamed for. She had fallen and smashed it on the floor this time, and the house went ablaze. She simply retired into a dim corner of the house, behind some of the junk in the pantry: junk Gus had left piled up before he passed on. Things for the car like bolts, and fitting, and so forth. She just kneeled there, touching those pieces as if sorting them out until the smoke and fire covered her like a foot inside a shoe, removing the last of life from her, tossing it—like a kick from a mule behind her, as if she never was.
That’s the way we all figured it was anyways. That’s how the sheriff saw it likewise. When he looking down on her, after the fire settled, chewing his tobacco as usual, checking his timepiece out as usual, and making out his report as required, the report read “No evidence of foul play,” likened to the report he made out pertaining to Otis Mather’s death.

No: 517 (11-17-2009)

“The Corncob Pipe.”
Winter of 1982

(Part Four of Four)

Joe Quinn stood there with his huge broad, hulk of a body, with his hard square large fists.
“What are you up to?” asked Sheriff Donavan.
“Paw left up in the night, gone fishing I suppose, and it got cold here in the house, and things so quiet, I couldn’t sleep none last night. I spent the whole night trying to fix this here boiler Sheriff, what brings you out this way?”
“Can’t get enough steam in that big old boiler haw?” remarked the Sheriff.
“By the time I shut my eyes last night I could hear the steam shutoff, and I woke up myself chilling like a freezing pigeon. Then after a spell, I couldn’t sleep again.”
“Did you relight that pilot-light underneath the boiler?” Asked the sheriff (smoking a corncob pipe that looked as if it was the very one old Otis Wilde Mather had on the night he was beat to death, that appeared to catch the eye of Joe.
Joe stepped back into a dim lit corner of the basement where the boiler was, where the sheriff had seen him through a window of the basement where a light was on—he came to pay them a visit, was hoping to find Otis alone, knowing these winter months his pa did a lot of night and early morning fishing on the frozen lakes (there in Minnesota), he’d drill a hole in the ice, sit in his icehouse, and drink his beer, fish with his friends, and to him that was heaven on earth.
The Sheriff had simply opened up the outside door, walked into the house, and down the steps to the basement where Joe was (kind of inviting himself in, knowing they usually didn’t keep the doors locked there in the countryside).
“Boy, your pa’s got a lot of junk down here, but I suppose one accumulates it after a life time of miscellaneous collecting everything and thinking one day you’ll going to use it (there were valves and rods and so forth, piled here and there).”
Then the sheriff kneeled down to check the pilot-light, a piece of round metal (like a small cylinder) with a hole in its center, which lit the boiler, and its heating pipes above it, and he lit it, then saw the water gauge to the boiler, a glass flask, brass on the top and bottom, showing the water level, which was perhaps less then ten-percent filled, meaning the boiler was per near dry.
“You’re going to blow this boiler sky high,” said the sheriff, if you don’t refill it with water, cold water, not hot water—hot water will make it crack in this cold. The pilot’s lit now. Once it’s filled gradually heat it, do you understand Joe?”
Joe didn’t want to wait—he just wanted to turn the attached knobs on the water pipes to the boiler, to get it going, operating. Then the sheriff told Joe, “That’s what you got to do, so are you going to fill this thing properly, or blow us up to kingdom come?”
Joe glanced once more at the boiler, then opened its iron trap door, into its round like enclosure, then spat on it, to see if it was hot, and of course it wasn’t hot. Then he glanced again at the corncob pipe, “That corncob pipe sure looks like I saw it before,” remarked Joe, with a frown, “didn’t it belong to that there Negro from Alabama?”
“You mean Otis Wilde Mather?”
“I tends to my own business, I don’t know a thing about what happened to him—ain’t no trouble of mine.”
The sheriff stood there eagle-eyed, chewing his tobacco, and looking at his watch, “Tell me what you know about the unlawful death of Otis Wilde Matter? I’m just trying to get enough facts so I can close this –reopened case, his family from Ozark, Alabama wants a new, and improved investigation, they said the last one was the worse one they had ever heard of—I mean read. And to be honest, we didn’t do much look into.”

Joe had waited until the sheriff had finished, then said—blinking his eyes slowly, and taking in a deep breath—surprisingly said, “Okay, okay, just fix the boiler before paw comes home, he’ll have a fit.”
But the sheriff had already started filling the boiler with water—having had already connected a hose attached to one of the pipes to the boiler, and to the sick, turning on the water, opening up the valves to the boiler, and watched the water level in the glass tube rise, filling the boiler up to a half-inch below the top, allowing a free flow of water throughout the boiler. Then he turned the water off, by turning the two knobs counterclockwise, tightening up the valves, so the water would not drain back out.
“What then?” the Sheriff said.
Joe didn’t answer. He stood large and faceless, too quite, a little cold.
“Yes, yes,” Joe said, “we did it. I hit him, paw told me to scare him, so I hit him, and I guess I hit him too hard.”
Now the sheriff turned on the furnace and it lit up boldly.
“You got anything else to say on the matter?” asked the sheriff.
“No,” said Joe, relieved.
“You do as I say, unless you want to spend the rest of your life in jail (Joe nodded his head up and down, indicating he understood; he was tired of it).
“Who else was in that black sedan of Finley’s, Mabel O’Day’s neighbor said she saw a black sedan that night parked out by the fence, behind that large old oak tree, suspicious like, but hadn’t come forward with the information, knowing it was old Judge Finley’s son’s car?”
Grimly Joe named all four men in the black sedan, to include his self.

No: 517 (11-18-2009)

Dickey’s Diner

2009-10-08T13:34:00.001-07:00

(A Shannon O’Day Story)

For those who have read the ongoing stories of Shannon O’Day (in the author’s previous books), this here sketch, is how he came to become friends at Dickey’s Diner, which was hardly mentioned (somewhat of an interlude between the previous stories)…; also it is an overall sketch of many
parts of his life; conceivably you could call it a synopsis…
in addition the reader will get a new happening
thus far untold of Shannon’s working days
at the foundry (in part two
of these two sketches)

(Part one, is an overview; part two, is a new sketch)

Part One of Two

Narrated by: Clayton Claymore Sycamore
((Observer at Dickey’s Diner, partisan and Journalist for a local periodical) (1968))

Mr. Sycamore is sitting at the diner counter talking to folks to his right and left, and a new cook, an assistant to Old Josh…Clayton is also talking to him, as he is cooking their food, as is a waitress nearby listening as she stands ready to serve them once the young cook puts the food on a plates, as Clayton C. Sycamore tells the life, and times or what he knows about them of Shannon O’Day, who had did a year earlier…

So when we first saw Shannon O’Day walking into the diner giving off that rough, independent, worn solidarity look, impression as if in another minute our flesh itself would burn off through our garments—looking more cleaver than a cobra, or even the devil himself—in some kind of disorderly-haste, he—O’Day—didn’t even pay no mind to us, not one iota, folks staring at him, it seemed to us we were watching fate of which both he and us in the diner were meat to meet, and perchance be future victims. It was our first time we laid eyes on each other. We didn’t need to, and I suppose for some of us, we didn’t want to. We assumed of course he was an unregenerate, he’d simply slip out of the diner after he ate, the same way he appeared to have slipped in—but we were not sure of that either. By some devious charm or method he got to know us all quite well—as if he had laid in ambush, just to get to know us, find a new hangout, because more than just he had won, been excepted, thus our new decade, was set. But not solely with him, on the contrary, we were all closer to each other (or in time would be, because of him).
We didn’t ask how it came about, we simple were all allies—in due time that is, his confidents, you could say. Our whole diner (Dickey’s Diner, here in St. Paul, Minnesota) was accessory to that drunk and cuckold—all though we had no proof he was a husband of an unfaithful wife (gossip perhaps feeds the imagination to no bounds, and in our case it did), he simply was never home much, so we assumed so. He was amicable with us; that is, when he was not under the influence of alcohol (though it was hard for us to decipher, he drank from sunrise to sunset).
We were not against Mrs. O’Day, we didn’t even know her, and it was perhaps we had not yet read, or even seen the whole picture. We were never in favor of infidelity, wrongdoing: we simply liked Shannon O’Day and heard about his wife (although I think he had three in sum total, this was his first wife I’m talking about), you see, they drank a lot in the cornfields together, then one summer morning, before he woke up in those cornfields, she had already up and left him, just like that, for what most of us called ‘ordained fate.’ Luckily, the diner didn’t supply their battleground (but for all intent and purposes, there was no battle, as I said, she just up and left, just like that; one morning there simply was no more of her).
Even Mr. Ingway (who works for the foundry, a friend of Shannon’s and who ate here at the diner), and old Josh, the night cook at the diner now, and even that young lad who sings those Ricky Nelson songs at night here in the diner, who sits in the back in the corner, we all said to the rest of the folks here at the diner—in one way or another back then, ‘This diner isn’t that big. Shannon he’ll come back he just went to Erie to get a breath of fresh air. He doesn’t want to stay there, what for, nothing there worth staying for…!”
Then we learned he was back in town.

Shannon got a job at the foundry a while back, for a while, and somewhere along the line, he made friends with that negro from down south, I think Ozark, Alabama, his brother Gus, never took a liking for him, said once, “That damn nigger burned my cornfields…!” but Shannon whispered to Josh on one occasion, “It Aint so, he’s got it all wrong, but I can’t tell you the truth, so don’t be judging the wrong man for the wrong crime!”
But he never was all that serious about anything after he came back from the war, the Great War —I hear tell—, he was a hero of sorts, that’s when his drinking went from moderate to chronic. Never very serious, not any connections between his loves, life and long friends, only liberty to do as he wanted to do, when he wanted to do it.
I don’t suppose even he knew where his life would end up, where he was headed. He retired before he even began any long term employment. And then he died in those cornfields he so adored—in his late 60s, out by his brother’s farm, after his brother had died a decade earlier. He even talked to us as those cornfields being a most pleasant idea for drinking and conversation.
“Why not?” He’d say to us.
But he’d stay out all night drinking, until he passed out in those cornfields, and we all had regular jobs.

A Third Person Narration

Part Two of Two

At the Diner Counter

Said the partisan to the left side of Clayton Claymore Sycamore, Henry Aldrich, sitting at the diner counter:
“Tell us something nobody knows, I heard about this guy and that’s kind of old news?”
“That’s what…” said Clayton?
“Sir,” he said, “old news.”
“Why not!” said Clayton, looking about the diner to see if any old timers, partisans new Shannon well, were around—not wanting to start trouble, or alleged gossip.
At first he laughed, then he looked at the young cook, he was just finishing up frying his hamburger.
“At the foundry, where Shannon worked a short while, he was the low last man in the hierarchy, and he was drinking a lot in those days, and he was not happy with his second marriage, marriage, sentimentalized by a few as a hero of lost gallantry, now lost and irrevocable tragedy, if not misfortune. This all lead to what he’d do, and no one but a few would find out.”
“Here’s your hamburger sir,” said the young cook, whipping his hands on his apron, ready to mix some pancake blend, said, “I think I heard that story too.”
“He,” Mr. Sycamore said, “he hid the iron, and copper and brass all right, where no one could find it. Not even Ingway could find it. Because it wasn’t where he thought Shannon put it, said he had put it, because after Shannon told Ingway he took it, he shortly after that, was accused of taking it, Ingway had told the foreman, but Shannon had already moved it, denied it; because Shannon was no match for wasting time when it came to certain things, and he wanted drinking money.”
And Ingway said to Shannon, “What did you do with it?”
That was when Ingway let it go…,” because Shannon said he sold it, but he didn’t, not yet anyhow.
“You,” said Ingway to Shannon, “made me look stupid in front of my boss!”
“I hope so,” he remarked.
It was nearing twilight, when he got off for a break, carrying his lunch pail to make it look proper, he sat near the shower room eating, because Ingway saw him. Well, Shannon told me, “Me and that old Indian, called Cochise, for short, not sure what his real name was, we threw it out the back window by the shower, and picked it up after our shift, no one being the wiser. And we went that evening, he and I out to my brother’s cornfields, and drank the weekend away.”
Though by the time it got dark, and there was no light to the side of the shower room, outside, so it was dark enough for somebody, I suppose anybody to walk about and take the items thrown out the window, put into three or four sacks, and sell the next morning at the junkyard, but he even had that figured out, he called Jefferson Thomas, the owner of the junkyard off Mississippi Street, to keep the place open, and they weighed the items, and he had brought near a half ton of iron, brass and copper to him.

No: 482 (September 30, 2009) •• Part one of Two “The Diner”
No: 483 (October, 1, 200) • • Part Two of Two “At the Diner Counter”

The Circular Years

2009-08-26T14:57:00.000-07:00

((Shannon O’Day’s Youthful Years in Sketches) (1900-1909))

There have been three books written on Shannon O’Day and some independent sketches, this is one of those sketches, for the curious reader who wishes to know more about Shannon’s earlier years especial how he came about for the liking of his most precious substance—booze!

Sketch One

The World According to Shannon O’ Day

The world, which grownups call civilization, or the city or county or country, is composed of a hazy, perhaps never-ending flow of thoughts, and to an eight-year old boy, I could say any boy, with a vast accumulation of energy, but in this case, that is, in particular, Shannon O’Day’s case, he fits the bill quite well.
They, Shannon’s nuclear family, consisted of his brother, mother and father, and they lived in the upper apartments, near the Capitol, of the inner city of St. Paul, Minnesota, between 1900 and 1909.
They only had one lamp for light, sloping crossways, giving light circular throughout the one big room they had. Although the kitchen was sectioned off, the bathroom was in the hallway, on each of the three floors. The building was old—even in 1900—an old wooden structure, perhaps built in the late 1870s.
Like all boys of his age, at his time and place in history, he wanted to travel, journey in search of adventure, perhaps to a war, yet his eyes could scarcely decipher what life was all about. He saw his father almost from birth—with his drinking daily, preparing to die daily, that is to say, coughing up blood, and hangovers, and bloodshot eyes, and reeking with booze out of his pores. Once out of madness, he nearly hurled him over the banister, from their third floor apartment. He wasn’t corrupt, just kind of disband, melted down you might say, with the winds of booze, which often swept his mind, engendered, stimulated his second self, his death’s second self, the one waiting for him, with his demons.
But Shannon, of Irish stock, had that intuition (or learned it mighty quick), that near second insight I might say, perhaps that the Druids had or Celts had; he also had that mental book, cyclical book of the devil’s, that he could see into—per near read, so Shannon knew when his father was possessed and when he wasn’t. This would suffice for his survival through those trying years.
These were the circular years for him, because he seemed to be going always in circles, especial with his father, things seldom changed, that is to say, he got drunk, they ate very little, except when their mother brought home groceries because she did some sewing for a neighbor, or cleaned a house, and so forth.

No reasonable mind can doubt this truth, whose instantaneous result would show up in the future—hence, thereafter, time without end—the curse of the world would befall him; and the theory holds true I believe, that when a boy is weaned on milk, he will grow strong boned, when he is weaned on milk and booze, he will perhaps grow strong, but also acquire a taste, a liking for the cursed substance called booze. He will—in time, have a body-chemistry change over, or if his genetic structure is likened to his father from day one, this imperfect substance, maliciously will take a voyage throughout his system, and seat itself at the helm of his being—near his soul, and forevermore, make him want more, make him come back for more, and Shannon’s father, was the organic ladder for Shannon’s demise with alcoholism, as well as his own, and the weakening of the heart of Shannon’s older brother Gus, I do believe.
It is enough to compare a drunk with a drunk, the rude unsteady hands of Shannon’s father would bring—or better put—permitted the formulation of Shannon’s future addiction to alcohol, where there would be no satisfactory resolution for him to stop its usage. This formless substance, with its chaotic nature made his father insensitive at times, and thus, would form a faithful, and catalogued character, and friend to and for Shannon.

No: 455 (8-25-2009)

The Circular Years
((Shannon O’Day’s Youthful Years in Sketches) (1900-1909))

Sketch Two

“Implacable Death”

I went to my bed, flopped down on top of my iron framed bed—I had already closed the curtains around the bed, nobody was home, just me. And there I lay on my back. The never changing world circled around me, as did the room. Everything was hazy, it was near twilight, the sun in the sky appeared to be hung onto a rope like a shadow, or perhaps it was like a cloud, it was by and large, an incredible day, a day without end, many omens, and I felt my pitiless death surround me. In spite of having been a child of eight-years old, my grandfather had died of alcoholism, and my father was on his way to such a death, and now me, at eight-years old, I was in the symmetrical gardens of the dying, or so I felt, my father allowed me enter without cost, perhaps more at coheres me to enter, to drink four-shots of 140-proof vodka—was his way of saying: welcome to the family curse.
“Was I to die now?” I asked myself.
I looked in the window behind me, it was likened to a mirror, I saw my reflection, in the midst of it all, I hated looking at myself, nearly in terror—I had a long looking horse-face.
“How does one put an end to these wandering illusions?” I asked myself, but of course, in simpler terms. Then got thinking, my father lived with these on a daily bases—by gosh, what a life.
I knew the fast moving thoughts and visions I was having were doubtless due to the alcohol, four shots in a row—it per near poisoned my system, saturated my blood stream. A bird flew across the window, unthinkingly I turned my head and waited for it to return, it never did. I had even noticed as I tried to talk to myself, my human voice weakened. I had tried to tell dad “No more…!” but he said, “Grow up you little twerp!”
And so I had two more shots, four all together. Back then, back when I was just a youngster, nothing I said reached the ear of my father; a man who is sitting in his own infinitely senseless, silence—somewhere I would expect, wanting, waiting but not getting another drink of booze, cause he’s long gone.

The Lamp and a Timorous Boy

The lamp lit the room, and after I sobered up I got thinking, no more faces remained or shadows. They had all gone a good distance away, without waiting for my head to produce questions and answers, there I laid in bed thinking….

I was a timorous boy, to say the least. I can say it now, but wouldn’t have back then, now that I have entered—and seem to be in the middle of (looking back), entered I say, into carrying out a life of drinking, that alcohol had degraded me by making me become shy. Furthermore, it made me an over unassuming man—, as a boy, I took leave of myself, went looking around for pa’s booze, sneaked it, quiet like, even took a few dollars out of his pocket when he was passed-out, and bought corn whiskey with it. The truth is that, I felt too often, and perhaps most often, too visible and vulnerable. But vainly, I kept my drinking under some kind of control during those youthful years.
At age ten, I had already told myself happiness had ended for my youth, no accident of fate. Somehow I thought in my head, or foresaw, that humanity had two regions that he could dwell in happily, one being a soldier, the other a bandit. On the other hand, a lifetime job seemed to me, whosoever would undertake it that is—it would impose upon him a future as atrocious as trying to find your way through a labyrinth. So I hoped and prayed there would be a big war, and there was, they called it, The Great War, and I told myself that was my cup of tea. For as I grew older, I drank more, and the more I drank the more the eyes of men looked dead to me. Anyhow, so war was my forte for when I’d grow up.

A Blurred Young Soldier’s Vision

Under the trees of our apartment building’s backyard, I meditated on this loss of youth I felt surrounded me one summer afternoon when I was ten-years old, ready to go and move in with our Uncle Hawk, and perhaps try to figure out the plan mankind had for an extended life for a human being, for a labyrinth that produced an everyday job for every solid citizen, in the country. I imagined it was under the control of some secret society, on top of some far-off mountain, and that they could escape if need be by some underground tunnel beneath the mountain that lead into the sea, and came up and out, somewhere else right out of a river, what a thought, and want a maze, growing out of a ten-year old mind. Yes I was lost in these imaginary illusions, for an undetermined period of time, youthful time. By observing my father, I got the impression men might be enemies of other men, depending on the simple differing of opinions they shared. But all men seemed to share the same understanding, and loyalty to the one country they lived in, perhaps that is why I figured being a soldier inspired me—filled my mediating days back then. I could see an avenue of escape, a strange destiny and course. Now looking back, I know the blood and tears that are required for a war, the madness, the shapeless mass of contradictory words that float across oceans and continents and other large land masses.

No: 456 (8-25-2009)

Yesterday

2009-08-05T12:15:00.000-07:00

(A Shannon O’Day Story)

Gus O’Day had not always been a Minnesota corn farmer. But the time when he had not been, his neighbors, or even his brother Shannon could not remember, it was more than forty-five years ago, and it was such a short period of time in his life that only the old men at the County Old Folks Farm could recall it, and to be quite honest, in 1956 (several months before he’d die of a heart attack), it was hard for them to even recall it, and most of them did not, because in that time he was not yet even twenty-years old.
He was a young man then, working at a pawnshop (His Uncle Hawk Gordon O’Day owned it, down on Wabasha Street by the Lyceum Movie Theatre, across the street from the World Theatre. Hawk Gordon was a man of a small figure, with red hair, always having greasy looking hands and shirt and face, wiping his hands constantly onto the back of his trousers—), he worked there at his mother’s request and done so voluntarily when asked, he even tried to persuade his mother (Ella Teresa Cotton O’Day) to let him do it alone, which she refused because after his father departed (dropped them off there), left them to go to who-knows-where, he knew this part of his life—with his younger brother but ten-years—was a mere formally, and a fragment in the span of a life time.
So Gus did what he felt he had to do. Years after (after the death of his mother, and his marriage to Mabel Foote, and taking in his younger brother, and buying his farm), years after that, he still said it was the only thing he could have done, or do; that is, to put up with the situation, and the drunkenness of his uncle in which he was convinced he was taking advantage of his mother, of which she insisted he remain neutral, because he provided a backroom for them to live in, and food—room and board.
Actually he did not overlook it, several months after his mother had passed on—that following winter, having saved enough money in the past two years for a down payment on a small farm, he bought it, and left that part of St. Paul, and moved twenty-miles outside of the city in what was then a remote section of the outskirts. He left his uncle with a taste of his fists, the night he left, and just like they had appeared one night from nowhere, he left the whiskey soaked uncle, the sole owner—promptly, and dignified, with a bill of sale for the farm in his pants pocket and his name signed to it.

The following morning, Gus woke Shannon and Mabel up, sat in the kitchen, at their square wooden table, and Gus handed them a butcher’s knife, and said, “I killed Uncle Hawk Gordon, five hours ago.”
Mabel half awake, who had been sitting drinking coffee at the square wooden table first, before Gus arrived, perhaps had been sitting there for those hours Gus had been missing from the bedroom, whose to say, looked at the nine-inch knife, looked it over, as Gus had swayed—unnoticeable swayed it to and fro: she looked at that knife in his hands with a flat affect, “Let’s not jump to conclusions it appears no one took you into consideration yet.” And with the morning paper to prove it, she looked high and low, page after page, turned on the radio, station to station, end to end, not a word of the murder, and with that she calmed her husband down, claiming the wrong he did was so far undetected on his part, and perhaps better left alone.
I can remember the odd and surprised look that Shannon had on his face. I grabbed the evidence, and it did not take but ten-minutes to dispose of it into the forty-foot well outside near the creek.
“We’re farmers now,” Mabel said, “not storekeepers anymore.” And it would have seemed to an onlooker she had become unshakable to the incident. Gus’ voice was near silent, almost numb, she added, “There’s not going to be any court-trial over that gray and redheaded whiskey drinking pervert!” She insisted.
Only those words were harsher than the words she’d use in 1956. But even then, she’d confess, he got what he deserved. That the justice system would not consider the torment he caused his fellow man, and Gus’ mother, you’d have to be rich, or famous, or know someone—someone who could understand, and empathize, and someone who could do something about such a person, and there was no one out there like that, not even Judge Finley would have protected Gus.
“We all know in this country,” she said back then, “we all know from birth to death that justice—if you want to call it that, demands the culprit be given his rights over the victim, and it is seldom the everlasting price, mentally if not physically—or ever would be considered by the injustice system presently in place.” And as far as she could see, Uncle Hawk had only his own life to pay for the life he tormented, thus, his death, spares those who would have come before him, had he not died.

“I had felt at the time I had to take Uncle Hawk Gordon’s life from him in order to stop him from using people the way he used us!” said Gus. “I didn’t know back then it would follow me to my grave. And that is what I am talking about—somewhat talking about, not about a dead man per se, that died forty-years ago, or his character per se, nor his morality or the sexual acts he made my mother perform, that I saw from the keyhole, but that she was defenseless and he justified it in forcing the issue with our survival, and basing it on her performance. Of course, he never knew this, he slept sound with his bottle of whiskey in his hands each night, as he did when I killed him. Perhaps he still has that bottle in his grave.”
“Yes,” said Mabel, “I’ve tried to tell you this for years, she had no choice in the matter that she was just trying to do the best she could do, with what she had at the time, under the trying circumstances she found herself in. And your instincts and beliefs made his death inevitable, and caused no one any misery, and perhaps better for humanity’s sake.”

Gus had been sitting at the same kitchen table, in the same room he had sat in forty-years ago, where his brother Shannon had sat as a boy…took in that deep breath of disbelief, and everything was so quiet you could only hear the clock ticking on the wall, that seemed to go throughout the room, as if in a bell tower.
“Well Gus,” said his wife, “at least after forty-some years you’ve stopped talking about it, and now at sixty-six it surfaces.”
“That’s right,” Gus said, then corrected himself, “I thought about it everyday of my life, every time I look at that wall, I even replaced the clock so I’d not have to hear the ticking.”
His eyes no longer bright, his face thin, his hair starting to whiten, his heart weakened, “Come here,” said Mabel. “I want you over here for a moment. Ask your brother to come over, you’re feeling way down, over that perverted uncle of yours. Shannon seems to perk you up!”

They were outside now, standing on the wooden stairs, Gus stepped halfway down, his hand on his wife’s shoulder to keep his balance, his eyes half shut too weak to keep them open any wider.
“Justice was accomplished for once, if you can’t bear looking at it that way, don’t look at it at all,” Mabel said.
“Yes,” said Gus.
“Then what do you want?” or expect?”
“I can’t help it,” Gus said, and he couldn’t. Yet for him it was like it happened yesterday, not forty-years ago. Then he heard a voice, it was Shannon’s, “Stop! Over hear!” And Gus looked to the right hand side of him. He could hardly see Shannon. There he stood, benting over the railing, much older looking than he was, barefoot on his porch steps, with a haunting and fierce look on his face; his skin pale, like buttermilk; his hands shaking, as if having palsy of age.
“Come,” said Shannon “I got some homemade corn whisky, let’s sit in the cornfields and get drunk!”
“Yup!” he agreed “let’s get out of here and get off these porch steps, let’s go!” And they did.
His eyes were now eager, content and more than willing to let the dead bury the dead, at least until tomorrow, which today would be yesterday, after they finished that bottle of corn liquor.

No: 449 8-5-2009.. Independent of any other stories of Shannon O’Day

Burying Shannon O'Day (a short story)

2009-06-11T22:54:00.000-07:00

Burying Shannon O’Day
(A Shannon O’Day and Otis Wilde Mather Story)

Chapter One
The Meeting

“All right,” Otis Wilde Mather says. “Then I will pay for his funeral, and his headstone, since no one else will—”
“Gentlemen and Ladies,” said the lawyer, Miles C. Hoffman, and the young one, Annabelle Henry the first one standing up and sternly saying and near tears, “Can’t you all see, Mr. Shannon O’Day was a part of our lives, we all need to make him a big gravestone, not just leaving it up to Otis, because Otis is rich and handsome and kind, and was a close friend to Shannon.
“I’ve already thought of that too,” said Poggi Ingway, a dear friend who had worked at a foundry with him, and even Maribel Adams, who had married Shannon for a season, and lost him to Annabelle, and now was married to Earnest French, making her new name Maribel French, who had traveled all the way from San Francisco to Minnesota to attend Shannon’s funeral, “I feel,” she said, “he belongs to all of us, let’s build a mausoleum, and make it look like a cornfield, because he liked to drink in those damn fields all the time.” (And she chuckled.)
“He’s a war veteran,” says judge Finley, now in his eighties “no need for this meeting to see who’s going to bury the drunk, let’s just have a funeral and a wake and say our goodbyes, the Army provides a wooden coffin, and a hundred dollars I hear.”
Said the Lawyer, “He fought with the French, not the US Military, we’d have to contact them, see what their rules are concerning this matter of payment.”
“Hum…mmm” said the judge.
“Wait, wait,” said Gus’ wife Mabel, “Youall came to my husband’s funeral and there was no fuss about folks putting in fer his headstone so we should jest take up a collection now fer Shannon see what we all can get.”
Old Josh, Zam-Zam and Jake from ‘Dickey’s Diner,’ were also on hand, along with J.R. Ritt from the bank, the owner, he knew Gus better than Shannon, and had a eye for Mabel, always had an eye for Mabel, went to High School with her, fancied her then, and now. I suppose, and I’m sure she supposed, it was a chance for both to meet again; they were standing by one another.
“But there isn’t’ any crime if Otis wants to put the bulk of the proceeds in since he’s a rich—(and he was going to say nigger, but the Lawyer, held his tongue and said) black gentleman.”
As everyone looked at everyone else, like big bass fish, with bulging eyes, nobody paid any attention to no-how to anybody, until Annabelle said, “Well, damn it, will someone speak up!”
“Then what the hell do you want from each one of us, someone take charge here—please!” said Judge Finley.
The Lawyer Miles sitting there calm and quiet, with his face paper white and stiff; and it had seemed to Annabelle, he hadn’t learned much how to speak up and fight, timid as a hermit mouse.
“I was more Gus’ friend than Shannon’s,” said the judge, in a whisper, waiting for someone to make a rule on the amount of money needed, but it was obvious, nobody knew what they needed and wanted, and Shannon’s body needed to be buried, and that was what they came there for, to settle just that, by a passel of amateurs who knew not how to go about having a board meeting, or confronting issues, in a professional way, aimed at trying to simply bury someone, somehow, more now than then.
Poggi was somewhere in the group, and stood up and looked out at the others, “Gertrude, is Gertrude here?” (one of his five wives), and she was there standing in the archway of the door that lead into the kitchen from a hallway, with her daughter, Cantina.
“Yes, Poggi, I’m here, why?” she asked.
“I suppose we’ll have to have your daughter’s signature on everything, she’s the closest thing Shannon had to anyone being legal over him. And I guess you’ve heard as much as we have here, as any one on recommendations, so perhaps you can give a few?”
“Yes: all right, suppose everyone come back out here to Gus’ farm tomorrow and bring what money they can, and my daughter and I will see how much it cost to make him into ashes, and buy him inside a urn and if you all want him to have cornfields, I’ll have the urn designer, that is, do a quick paint job on it.”
Said Judge Finley, “We’ll hold the meeting out here at Mabel’s farm tomorrow then, Gus would like that, and I hear Sally-Ann and Margaret-Rose will be in town tomorrow, Shannon’s other wives, so perhaps the piggy-bank will have more money in it for his funeral. Or his wake or those cornfields Gertrude was talking about.”
Then they all got up to leave, some laughing and talking and joking, back and forth, Annabelle enjoying Otis’ company; Judge Finley looking at Otis, as if he was the Chief Head Master of the Minnesota KKK: old judge Finley had always treated Otis as if he was a foreigner, not even paying no attention to the others, standing by him, just staring at Annabelle and Otis, who became a millionaire in the meat market business, between Minnesota and Alabama, in the past twenty-years or so with the $500-dollars Shannon had won off a racehorse, in the 1940s. And J.R. Ritt, looking at Mabel as if he wanted to restart those old flames from his high school days.
“Now are you satisfied?” said Gertrude, to Poggi. As if to say, now you can leave me alone. She had stood in the archway of the door not wanting to be recognize, who she was—she did not come burrowing through and up to the meeting, relishing the fact she had to take on the coordinating of her ex-husband’s funeral, she had been in Chicago, all this time, just doing normal business until someone said Shannon’s lights went out, she was setting alone in a small apartment, how does a woman say it, inviting her soul to keep her company. It was really simple a time for her to see her daughter, and since it was a grieving time for her, she wanted to be by her. She, herself, had already done all the grieving she was going to do over that man.

Chapter Two
Gertrude’s Testimony

To be frank, and down right honest, Gertrude, wanted to go back to Chicago that very night, she did not want to attend the meeting tomorrow, and she told Cantina that, in so many words, and it didn’t seem Cantina needed her anyhow.
She was capable, but that wasn’t it, she was frail, as if her bones and flesh became fragile and her eyes seemed sleepless, and her mind seemed as if she could not dream anymore, she told her daughter, and that she was relearning these things since she left her father (and her ex-husband),
“Your father meant well, he always was a laugh, and we drank ourselves sick and silly, and I drank with him knowing I would never be enough woman for him, but he was enough man or drunk to do me harm and damage me more mental than physical, he never laid a hand on me, just enough man to do it mentally though, and, I might add, or maybe I didn’t know him, thank god I got away from him. Ay, thank god for that, I found peace in Chicago, perhaps it’s too late, I still have some ensnared anguish, and I thought I could be brave for you.”
“There, there, mother, it’s all right, I know you were brave then and you are brave now,” said Cantina.
“The morning I left your father, when I got home, the first thing I did was to turn on the lights, and the heater, the big space heater in the living room, it was cold. I propped the door to stand open, and I grabbed the bank book. The second thing I did, was to get the money out of our account, then out of town before your father called the police on me, looking for me, I was merely running and wanted him to leave me alone, I was dying of drinking, and he would never understand that.
“I ran up the stairs got my cloths, and I turned off the space heater before I left, and I suppose maybe your father thought there might have been an intruder, but I tried to be tidy about leaving. So I leaped here and there to turn this and that off, I moved, turned away from my home and husband, I had learned the hard way, he had the right to be where he was, and to change things I had to change me and my environment, had I stayed we would have fought over this and that, to flee to run, succeeded. With your father I would have had to be some lesser and baser other, to be vulnerable to him, to have to be silent to his drinking, and to be his drinking partner.
“To gain what? For what? What did I desire, what was I hoping for—it was all scary at first, but what I really wanted was simple, my own identity. I found privacy to sleep, and read, and not be in a state of despair.”

“I understand mother,” said Cantina, “You left because you were unhappy, simple as that, and its okay.”
“Shannon wouldn’t really mind, because I can’t hurt him now,” said Gertrude, “I can’t harm him, not just me, no matter what anyone did, they couldn’t harm him. That he would really just as soon drink and sleep and die in those cornfields as he did and for what godly reason I don’t know, perhaps just to show he cant be hurt. All right, you don’t’ have to agree, what do you want me to do here now?”
“I would like you to stay with me until he is buried,” said Cantina.
“If you were not drinking with your father, after a while he became a nuisance, all drunks are a nuisance when you are sober and they are drunk. I will not miss him, least his drinking, perhaps some of the laugher in the cornfields, since we both agreed in the beginning, cuckolding each other.”
“Lock the door mother,” she said. “We’ve already had a long day, its getting late, let’s go to bed.”
“I hope Cantina; you didn’t mind what I said about your father?” expressed Gertrude.
“Oh no mother of course not, but I do value him as highly as I value you and your coming here proves you value me. Good night!”

Chapter Three
Cantina’s Dilemma

Gertrude told her daughter Cantina, in a smooth yet sour way, the following morning as they readied for the second meeting, “You are much like your father you know, a dreamer and a poet—usually women are only swayed by poets long, a short while perhaps, they prefer reality, facts, and truth, well, they can make it fit in-between as long as they can iron out the other two, but you, you see your father as a hero, the facts are that which existed some forty-years ago, there is no more reality to that, it is all squeezed out like a wet rag, but you won’t even believe me, he was a drunk, no more, then than now, or just before he passed on—I mean.”
“Don’t say anymore maw, I’ll just end up hating you both, you most of all because you started it.” Then Cantina hesitated, trying to get her composure back, “I don’t believe you,” she said, cried and thought.
“So,” said Gertrude, “there is nothing I can say.”
Gertrude held her cigarette in her hand, motionless, as it burned down towards her fingers, “Bury him and be done with it.”
“Don’t you see mother that is what I’m after?”
“Our marriage my dear was a fact, the rest of it was that poetic romance I was fool enough to be fooled into, that only a fool follows a fool, but at the bitter end, the fool, one fool woke up.”
“Good-bye!” she said harshly, adding, “you’ll have to bury him alone, or not with me anyhow!”
“All right,” Cantina told her mother, “thank you for coming anyway.”

∙

Cantina didn’t care, know anything about womanhood for the most part, the parts anyhow, Gertrude was talking about, the things like romantic love, she only knew parental love, or mortality (death), she was too young to think of such things, to place them on a table and call them facts of life, she didn’t care about her mother’s reality, let alone the truth or no truth of what was the real truth that went on between them two, it was their lives, not in particularly her’s—perhaps she wouldn’t have put it quite that way—but she knew little about such things, yet she knew she had time to learn them, in time, she only knew what she knew, and felt, that she loved the man that died, her father, and it was unconditional love, it was free for him to take, and her to give, and she gave and he took, and he gave and she took, and it was not necessarily always receiving. If it was, then it was a trade, not unconditional. And that is what she knew, and felt, that was her reality.
And she knew this second meeting, meant just that. And she knew by the time everyone was done talking at the meeting, all the ex wives, and the banker, Ritt, and Poggi, and even Otis, her father’s body, oh yes, the dead can look ugly, and smell bad, no semblance of who they really were. This, the second meeting was the devil’s ambush, to take from her what her mother couldn’t, but tried, that last reflex of devotion and make it like sour milk
“All right,” she said, “just tell me paw how do you want to be buried?” and she fell to her knees, put her hands over her eyes, then when she opened them, in his shoe, she found an envelope, she opened it, and in the envelope was a letter, his will, how he wanted to be buried.
Then that afternoon she set out to follow the instructions. It all was too simple, but simplicity was greeted as a gift, a pusher, a stressor taken off her.

That evening, while everyone waited in the yard, at Gus’ farm, Cantina, showed up, all knowing she had the instructions from Shannon himself now, written out in plain English for her daughter to follow, all watching what she was going to do, she said “Okay paw it’s your idea to go home, it is you who insist on it being this way…” she held in her arms a two gallon antique, moonshine jug, one that Shannon used for drinking moonshine, and wine and his corn whisky in and from, those they had around the 1880s thru about 1910, or so.
Next she started walking down the rows those tall cornstalks rows one after the other, one by one, slowly and contently, inside that jug was his ashes, and she started emptying them out, pouring them out as if she was fertilizing the ground with them, per his instructions, and she whispered along the way: “I hope your pleased paw…I hope your pleased, I really do, I really do, I really, really do.”

No: 412; Written 6-10 & 11, 2009

Day of the Damned Horses (WWI, 1916)

2009-06-09T22:46:00.000-07:00

Day of the Damned Horses
((A Day in the battle for Verdun, WWI, 1916) (A Shannon O’Day story))

Chapter One
The War and the Machine Gun Nest

(It is 1964; Shannon O’Day’s daughter Cantina is twelve-years old. She is with him for the weekend. They are out at Como Park, sitting along the banks of Como Lake. He often talks about the Great War with her, the one he was in as a young lad, and she always listens, but it is often a repeat, but nonetheless she listens, and today, Saturday, he is talking to her about it, they have cool-aid and hotdogs, sitting on an Indian type blanket in the grass:)

Says Shannon to his daughter, Cantina, “I came, I saw, I concurred, in the Great War…” then paused to look deep into her eyes, to see if she was really attentive, listening, “I was a man alone, like an island in the middle of the sea, entire of itself, like a continent, or part of one, that is how I felt in the war, especially in this one day of battle I had, and I had two days that were special in that 300-day battle—oh, perhaps more, but two that haunt me, one of victory, one of tragedy, both during the Battle for Verdun, in 1916, let me tell you about the first one, I call it ‘The Day of the ‘Dead Horses.’” (She nods her head yes, up and down slowly, she’s heard it before, each time though she gets something new out of it, something he was fearful before of releasing, so she has learned to not show discontent for him bringing it up for the umpteenth time, she knows when he’d dead, gone, these will be her private stockpile photos, of his trying days in battle, ones he only shared with her, and only her.
Cantina knew ever since he had come back from his war—some forty years ago, as Shannon called it, World War One, there was a since of duty that remained in him. As if he should have died, but survived for some reason.

She knows, but she can’t put it in words, knows: He sees no hope for victory in the long run for mankind, but finds he can live a full life in the hours God has left him. She knows this has told herself this in so many words, just sitting there talking to her father, thinking but not saying, saying only those things that are pleasing to him, she knows, he doesn’t fear death or solitude, never has and he finds love is possible for him in a sense that in that will, his will, he must never hide from death, nor retreat from it, he can live a full life, closely interwoven with it, but remembers the village where he almost lost his life in France, the girl who lost her two boys, and he had to half kill her, she did the other half of the killing. And those horse, those damn dead horses, he remembers them well, and therefore, he feels in life, ever since, he stands alone.
“What are you thinking?” asks Shannon to his daughter.
“The way you might be thinking.” She says back to her father, and it actually makes him smile, what daughter would try to understand a man like him, a good and fine daughter, that is who, he confirms this to his second self. “She doesn’t judge him,” he tells himself. “How funny, everyone else does.”
And so on this day, in 1964, in the park, sitting on the Indian blanket, here is the story he tells Cantina, I shall tell it in my own words, as he tried to tell her in his:

Shannon O’Day was making his stand in a trench. He did not like this trench and when he saw it he thought it had a shape of a woman’s womb. But he had no choice this was the trench, and he selected it as far away from the German artillery shells could reach as possible. But not as far away as the sound of automatic machine guns reached with their bullets banging away night and day, halting and firing, hesitant, uncertain, and then firing again and again, to give him and his platoon of eleven men a nervous case of being shell-shocked.
There still was snow on the ground, frost for the most part, it had ruined the ground, made it muddy, chilled and hardened at night, when the sun sank, and when the horses came pulling wagons of supplies, jerking, and climbing, and staggering their way through the mud, and snow, hauling equipment, men pulling their bridles, the rains coming over their heads and shoulders, holding the horses by the mane, many had to be shot, and many got shot in the line of battle, and there they lay dead, where they feel, for the flies and the worms and the rats.
The horses sometimes were used for barricades, if the battle took place within the timeframe the carcass was still plump, and not gutted by animals, and even Shannon and his men shot over their bodies on occasions, their burnt hides, laying their hot muzzles on their dead flesh and firing at the enemy instead of within the trench, allowing at times for them to advance, knowing all that was behind them were empty trenches, in particular their one empty trench this day of battle, and so they used these dead horses, fifty shot in one day to advance from one point to another, giving Corporal O’Day an idea, one that could take out that nest of machine-gunners.
This day, this one early spring day, one of 300-days in the Battle for Verdun, in France, once the twelve men had reached the perimeter, of the enemy, within pistol distance, there were several more horses laying dead thereabouts, they had succeeded in stealing foot after foot after foot, to get that close to the enemy, and now behind those several horses they waited until night fall, when their first shooting would start, the enemy not knowing how close they really were, and how many had perished in the previous battle, which none had.
Of the twelve men who had reached the outer rim of the boarder where the enemy had their machineguns, two were wounded, Henry Sanchez and Elmer Boswell. Henry was from New Mexico a young lad of eighteen, and Elmer, was a man from Wisconsin, a son of a baker, he also was eighteen.
Henry had a leg wound, shot twice, in two places. And Elmer had an arm wound. All the men were very thirsty, and the wounds of the men were starting to stiffen, yet Corporal Shannon O’Day, was too close to victory to halt the operation, it must go forward, wounds or not. Henry had told Shannon it was very painful. And this brought on a severe annoyance, and he told the soldier, plainly, “You will have to endure the pain, or take death as your way out, or if you have an aspirin, that might help, whatever you chose, make it quick, and if you can’t fight anymore, stay put, and if you can, continue to do as you’ve been doing, but this is not debatable.”
It was no joke, reality, it was the mission first, not the man, and if nausea became deeper and deeper throughout the night for the two soldiers, they were considered no longer usable in battle and therefore, second in priority.
Shannon and his other now capable nine men were spread out likened to the Little Dipper. Using the horses for cover, they simply waited; the horses big like mounds linking the soldiers like baseball bases, from one point to another. Shannon moved on his belly from one horse to the other checking his men to make sure they kept their steel helmets on, a few had bullet holes through them, a few had hammered them out, yet some of the edges were still unsmoothed.
When the shooting started at, 3:00 a.m., and all the helmets had been clapped, you could hear a few of those bullets banging against the helmets, and the heads inside of them swaying, the sounds were death sounds: mouth-draying sounds, spiting sounds, cracking sounds, mechanical sounds, machine-like sounds, desperation sounds, and then a final sound—and throaty voices were no more!
The dryness and fear Shannon had in his mouth, and gut, were on hold, as he looked among the nest for the bodies of the enemy, he had thrown in three grenades, men were laying flat on their faces, arms, torn off, reaching—but reaching unconnected to their bodies, for more machinegun rounds.
Shannon walked among the dead, he wondered said to his second self, “What was their last word inside their head, their last thoughts, or to one another, to the comrade next to him?’
Said Shannon to Henry, as now he had taken the pain, and simply endured it, was still part of the onslaught, standing by his side, “It is better to die on your feet, than on your bellies.”
Another man said in back of them, “Why should they die and not us?”
And of course, in days to come, that voice would die, in a trench, but Shannon had no wisdom, or witty words for the older man, older than he by far, so he said not a word. But Shannon O’Day was thinking: it’s early now, and soon would be first light, and he could take his men back to the General and tell them, if they didn’t already know, the machinegun nest was silenced, and they’d all get a three to seven day pass to Paris or someplace safe, and a good breakfast, and Henry would go home, the war was over for him, and so was it for Elmer. And he’d get two replacements in a week or so.’
He looked around carefully, looked in back of him at the dead horses, in front of him at the machineguns, he looked at the mud where he had crawled, at the bodies he had killed, not one of his men died today, just two wounded, but this was a good day—he felt, he knew there would be worse.

Chapter Two
Rest and Recuperation in Borges

Shannon had went to Paris, for his rest and recuperation, then right onto Burgos, Belgium, for the rest of his seven day leave from the war, it had seemed to him that from now on, after that killing of several men in the machinegun bunker now everyone he passed or talked to, anyone, one and all, he met, or saw, recognized him as the face of the man who killed the seven Germans, that he had a specific face and name, and that each person knew he’d be in Belgium, floating down the cannel in a boat, looking at the old houses, the tower, the square. On second thought—he knew this to be a mental if not physical impossibility, a trick of the mind, a stress from the war, the battle, that war was destroying him, a certain quality in him anyhow, that people like him, had gotten, but even sharper than him, debilitating. He told himself, “When I go home, I’ll have to fix myself, learn how to deal with people again, talk to them,” he meant, not react to them, but act by them.
As he walked along the cannel, and in the square the days he was there, pacing almost unnoticing the people around him as if he was a pigeon in the air, just sailing away, the horses came back to haunt him, the arbitrary shooting, the appearance of the body parts separated from the bodies, he was blank, expressionless, person. Each moment was a new moment a bizarre moment, he was trying to pretend to the people around him he was not involved with the war, that he was someone free of the war, never heard the name, World at War, thinking instead of someone whose destination and goal in life was higher than that, higher than allowing one man one day, start a war between two countries, and pull in the rest of the world, and the rest of the world followed like blind working ants building an anthill, and all these countries miles and miles away, and the spirit of war, having legs, walked and stretched its way down every side street and road in every town and village and city in the world.
He didn’t know these scares would last decade to decade, penetrating his daily life, habits, he didn’t realize then when he got out of the war, he’d be out of the world, out of a life, perhaps his mind betrayed him, the war was fatal to him, he would increase his drinking, it was a healer, and he just couldn’t find anything better.

Chapter Three
The Crossroads Restaurant

Shannon got hungry, and went to a nearby shell of a restaurant, it was in-between two crossroads—shaped like ‘y’ and the restaurant was in-between the ‘y’; inside there was a hearth ablaze, with thick and colorful flames, and the crackling of the dry wood echoed in each ear, it was warm and cozy, he sat close to it.
The guesthouse provided an oilcloth-covered table, with an oil lamp in the middle of it. He ate alone, the guests had vanished, the room looked empty, the plate of food was all eaten, sauerkraut, with a sizzling steak, and corn from a can, and some biscuits, a cup of dark coffee. A few wood embers floated by his table, he spoke casual to the waitress, light conversation, and idly he remained looking out the window.
He spread his legs to warm his inner thighs, the kitchen light went off, he spoke inattentively, “I suppose you’ll be closing for a spell,” he said.
“Just for clean up, we’ll open back up in two hours,” said the waitress.
Shannon asked her to speak a little louder, there was a ringing in his ears, he had become a little deaf from all the gun firing, and artillery; consequently, her having to speak launder, triggered something inside of him, a immobility, a guardedness, he held his breath, looked about as if he was searching for the enemy.
“Are you okay, sir?” asked the waitress.
Shannon’s side was to the fire, something beyond just stillness had overcome him, then he pulled himself back together, his voice had remained the same, “I’ fine, fine,” he reassured her.
“You just sit on where you are mister,” said the waitress, “I’ll cleanup around you, no need to move.”
Shannon nodded his head in thanks, and his mind shifted, as if he was taking a nap with his eyes open, he remembered drinking in the cornfields with his older brother Gus, he’d fall to sleep on the ground, wake up in the mornings, have a feeling the earth itself sucked all the living protean out of his bones, it was as if the ground had arms, and was trying to pull him down into its depths, before his time, but the alcohol would make him pass out and that is where he laid, and that is where he got a full sleep nonetheless—well, not a full sleep, no drunk does, but a dead sleep, not like when he was in the trenches, he could never get a good nights sleep or full sleep, and when he did wakeup from his sporadic sleep in those mud and fly infested trenches, he never knew were he was, thought he was at home, in the cornfields, in his brother’s house, everyplace but where he really was. So that is why he had gotten a hotel room the first day he was in Burgos, and that is why he was thinking about the cornfields, he was thinking about the places he got the best sleep—or at least a full sleep, and now he had learned to appreciate a good full sleep, one of the great gifts of God—is a good night’s sleep, he murmured, and the waitress now sweeping around him, heard him, and knew—right then and there, he was not a tourist, he was a soldier of the Great War.

Chapter Four
Anyplace will do

Shannon O’Day was really not much different in battle than out of the battle in that he never did much hiding or luring about, with his behavior, perhaps unseen and unheard as if he was a space invader, and could be an animal as in their natural habitat like a coyote or a wolf, after his prey, and when he attacked he was not concealed any longer, not crouching behind those dead horses, after hours of discomfort—laying against those smelly decomposing, horses, whose shapes were no longer shapes of horses, infinitesimal insects from the horses crawling from the dead to the living, like crossing over on continuant to another. These were the thoughts going through his head as the waitress mopped the floor, and he stared into the flicker flames of the hearth. A little jealous the waitress never had to face such uncertainties that soldiers had to, but happy for her at the same time. She was pretty, he noticed as she walked by the light shinning through the window, near the corner of the room. He had finished his meal, and was now drinking a beer, with his feet propped on a stool, that was left by the hearth for someone to sit on and feed the fire with dray wood.
He didn’t need to be shot at anymore, he could sense, almost feel the whizzing by of bullets, just daydreaming where he was, he could hear them like a bees shooting and buzzing by his ears, it was all invisible to the eye, soaring sounds of invisibility; beyond the woman sat a man counting the morning’s and noon’s receipts—thinking hurriedly, as if the doors would soon be opened again for the early afternoon rush, to dinner rush. He didn’t need to say anything, he just ordered a third beer, and watched and listened and gazed at the legs of the young and pretty waitress. He hadn’t moved from his chair, not once.

The waitress looked at Shannon, trying to figure out his age, figuring him to be twenty or twenty one, not sixteen or seventeen, she was twenty-three, and she had seen many a soldier come through those doors, and sho enough he was a soldier, and she knew had she been through war, she wouldn’t have much left neither, that what she’d want is just what he was wanting, a warm corner someplace, a quiet someplace for a little while. And she left him to himself.

No: 412 (6-9-2009)..

Corn Harvesting and Hogtying (a Shannon O'Day Story)

2009-06-07T20:42:00.000-07:00

Corn Harvesting and Hogtying
(A Shannon O’Day Story)

Chapter One
Cantina’s High School

“You are most unhappy when your life is empty,” Shannon O’Day told his daughter Cantina O’Day, picking her up from her High School in March, of 1965 (three months before school would let out for the summer season).
“You got to keep yourself busy,” he pressed this point, “you live from moment to moment, and you should never have any recollection of the previous moment, this way you never have to concentrate or dread tomorrow, it’s all one flash, and one fiesta—!”
But Cantina knew that was the way her dad lived, and for her it just wouldn’t do, nor last. But she smiled at his philosophy it was really meant to smooth her troubled mind about her going with him for the several months, while out on school vacation, and her uncle Gus was visiting down in North Carolina.
She was the kind of like her mother, Gertrude, if she didn’t look out the window to see what or who was coming down the road, or look at what she might have to bear in life, it would become for her unbearable, life postponed, and this in itself would create to a great extent, anxiety.
She knew her father wouldn’t even budge from those cornfields he loved so very much while drinking in the late springs and summers, that an atom bomb wouldn’t chase him away, or even an attack by bees in all directions, yet he was her hero, who fought in the Great War, and fought while in those foxholes they called trenches, and was decorated, while in Europe, by a French General.
She remembered what her mother told her that when Shannon reached home in 1919, there was no triumphant hooting for him, yet he wanted to believe that there were things worth dying for in life, fighting and dying for in life. For at least one thing—even if it wasn’t the real reason—was that Shannon O’Day, himself never thought or believed of naming it anything other than what it was because to him, to Shannon O’Day, it was nameless anyhow, it was that someday he’d have a daughter, and he didn’t want her to have to worry about a dotted world outside the boundaries of America the beautiful—soldiers and sailors and marines pushing their way with hands and weapons onto her sacred soil and coming down the highway standing on the corners waiting to kill Americans like hogs waiting for the slaughter—like rooting hogs, ready to enslave America.
During some of his trying times, he never once went on relief, leaving the bureaucratic Government one less recipient.
So he came to Washington High School, off Rice Street, in ST. Paul Friday afternoon to pick up his daughter, that he Shannon O’Day, knowing that he would have her for the rest of spring, the entire summer and until after harvest time, and then she’d be heading back to school (March through September, to about October 1), about seven months, through the planting season and harvesting time of his brother’s cornfields, outside of the city, where Gus and his wife took care of Cantina, but because Gus’ wife’s mother was ill down in Fayetteville, North Carolina, Gus and she were going down there to take care of her, she was 92-years old.
Shannon would do his farming along with his friend Otis Wilde Mather, although Shannon didn’t tell Gus about Otis being with him during some of the planting and harvesting time (the rest of the time Otis, would be gone attending to his businesses in Ozark, Alabama, and a Meat market, he owned on Jackson Street in St. Paul) Gus never like him, called him a ‘Sneaky and cagey nigger.”

Cantina was thirteen-years old at the time.

That was the situation when he arrived at the school that Friday afternoon, to pick up his daughter. There was apprehension in it too of course, since, for Shannon, to raise a daughter with his drinking condition, and it was Gertrude’s normal concern whenever he took her, even for a day, now for seven months, but she insisted she be with her father on the familiar farm, for Gertrude had to remain close to where she worked, her and Shannon owning a house on Albemarle Street, and working downtown by the Mississippi River at ‘Gillette’, assembly line work.
But now, even if she had changed her mind, it was really too late, the last breathe on the issue had been discharged.

Chapter Two
The Planting

(March) The morning was cold; it was the 10th of March, Shannon had not drank for ten-days, and was already seated at the kitchen table, with Otis, when Cantina came in, down from her second story bedroom, looked out the window, and joined her father, he was leaning back reading the newspaper, as Cantina, clutching her shawl, like her mother often did, said in a waking up manner,
“What are you going to do today when I head off for school?”
“I’m going to start planting,” said Shannon.
“Don’t you think it’s a little early?” she commented.
“Why it’s the tenth of the month, and I’m not waiting for no train.” He said with a chuckle.
“I mean paw, is the ground warm enough?” asked Cantina.
“Warm enough, I don’t know, the worms are still in the ground, they are warm I’d think, when they get cold they’ll show their heads, and that’s good enough for me,” and he laughed again pouring down his coffee, and had a little whisky in it he had hidden, not even told Otis about the pint he kept in the back water where one flushed the toilet.
“All right,” she said, and Shannon remarked, “Get on out of here and go onto school, like you’re suppose to do.” And she did.

It was that the ground was 45F, not the normal required 50 to 55 or 60, for best planting weather, and thus, Otis and Shannon took the direct seeding and planted in the cold soil, and they planted between six to eight inches apart, not the normal eight to twelve for corn stacks to grow among each other, he wanted to get a big harvest, and early planting. And he planted two inches deep, instead of the normal one inch, thinking he’d not let the crows have a feast, and his rows were 20 to 25 inches apart, not the normal 30 to 36 inches, and he had blocks of 8 rows, not four, and it was a wet spring, the soil was drenched, and he needed to drain some of it, but felt no need to, this would save Gus a big water bill, and didn’t. And accordingly, the planting was done, the way his drinking was done, fast and careless.
Then, exactly like Shannon, the other one, Otis, said, “We aint got a thing to do but wait now I reckon, lets git on to doin’ some serious drunkin’?”
Without hesitation, and forgetting his pledge to his wife, he simple said, “Okay, but damn, we’ll be sure not to tell Gertrude, or my daughter, I’ll sleep it off before she comes back from school. Go-on now and bring in that jug of corn whisky, I know you got it hidden someplace.”
Shannon knew Otis had some whisky hidden, and Otis knew Shannon was drinking on the side that he was not as serious to sobriety as he proclaimed to be, but didn’t say anything to Shannon he knew, he just figured it was timing before he’d bring up the subject, and the jug, and therefore, he moved lickety-split like to the loft of the barn where he hid the jug under some hay, and brought that jug in, pulled the cork, and with one hand like a pro, laying it against his cheek, and on his shoulder, he gulped down a big mouthful of that corn whisky like it was Coca-Cola, and Shannon, likewise.

Chapter Three
Watering & Harvesting

As the weeks passed, Cantina would have to remind her pa to water the fields, and he’d do so when she’d go off to school, and during the summer, early summer, she noticed the corn was not growing well. And she watched her papa watering; he did it too shallow, “Paw” she said, “you got to soak the soil thoroughly! And be careful not to damage the plants while cultivating!”

“Cultivating, what is that?” asked Shannon, but Cantina didn’t hear him, she was long gone by the time he got the last syllable out.

As the corn stocks got bigger (knee high), Cantina noticed it was starting to look like a jungle in the cornfields, “Paw,” she said (a little inquisitively), “don’t you remember when you were drinking, there was room for you to put your bottle down, lay back, spread your feet out, while drinking in the cornfields, now if you were drinking today, how would you do it, the cornfields look like the Amazon?”
“Hum…mm, what is your suggestion my dear?” he asked.
“Well, by planting early, you avoided the warm problem somewhat, but now the corn is not growing fast enough you planted it too deep, if you can harvest early, like in August, and not September or October, you will be ahead. You need to use more insecticide.”
“No, I haven’t used any yet, not well for the bones,” said Shannon.
“Oh my gosh,” she murmured, “You should every several days, and when it gets real hot—like it’s starting to get—we’re going to have real big problems.”
It was soon after this that the corn started to silk, and the weather got blazingly hot, and worms were starting to show up, and there was leaf rust (disease on the corn), and there was tumor like growth on the leaves.
During all this, Otis and Shannon were drinking during the early afternoons, sleeping the late afternoons away, as Cantina went to visit her friends and mother. By the time she arrived back, Shannon had a 4:00 p.m., there was usually dinner on the table for her, and Shannon would be looking, or at least acting, all sobered up.

At the dinner table this one evening, she asked, as often she did, “How’s the cornfields?”
“Fine,” he replied.
“Have you done any weeding yet?”
“Weeding,” he repeated, “am I suppose to do weeding too?”
“Oh paw, frequent weeding, that is cultivation, you got to do that before you get a problem, you cultivate just deep enough to cut the weeds off below the surface of the soil. You got to be careful so you don’t damage the plants.”
“Well dear, your old paw knows a lot, but not everything about this farming life.”
“Yaw I know paw, I think Gus knew also, he wrote me, he asked if his field is a disaster yet or not.”
“You’re kidding me, my own brother said that?”
“And I know you’ve been drinking and I won’t tell mom or Gus, because she will take me away from you.”
“I suppose she might, if she knew, but I thought I was being pretty clandestine, like that Charlie Chan fellow, you know, that detective from Hong Kong.”
“Yes, I seen the movie paw, that’s pretty old fashion thought, it’s Perry Mason, nowadays.”
“Yaw, I watch him too, but the best of them all is that private eye called, Sherlock somebody…!”
“Why we are talking like this, when it is a serious matter, you got to take care of the farm Paw, you promised Gus.”
“But I’m doing the best I can, really I am.”
She looked at her paw, and she just couldn’t help but smile, he really felt he was, even if he wasn’t, “I know you are paw, I just wanted to remind you of your promise, sometimes you forget.”

Cantina went out to look at the jungle of corn, it was all of that and worse, worms were starting to mature and eating the corn, and much of it was diseased, and you couldn’t see five feet beyond the first row of corn, and the ground was mushy, and it was late July. The ears were full and milky.
“Pop,” she said as she ran into the kitchen, “I think we can save half, or near half the harvest if we harvest now, sorry about the rest, but it’s bad.”

Gus was getting abut five bushels of corn per acre, using about 9000-gallons of water per acre. And planted 400-acres, thus, getting, 2000 bushels of corn; Shannon got 750-bushels, used about 1000-gallons of water, per acre, and none in August or September, normally high water volume months, but somehow, everyone thought under the circumstances, he did a fair job. And everyone felt, he was drinking, and many of the neighbors said he was for sure they saw him and Otis drunk and laughing in the cornfields as if they were trying to hogtie each other, but since no one got killed in the process, Gertrude and Gus, didn’t say a word concerning the matter, to save Cantina’s respect for her father, they wanted her to see him as she always saw him, her hero, because other than drinking, he had good values, so they had just crossed their fingers, and thanked the Good Lord everything turned out rosy, somewhat.

6-7-2009. . No: 411

"To Save a Lopsided Sparrow" (the complete Novel)

2009-05-31T09:21:00.000-07:00

To Save a Lopsided Sparrow

(Sequel to the book, “Cornfield Laughter”)

In English and Spanish

By Dennis L. Siluk, Ed.D.
Three Time Poet Laureate

Yea, the sparrow hath found a house, and … a nest for herself…” Psalm 84

One Sparrow shall not fall on the ground without your Father knowing. Fear ye not therefore, ye are of more value than the sparrow. Matthew 10:29

Contents

1

Death in the Dark (a poem)

In English and Spanish
“To Save a Lopsided Sparrow”
(Book II to the Shannon O’Day stories)
“Salvar a un Gorrión Irregular”

Theme Poem: “The Pillars”

(1916-1919)

Part I. — The Lank Figure

Part II. — The Great War

Chapter One: Rain of Shells
Chapter Two: Streets of Paris
Chapter Three: The Village of Douaumont
Chapter Four: Drops of Sleep
Chapter Five: Death Reeks (Leticia’s Story)
Chapter Six: The First Time
Chapter Seven: The Beast Unhealed
and Edge of the Hamlet

Part III. –Home Sweet Home

(1919-1923)

Chapter One: A Soldier Goes Home
Chapter Two: The Prison
Chapter Three: The Gem Bar
Chapter Four: Jobless Isaiah
Chapter Five: Death to Death

Poem: “Beauty with Dark Vines”

Linking Additional sketches and stories of the life and times of Shannon O’Day (In English Only)

2
The Half Tramp
(A Story, with three Chapters)

“The Half Tramp”
((Chapter one) (Shannon O’Day, 1922-1932))

“The Bluff”
((Chapter two from “The Half Tramp) (1946))

“Cornfield Burner!”
((Chapter three from “The Half Tramp”) (1950))

3
The Third Wife
(Independent Sketch, 1951-1953)

4
Not One Hooting Owl Left
(A Story in Five Parts)

The Mare (1954)
The Rich Nigger (1955)
Closed Out (1954)
The Judge’s Visit
Subchapter to ‘Closed Out’ (1957)
Not One Hooting Owl Left (1965)

5

The Farm
(Shannon O’Day, the missing
Chapter to “Cornfield Laughter,” 1957)
An Independent Sketch
6
Feeding a Dead Horse
The Case of Dana Stanley
((Godchild to Shannon O’Day) (1958))
An Independent Sketch
7
The Pawn Shop
Recollections of Shannon O’Day’s father
(1959, as told by Shannon O’Day to Otis Wilde Mather)
An Independent Sketch

8
Inside Job: Stillwater Prison (Part One: 1961-63)
In two Parts and six Chapters
The Day before Yesterday (Part Two: 1916/1966)
To Save a Lopsided Sparrow

Part One:
The Lank Figure 1916-1919

(Shannon O’Day’s dream-vision) He was near a skeleton figure, lank, with only a thread deep of flesh over his frame, a dark figure, age—hard to define, with long black hair, irregular; rather long-drawn-out features. His chin and jawbone hung low, as if he were of some ancient subspecies of humans, perhaps of the Neanderthal civilization. He lurked consistently at a holy man, Shannon couldn’t make out if he was a priest, angel, minister of some organized church, evangelist, or prophet, but the holy man kept distinctly skeptical, gazing eyes at the lank figure, he could not have gazed harder, had he been a statue.
The lank figure and the holy man were both particularly sensitive to each other’s voices. Shannon had learned he had severe injuries, had he not, the lank figure would not have bothered with him, he knew this intuitively. And so he watched the movements, gestures of the two figures in robes, their mouths, tongues, eyes, knees as their movements made their robes ruffle.
“He drinks and he smokes, and he is dying,” said the lank figure about Shannon O’ Day, “and he has killed, and killed, without a morsel of remorse, or so it would appear,” there was the faintest suggestion of derision in his voice.
“If death can possible be avoided,” the holy man said.
“Whose loss shall it be?” asked the lank figure, “For I have much to do!”
“I think it is possible to keep your honor and dignity, and vow,” said the holy man, “should you walk away from this lopsided sparrow?”

The holy man and the lank figure sat at a table both resting their arms upon it, and waiting the next development of this unsatisfactory situation.
“Of course,” said the lank figure, as if he had deliberated the issue with himself, “you must have some sort of comfort, I understand that…. (The holy man nodded his head). It is easy enough to say as many do, leave this man or give me that man, or don’t stand over him or her, the truth is, you want them all full of God—and second chances, and you don’t even know if it is a good or bad thing, giving second chances, good for humanity, or bad for humanity, when they are due to die they should die, but you always try to get to them before me; whose to say what is good and what is bad?”
“I can’t for an instant tell you to leave, but I can stay by his side and pray against these uncertainties, for didn’t the Lord say in so many words: ‘…ye are of more value than the sparrow.’ And is not this sparrow irregular?”’
“Here I confess, we are like publishing a book before the final chapter has been completely written; but you must agree—this man is dying and is in a state of hallucination, he will not even notice the crossover, or pain.”
“But truth be told, essential truth that is, is hidden. It always is.”
“I follow you,” the lank figure said, “that is always so! Perhaps there could be some violent link in all this; some contradictory fact, some accident or some subtle change to take place,” and death had a feeling, and death paused. Even the holy man was reluctantly interested. It meant something, described something, the holy man admitted, he too had intuition, supernatural intuition.
“I never believe in concealing my own thoughts from an intellectual being, such as you,” he said with a quiet offensiveness, “I left that back in the Dark Ages. I will inform you of my guesses and suppositions. At the base of this all, is a man who is due death, as a matter of fact in time to come he may very well die of over drinking; he consumes more alcohol than air, so it would seem. I’ll make you a deal—contract. I’ll leave here for a day, twenty-four hours, and upon my return, you will leave for ten days?”
The holy man nodded, and the deal was sealed.

Part Two:
The Great War

Chapter One
Rain of Shells

In ill-fitting khakis and a bent helmet, looking like the most un-heroic figure of WWI, Shannon O’Day was in near staggering agony. He took on the look of death, as it was one of the paths his life was bound to take, although, strangely enough, his will, the fight or die, faction of his will, against all odds, its probability, was opposed to it—said no! Therefore it employed its endurance to survive, in this particular case, and death would have to wait—he would be no martyr for a war today.

(To the poor fools, necessity gives them death.)

But this was no illusion. He saw the battle in motion before he became unconscious, and now conscious, he was among his comrades, the mass dead, died in their tracks evidently, as if at a rabbit shoot, dead as dead can be, no deader, no bloodier, all laying around him, looking barely discernible.
The bodies were in front of him, in the back of him, along side of him, all in the trench with him, all dead, looking as if traumatized, disemboweled, from the massive bombardment of shells; shot full of bullet holes; and after the numbness of seeing death all around you—— undeniable compassion of man for man sunk in.

He looked around him in the long narrow trench it was all too quiet, he knew why it was quiet though—the dead are always quiet, there is no quieter more stillness than in a dead body, even if their blood still be warm. One minute they were all laughing, smoking cigarettes, showing each other pictures, getting ready for battle (this was the last day of the battle, April 19, 1916; the battle had gone on for 300-days, 230,000 dead, 700,000 wounded) now empty of life, they all were, all nine of them starting to stiffen as like manikins. He looked at them, two were missing, out of the eleven; he was the twelfth member of the squad (the battery). He must have been out for a while, flies had gathered around the bodies, and a stench of death filled the air, he had to leave the trench but which way? Who went where: referring to the Germans and the French?
One should not break from his company or platoon, but surely they thought he was dead, he sobbed, got his emotions out, he was only seventeen, in the night of iron darkness, alone. He filled his lungs with air, as he crawled over the edge of his trench; the battle had gone elsewhere he figured, at least for the moment. Or it had ended. He moved his belly in the direction of the village called Douaumont, and as he moved inch by inch, foot by foot, he imagined the comforts of a beautiful woman. The sweet smells of her perfumes, the soft touch of her flesh; when he stopped thinking along those lines, he could hear the bugs moving along side of him—as if they were chewing, as if they were squashing and chomping and chewing on grass, and he could hear the sounds of crickets, and other unnamed bugs, saw the fireflies overhead.
He didn’t care to be a corporal, he was too young he told the Captain; also he told him he was too young to be in charge of a squad, in charge of men twice his age, but he was in charge, and now injured, his soul sank into oblivion.

Chapter Two
Streets of Paris

(Before the Shelling)

When Shannon O’Day was in Paris, it was a different world to him, before he got sent to defend France, on French soil that was taken over by Germans in February of 1916, called “The Battle of Verdun” and to make his new home in trenches. He was from the Midwest of the United States, a somewhat country boy, from a conservative city, who on weekends visited his older brother—older by ten-years—Gus and they’d drink whiskey in the cornfields, as he’d help his brother plant and harvest. Paris was completely different, here people ate outside, on tables spread out, not indoors. Women sat on the church steps knitting with their babies, begging for food, or loose change. Horses pulled grand buggies by Notre Dame Cathedral, while men and women of prestige would disembark them. The Luxembourg Gardens was nearby, passers-by looked at him as he’d walk through them, in his uniform, and clap their hands in applause as if to say thank you for coming. And if he could have read their lips, he’d had sworn they were saying, ‘Be patient soldier, the war will soon be over.’ The people even smiled heroically as if saying hurry up and win it for us, make it disappear like smoke. Tell America to send troops over, Shannon had joined the French Army, in fear he’d not be able to see action, and now he was hesitant about seeing the action he so much wanted to classify as adventure.
While in Paris he went to the theater, couldn’t make heads or tails out of it, could only understand a few words of it, it was in French. It was Victor Hugo’s “The Hunchback of Notre Dame.” All he could remember was Quasimodo, the disfigured hunchback, and his carrying a woman on his shoulders into the Cathedral. It really didn’t much matter to him, it occupied his time.
He noticed other soldiers having leisure time in Paris; the rest of the world in Paris appeared to be either on edge, busy or in a hurry.
A woman said, “We are pretty in red dressed, don’t you think so?”
She was for sale, and that night with Shannon, they drank some strong red wine, walked by the doors of Notre Dame de Paris, the Rue Saint Jacques, naked as two jaybirds, stopping traffic wherever they went, laughing like he used to do with his brother in the cornfields back home with a bottle of wine or rum or whisky (such other details I must leave out, for whoever has a liking for them, must at this point use his or her imagination).

It was not until he woke up, he put two and two together, that he was still alive, and in French dirt, but nearer to Douaumont, crawling inch by inch, foot by foot, that it dawned on him, he was dreaming of the few days he spent in Paris before he got his assignment for this great battle of battles. He was now reluctant to move. He must have crawled quite a distance since last he was conscious, he took as fact.

Chapter Three
The Village of Douaumont

He saw chimneys in the distance, roofs of houses, mostly dilapidated but a few could be seen erect; he had been in the village called Douaumont before, just passing through, during the 300-day battle, it had about a dozen structures or more, not much more. A few two story buildings, many connecting to the next structure by it—wall to wall. Narrow doorways, a dirt road for a main street, wide and with embankments on the side, rubbish laying alongside the ramshackle houses, and during its best day it was somewhat rundown anyhow, now after the 300-days of battle it was completely destroyed, yet he saw roofs and chimneys, and smoke coming from one chimney.
Shannon wanted a moment to rest. He wanted to lay hidden until his company found him, or he regained his nerve, or just plain died, the war was not unfinished, perhaps the ongoing battle was, that is all.
He told God he could use a friend now. And he laid there for hours, preoccupied with formless dreams, a brooding mind; remote and unstoppable reminiscing. He was out of the trench, out of the latrine like trench, now in a field of dirt, by a tree, behind a rock, the hamlet in front of him. He un-tightened his belt so he could breathe better. He had been through it. He was like the enemy, a savage, and brute no better, why should God help him, if not the enemy. He could not hold anything new called humiliation. He had the worse gaunt and grubby appearance a human could have. He was nothing but a sad, pitiful primitive creature.
There he laid blood stained uniform, with a scornful indifferent look.
“Where’s my men?” he questioned, muttered in his under breath, his mind answered ‘Blown to bloody fragments in the trench!”

He talked to himself—anxiously, in a voice, unsteady and near breaking. He was hungry and the sun was coming up, bright like a shiny orange, near flawless, symmetrically round. His mind told him it was breakfast time, he felt in his coat pocket, a piece of old beef jerky, he had saved it from his rations while in the trenches; he pulled it out, unwrapped it, it was only two inches long, but it was enough, and he ate it, like a famished wolf, chewing it like rawhide, squeezing with his teeth every ounce of flavor from it.

Chapter Four
Drops of Sleep

Corporal O’Day, inside his sleepy mind, he questioned: could all this good action, to cleanse the world of evil, be a bad one? He questioned such things as he lay there, looking at smoke coming out of a chimney, in the supposedly, deserted village that wasn’t evidently, completely deserted, it was suppose to be, but there was smoke, his intuition was correct. There would be a new page in history written about today, or now it was yesterday, history would write about yesterday he muttered as if talking to the rock he was laying against, then in a generation or so, hidden if not erased with a whole new generation, and new wars, perhaps even greater ones than this.

Chapter Five
Death Reeks (Leticia’s Story)

After the first days of the battle the mother of two children (Leticia Dalasi) was found wandering, almost haphazard among the rubble of the destroyed hamlet, called Douaumont, walking aimlessly, day and night looking for her children; this is indeed the history of her days, after the great bombardment, the battle for Verdun.
She ate little and rested little; she ate like the birds, and slept only because she had to. She had fallen down continuously, as if dead a hundred times, during these first weeks and months.
She had made her new abode, under some demolished ruins, a livable space, held by four crumbling walls, lopsided walls, open door, some straw above her head for a roof, held lightly together by broken beams she had slept on two straw covered rafters avoiding the rats, but had a bed of straw and grass alongside one of the walls under her, which she used when she had no strength to climb the rope ladder to the rafters.
She could nonetheless, feel the rats move above and beneath her, sleeping among the beams or beside the walls; in either case, she watch the heavens through an open space in the roof, a window of sorts.
She’d sleep, and then go look in the rubble for something that would remind her of her children, sleep again for several hours, and do the same thing over and over and over, day after day, week after week. Her life and death had been marked out for her. There was nobody to hear her murmurs, the names of her children. In the night she walked about half-asleep dreaming.
It was the 301st day of her tragedy.
She had noticed the shelling had passed, she saw in the distance a curious figure, it had a youthful face, a slim frame, and “What is it?” she questioned.
“Whence does it come?” She murmured, hesitantly looking at him.
“Where was it going?” She murmured, hesitantly, looking out in the fields.
“Let it go where it will, avoid it, let it die,” her mind told her. It was as if death itself was warning her, as if her mind for a moment—woke up, and gave her a heavy jolt.

Leticia watched this mysterious figure wiggle about in its blood soaked cloths. They were just outside the hamlet. As she stared at this young American, dressed as a French soldier, she shivered without being able to tell what for. She felt human to be able to walk around this new discovery she made. She lost the fright and anxiety she had on her face, the drum beat in her heart ceased. She noticed a short of movement to this soldier.

Chapter Six
The First Time

(In a delirium, and half-sleep)

For Shannon O’Day, the victory of the Germans the day before was complete. His eleven men fought like a thousand, they deserved honor for the day, perhaps the two left, and the un-killed two, had escaped or were captured, and he wished he knew their fate, but he did not. He had looked behind him as he had crawled throughout the night; it was strewn with dead and the dying. All the roots of resistance must be pulled out from the ground, and the Germans knew this, as did the French, and the English and the Russians.
He knew in his delirium, in his half-sleep, he had been severely wounded, yet he never did surrender; matter-of-fact, as he was thinking all this he knew, because his second self, his mind, like a hidden bug in his subconscious told him all, it said, “You are blood socked, all the way through your cloths. You have been silenced.”

Then he heard a woman’s voice, like an echo, it said, “What is your name?”
Shannon could not answer just hear, he was dying, the loss of blood was extreme, yet the voice, was near all his movement, “You are a brave boy,” this middle aged voice said, an attractive voice, soft voice “a very brave boy, you should be dead. I’m Leticia,” and then he raised one arm to let her know he was not yet dead. She stepped back, thought he was going to attack her, thus, she gave him a blow at his head with a thick wooden board, swift as a lioness. This was a woman unobserved by any one around her, and she had many sides to her.

Chapter Seven
The Beast Unhealed
And Edge of the Hamlet

Beauty with Dark Vines

There is strangeness in beauty
Yea! And my heart knows not why
Perhaps God has taken this memory
(forgotten by man)
Yea! Those are the secrets of time
Yea! Beauty with dark vines…

No: 2609 5-3-2009

A wound does not heal quickly: and so Shannon O’Day seriously wounded, was at the mercy of this female observer. She had discovered after a moment, she had miscalculated in what his intentions were; here was a man that had been shot more than once, she could see that plainly now. She looked into the fields: “He must have crawled a long ways to get here, she concluded at the edge of the Hamlet, he must have seen my smoke from the chimney. She dragged him by his feet down a slope into the lair she had fixed up as her home.

Shannon O’Day was even in a more critical condition than Leticia had believed. There was a wound in his shoulder blade, and one above the breast, his collarbone was cracked, but the bullets that whizzed by him and through him, none hit or penetrated, or punctured his lungs, he could recover, Leticia thought.
She was a little nurse, a little sorcerer, and after she had dragged Corporal O’Day, to her lair, laid him upon a bed of straw and grass, covered him with a blanket, and treated his wounds with her own simples, or remedies, the collarbone knitted tightly back together, the wounds mended a little in the following days, with convalescent rest and leisure.
Then there was a pause, “Where am I?” he asked.
“In Douaumont, and who are you?” she asked.
“My squad, we all got shot up. I’m Corporal O’Day, French Army; but I’m an American.”

In the evening, on the eleventh day of his recuperative period, he was able to walk out of the little lair, and seat himself on a large stone, he used for a chair alongside the lair.
“Don’t try to speed things up,” said Leticia. He could see in her eyes a flood of fleeting and mixed thoughts, confusion. And he saw those thoughts coming and going. She smiled with a strain. But this was the first evening he was back to near normal strength. The evening was quiet.
The middle aged handsome lady, who had fixed her ratted hair, and put on some clean cloths, washed his and her cloths, watched him with delight, gave him a smile, another strained smile, she said to him: “Your wounds have healed, you can walk again, just take your time in talking.”
This of course brought on a whole new world of thoughts, some she had tried to tuck under that straw bed. Since he could not talk much, he thought she must think he was still in a state of delirium, and it would last longer, and he’d have to stay with her longer, and she’d keep her ongoing observations of him. But she was thinking, thinking of things she thought she had pushed aside.

It would seem, the healthier Shannon became, the less Leticia became in knowing what to say and do with the young man, like her children she had taken care of them, and now this man, who was going to leave, and as a result, she was to be left alone again; unable to be a caretaker, a natural instinct for a mother, and perhaps for many women in general. It was easy to tell a child what to do, where to go; but a soldier, a young man, all shot up, emptied out of war, “Nothing,” you can say “Nothing,” to a man like that, she conclude. She knew the beast in a man, in a soldier; they killed her children with this 300-day battle. She knew they were among the unfound corpses. She was as most women are, attracted to a young man in uniform, whom was to be idealized for his bravery, no matter whose side he was on, and she knew a man loved with his heart, and perhaps she knew he could not give it willingly, she knew that now, not before, yet her children had given her unconditional love, as she gave it back to them.
She asked herself a host of questions, concerning this unfortunate soldier, but could answer none of them. She had witnessed him naked, a hard young body, handsome, and a man who did not willingly brag of the ordeal he had just been through. Yes indeed, for a young man he was odd, peculiar.
But now she saw peacefulness in his beauty, occupied with nature, plants and the birds that chipper about him…

and her passiveness of him was becoming too obvious, as if there was another side to her, but she had harnessed it for the moment. Hence, it was that very night, she created a dread about him—inside her mind, she felt he could not see the other side of her face, although she didn’t see it herself completely. And he knew to a certain extent he was isolated, and her mannerisms had changed. But she didn’t ask many questions, and he gave only a few answers. And it was that night she’d wake up and climb down the rope ladder and lay with him, and she did just that, and who knows what was passing in their minds, they both for that evening clung to one another—like white on rice, but she woke up in the wee hours of the morning, screaming, “My Children! My Children!”
She cried with almost an accent of rage, “MY CHILDREN!”
Shannon dropped his head and shoulders gently back down into the bed, she had a revolver aimed at his temple.
He accounted for this to himself by saying, “Why then did you save me, if only to sacrifice me for the wrongs mankind has done to you and your children?”
It had seemed to Shannon, it was some kind of atonement, for not taking revenge.
And she answered his question, “Because it is man’s war, not mine.”
There she sat, on the edge of the bed, she remained doubtful on what to do for a time, the gun being lowered and brought back up, and lowered again, “If I had known,” she started to say, and went silent, then added, “My good action was really a bad one, in that I spared the life of the wolf, to kill the sheep, and my children are the dead examples, of some of those dead sheep, and those yet you may very well kill.”
And like a strong vulture with overwhelming wings, he pulled up his arms from under the blanket, with unreasoning calmness, yet swift, and in knowing it was just a matter of seconds before she’d had pulled the trigger, he took her arm, and jerked it away from his temple, having confidence in his strength now, he turned the gun on her, and forced her finger to pull the trigger, and she didn’t have time to tell him what she wanted to tell him, so I shall tell you: “What am I without my children. A peasant has nothing but her children, men have war to contain them, brag about after it is all over with.” And so death got its warrant fulfilled—but death had its own agenda.

Part Three:
Home Sweet Home 1919-1923

Chapter One
A Soldier Goes Home

Shannon O’Day, returned to the United States in the summer of 1919 twenty-years old now. He had spent free time along the Rhine with some French soldiers, and German girls before the corporal caught his ship back home; not beautiful, more plain than pretty. In the few pictures he took, you got just a glimpse of the Rhine. By the time Shannon O’Day returned home, all the celebrations had come and passed. He was too late, hysteria had filled the cities, now peace had set in, and reactions of the people were back to normal—just to be written for posterity’s sake.
Shannon needed someone, anybody would do, to talk to, to listened to him, so he could get it all out, unbolted.
As people listened to Shannon, it appeared they wanted his stories to be more fictionalized, and he accommodated them, so they’d continue to listen, yet it was drowning him. He didn’t like being vulnerable, a side show, with his lies; unimportant lies to him, merely entertainment for the listeners.

During this time, fall had set into Minnesota, and deeply into the city of St. Paul. He slept long hours, eating at a bar and restaurant, called, “The Coney Island Bar,” on St. Peter’s Street, between 6th and 7th streets, it was a short walk from his apartment on Wabasha Street. In the evenings he’d fiddle on an old brown and black faded guitar, too small for him but he had purchased it at one of the many pawnshops along Wabasha.
When drunk, and drunk he was mostly during these months after his return from Europe, and when his bar friends were drunk, he was a hero to many, and sober, only to his brother Gus was he a hero, who had a little farm a short ways outside the city limits, heading towards Stillwater township.
A little ways away from the Coney Island Bar, that made delicious Coney Island Hot Dogs, made them with raw onions, and lots of hamburger with beans and an Italian sauce, and cheese, he’d head onto the Gem Bar, a more bar type bar, with cool reeking smells and moistness of a bar.
It was this one night after Shannon O’Day had been home, three months, near winter of 1919, when he went into the Gem Bar, she was a waitress, and she smoothed her apron out when she saw him.
“Do you want a beer?” Sally-Anne Como asked, then thought of what she said, “I, mean, what would you like sir?”
“Yeah!” said Shannon, with tired and bloodshot eyes, which scanned her as if he was an android, or robotic.
“I know your brother Gus, he comes in here off and on, talks about you quite a lot, tells us girls here at the bar about your time in Germany, you know, the Great War?” She was completely fascinated with him.
“I’ll bet he does,” Shannon said with a chuckle.
“Yeah, he really does,” remarked Sally-Anne.
“After work someday I’d like to take you over to the Coney Island Bar and buy you a Coney Island, okay?”
“Yeah,” commented Sally-Anne, then added, “Uncle Isaiah says he knows yaw!” Shannon looked at the big Blackman behind the bar, he looked familiar, “Yeah, I know him, all right,” said Shannon, “it’s been a long while since I saw him last, he was old when I knew him some years ago, and he looks older now, I guess, I’m surprised to see him still kicking.”
“Well, I suppose I better get back to work,” she said.
Shannon looked at her, he liked her, he liked her very much, and he looked at her for a long time, “Have you got the newspaper?” he asked.
She brought the paper over to him, the Saint Paul Pioneer Press. And as he read it, he looked at Old Uncle Isaiah, remembering the first time he saw him, had met him:

(Daydreaming) It was on Nigger Roe, that’s what we all called it; we all knew where it was, on Rondo, I had never walked that street alone, matter-of-fact, I had never walked that street at all, rode by it, down it, rode around it with a few friends, through its neighborhoods. And this one night, a weekend night, late after the bars closed, I met Hank Lowery, and Seven Lundberg, and Charley Lund we all went down to Nigger Town, to this after hours club. That was the night I met the man they called Uncle Isaiah, he had a crowbar lying on an old wooden table, alongside the door entrance to the after-hours joint. I presupposed he was the bouncer.
“Youall ole-enough to drink whitey?” he asked. He had already let my friends through, put an ink stamp on their hands.
“All right, all right,” he said “no reason to be afraid of this big black nigger, you ever been so close to one before?”
And I didn’t say a word, and to this day, I have never seen a man laugh so hard, laughing behind his laughing, until he had to take hold of his stomach, undo a few buttons on his shirt, or they’d have popped off. I was all of fourteen-years old then. Gus was to catch up with us, but he hadn’t showed up yet.
“Jes’ call me Uncle Isaiah, this her’ crowbar aint fer you son, it fer those wild ones that is a-comin’, they jes’ is not her yet…! I knowen you aint no trouble maker, cuz you is too scared to be one, so, you go-on in dhere, and be my guest.”

After going to the after-hours joint several times Uncle Isaiah would say to me, chidingly, and then jokingly, “Youall’s goin’ in dhere to try and see dhe black girl’s behinds, pumping up and down inside those dresses until somebody stops dhem,” then he’d look at me again and say, “Yippee!”

“Sally-Anne,” yelled Shannon, and she come over and stood by him, “Sally-Anne, please don’t muss up the paper next time, no one can read it proper.”
She stood there a moment, watched him unfold the paper again, trying to iron out the wrinkles on the table with the palms of his hands, he liked reading the paper.
“You are an odd one,” she said with a peculiar look on her face, “but I like heroes, I’ll meet you at the Coney Island Bar whenever you want!”
“Good,” said Shannon, “how old are you?”
“I’ll tell you, but you have to keep it hushed up, I’m seventeen-years old.”
“Yeah,” said Shannon, “I thought as much.”
“You bet.”
“Couldn’t you get in trouble for lying?”
“I don’t know.”
“Sure you know. You can be my beau, okay?”
“Sure. I’m your girl now.”
“Sure you’re sure?” asked Shannon putting on a serious face.
“If you’re sure, I’m sure, and if you’re sure you love me, I can even be surer!”
“Uh, hah…maybe!”
“Will you love me forever?”
“Sure, why not!”
“You run along now, I got work to do,” said Sally-Anne, happy as a peacock, flapping its colorful wings.
She put his empty beer bottle on her try and brought it up to the bartender, Uncle Isaiah, and he dropped it back into a box, below him, and he started wiping down the counter, which he did quite often.

Chapter Two
The Prison

It was in 1921, Shannon O’Day was at the Gem Bar reading the paper, reading about two soldiers that had been captured the last day of the battle for Verdun, they had given their story to a magazine, and the newspapers picked up on it, nationally; when he read the names of the two soldiers, it was the very two Shannon had lost account of.

The extract read:

…two sentinels stood guard on duty before the closed door of the small prison…; in the late hours of the night a German soldier would come with a lantern in his hand, transverse the halls, from cell to cell, made himself known to all the sentries, and ordered all the guards to stand at attention for inspection. He then entered each inmates prison cell, leaving the door ajar, to allow fresh air to enter. The dungeon was moist and dark, and silent. —it was gloomy and shadowy, mostly sleeping men; almost peaceful, until he’d show up. We’d had been laying on a bundle of straw, some men slept deeply, no one tried to escape.
The man they called captain, moved close to each one of us, standing tall by the frames of our prison doors, noiselessly standing. He’d press his clinched hands against our throats, his eyes gave a gesture of motionless terror—dots for pupils, he’d tell us to kneel and pray, he’d press his revolver to our lips, the whites of his eyes would open up wide, a dim light in them.
“Ah,” said he, “it is you tonight,” and he’d take one of us out of the small room, away and down the hallway, out through the metal doors of the prison, there beyond, never to return, or be seen, or heard of again. Then one day the doors opened and a French Officer, an American and English officer stood by and one of them said, and I can’t remember which one, said it, “You’re free, what do you understand by that?”
I thought this at the time, but didn’t say it, but I’ll say it now what I thought, because now I fully understand it: each of us, and all owe to each, a whole life, in some kind of peaceful, social order, beyond this, simple law, there is nothing but war. No justice no equity to build for the future, no obligatory service to mankind. I want peace, that last word is what I told him, “We found peace!”

“What are you reading, you’re so intense?” asked Sally-Anne Como, to Shannon.
“Nothing much, just a fling of manure,” he then throws the paper onto Sally-Anne’s tray, “it belongs in the sewer.”

Chapter Three
Gem Bar, Isaiah Christianson

It was old Isaiah Christianson, Uncle Isaiah to most folks he knew, fifteen-years he worked at the Gem Bar, Sally-Anne liked working there, it was slow during the day, and she had her nights free. The bar was cool but dim, as most bars are, but the Gem was dimmer than most bars in general, and Shannon O’Day liked the bar for that very reason also, a quiet kind of bar.
Dim perhaps because the owner—Jefferson Manning, never washed the windows. Isaiah would tell the customers, the owner liked it that way, and it kept out the young noisy, crowd. Isaiah would say, “Nobody can see in, and nobody can see out, therefore, nobody knows anybody’s business, and that way nobody can get into trouble.” And so he just had the old folks come in, mostly old folks, a few like Gus and Shannon O’Day, but very few. And Old Isaiah was getting very old, and slow, and he no longer worked at any after-hours joints, like he used to some years back, he needed his sleep. He’d even play cards and dice with the customers, which is how slow it got. And to be frank, Old Isaiah couldn’t see that clear anymore, anyways, a thick yellowish gook surrounded his eyes.
Mr. Jefferson Manning, was a big man, weighted some 400-pounds, wore small glasses, ate all day long: eggs and pickles, and fried hamburgers, and fried chicken and watermelon, and cakes, and pies, and popcorn, then would go up to the Coney Island Bar, and eat a half dozen Coney Island hotdogs in a fat bun, with chili been sauce, and cheese, and raw onions. He’d sit by the big gas stove in the middle of the floor of the bar, and wash it all down with two or three beers, then return to his apartment on top of his Gem Bar, take a two hour nap, and start the routine all over again. But he was going broke; he needed more money, even though his bar was paid for, left to him by his parents. And he was thinking, when he came in after taking that two-hour nape one spring day, in 1922, and he looked at those dirty windows, and he looked, and he looked, and he formed an idea in the process of looking.

Chapter Four
Jobless Isaiah

Old Isaiah Christianson was fired, Mr. Manning, the owner of the Gem Bar, had come down from a nap, looked at his windows, looked at Sally-Anne, never even looked at Isaiah, and said “Sally-Anne, you’re the new bartender, Isaiah’s fired, I hope you know his duties, and if you don’t I’m sure it will not take you all that long to figure them out, get to it.”
Isaiah was in shock, he didn’t say a word, he was just too dumbfounded, he was handed a check for the weeks pay, and $500-dollars in cash, for severance pay, saying “I got new plans Isaiah, and you’re not in them, you just don’t fit, sorry!”
So he himself, took a bucket of hot water, and soap, and several rages, and washed those windows clean, as clean and clear as the ice on the Mississippi River, a few blocks away. And he helped paint it, painted the whole bar, walls and all the woodwork, hired Shannon and Gus and Sally-Anne after hours, and they painted it in two days. Then he bought a big sign that read: “Live Music Nightly, Jazz!”
And the crowd started coming in, almost immediately, and in two months he was making more money than he had made in the whole previous year.
Well, this didn’t sit well with Isaiah, not one bit; he took a disliking for it all, and rented an apartment across the street, by a new hamburger joint called “White Castle.” And he’d sit outside on a chair, a bottle of whiskey in his hands and these little hamburgers, eating one after the other, and he’d cuss all the customers that went into the bar, and he called Mr. Manning every fat name he could think of and made a few up.
Some days he’d sit on the curb, until Mr. Manning called the police, and got a court order for him to stop his monkey business, stop being a pain in the ass for everybody, to stop his nonsense. The judge warned him that they had places for mentally ill folk, although everyone knew it was anger that got Uncle Isaiah’s goat.
And every week, when one of the waitresses would clean the windows now, Isaiah would throw dirt at the window, he actually had a little supply of it in little white sacks he’d pull one out of his coat pocket, and it was fine sand, and he spat in it, to get it nice and gooey, then throw it at the windows. He even told Shannon O’Day, one day when he was about to enter the bar, “Youall tell um, da fat man, I is goin’ to hit him ef’in I ever sees him alone.”

Chapter Five
Death

After a while old Isaiah only came out of his apartment on occasions, lost one-hundred pounds, of his one-hundred and ninety-pounds he had at one time. His eyes looked like cracked eggs, in deep sockets, skin and face unkempt, unshaven, warts and pimples all over him. I’m not saying he forgot about what he said concerning revenge on the fat man, he never did forget, he just never got around to doing it, and if he did, when he did, it was too late, because when he got to that point, Mr. Manning had died and left him holding those bags full of sand, which he never threw once he was six feet under, then three months after Jefferson Manning died, he died.
Manning died at fifty-three years old, a heart attack. Uncle Isaiah, at 73, of cancer; It would seem after he got fired he never recovered from the wound, worse than Shannon’s in combat, a deeper scare I’d say.
It wasn’t long after both their deaths, those windows got dirty again and one of Manning’s relatives by the last name of Ingway, took over the Gem Bar, that was in 1923, they had closed the bar down for a spell I understand.

End Notes on writing of the Novelette: “To Save a Lopsided Sparrow,” the name of the book had three revisions: “The Sparrow,” one day, then the next, “The Lopsided Sparrow,” and then the third day, “To Save a Lopsided Sparrow.” The first day of writing, 5-2-2009, during the afternoon on my terrace roof in Lima, did two thirds of the outline, up to the end of the war and the death of Leticia Dalasi (the Mad woman); on 5-3-2009, I did half of Part Three, the five end chapters; and on 5-4-2009, I did Part One, and the last two chapters of Part Three, along with a poem. Three days in the making, on my terrace roof; day four, three paragraphs were added to the story, 5-5-2009. Day five, “Eating her Own Death,” was written out, a Chapter Story. (FM/∙∙/∙)

The Half Tramp
(The Years 1922-1932)

As told by: Mabel O’Day ((Widow to Gus O’Day, 1969) (Shannon O’Day had died in the Cornfields in 1967, as indicated in the sequel, “Cornfield Laughter”))

Chapter One:
The Half Tramp

They—his mother and father had tried to instill it into their two boys, we all knew that in the family, I am speaking of fortitude, the heart and the will to endure, Gus and Shannon neither could answer them in logic or reason, or have explained back to them what they were trying to instill, but we all knew what they had instilled, what their mother and father had implanted, we always knew, and they had it, matter-of-fact, they had more than their share. And their mother knew—beyond her battered life—knew, beyond any doubt, and within their small lonely spot, forlorn spot on earth, which God and humanity gave them: she knew she needed to instill this before she was blotted out of this existence.
And it was this will, this fortitude that held him, helped Shannon O’Day, through those war years (the Great War), and it was that he was fleeing those memories because he was not going anyplace soon; he spent the following decade (between 1922 and 1932) as a half tramp, that is to say, somewhat of a casual tramp, between getting drunk in his brother’s cornfields outside of the city of St. Paul, Minnesota, and the bars and streets of the inner city, working part-time jobs as he could, in per near every factory and foundry in the city, and a general laborer during a few summers working in the field of construction of building, buildings and houses. He even worked a spell in the South St. Paul, Stockyards, drifting from one job to another—for example, the hog kill, to the meat packing department, and to the Rose Room, where they burnt up the waste of the animals: drinking before and after his work hours, and finally getting fired from there. And back to the Gem Bar he’d go; now Ira Ingway owned it; where Sally-Anne, now his wife was bartender.

At twenty-five years old, in 1925, he could hardly bear to take a cold shower, feeling its needle like thrust of shooting out water on his sensitive skin; taking five aspirins to subdue his headache and unsteady hands. But he could somehow afford to drink as much as he pleased in those trying years, particularly in the evenings, and on the weekends in his friends or brother’s cornfields. He did this of course with the knowledge of everyone knowing, because on Monday mornings, shrill cries of half drunken women followed him to his work which he had a hard time, at times, driving himself back even to the city, fourteen miles away, how he got to work from there, puzzled all of us. We all learned in time, he’d walk into work in some dreamless stupefaction of reeking alcohol from last night’s uproar, that was still pounding in his head—, in the afternoons it would die, and the recuperation process would start in full swing.

Ten-years of an insane desire to drink—Sally-Anne, made it through the first two; she had married him in 1922, and left him in 1924. In 1932, he still had that shrewdness, that luck and fortitude imported from Europe, by way of his mother and father, good Irish stock.

(It was his brother who had fetched him back—when their mother died, prior to his 14th Birthday, with a kind of abashed and thoughtful unshakability and brought him here, to our farm, and home in which he would live thereafter—until he went to France to join the military, to fight Germans. He had started drinking a little prior to this time with his brother, ten-years his senior, in those cornfields, not one in all those years had he failed to stop drinking, to my knowledge, not even during the war years I would guess.)

Of course all this drinking, required and took, and drained the character and strength of Shannon O’Day. At the Gem Bar, Ira Ingway, had bequeathed him credit, and a discount of 20% off all he consumed, if he agreed to patronize his establishment over the other bars—although an occasional stop at the Coney Island Bar, didn’t matter, and Sally-Anne, now married to Ira, didn’t care for that, but Ira had said, business is business, and since he was such a half tramp in drinking, she could keep an eye on him that way—better, so no harm would come to him. Such logic, but it worked. On the other hand, one could say, and many of us did say, Ira Ingway helped Shannon’s dig his hole. By and large, Shannon did drink there the majority of the times, and didn’t spend more than ten-minutes talking with his now ex-wife, Sally-Anne, per week, who was now of course much better off economically.
Sally-Anne, on the other hand lived in complete physical and mental ease and peace as she could devise with Ira Ingway and his bar. She would have had to agree, her life no longer required cash, it was all there for the taking, in the form of credit wherever she went: at the bakery, the butcher, the Emporium Department Store, you name it, and she had credit there.
She could have had servants, if she so desired, or wished to, but she never did, an old habit, a do it yourself thing.
So it would seem she had done right by her new marriage, and nobody blamed her for leaving Shannon, not even Shannon.
The question had come up among us, “Did Shannon think about Sally-Anne, thereafter?”
Shannon told me once, and he always added a little smartness to his dialogue, so I can’t say one way or the other where the truth lies, but he said, and he had a sense of humor of course in saying what he said, “Yes I think about Sally-Anne, when I take cold showers, and when I roll out of bed, in the middle of the night to get a drink of corn whisky, or when I drink out of the ordinary.” If this indeed was true, I was the only one he told. During these times he had a hard time distinguishing between reality and illusion, during those years.

Subchapter:
Foolish Years—1930s

It was hard on Shannon when he got jolted by his wife, first wife, perhaps the bitterest thing he ever had to face, and it all came about of course because of his lifestyle, his drinking, and his thoughtlessness. Even now, years later, when I think about it, I want to cry, if not swear or kick him in the pants. Yes, even now after all this time and he is of course buried six-feet under. I’m old now, and when I look back I know there will be no satisfaction in telling this, but I will.
To tell the truth, I feel a little foolish bring this up, but during the summer of 1930, Shannon brought a nigger named Otis Wilder Mather over to the farm, Otis, he said was working at a ranch, where people rented out horses, Hilltop Stables, they called it. I guess his job was as a helper all-around, whatever that means. Shannon thought it something disgraceful that one of his friends, in this case, new friends should take a job like that. Otis had been working at the stables for a long spell, some three years trying to save enough money to bring back home to his ma and pa, down in Ozark, Alabama; he had told Shannon in front of me (half drunk) one afternoon after coming in from the cornfields with him—each with a bottle of whisky in hand, “I gots to work dhere cuz dhere aint no other work to be git.” He was a big nigger fellow, young, big as a lumbering jack, you know one of those tree climbers, and cutters, he was only twenty-years old, and Shannon was thirty.
And they just got to hanging around the farm drinking, and Gus didn’t say a word, but it got on my nerves. And I told him so, and he said, “Mabel, I’m not mowing people’s lawns anymore, nor am I going to sell newspapers like I did when I was ten-years old, and I’m not cleaning any cistern out. So what can I do but get drunk!”
Well, Otis had moved in with Shannon, and here were two lazy birds, sprawling bodies, cockeyed drunk every morning, in his little hotel room on Wabasha Street. And if anybody had the luck of the devil, it was that nigger, and Shannon was smart enough to take a chance.
They both kept a peachy time I’ll say that, I don’t mean any of that funny stuff, just drinking, and joking. And they took off one weekend, jumped a boxcar in August, of 1930, and Shannon took all the money he had left, some $500-dollars I heard, and he bet it on a horse Otis had picked out. And I’ll be, he won $5000-dollars, enough for a house, two or three years of wages. Otis was a fine nigger, like Shannon tried to be a fine brother-in-law, neither one ever stole a thing, or would steal anything, just get drunk a whole lot, swear a little, like his brother Gus, my husband. Shannon even told me once, he said, “That young nigger taught me how to rub down a horse, and can you beat that Mabel?”
He’d get so excited about it he’d even explain it to me in detail, “You wrap a bandage on a horse’s leg, you see, and make sure it is smooth.” And I’d say, “Yaw,” waiting for the next whatever he was suppose to do to the horse, and Shannon would say, “That’s it, there isn’t anymore.”
“Gee whiz,” I’d say, waiting for him to say something else.
Anyhow, it left him with a lot of time to hang around and listen to horse stories from Otis as they’d yap in the warm air in the cornfields. He gave that nigger $500-dollars, and the next day he was gone, said he was going back to Alabama, to be with his folk. And Shannon gave Gus $1000-dollars. If he had any sense he would have bought a house. “Gosh almighty,” I said to Gus, “your brother was sure nice to us,” and that paid the farm off.

5-12-1009∙

The Bluff (1946)
(Margaret-Rose Ramsey and Shannon O’Day)

Chapter Three

As told by: Mabel O’Day (Widow to Gus O’Day)

And so Otis Wilde Mather took off to Ozark, Alabama, and he’d wait sixteen-years before he’d return to Minnesota, whereupon, he’d meet Margaret-Rose Ramsey, Shannon O’Day’s second wife to be.

(Mabel O’Day :) If I recall right, Otis Wilde Mather, that there nigger he liked, come up from Alabama one summer, the summer of 1946, after the second war, and he and that nigger gulped down some wine in the cornfield together, like they used to, he was now thirty-six years job, and looking for work. Shannon was forty-six at the time, and still working part time here and there, actually he gave $500-dollars more to Gus from that money he won at the horse races a while back in I think 1940 or 1941, when they hit the jackpot for $5000-dollars. A bad year for everyone else, so it seemed, but not for those two, and so Gus took that as investing money and when times were good, Gus gave him some investment money back, and he hired Shannon to work, when he wasn’t working. But Gus just wouldn’t hire that there nigger friend of his, said his neighbors would hang him if he did. But Shannon didn’t give a hoot; you know how a fellow is that way. I had figured that out by now. But he was a mighty polite nigger; he was so tall I couldn’t even touch his shoulders I do believe. I’m not blaming Gus any, but that’s jes’ the way he was. I was friendlier I suppose with Otis, my mother being from Fayetteville, North Carolina, and father from Minnesota, mom and I kind of knew how to deal with color folk.
Otis and Shannon went to the Minnesota State Fair that year, and Gus and I tagged along, Shannon wanted to see the ‘Fat Man,’ he was 600-pounds of pure butter, and custard, if you know what I mean, ripples of fat like them there rollercoaster’s, they have out there, I like the rollercoaster, and the merry-go-round, but never cared to see the fat man, what for, fat is fat, but I went along with it all. He even winked at me, and I blushed, but I didn’t tell Gus, had I, gosh Almighty, what then? I just thought, the nerve of this guy, and let it be at that. But gee-whiz, gosh Almighty, there I was.
Anyhow, the Minnesota State Fair, lasted ten-days, and Shannon and Otis, went back there after we had went there with him, by themselves, and met Margaret-Rose Ramsey there, brought her to meet me and Gus at our farm, and she wasn’t any mutt. What I wouldn’t have given for a stick of chewing gum, I had jes’ eaten some garlic bread, and Gus, he done smoked a twenty-five cent cigar.
Shannon introduced us to her, and we all knew Otis, and she told us her father was a manufacturer of wooden crates for vegetables and fruits, and their company were named ‘Ramsey Crate Manufacturing Co.’
There was something in the way she dressed, in her designer style cloths, and I mean designer in the sense of creative; I bet it was all bought at the Golden Rule Department Store, or perhaps a personal tailor. And she had kind of pretty eyes, and the way she had looked at Gus, I didn’t like. She looked at me kind of strangely, as I was out of place, or so I felt, and I guess that was because of my garlic breath, it did give an ore of dislodgment.
Shannon sat down on a chair by the kitchen table, she stood by his shoulder, Otis was there, and Gus and I; I couldn’t show her up for a boob, I knew that.
I suppose I made a fool of myself, sure I did, I said I came from Connecticut, and my father knew Mark Twain, because he lived there, died in 1910, but it all seemed to fit. Yet I still had my mother’s southern, Fayetteville, North Carolina slight of speech in me, that minor pronunciation, or blur accent, southern twang. Nevertheless, as I kept bragging, Gus and Otis, and Shannon all leaned over their chairs listening not believing what they were hearing, and what I was saying, and I could just imagine what they were thinking. And I don’t think Margaret-Rose was doing much believing in what I was saying. But I kept on a saying what I was saying—and Gus and Shannon were silent about the truth of it all, and Miss Margaret-Rose’s eyes were shinning and so I went whole hog and said he even helped Mark Twain, by giving him advice concerning some short stories, one on a frog. By gosh, what was I thinking?
As I look back, I guess what happened was: I got a-bragging in a way I never had before, and as she listened, and things dragged on, the story just kept coming out of me, a tall tale that is, and somehow we all got to laughing, and I felt better, of course she didn’t, because she thought I was making fun of her status. Otis was leaning against the stove at this time, and even he was laughing with those big white buck teeth of his, and big nostrils like a dragon. I could have kicked myself in the butt; my legs are not agile enough to do that though. If a person goes to hell for telling a fib, I’m going to go to the hottest spot they got I do fear.
After a while we sat there talking, like we had known each other for years and years, and I bluffed it through the afternoon, even if I sounded like a lame cow.

Subchapter
Bushel of Spoiled Eggs

As told by: Mabel O’Day (Widow to Gus O’Day)

1948-49

There was something else eating at me, during those few years Shannon and Margaret-Rose dated and married, as she did in 1948, and had their first daughter in 1948—

Shannon broke a few, perhaps more than a few, pretty girls hearts in his day, he was a handsome man, in his youth. But he, himself came out of a bushel of spoiled eggs. I loved him as a brother-in-law, and still do, but a rotten egg is a rotten egg, however you look at it, or smell it: on the other hand, I guess I was left alone on that way of thinking, likened on a deserted island, no one else quite thought the way I did. He was no Rudolph Valentino you know, but you’d think he was, always carefree drinking, getting lucky. There I was small boobs as I am, but Gus loved them and me. And when Shannon come over to visit me and Gus and they’d go off into the cornfields, to drink, and leave Margaret-Rose with me cuz she didn’t drink much, she wasn’t saying much, she had changed overnight, so it appeared, and I guess I wasn’t saying much either that day. My guess was I really kind of knew. She wasn’t stuck on me because of the fib, about my father knowing Mark Twain and all that. I’ve learned there is a certain girl you meet and if you click, you best make some hay together cuz there gone forever and forever in some other world and trying to be close friends with them is impossible, you might jes’ as well fall off a house roof and die.
Why she fell for Shannon is beyond my understanding, but he played her music I suppose and after we had supper that day, Margaret-Rose had to leave at nine o’clock to catch a train to Chicago, to see her father, give him the news she was pregnant. Shannon simply went back to his cornfields with Gus and Otis and drank another bottle of watermelon wine, something he picked up in the war he said, over in France. I think that day was a mad, happy and sad day.
“I got to go to the train now Shannon,” said Margaret-Rose thinking he would follow her, but he didn’t. When she left, she was crying but Shannon didn’t see it. She never knew nothing I knew, and when they divorced I couldn’t believe she was all that busted up.

Margaret-Rose stayed in Chicago until after her baby girl was born. She wrote to me, and I wrote back to her, she asked how Shannon was, told me how the child was, that’s all she said. I suppose it was a chance to repair our friendship, a swell chance I got, but I was too busy too. Whatever kind of guy she was looking for, there wasn’t any such creature on God’s good earth. And me, trying to pass myself off as being a big bug, I never really cared to see her because of that; I was a little shameful about the way I acted.
And then after the child was six-months old, the train come in and she got off it, and Shannon met her and shook her hand, and she gave a little bow to me, and the baby cried like a baby does, “Gee,” I said, “what a lovely baby.” You know, like everyone does. “Did you ever see such a lovely baby Shannon?” She asked him.
What he said next I per near fell over, or as if the train itself had run over me, what he said was “It looks like a raw oversized turkey.”
I wanted to go sit down after that, let Margaret-Rose deal with the hurt, and mend fences with Shannon if indeed that was their plan, but I said, “I bet if Shannon hadn’t a drink of booze today, he’d had said how lovely the child was.” But I knew Shannon, and that was another fib, not like the big Mark Twain one though.
He, Shannon said, “Those gosh darn eyes of her’s looks like they’re smashed into her forehead, what happened?”
“You’re a big fool Shannon—that’s what he is,” I said to Margaret-Rose.
“Did you find work Shannon?” asked Margaret-Rose.
“I don’t care anything for working or saving or shaving, I’m just a half tramp!”

Seven Months Later

Unfortunately I received one last letter, several months after that visit, where Margaret-Rose had written me, her mother, the child’s grandmother had taken the child out for a ride in the winter, while in Chicago, skidded on a road, and they both ended up in the hospital. The mother losing her motor function ability, and the child’s death; I told Shannon of the news, and it simply made him drink more, he never did make it to the funeral.

“The Bluff” and “Bushel of Spoiled Eggs,” written: 5-12-2009, part two to the three part story, “The Half Tramp” being part one and part three being the “Cornfield Burner”

“Cornfield Burner!” (1950)

Chapter Four
Cornfield Burner

“What proofs have you Mr. Gus O’Day?” ask Judge Finley.
“I told you the nigger got into my cornfield, was drunk waiting for my brother Shannon to show up and he was the only one there!”
Judge Finley hesitated looked at Otis Wilde Mather… “But that isn’t any substantial proof!”
“I told him, warned him not to go in there without Shannon, my brother, I knew he smoked that damn corncob pipe, and drank,” said Gus O’Day.
“Shannon, he tells me, your honor, it be O.K., ef-in I goes in dhere and waits fer him.”
“Who told you that you could talk Mr. Mather, shut up until you’re told it’s your time to talk, you hear me?” said the judge. “Yessum,” said Otis, and then nodded his head.

“And this here is the man you’re talking about, right Mr. O’Day?” and the judge waved his hand for Otis to standup.
“Yes sir, your honor, that sure is,” said Gus O’Day, adding, “He’s a strange one, but my brother likes him for some odd reason, comes from down south and causes trouble up here.”
“But you don’t have any real proof,” said the judge, “you can see that, right?”
“Bring that big black nigger up over here, he’ll tell the truth, or else!”
Otis was still standing, big and wiry, in patched trousers, dusty and dirty, and ripped along the ridges, they were too tight for the six-foot six, man, some 220-pounds. With deep dark eyes, unkempt hair, gave him a wild look, yet he was not wild. He noticed all the white males’ grim faces in the courtroom. And here was a short white, gray haired judge, past middle age, with small gold rimmed glasses ordering him to stand and be accountable.
His body appeared to be stiff, from sleeping in a cramped jail cell overnight. This was not a court of judgment, just a fact finding court that being of a preliminary hearing to see if it was a case to be taken to court, or could be settled out of court.
Otis, didn’t seem to look at anybody in particular, he just stood there blankly, like the Tower of Pisa.

“What’s your name, boy?” asked the judge.
“Otis Wilde Mather, sir,” said the big Blackman.
“Where is your hometown?”
“Ozark, Alabama, sir.”
“Did you fall to sleep in the cornfields and with a lit pipe, burn Mr. O’Day’s crops to smithereens?”
“Nope, but I done drank some whisky your honor; I done left my corncob pipe at Mr. Shannon O’Day’s apartment, sir.”
There was no sound in the courtroom, you could have heard a dime drop had one dropped; it was absolutely quiet, everyone waiting for the Judge’s decision on the matter.
“So you’re saying you’re not guilty of this crime, is that so Mr. Mather?”
“Yessum your honor, dhats waht I is sayin’ cuz I dont rightly know how dhat dhere fire got a burnin’”
Gus’ face exploded with anger “Damn nigger!” he yelled.
“Case dismissed,” said the judge, adding “I can’t even find you careless, Mr. Mather, but I suggest you leave this city and go on back home where you belong, down to that Alabama place, and right quick. And if I ever see you in my courtroom again, you’ll be in the workhouse faster than you can say Jack Johnson.”
“I aint a-goin’ to stay,” said Otis, “dont care fer this place anymore…”
“That’s enough,” said the judge, “get on your way now, out of my courtroom, case dismissed!”

Shannon O’Day had appeared somewhere in the crowed walked out of the courtroom with Otis, gave him some chewing tobacco, they both had smiles on their faces, everyone else had a grim face.
Out on the courthouse steps were several women, farm folk that lived around Gus’ place, repeating: “Cornfield burner! Cornfield burner!”
Said Gus to his brother Shannon outside the courthouse, “Brother, you got to learn to stick with your own blood!”
Shannon didn’t say a word, he knew the truth, and the truth didn’t come out in the courtroom, and he knew who had the truth, and if it did come out, Gus would hate him for it.
So Shannon just stood behind other folks and listened, and figured, ‘We’ll see what tomorrow will bring.’

Subchapter
The Secret

Shannon gave Gus $500-dollars every penny he had, it was a gift given to his wife from her father, now separated from Margaret-Rose. Gus took the money saying to his wife, Mabel, “I hate to take it but I got to plant again, I imagine I’ll remain friends with my brother, even if he likes niggers—he didn’t burn my cornfield up anyhow, I know that! And I’ll owe him heart and soul until I pay him back.”
Then Shannon showed up at the door, hugged his brother, and they were like two happy hogs again.
“Guess I have some work to do with my new man, Albert Fitzgerald, going to replant as soon as possible.”
And he left the house.
“Come with me,” said Mabel to Shannon, and they went outside, to make sure no one was listening.
“Yes,” said Shannon.
“Otis,” she mentioned, and then paused as if it was Shannon’s turn to speak.
“I’m supposing he’ll be fine, he’s going back to Alabama on the 7:30 p.m., train this evening.
“You know I’ll owe you body and soul for as long as I live Shannon!” she said.
They walked up to the burnt cornfields, to its edge, it was a warm day, and as Shannon looked over the field, it was as if he had lost his lover, but he always had his friend’s farm to drink in, right next door to Gus’.
“You saved our marriage,” she told Shannon, as he stood foot solid looking at her, she was a nice looking woman, more plain than pretty, but she kept herself up, she wasn’t fat or too thin. Then he turned about, saw her farmhouse, perhaps this was the first time he took a good look at it, and the rose bushes, the wooden gate that was closed tight in the front of the house, the creek that run in the back of the house, and to its side, Gus and Mabel had put a life time of work into their marriage, and this farm.
It was a land of small farms, and cornfields, it was his world as well as Gus’. It brought him peace and joy. For no reason he could put into words, his mind being too liquefied from booze for deep thinking, yet he knew Mabel and Gus were safe from divorce now. And her dignity untouched and the buzzing wasps from the courthouse were put to rest, no longer capable of stinging his family.
Shannon knew this was the only way to stop sorrow, certainly raving jealous rage, iron like anger, it would have changed Gus forever, had he known the truth…

Shannon remembered his Negro friend was shouting: “Miss Mabel! Miss Mabel! You-is drunk, go-on back to your house befer youall git us in trouble!”
Gus was passed out in his bed, in the house. And Shannon had just taken a bath in the creek. No one seeing him, not even Otis, still waiting for him to show up, and here he was watching it all, per near.
He saw Mabel, in a thin, near see through nightgown, more like a slip, laced around the neck, thrashing like, trying to wipe booze off her lips and face and chin, with the palm of her hand.
After it was all over and Mabel no longer on her back, she stood up, shook herself clean, and headed on back to her house.
Shannon, now looking at Otis, “I tole her no, but…” he said to Shannon, cockeyed and loopy, as Shannon just shook his head.
“I heard yaw!” said Shannon, “now will you please just go away,” he told Otis, holding his breath, and Otis did.

Mabel had carried a kerosene lamp (paraffin style house lamp) the kind where the knob protruding to the right adjusts the wick, and hence the flame size, outside with her, and now was carrying it back headed out of the cornfield and to the house, it slipped out of her hands, and she fell a few feet from the fire that had now started, it had started almost instantly when she dropped the lantern—the glass had broken, and the fire escaped, and Shannon could do one of two things: stop the fire by putting it out with his shirt or pants, or put Mabel back into her house into her bed with Gus before Gus woke up to find out what all the fuss was about, and hope Otis could find his way back to his apartment in the dark, but he’d have to let the cornfields burn if he did that. And we all know what he did—what he felt was the lesser of the evils. He did not speak again to Otis until the day at court. He had never seen a man, white or black sweat so hard, as Otis did in that courtroom. But then, who wouldn’t have under the circumstances.

5-12-2009 ∙∙

The Third Wife1951- 1953

Prelude (and outline):

For those who do not know the ongoing story, or saga of Shannon O’Day, the first book “Cornfield Laughter,” shows Shannon O’Day as an old man, he dies in 1967, at the age of 67-years old; the book opens in the year 1966, and backtracks some, and then forward. His fourth wife is Gertrude (who he had his second daughter with, and who survives him), who leaves him stranded in the cornfields of Minnesota one morning, and is never seen of again; and his fifth and last wife is Maribel, who he marries, after meeting her at the diner in St. Paul, and they divorce after the winter of that year, and he goes onto dating Annabelle, who is less than half his age, but never marries her. His first wife is Sally-Anne Como, who he meets in the Gem Bar, in the second book called: “To Save a Lopsided Sparrow,” and whom she leaves because of his drinking. Also in the same book his second wife, Margaret-Rose, has a child with him, but dies after an accident, and she returns to live with her father in Chicago. And now here is his third wife, Sandra Rossellini, the one thus far unmentioned, and for a good reason…

The Story

Chapter One
The Apartment

When Shannon O’Day saw her nearing the door to her apartment, her apartment being next to his—she had moved in a few weeks earlier—both noticing each other through their windows, both taking a liking for each other, this day, this Friday, they stopped and looked up at each other instead of looking down for her keys, and him digging in his pocket for his.
“Would you like to come in for a beer?” he asked her kindly. He pulled out his apartment door key from his pocket, put it into the door’s keyhole, and then held the door open for her, and she walked in.
“What’s your name?” she asked.
“Shannon O’Day,” he answered, “And yours is?” he remarked, “Sandra Rossellini,” she said in a soft spoken voice, and Shannon thought right then and there, what a pretty fresh looking face she has.
“Beer?” she said to Shannon, “don’t you have something stronger?”
“Whisky and rum, and vodka, and wine, take your pick.”
He drew a beer for himself, and took a second one out of the ice box and pushed it across his little bar counter to her, she sat on a stool, and he was standing upright, behind the counter.
“What’s the matter?” he asked her.
She didn’t answer him. She just looked over his head and at something behind him, and after a long moment of staring, said, “Who’s that?” it was a picture in a frame of a young woman.
“Gwyneth Davis, someone I’ve been dating,” he remarked.
“Rye whisky,” the woman said, “I’ll take a glass of your rye whisky and use the beer for a chaser, I suppose.” (She really didn’t care for beer she was being polite.)
Shannon put out a bottle of beer by her, and a glass and a bottle of rye whisky by her, and a glass of water in case she wanted to mix the whisky with water. Then he pulled out of the ice box, some pickled pig’s feet, put them on a dish between the two, put two forks alongside each other near the pig’s feet, so he or she could pick them up with ease.
“No,” she said, “I don’t care for pig’s feet, you can put one of them back, I’m not eating it,” and she poured water and whisky into the glass.
“So you don’t like pig’s feet?” said Shannon.
“The damn thing stinks,” she remarked, and gagged at the sight of them. Shannon put one back into the ice box.
“Listen,” said Shannon, “if you want we can go for a walk after the drinks.”
“Who said I wanted to go out with you,” she said “it wasn’t’ my idea, all I wanted was to meet you, I saw you about, you have an interesting face.”
“We’ll just go for a short walk; we’ll be back in a hurry.” He told her.
“No you won’t,” she said, “You have other ideas.”
They both drank down their drinks, and Shannon said, “Come on! Do I need to tell you how wrong you are?”
Sandra turned to the window in back of her, it was getting dark. “I don’t know,” she said. “If I go with you tonight are you going to dump that little mistress of yours?” She asked Shannon, and Shannon shook his head yes. She was a very lovely woman, about thirty-two years old; she looked like Audrey Hepburn, he thought. Gwyneth Davis was young and plain looking but loved to drink in the cornfields with Shannon, and that mattered, but he was hoping Sandra would also.
“Who’s that man that brings you home now and then?” He asked her.
“Truman Weaver, you could say I guess, I’m his part time mistress—just like that one is for you (pointing back at the picture in its frame behind Shannon), he pays for everything, and I don’t love him, although he loves me. And I suppose we should get going its getting dark.”

Chapter Two
Murder on the Highway

(Sunday Morning) Shannon O’Day was woken up and picked up by the St. Paul Police, while sleeping in his brother’s cornfields and brought down to the St. Paul Police Station for the murder of Gwyneth Davis, twenty-four years old. He looked about saw a half dozen whores waiting for their lawyers to get them out before they got put into a jail cell, they were about to be processed. There were a few blacks, Indians and Mexicans, talking to a few police men, taking down statements. Two white women complaining about their husbands battering. It was crowded and hot, and stale smoke circled the area, it was the main entrance room where everyone was waiting, processing and complaining. And he was brought through this crowd and put into a backroom, where Sergeant Toby Patron, was waiting for him, for questioning.
As Shannon entered the room the Sergeant didn’t say a word, he shut the door behind him, and noticed the window was up to let in the fresh air. Shannon had spread out trousers and high boots on, a plaid shirt, no cap, and his face pale, eyes bloodshot red, he had been on a drinking binge.
“Thank you for coming down with the officers peacefully,” said the Sergeant.
“I’m an old soldier, I never interfere with the law,” he said, Shannon was fifty-one years old.
“No,” the sergeant said, “I hope not.”
Shannon noticed the Sergeant held his lips tight together, and then another officer came in through the door, stood by it like a guard, as if he might try to escape.
“You like sugar in your coffee,” asked the Sergeant, “I can have Officer Jones, go get you some?”
“No,” said Shannon O’Day, “no coffee for me.”
The sergeant leaned over the wooden table that was between him and O’Day, “Look,” he said—near side by side, “you are a piece of disgusting flesh, why did you murder her?”
Shannon O’Day started laughing, “Murder who?” he said, and he just kept laughing and shaking.
“Oh my god,” said the Sergeant, “he’s pretending he doesn’t know!” (Looking at Officer Jones.)
Officer Jones stood by the door like a dignified pillar.
Shannon was getting ready to say something, and the Sergeant stood up, pounded on the table, “Well!” he said.
“I swear I don’t know what you are talking about.”
“Here look at these two pictures,” said the sergeant, they were of Gwyneth Davis, her face beaten and her throat cut and thrown to the side of the road by a café not far from the cornfields Shannon was found sleeping in by the police.
“How old was she?” the sergeant asked.
“Twenty-four; I had just broken up with her, told her I was dating this Sandra Rossellini girl I met, and she was upset and took off and started walking home,” said Shannon.
“Ho! Ho! Ho!” said the sergeant, “and you let her walk home in the dark alone?”
“Is that a crime?”
“No, but it isn’t very decent,” said the Sergeant.
“So I’m not decent, is that a crime?” he asked in a sarcastic but friendly manner.
“What’s the matter with you?” asked the Sergeant, and Jones came over to the side of Shannon as if to hit him, and Shannon stood up, then the sergeant said, “That’s all right.” And Jones went back to the door.

Subchapter
Mr. Dudley Arrives

“I would prefer us all here to be friends, Mr. O’Day?” said the Sergeant.
“No,” said O’Day, “not with you.”
“Don’t want to be friends?” said the Sergeant.
“She was just a spitfire, she up and left after I told her about Sandra, not a thing I could do about it.” Shannon told the Sergeant.
The one officer by the door looked at the other and shook his head.
“Damn liars, I hate them,” he said.
Shannon commenced to laugh again and to shake all over, it was kind of an automatic impulse, even the laughing, a form of dealing with unwanted, confrontational stress.
“There’s nothing funny here Mr. O’Day,” the Sergeant said. “Your laugh gives you away. Can’t you stop laughing, and you and I speak decently? If not I’m going to have to jail you.”
“For what?” asked Shannon, “laughing?”
A third officer came through the door with Mr. Dudley, from the Law Firm, ‘Dudley and Smith’ along with Gus O’Day, Shannon’s brother.
“Oh, shut up,” said Gus to Shannon, Mr. Dudley is here to over see this interview, or interrogation.
“We were just finishing up, Mr. Dudley, matter-of-fact, make sure your client doesn’t leave the state, or for that matter the city, for the time being, he’s under suspicion.”
Everyone was very respectful to the attorney, he said, “Mr. Shannon O’Day, this is of course, as you should know, just a high stagy way of trying to get you to say something you’ll regret later,” but Shannon was starting to shake, hands, shoulders, legs from the stress, strain and booze.
“I wouldn’t have hurt him,” councilman, said the Sergeant.
“That’s a fine way to look at it,” said Dudley, “it is all a trick once you are brought into this room Shannon, get up and let’s go unless the good sergeant here, has some more relevant questions to ask, or if he is officially charging you.”
The Sergeant turned and smiled at Dudley, he had been looking out the window somewhat at the little school across the street, at the little French School next to the church called, St. Louis, “My boys go to that school, got to take them for lunch today, go on with Mr. Dudley, Shannon O’Day, we’ll see you later I’m sure.”
The sergeant was a huge figure of a man, broad shoulders, robust built, in his late forties, lumberjack type.
“I hope to god you’re telling the truth. So white and clean and beautiful and smooth skin was that girl, she could have been my daughter.” The sergeant said. And Dudley, Gus and Shannon all walked out of the room as if he was talking to himself, and as they went outside onto the platform, by the doors of the police station, the Indians that were arguing inside the station, when Shannon had first come, were now arguing outside, a little cockeyed.

Chapter Three
The Doubt

During the following fifteen-months, of marriage between Sandra Rossellini, and Shannon O’Day, everyone felt terrible. It was sad, the police hounded Shannon O’Day, questioned his wife, and it became embarrassing. Sandra started speaking in a low voice, thinking after talking to the police sergeant several times, maybe her husband did kill young Gwyneth Davis, if not, who did? And she spoke to Gus and Mabel O’Day about it, the fear of it, and Shannon being in war knew how to kill with a knife, and the Sergeant telling her, “Your husband’s a dirty liar,” and Sandra not saying a word back to Shannon. She had never met Gwyneth in her life, but she was feeling sorry for her, felt she knew her. And so she was being flooded with all these emotions, suspicions, doubts, and fears—fears that if he did kill her, she could possibility be the his next victim. I mean, if he got away with it once, why not twice. He had a motive, a reason to, a flimsy one, but one nonetheless.
“How can you say that about your husband?” asked Mabel.
“I say it because it can be true,” said Sandra.
“I know Shannon, and it is not true, and God can strike me dead if it isn’t true,” said Mabel.
“He can strike me too,” said Gus.
And then Shannon, who had been working at a foundry came in during this visit and discussion overhearing parts of it, one Friday afternoon, that lead into late afternoon, “What did she say?” he asked Gus (and he knew somewhat of what she had said, but it was indistinct).
Sandra was crying, so she could hardly speak to express herself any longer.
“You’re a lovely wife,” said Shannon, “you got me to want to work and make something of myself, and now this!”
He knew she had been under stress, but not that she might think he killed Gwyneth, then Mabel, said, “She’s been talking to that Sergeant fellow down at the St. Paul Police Station off and on, he’s been feeding her all this rot…I guess I don’t know exactly what it is, but it’s all a lie, and it has scared her.”
“It’s true,” Gus said. “That’s truly what has been going on.”
“Is that so?” Shannon said proudly to his wife.
“Yes, it’s true, true, true, and true, to Almighty God true.”
“I don’t think Sandra my wife could have said that by herself, it wasn’t the girl I got married to, it wasn’t the way you talked when we first met.”
“It’s true, I fear you might have killed her, I’m sorry, I’m really sorry,” said Sandra in her soft low voice, “and I guess it doesn’t matter one way or the other, what is, or what isn’t because it is how I feel—especially if your heart and mind believe it, and there is no other proof to the contrary, then it is reality.”
She wasn’t crying anymore, and she was calm. And now Shannon knew it was impossible for them to put the marriage back to how it was, how it was meant to be, should have been; that faith, the belief the trust it was all gone, if indeed, it was ever there in the first place, the reliance was gone, that was suppose to have been there like stone, to march through storms and years of whatever God or the Devil put in front of you.
He said, happily, “I stopped at the police station today to talk to Sergeant Toby Patron, he called me at my work and he said to come down to the police station, he had something to tell me, and show me, and when I got there, he told me face to face, shoulder to shoulder, eye to eye, ‘Mr. Shannon O’Day,’ he said to me, ‘you’re a better man than I,’ that is what he said and meant, and I said to him: Did you call me down here to insult me? I asked, ‘No,’ he said, then pointed to a man across the hall, I could see him through the little window of the door, ‘He’s got some bad memories,’ the sergeant said, ‘he just signed a statement he killed Gwyneth’ guess who it was Sandra?”’
She looked at Shannon, “Who?” she asked.
“Truman Weaver, he was jealous over you and me, and thought he’d kill her and pin it on me, and you’d leave me for him. I guess half of that’s true anyhow. Go ahead and call the sergeant up, I never lie, and Gus and Mabel know it.”
It seemed as if she didn’t want to call the sergeant up, but just had to. And had she not, perhaps what took place next, might not have.
And she did call the good Sergeant up, and he did say, whatever he said, and Shannon grabbed a bottle of whiskey out of Gus’ hiding place, behind a cabinet, and said “Good-bye,” to Sandra. And as he walked out, he thought (never looking back once): she certainly had a nice voice, and a few other nice things, but nice is not trusting, and that was what was needed, especially when there was no reason not to trust. That is to say, Shannon O’Day was many things to many folks, but he was not untrustworthy.
Gus and Mabel were getting ready to go shopping, and Sandra asked, “Can you bring me back to my apartment; I need to pack some things?”
Mabel looked at Sandra, and then at Gus, and at Shannon walking into the cornfields with his bottle of whiskey uncorked, in his right hand, then back at Sandra, her face put on a hurt look, and she lost that everlasting smile of hers, the one she once had, and she lost that look, the prettiest face Mabel had ever saw on a woman, but not today, and her voice was lovely, but not today, and she was always so friendly, but not today, then she said, “We’re going the other way from you.”

Written 5-21 & 22, 2009 (No: 404)

Not One Hooting Owl Left
(A Story in Five Parts)

Part One

The Mare
((Hullabaloo 1954) (Part One of Three Parts))

(Part of the End) And so Shannon O’Day knew that very first morning of October, 1954 new that Kent Peterson would be were he was always in the wee hours of the morning, on that porch of his waiting for him to walk through the front gate to paint, and Shannon could no longer withstand, the moment had simply come to that point that no longer could both breathe the same air in the same farmyard, in the same county, and same state, on the same day, and what he said pushed him over the forbidden line, the red line. And so lacking his patience, and perseverance, to subdue his pride, to withstand his nagging, his persistence, he fell back on that right to defend it, the way he did in the war, the Great War, the one he earned a medal for killing his enemy, with his rifle, bayoneted, like Kent Peterson was to him now. But the war was of course over.
It began in the fall of 1953, or a year prior. Oh maybe not, perhaps it started in the summer of 1951, or even sooner, but it shaped itself into a hullabaloo between the two, when he was ordered to paint his house and barn, paint for fifteen days. It all stemmed from arrogance, intolerance and pride, and then destruction. It all started when they started to breathe the same Midwestern air day after day after day, because he, Shannon, was not a contentious man, not like Kent, but he was defending his wimple rights, in the only way he knew how. So perhaps Kent made his own fate, destiny when he finally impinged on Shannon’s, if indeed he, or we can say that is what he did, provoking Shannon. This was all after Shannon’s wife left him, and Shannon had rented out a farm next to Kent Peterson, who was rich enough to have several Negro workers on his 400- acres of land. The problem was Gus, his brother was gone out of town, not around to help him out of this jam, he was down visiting Mabel’s parents in Fayetteville, North Carolina celebrating for a month their anniversary, their 35th anniversary.

(The Beginning) It was Shannon’s one and only horse. Not having much money, and trying to do what his brother did create a self-sufficient farm, an independent one, asking no favours of any man, paying his own way. He—the horse (called: Dan), had strayed off in fall, into the skeleton cornfields next to his farm, and there he was over by Kent Peterson’s place, and Shannon couldn’t feed him so he left him there; and lived the whole winter without him, let Old Man Peterson feed him, knowingly feeding him. So Peterson feed the horse, knowing it was Shannon’s, the rest of fall, and through the winter—a long hard cold winter, and when spring came, then Shannon went to get his barren horse, worthless horse, his twenty-dollar horse, but he was fat and healthy now.

(The Deal) According to Mr. Kent Peterson’s calculations, and the sheriff from Dakota Country, Sheriff Terry Fauna, who had asked a few other farmers what the horse was worth now, and they all agreed it was valued at $140-dollars, not the $20-dollars Shannon had paid, now that it was fed and exercised, and groomed. Thus, this was the price tag for Shannon to acquire his horse back, according to law.
Yes indeed, all this trouble over a twenty-dollar horse, that now would cost him $140-dollars because he wanted to fool Mr. Peterson, in feeding him, for a short fall and long winter, because he couldn’t afford to do it.
“All right!” Shannon had said to Kent Peterson, to this sheriff, “I’ll work the fifteen days to get my horse back, peacefully, if that’s what you all want, and if that is what it takes, I guess I’ll have to do it, I went through the Great War, I can do this standing on my hands, I can withstand you both likewise.”
And he, Shannon felt forlorn and defenceless he wished his brother Gus was back from down south, he could straighten things out, but he wasn’t.
‘If Gus was back,’ he thought, ‘he would have settled this issue with the horse, he knows the sheriff and Mr. Peterson,’ but he was too impatient. And so he agreed to work for Mr. Peterson for fifteen days, to get his horse back, lest he lose both the goat and the rope.

Shannon worked for Kent, on his farm, painted his house a two-story frame building, then his barn, all 440-square feet of it (and in-between painting he fed the pigs, milk the cows, brought the hay down from the loft: day, after day, after day. He had fifteen days to work off (nine days being spent on the house), and as he shifted from the house to the barn working from sunup to sundown, he watched the young men and girls from the city driving by drinking in their cars, and he’d stop painting the barn to watch them, and the couples and old people, children. The barn faced the highway, the cars all moving in two directions. He could even hear their radios on, playing music—loud. He followed each car with his eyes, at night too, a lantern outside the barn lighted as now.

(The Barn) On the tenth day, now working at night on the barn, he heard the freight trains pass, which did almost at anytime throughout the evening, let alone the other passenger trains. So just by spending the evenings in one 440-square foot area, with only a little movement, he would hear maybe three or six trains before twilight.
When his day and evening was finished he’d walk past the old man, Kent on his way home, a two mile walk to his farm, as he sat in his dim rocking chair on his porch in the cool of the dark evening, an electric light on by his screened-in-door behind him to his right side, that led into the kitchen, where’ll the bugs gathered peacefully, with no worries, no need to escape the death hand of fate, and Kent wanted to talk a little while with Shannon, but he never stopped long enough for the old man to get a syllable out, just kept right on walking by, just like those bugs behind him, so he treated the old man, as if he wasn’t there.

(Trains) By the time he got back to his farm, he grabbed a jug of whiskey out from under his kitchen cabinet, walked a mile to the train tracks, sat on the edge of an embankment, waited and watched for the trains to come and go by, those coming from Chicago, to St. Paul, a few stopping in Stillwater Township first, about twelve miles away. The train it self, he liked to hear the four whistle blasts for a crossing, the headlights, the nosy engine, see the shadows of the engineer, and conductor, and fireman, and watch the slowing down of the coaches, the people in the late dining room car. The black waiters going back and forth with food for the rich: then the back lights of the train were gone as fast as they had appeared in a clap of an eye.
Between the long days of working for Peterson, and his hours of drinking after twilight, he became a fleshless, sleepless, foodless near mindless, empty man, a shell of a man, all over that twenty-dollar horse, that now was worth seven time that amount because he wanted to fool Mr. Peterson, in feeding him, for a short fall and long winter, because he couldn’t afford to do it. But Mr. Peterson had fooled him, and fed him knowing quite well if he did, he’d get fifteen days of work out of Shannon.

(Frozen Anger) It was as if Shannon wanted to get mad, or madder each day he worked, and anger grew, but he didn’t want to cause trouble, he knew he owed Mr. Peterson, and was determined to pay him back, even if he had to drain every ounce of blood out of him. And he knew inside of his cup of anger, if it overflowed its rim, Kent’s life was at risk, and thus, it mustn’t reach that stage.

Day Fifteen

When he woke, it was tomorrow morning, day fifteen.

(Rest of the Ending) It was 5:00 a.m., when Shannon got down to Kent Peterson’s farm a two mile hike from his, he was disturbed, so old man Peterson did notice, and being indifferent, he didn’t much care, said quietly, eating a biscuit, eating it steadily, standing on his porch, Shannon didn’t even notice him on his porch as he walked by, until he said,
“Looks like you had a hard night drinking,” never thinking he didn’t have time to plough and hoe, and get his ground ready for planting, on his farm, that perhaps that was on his mind as well, nor did he have a dinner, or breakfast, and his usual coffee, as the old man usually had simply slept away his afternoons.

(Shannon had taken from his army gear, the dull and rusty bayonet the one he had used in the army in the Great War, to scrape the old paint off the last wall of the barn and finished this last and fifteenth day of his penance, and bring home his horse; the bayonet almost as long as the forearm.)

“Now what?” asked Shannon?

“You, look like a zombie,” he remarked.
“I’m burnt out old man, shut you mouth and let me work my last day out.”
He then went over to the hedgerows and patches of woods to take a leak— concealed and undetected. But the old man followed him, was right behind him,
“You owe me one more day’s work Shannon, for feeding that house of yours for the last fifteen-days,” still chewing on that biscuit.
Inflexible, was the old man, silent was Shannon, as he did his duty, and he thought: ‘Maybe if he worked today, and tomorrow, tomorrow wouldn’t be the last day either. Maybe there would never be a last day, period!’
He put his hand under his coat, his fingers around the handle of the bayonet, pulled it out slowly, his fingers already tightening and taking up the slack around the handle, ‘I’ll never satisfy him,’ he told himself, whispered out loud a second time, without thinking, and between the scream and the bayonet and its impact of the thrust for him to say to Kent, and for Kent to have reasoned with it: ‘I’m not killing you because of the fifteen days of work, that’s okay, I done reasoned that out, and not because you’re rich and have no limits, and sleep all afternoon in that hammock of yours, but because of that one additional day you added on.”

The case of Shannon O’Day never did reach the courts, it was said, (some years after the incident of Mr. Kent Peterson) someone paid the judge to dismiss it, and a check in the mail came from down south, for $10,000-dollars, delivered personally to the judge. And an eye witness showed up at the district attorney’s office, said, there was another man hiding in the woods, which had it in for old man Peterson, an old worker, and grabbed Shannon’s bayonet, and did him in. When Shannon was asked if he killed Peterson at the inquest, or not, he answered, “I rightly don’t know, I hadn’t had any sleep for days, or food, and when I woke up, I had a nightmare that I did, and the police was hauling me down to jail.”
Then the judge said, “We don’t put people in penitentiaries for nightmares, in this country of ours; inefficient evidence, case dismissed!”

Written 5-25 and 26, of May, 2009
No: 406 xx

Part Two

Otis Wilder Mather’s Revenge

((or, the Rick Nigger of Minnesota) (Part Two of Four Parts))

((A Shannon O’Day Story) (1955))

Otis Wilder Mather, had taken the $500-dollars Shannon O’Day had given him, back in the early 40s, invested it in Ozark. Alabama, livestock, and became rich, obliged to no man. Not that he didn’t owe a much obliged to someone. This was years later of course, Many a hard and wet and snowy and grey winter had come and gone in Minnesota, left between his visits to see Shannon O’Day, his truly one and only friend up in Minnesota. He even drove his brand new 1955 Ford sports car, Thunderbird; and owned his own meat market on Jackson Street and two more in Ozark, and one in Shanty Town, seven miles outside of Ozark.
He no longer wore patched cotton overalls, rather tailored ones. They called him in Minnesota, ‘The rich nigger from Ozark.’
He’d walk the snowy streets in gray misty afternoons, passing over the Wabasha Bridge, looking down onto the Mississippi River, saying out loud to the Lord, “Eyes in a hurry Lord, cuz black folk dont even have a barn to live in nowadays, against the cold weather up yonder here,” and folks saw he had very warm boots with fur on them, and a long coat, with fur on the lapels, and he’d hear them badmouthing him under their breaths, cussing him as he walked by, saying ‘nigger go home’ in the stormy winters, breathing in the cold mist, like them. They said these things, not because he was rich, became James Hill, who owned a railroad and lived on Summit Hill nearby, was rich, but because he was a negro, for his black skin being inside those warm garments, warmer than theirs, and their skin was white, and because Otis Wilder Mather was more devoted to work, and beef and cattle, and cows and calves and butcher shops than to humans, even though he took care of his family well. They couldn’t believe a black man could obtain such wealth, cursing the fact that he did; his vengeance to the white raced his revenge one could say was success.
But he learned something from his one time accuser of wrong, Gus O’Day, that in slow incriminations over a long period of time, converted into wealth, that something’s were somewhat controllable and somewhat predictable, one being the love the white race had for beef. In addition to that, the love human males had for the cow, its milk and beef and the long subsequent years of their gestation of his products. This success was the only justice available to him for the wrongs man had done him in Minnesota, when they tired to convict him in 1950 for the burning of Gus O’Day’s cornfields, when it remained a mystery to the truth.
That was it. Prolongation—never stopping or hoping never giving in, hope no longer was deferred, he saw it in the white man’s eyes, ‘outrage!’ now the blow fell upon those who cursed and cussed him. The one who gave him the five-hundred dollars, he had dreamed when given that money, dreamt the imaginary purchase of a cow, and here he bought twelve-cows, and fed them a winter, then sold them plump, and for twice as much, and bough twenty-four cows and fed them another winter, for near fifteen years he did that, now he owned four meat markets, in Ozark, St. Paul, and Shanty Town, a few miles outside of Ozark, where the poor black folk lived.

Written 5-25-2009
No: 405 xx

Part Three

Closed Out!
((Shannon O’Day, 1956-57) (Part Three of Four Parts))

When Gus O’Day and his wife had come back from Fayetteville, North Carolina, he heard about Shannon’s run in with the law, not to mention his reckless try at farming had ended, but “Thank God for that,” he told his friend Ronald Short, the county attorney.
Why in fact, Mr. Short was initially confused on the Kent Peterson murder he didn’t let out, but the sheriff, Dakota Country, Sheriff Terry Fauna, never pursued the murder, or his inquisitive nature, just let it go, again both Gus and Short were puzzled. It appeared it never needed the law to close out the case; it just did on its own, as if someone pulled the blinds down. Now instead of Shannon hanging out with Gus, because of his browbeating over wanting to know the details of the killing, what wasn’t brought out in court, wanting to know, what he didn’t know, or pretended he didn’t know, but he should have known, if indeed he did kill Kent, and he did of course kill Kent, but hanging out with Gus might bring things to light, and Shannon was alright with the results of the Court, so he started hanging out at Dickey’s Diner, he ate there before, he just didn’t hang out there, and now he was hanging out there, got to know Old Josh the cook quite well, and a few waitresses, and some young guy blind who played Ricky Nelson songs, and some little black lad who came in and tap-danced, called Zam Zam.
It was a Friday night, Shannon, he had left the Diner, leaned half the night against the lamppost looking at the empty lots about, you would a-thought he could a-held his staring indefinitely. Then he stumbled on back to his apartment on Wabasha Street, by the World Theater, where he could do no harm to his-self or anyone else—to include innocent bystanders or perhaps all three.

This is when he changed course in his life, which was simply unavoidable—to be—a hazard if he hadn’t. He drank in Gus’ neighbor’s cornfield now, Mr. Orville Stanley (who had retired from the railroad, and had this hobby farm with his wife) Alice Stanley, their daughter, Nadine, and her daughter, Dana.
He knew them as well as anyone else knew them. So of 1956, he asks them without any troublesome interruption, if they wouldn’t mind him drinking among their corn stocks. And as time passed that summer, he’d drop a pint of moonshine whiskey into the old man’s mailbox and when they met and talked, he’d drop a pint into his hind pockets.
So now no one need bother to question Shannon over the murder and he didn’t get that browbeating from his brother, and the way he figured it: out of sight out of mind, or perhaps, what you don’t know, can’t hurt you, or possible, the concept of blood-kin being thinker than water, would not be tested under fire, as Mark Twain would have put it. And that was that, and that was all right with Shannon O’Day.
But it wasn’t the way Gus and that Country Attorney saw things, Mr. Ronald Short, but Gus was not to be as persistent as Mr. Short.
The next, Saturday, Mr. Short and the Sheriff Fauna, both friends, kind of friends, not bosom-buddies but lightly friends, had eaten at Dickey’s Diner, the sheriff believing, and telling Mr. Short in so many words: simple destiny was taking its expected course, and he shouldn’t get too reckless in taking advantage of destiny and poking his nose into the case anymore than he had already, that Judge Finley, had made his decision, and he’d not take a likening should he take this to another level, other than curiosity.
Mr. Short knew, Finley had a short temper, and didn’t care to be questioned on his judgments, and in particular this matter of Shannon O’Day; and Finley had told his dear friend, Sheriff Fauna, not to let Short, get one whiff or light flash of the real picture.
Ronald Short did start to meddle into what Judge Finley thought was his business. Short feeling he wasn’t doing Finely no harm in the process but he was telling the Sheriff about his new investigation into the murder, and forgot that the Sheriff was a dear friend of Finley’s, more so than his.
“No,” he said to Fauna, “what baffles me is Henry Sears, the witness, the very one who saw some stranger kill Kent Peterson then runs deep into woods. And then after the court hearing, he up and leaves the state. I think Shannon had some money hidden, and paid Sears to lie?”

Judge Finley said to Sheriff Fauna, that following Monday morning, in the Dakota County Court hallway, “What in creation kind of County Attorney do we have here, a detective? Ask him if he has a license to snoop beyond the courthouse!”
So for that moment his trust and assurance in Ronald Short shined unsteadily, you could say. For that trying moment he told the sheriff, “Mr. Short could be the victim of pure circumstance, compounded…jest like any one else; if that darn boy don’t believe the old picture show, that he might slip in some alley, or be subject to some outrageous misfortune and coincidence that befell Mr. Peterson, and then we all can rest in peace. Matter-of-fact, if he says anything more about being a detective, burn his britches, and if that don’t work, well, the alley will do.”
Short still never had one second’s doubt that it had been Shannon who paid someone to lie for him, with the clear and simple color of money. But Shannon never had a nickel to his name at this time.
So all Ronald Short needed to do was find out where the money came from, or where the witness was, or work with Gus on Shannon’s guilt, and consciousness, realization to the killing. Anyone, either one would work. And this is exactly what he was determined to do, to pursue, and if need be, persuade, and he was not discreet, having the sheriff provide spies for him, thinking the sheriff was one of his respectable spies himself, with pride in his profession to catch the real killer, instead of chasing shadows, since any little child who could read the court files would have said, ‘hogwash’ to them, and would have known something was fixed.

In plain sight of half the city of St. Paul, evidently going home from the late picture show, nobody could locate Judge Finley to tell him about it. Anyhow, Ronald Short, had found somebody, someone he felt he could squeeze information out of, who called him, and said they had information he was seeking, and Short met this man, in an alley by the Diner, but there was someone behind hidden doors.
He never had anymore sense then to believe the sheriff was on his side, and he could tangle with the old Judge, and walk away as if nothing happened. Not to mention to try and question the witness, and assure him of no ill feelings, and he’d keep it a secret of his identity, but secrets are not secrets when two people know them, they are agreements.
Inside the Baptist church that Sunday morning, Short’s wife had the funeral, and of course Judge Finley and Sheriff Fauna were present, but not Shannon O’Day, nor his brother. They both even brought roses for his wife to lie at the coffin.

That was a lot of money, $10,000-dollars back in 1956. It could have paid for two small houses on the North End of St. Paul, matter of fact it did buy one, for the judge. And as far as the judge and the sheriff were concerned, the investigation was closed out. Forevermore; off the register.

Written 5-27-2009 xx No: 407

Part Four

The Judge’s Visit
Subchapter to ‘Closed Out’ (1957)

Old Judge Finley told Gus in front of Sheriff Fauna, “Ronald Short could have become rich as a top attorney in Dakota County, provided he just didn’t die beforehand,” sitting in his kitchen chair one Sunday afternoon in 1957. The Sheriff chewing tobacco and the judge chewing a stick of gum, the judge looking about watching his wife bend over doing her chores.
“Life,” he said, “Your brother could have gotten life in prison” (thinking it was Gus who had sent him the $10,000-dollars from down south when he was visiting his wife’s kin, when it really was Otis Wilder Mather).
The judge and the sheriff were hungry for more money.
“How long has it been?” asked the Judge, “1954, wasn’t it?” said the Judge, as Gus was looking out the kitchen window at his cornfields.
Finley figured Gus was the only O’Day with that amount of money, or perhaps he borrowed it from his kin folks down in North Carolina, his wife’s parents, and he had influence to help Shannon. But as much as Shannon had hoped Gus would save the day, he never did.
“From 1954 to now, 1957, it’s been three years and we could open the case up again,” said the judge.
“Why would you do that?” asked Gus.
“What do you want me to do?” Asked Finley.
Gus didn’t know what to say.
“Okay,” Finley said, “what do I get if I don’t?”
Gus sat there a while leaning against the wall near laughing, thinking it was a joke. Then Finley, he told him: “I’ll take the same as before, $10,000-dollars. If that’s too high, I can take $5000-dollars in cash and the other in trade,” and looked at his wife “on an installment plan.”
The Sheriff sat there in a shadow, and just chewed his tobacco.
“Even if I had it, I’d not pay; the best you can do is getting him sentenced, and get twenty years yourself for blackmailing me.”
“Stop smirking around the bargains,” said the judge, “you’re the one who sent me the money right?”
“If I had ten-grand, I could have hired ten killers to kill you, not pay you nine times more than what it is worth,” said Gus.
He didn’t even quite chewing his gum, “Then who?” said the judge.
“Well, well,” said Gus, Shannon really did kill that Mr. Peterson after all.”
“Let’s not haggle,” said the sheriff, “I know who it was!”
This time Finley stopped chewing long enough to listen.
“Who?” asked the judge?
“Who’s got $10,000-dollars to spare and give away to save a worthless drunk?” he remarked.
“Who?” repeated the judge?
“That there nigger friend of his, Otis Wilder…forgot his last name, but the judge in St. Paul kicked him out of town years ago for burning, or not burning, Gus’ cornfields.”

Written 5-27-2009 xx 408

Part Five

Not One Hooting Owl Left
((In Poetic Prose) (Part four of four parts))

(1965) it was in the summer of 1965, Shannon O’Day went out to Mr. Kent Peterson’s farm, out to where he had painted the barn, back in 1954, eleven years had passed, it had been unused since the day he died, and the only way I can express how Shannon felt standing by that barn, the one he paint all 440-square feet of, is in the following manner, in poetic prose:

The inside walls was the remains of an old barn one that was never quiet, he had painted it eleven years ago, he remembered how it sheltered animals, kept the hay dray in the loft, stored the machinery snug against the walls, it had stood with the farm, and family through the good and bad times, through their joys and great efforts, it was their lives, it was part of his life too—if the barn could talk and it did talk to Shannon O’Day, so he said, time and again, for a decade— it remembered him, and reminded him, he had worked it, he’d swear it told him when to feed the pigs, milk the cows, bring the hay down from the loft: day, after day, after day, a tedious job, but no tears did the barn shed, it even told him of the winds mounting up outside upon its walls, to hurry on up, and bring the horses in, and so forth. And of the past winters it withstood, and the summer’s sun that beat on it, that it endured, now silent, not a friend left, not even the small critters, the pigeons and their cooing had gone, the squirrels left; all its companions left, tomorrow it would be no more, no longer there, even loyal to its owls, it would have to go, go with all its secrets, it has to make room for a highway they told Shannon’s brother, Gus.
“A barn is never quiet until its last day,” Shannon whispered, which was this very day, speaking to the barn, standing in front of whatever it used to be, now dilapidated waiting for the bulldozer; the weathervane on top of the roof, had fallen to the earth, no longer able to indicate the direction of the wind (and there it lay amongst the weeds). “Then the squeaks diminish,” he whispered. He saw that all creatures great and small had long gone, empty as an egg shell, its ground it stood on, now waiting for the new sounds, of cars and tires, the new smells, from their exhaust of carbon dioxide. Not even one hooting owl left.

No: 2613 5-25-2009

The Farm 1957

“Yes, brother,” said Gus O’Day to his younger brother Shannon, “a man sees too much if he lives too long: a lot of fellows in a lot of situations.”
He was chatting in a kindly tone with his brother on the porch steps of his farm, Gus’ wife, Mabel, sitting on a rocker on the open air porch. It was a cool evening, and Shannon had spent a good portion of it out in the cornfields drinking rum and whisky alone.
“All this farm life gets yaw tired I’d think, up the nose with rules and regulations, and if you don’t produce, the government gives yaw money, and if you do, and you want to sell, and the government don’t want you to raise more crops and sell, you can’t sell them anyhow, you end up storing them in some bin, the government steps in, don’t know how you put up with it, but I love your cornfields brother, I love the crows, and the smell of dirt and the yellowish-green in the cornstalks, and listening to the trains go by on those metal tracks, and even when the breaks screech, and one car bumps into another, I love it all.”
“Yup!” said Gus, “we done made a bowl of soup out of ourselves on this here farm alright, now all we are, is recipes for the government, if they want stew with corn we plant corn. If they want stew with carrots, we plant carrots; if they want…oh you know what I mean.”
“Man doesn’t need a backbone anymore, brother. ((Gus asks for a swig of Shannon’s bottle of whisky, and he hands it to him, and Mabel says, ‘Slow with it, remember your heart, you’re no spring chicken, Shannon’s ten-years younger than you, so take it easy.”)(That was in the summer of 1957.))
“She likes to bug me,” said Gus, “but as you were going to say brother?”
“Yup!” said Shannon, “man don’t need a backbone anymore, it’s us old critters that have them, I don’t know how big of a wrench it will take to loosen mine up, no need for it nowadays.”

“I reckon Shannon you’d be right lonesome out here just by yourself,” said Gus.
“I don’t rightly know what you mean by that, why you saying—what you saying?”
“Your older brother Shannon,” said Mabel “Gus, he’s picked out his headstone already, matter-of-fact, the other day he picked it out, says he’s goin’ to need it real soon.”
Mabel lit the lantern, it was becoming dark, moved it over a bit by the two brothers sitting on the steps, shoulder to shoulder.
“Can’t see the steps,” said Gus, “my eyes don’t work much anymore, too many shadows in them, I move too slow, breath too hard, get tired too quick.”
“I need to get up,” said Gus to Shannon. Shannon nodded his head up and down, toward his chest, “Yes” he said, but it wasn’t that he needed to relieve himself; it was he needed to get more air into his lungs, his stomach. And he stood up, and held tight onto the railing.
“Nonsense,” said Mabel, “just sit on back down, the strain is too much fer yaw!”
“Honor, and pride and discipline,” Gus told Shannon, “that’s the recipe for a man, and God.”
“I know all that Gus, and trouble is the best teacher, it always comes back to haunt yaw!”
“You know I got to go, got to leave yaw, couldn’t do it without seeing yaw one more time though…” Gus told Shannon in an almost whisper.
Shannon knew what he meant, it was Gus who had raised Shannon per near, he was always patient, calm, with him and figured if he ever wanted to know about God, his brother must had been a carbon copy of him. He was a good model, and always kind of put himself in the background, he had a servant’s heart, but he could be difficult and at times prejudice. —Gus didn’t need to tell Shannon twice, he saw him holding his chest, leaning on that rail that extended from the first step to the third, the top one. Gus asked Shannon to stand up by him. Mabel had laid her head back, Shannon stood up, Gus leaned toward him. And here was two men kissing each other on the cheeks, each hugging the other showing outright love, without shame. He said his last words to Shannon, “It will be a long time from now to then.”
Mabel lifted up the lantern to see why Shannon O’Day was crying, a tall, lean, old man had stopped breathing.

Note on this Chapter Story: “The Farm”: Here is one of the missing chapters to the Novel “Cornfield Laughter.” Written 5-1-2009 (VH)

Feeding a Dead Horse
The Case of Dana Stanley
((Godchild to Shannon O’Day) (1958))

State of Minnesota, Appellant vs. Edward Morrill, Respondent Filed September 29, 1958; Affirmed Finley, Judge; Dakota County District Courthouse

FACTS

Prosecuting Country Attorney: Steve Ramsey (Speaks to the court):

Dana Stanley, born September 27, 1942, met Edward Morrill born August 28, 1930, while working as a teacher's aide in the Dakota County school system. Dana was a student at the High School. Sometime during the school year of 1958, Edward Morrill engaged in consensual sexual intercourse with Dana Stanley, whom was sixteen-years old at the time, and Edward, some ten-years her senior. He had met her while in one of her classes, and thereafter, slowly the acquaintanceship became a relationship, and sexual. Edward fell in love with Dana, and she wrote several love letters to him, expressing her desire to marry him when she was of age.

Mr. Morrill, came to the realization, the relationship was improper, so he says, and brought it to the attention of the school principal, William Ingway. And according to Ingway, Mr. Morrill, was very sorry, and felt he made a mistake, and wanted to come clean, to remove it from his mind, off his chest, get it over with so he could go on living, and by doing this, he could bring forth exactly what the situation was. As was this following statement given to the state’s investigators thereafter, Sheriff Fauna, was present and had this to say:

“He told us that he had fallen in love with Dana and I believe it, he also said it was his first love that I think is a lot of rot, although it may have been her first love. I do see him as a sexual predator of some kind, although the principle Mr. Ingway, don’t see it that way, but then he has his schools reputation to consider, doesn’t he. I wouldn't think there would be any type of pattern to his predator way of life, it is perhaps what he sees, and what he likes he goes after, but I am no psychologist. Mr. Shannon O’Day, the godfather of the child sees it my way also, said he picked her up from school a few times, and Mr. Morrill had always an evil eye on her, he said. To me it is plain as trying to feed a dead horse, He got involved with a student and this kind of behavior cannot be allowed because he says after the fact ‘I’m sorry,’ the sorry doesn’t’ do a damn bit of good. When he goes to prison, I’ll accept his sorry, and so will his godfather, and so will the mother and father, who seem a little more passive on this issue.”

(Steve Ramsey speaks to Judge Finley and those in the courtroom :)

your honor, this following statement was given to the state’s investigators also, by Shannon O’Day, the godfather:

“In my opinion, I would agree with Sheriff Fauna, I had an opportunity to talk to Mr. Morrill, last summer, actually during his summer job, aiding teachers at summer school, those kids that are too lazy to work during the normal school year have to go to the dumb school to catch up.
I was working on my brother’s farm, he died last year, and his wife needed me to do some handiwork, hired me for a-spell, and I got a hold of him on his off time to work, and I got to know him probably on a little better basis and uh, I do see it as a problem and he should get his penis cut off, the horrid son of a bitch. You should hang him, not put him in prison, it is like feeding a dead horse, he’ll just do it again, and again.”

(County Attorney Steven Ramsey) From the documents submitted, specifically the letters from the County Sheriff and Mr. Shannon O’Day, and the statements from the Principle Ingway, which I have aggressively pursued in this relationship between Morrill and Dana Stanley, disclosed relationship because it might never have been, had Mr. Morrill never have brought it to the attention of the school’s principle, and now that he has stopped initiating contact with Dana, and him voluntarily submitted to and paid for a psychological evaluation perhaps his social immaturity and poorly-developed social skills, can be readjusted during some kind of treatment which he says he doesn’t mind attending, if he doesn’t go to prison, which I recommend he does.

The morning trial took a recess; and Mr. Morrill’s counsel delivered an affidavit signed by Mr. and Mrs. Stanley, saying in essence to the state, and district court, and it was given to Judge Finley:

“…Morrill and Dana we understand had a consensual sexual relationship that occurred as a result of affection they both held for one another, this we understand, and a long trial would not be in my daughter’s best interest, nor allowing Mr. Morrill to go completely free, even if he pleads guilty to the charge or not, and we understand he has pleaded guilty on the basis of a stay of adjudication, and as I understand that to mean, no prison time. So we feel the best way to resolve the matter is to have the court sentence him on a stay of adjudication. It is what our daughter wants too, although we know his Godfather is against this, but that is his nature. So there is no reason we see that the state should not go along with allowing our request.”

(Narrator) The state did say it would look at, and consider a stay of imposition. The district court told Morrill that it could not promise anything, only indicated a strong willingness. And so Morrill decided to plead guilty to the charge cited in the complaint. During the states questioning of Morrill and opposed to a stay of adjudication, the final decision on sentencing would be "up to the judge."

(Narrator) At the sentencing hearing, the district court determined that there were "special circumstances" (and the judge had considered, behind closed doors before he talked to Shannon O’ Day allowing Morrill to be put in jail for 120-days, and 600-hours of community work, and five years probation, alone with restricting him to have any contact with minors without being supervised, but Shannon O’Day’s friend, Otis Wilder Mather, who still had frozen, if not hidden anger for the state of Minnesota and its off the wall law system, gave, free of charge $5000-dollars to bribe Judge Finley, to execute the worse punishment he could on the offender).

Judge Finley’s Decision:

“The state challenges the district court's conclusion that this case presents special circumstances in which a stay of adjudication is not justified. Generally, the charging function is within the broad discretion of the prosecutor, which should not be subject to interference by the district court. However, a district court may stay adjudication over the prosecutor's objection, if the case exhibits "special circumstances." In the present case, the district court found no existence of prior or identical "special circumstances" to allow this. And I see that the state had reached no plea agreement worthy of the crime. Therefore, over the objects of those concerned for such a ruling, as the case warrants which is a sentence of no less than five years in the state penitentiary, at Stillwater, Minnesota.”

Lawyer for the Offender: “But your honor, Mr. Morrill has no history of aggressiveness, and his part of the relationship with Dana Stanley was consensual and they both appear to want to get married, and the mother’s statement.”
The Judge: “In this case, since you bring it back up, Mr. Morrill in addition is ordered to pay $500-dollars for court fees to the public defender’s fun, and if you question my ruling, I will fine you. And the more you talk, the more you dig a hole for your client, this is a severe breach of moral conduct, happen right in a school system. And for your understanding, he does now have a criminal history. I do not, nor does the public support this characterization. Affirmed.”

Note: this is a fictitious case, as are the names. Written 5-28-2009, ds

The Pawnshop
Recollections of Shannon O’Day’s father
(1959, as told by Shannon O’Day to Otis Wilde Mather)

I wasn’t born yet, so it was Gus my brother who was ten-years my senior who was old enough and big enough to remember for it all to make sense. That is, it was Gus and Sally O’Day, my cousin, my father’s brother, Uncle Marty. They both—Sally and Gus were nine-years old at the time, both born the same year as one another. My mother, Ella Teresa Cotton O’Day, her sister Emma Betty Cotton O’Day, married my father’s brother. But when Gus just called her Sally and dropped the cousin thing—he said it sounded too bonehead like, well, so did I when I got born, and was old enough to reason it out. We all lived in the same city, of St. Paul, at the time. Anyhow, I still hadn’t gotten born yet, so this is what Gus knew and Sally knew until I got born and big enough for them to tell me about it. And so when I say—we, I mean, all three of us, and the city of St. Paul to boot.
One day one fall, my father drove up an alley with Sally and Gus in the back seat, and some merchandise to sell at this here pawnshop. A friend of his owned it, down on Wabasha Street by the Lyceum Movie Theatre, across the street from the World Theatre. Hawk Gordon owned the shop, and drove this big yellow Cadillac of his. He kept the yellow beast for twenty years, I even remember it.
Gus saw through the back window of the pawnshop a man with red hair (Hawk Gordon), grease all over his hands and shirt and face, wiping his hands on an apron—Gus said he thought he was working on an old clock, a short kind of fellow, thin, unfriendly looking chap, with deep embed eyes, in square eye sockets, sunken deep into the pits of his tiny head, with a fat smashed-in nose, like a wino has with big pore holes in them, his hair sticking out everywhichway.
After that meeting, Gus and pa carried all those items he had in the trunk, and front seat, and back seat and on the floors, into the pawnshop, and mom and pa and Gus moved into the backroom, and six months later I was born.
“I give you six months and you’ll be drinking and drunk out on the street again,” Hawk Gordon told my pa.
That was the first fall, of 1899; the first time ma even had met Hawk Gordon. He was shrewd, and pa was working for nickels and dimes from him at the time, but I got born in a warm room, that’s about all I can say, he was a piece of work that’s for sure, if you know what I mean.
But all ready pa was spending his earnings on food and whiskey and gambling, he barely seen us boys, and mom did the required work at the pawnshop.
So pa didn’t know at the time he would go up to Alaska to work, he didn’t even know yet he would ever consider it seriously. But he did tell Gus, talked to Gus about it, said; “I’d like to go someday to Alaska.”
It was a nice thought to keep in mind, and to ponder on deeper, but with pa’s drinking and all, he was going to hell in a hand basket, quick. Mr. Gordon wasn’t all that wrong about pa; no flies on him.
He and Gus got to talking a lot, in those days, I suppose because pa only went to 8th grade in school, spent much of his younger years drinking and travelling, and Gus sounded smart, and told pa he was going to buy a farm, and he did buy a farm in years yet to come. Pa was born in 1874, so at this time he was all of twenty-six years old, but looked twenty-years older.
He, pa, started to sell vacuum cleaners on the side for awhile, he said he sold them before when he travelled, along with doing some swapping and trading, he was good at that.
Pa didn’t like the South, he told Gus many a-times, he said he hung around and played cards with some black folks, down in Huntsville, Alabama. And the white folk got wind of it, and told him to get his ass out of Alabama before they hung him, which would have been by the KKK, the next day, and so when the next day came, pa was gone. It was a poor Blackman’s farm house trifling farmers, and pa seemed to get along with them quite well.
I asked Gus “What made pa go to Alaska?”
“I don’t know,” Gus told me, “whatever it was, Sally’s father Marty went with him,” Marty. “I suppose they thought Alaska would be safer and a man could make lots of money. Or at least more than at Hawk Gordon’s pawnshop, and what they found in Alaska, the first winter was one horrid winter, and knew nothing about its environment, its wildlife.” Gus explained.
Between Gus and his thoughts, his talking to me was vague at best on pa, and Alaska—at first anyhow. Some hidden grief maybe, under his thin hair, and skin and hard skull bone, because when mom passed on and I moved in with Gus and his wife, to live until I went to War, the Great War, he got an official letter from the State of Alaska. And all that information about pa’s death was in that envelope, it took those official fellows, over ten-years to get him that information.
“Oh ay,” I remember saying, “let me in on the secret,” I told Gus as he chewed his fingernails wanted to open that envelope up, but not opening it up, because once he did, he’d know, and knowing he was dead for sure was worse than not knowing and thinking he was alive someplace in Alaska drinking away like he always did, laughing and poking jobs at things that were not funny, and slapping the behinds of pretty young waitresses.

Mother died, worked herself to death when I was thirteen or near thirteen, or perhaps I was fourteen, I rightly can’t remember now, it was that simple, it was that there was not enough of her to go around, just to small for any human female package to hold onto, so much life to deal with, too much of perhaps, doom, too much assortment in life.
I can’t say for sure, no gratitude from Gordon, just for her being his, off and on, mistress after pa was found dead, eaten up by hungry wolves, something Gus knew, but had no proof of until he got that envelope that one day from the State of Alaska. And Gordon being a male and ma in his space and time, and lonely and hurting, and trying to feed two boys, forever in a kind of despair, because she knew, and Gordon knew, there would never be enough of her of any one woman to hold onto grief, and no other men would ever do. That was what he discovered in time; Marty, he died of a heart attack that same year, in Alaska too, and mom of double-pneumonia.

Otis Wilde Mather:

“An’ that dthere yellow Cadillac, what-all happened to it Shannon?”

“Every year or so, someone wanted to buy it. It was a wild yellow, like a canary: when Hawk Gordon died, in around 1940, he put in his will to bury it with him. Well, his children got wind of that, and said ‘no dice,’ and sold it, Judge Finley said it was okay, after, one of the kids went into his back room in the courthouse and offered him 10% of whatever the auction would bring.

Written 2-28-2009 xx No: 409

Inside Job
(Stillwater State Prison) 1961-63

Part one of two

Dana Stanley, born September 27, 1942, met Edward Morrill born August 28, 1930, while working as a teacher's aide in the Dakota County school system…

Forward: Shannon O’Day was the cause Edward Morrill had been sentence to five-years in prison for his affair with a minor, Dana Stanley, during the fall of 1958, and it was now December, 1961. He had served a little over two years, with good behavior, he was to get out in another year 1963, September, and was going up for a board hearing and hopefully be placed on parole, thus, at this point and time he had a parole hearing come September of 1962, one year from this date, and he had told his roommate, he was going to kill the person who put him in this prison when he got out, and the person he told (kidding or not), was Otis Wilde Mather’s third cousin, and when his name came up, Shannon O’Day, Oscar Lewis Charleston, had written Otis, to visit him, saying it was urgent. And he did just that, and gave Otis the information of his roommate, inmate friend, and Otis, gave Oscar enough chewing tobacco to last him the year out. But now something needed to be done to stop this potential hazard in the making.

And Otis’ plan was two fold. Get him a new sentence, another five or ten years, or do him in. Whichever one was favorable, under whatever circumstances prevailed, in accordance to the time period; and the less people that knew, the better off, to include Shannon O’Day himself.

The Story

Chapter One
The Meeting

“Youall do me this here favor cousin Oscar Lewis and I’ll give Youall $200-dollars for you time. Ef-in that be okay with your conscious, and it dont go against your nerve,” said Otis Wilde Mather at the Stillwater State Prison, in Minnesota, during his visit with his third cousin, Oscar Lewis Charleston.
They both looked at one another, and Otis pulled out two-hundred dollars, “Ef-in I takes the money the guard here, I mean, the po-lice man, he a-goin’ to take it away anyhow, I wish I could buy a-whore, but there aint any here, we’all men here and we can do what women cant I reckon…so give da money to some poor sucker,” he said.
“Waht!” said Otis, “Youall sure you wants to do that?”
“How you mean, wants to do that? Jest finds someone who aint got a cent and give them two-hundred dollars worth of those cent’s, all right cousin?”
“We’ll,” said Otis, “ef-in that makes you feel a little better, how about that white girl, Dana Stanley, Morrill got her a baby, and she a-liven on her own in some shack on the levee in that there shanty town down by the Mississippi River, below the cliffs, in St. Paul?”
“Well, I’d like to see a color folk git da money, but poor white is fine I reckon. Waht do he do to her?” Asked Oscar.
“He done treated her like a whore and she waz only fifteen at dhe time, and turned sixteen, then he gits a heart to confess, and gits mad cause Shannon O’Day, he gits the Judge to put him away for five years. Oh I suppose she did her flatiron, but she as poor as a mouse with no cheese. So I’d say if anyone deserves that-there two-hundred dollars, its Dana.”

A woman started screaming in the visiting area, some inmate was running around trying to open up his fly, and everyone started looking, and his wife tried to settle him down, and by the time the guards got him, settled him down he had his britches half off wanted to do whatever he could do with his wife, right there and then, and his wife’s hands were over her face embarrassed, just shook her head. And a guard said loud and clear, “We got to cut visiting time short today folks—all right everybody leave please.”
Otis, hushed up, as the guard pulled the man’s britches back up around his butt, and zipped up his front. The guard said to the inmate,
“You’ll be walking a tightrope for along time Henry!”
Otis was done talking anyhow, and when he reached the last steps to leave the prison, hearing the heavy metal doors, steel bar doors, clang, and catch the lock, and click as if death itself, burped, close behind him, he took in a deep breath, and let it out slowly. Then he unfolded the money he was about to give Oscar, and put it into a separated department in his billfold. It was that very afternoon Otis visited Dana, and gave her the money on behalf of Oscar. “Do me a favor,” Otis, told her, “Write him a thank-you letter, ef’in that aint too much.”
She brought a beer to her little kitchen table, and opened it for Otis, “All Right,” she remarked, “just give me his full name and how to sent it to the prison, and I’ll do as you ask.”

Chapter Two
The Decision

Oscar had told his roommate, Edward Morrill, who slept on the top bunk bed, “Every inmate has a right to try and escape, the guards expect it. And I got life, or twenty-years in this cell, fifteen more to go if- I keep my behavior well. Then I am free, jest like that, free. But I aint got fifteen years in me left, I’m forty-eight now, I expect I be dead by then. And I reckon every guard has a right to shoot anyone who tries to leave this prison without the proper paperwork. I need your help, cuz my fate is doom, I aint goin’ to run out of her, Im goin’ to walk.”
Morrill didn’t know of course he was being set up, and that he should have known all along he was being set up, because he didn’t need to help anyone, he was not getting a promissory note for anything but trouble, but he said, “What is it you’re asking me to do?” So he even asked before he had to, what Oscar wanted him to do. Oscar had made sure he owed him a favor, a few black friends were going to blackjack him, threatened to slash his head with whatever they had if they couldn’t find a blackjack, and rape him. And Oscar put a scare into those fellows, and Edward was grateful. On the other had, Edward had wished he didn’t even know as much already as he did. In fact, if it was left to him, he would have likened to have been locked up in solitary until Oscar was over his escape theory.
“Don’t brag; just tell me how you expect to do it? I guess I’m under a small bond to you, I want to do what I got to do and wash my hands of you.” Morrill asked, and remarked.
“You don’t need to worry any,” Oscar said.
“What?” he said. “Why would you say that?”
“I said you don’t need to worry, nobody got anything against you and all I want you to do is go into the laundry room, pick up a bag of laundry, from Marcus, my friend in there, and bring it to me in the men’s room, during visiting time Saturday, its got women’s cloths in it, and my sister is going to visit me, and I’ll dress up like her, and she’ll say she lost her ID, and I’ll walk out of the place dressed like a female before her.”
“Yes,” he said, “but you’re going to be one ugly female.” And they both laughed.

Chapter Three
Two Days Later

The Warden called Edward Morrill to his office. “Sit on down,” he told him, “listen up” he said, clearing his throat, and then stated (his voice sotto-voce, and curious): “What in the heck did you do it for? We all thought you were of sound mind. That’s what your records say anyway, and that’s what you told us.”
“That’s right,” Edward said.
“Didn’t you know it wouldn’t work?” the Warden asked.
Edward got up, wanting to leave, and the Warden said, “Wait, didn’t you realize you’d never get away with it?”
“Oscar told me he wanted to escape, but when I brought the bag of cloths into the bathroom, and came out, he was gone, and his sister was gone, and I was standing there by my lonesome.” The Warden looked at him; he looked thin and frail.
“Oscar doesn’t have a sister, he ought not to have fooled you but he hasn’t anything to lose, and when I talked to him, he denied he had anything to do with the women’s clothing in that bag, the guard saw you bring it into the bathroom. You would have got out in just another year, and I warned you to keep your nose clean, not to help three-time losers.”
“He never had to do that to me,” said Edward.
“Well he did it, and you’re going to get another five-years added onto your original sentence, so forget about getting out early, you’ve got until 1968. That’s right Edward Morrill, the champion of champion dummies. And I’ve given you a private cell all to yourself. Some folks just never learn.”
“I thought I only had one enemy, Shannon O’Day, I guess I now got two,” said Edward.

Chapter Four
Sotto-voce

He, Edward Morrill was different now, as if his youth was going to be warn out before he got out of prison, over a statement he had forgot he even made. Immolated youth and hope had set into Dana Stanley likewise. The leather-toughness that he once had was now physical exhaustion; he had robbed the innocence of a young girl, and set a burning fire to his youthful years. Years would pass; those very same years that he was suppose to have been free. Had Edward had a better lawyer, he might have done better, he had forgot, secrets are no longer secrets once told. That was now. And now he belonged to the State of Minnesota, the Government. At first he was embarrassed, at what he did, but held some pride, respect for himself, because he hadn’t gotten caught at it, and had willingly brought his crime to the attention of the authorities, but he had forgiven himself, but now it had become a kind of reflection of someone’s amusement: someone beyond those steel bars, and his guilt, along with that other person’s unforgiving guilt he wanted to plant into him, who was trying to make his guilt into shame, someone beyond Oscar to have tricked him, now he felt foolish, and that old guilt came back and had turned into deep shame, hurt and anger.

And now knowing Edward was in for a number of years, more years, Dana didn’t feel like waiting, and she didn’t want to learn how to wait any longer, waiting and listening, and learning what was going on in the prison, and her child getting older. And so she had gone back to her people, her home with her mother and father, and started dating a gentlemen fellow from Stillwater Township, and she went back to Sunday school. And when Edward would get out in 1968, Shannon O’Day, who was old now, would be dead then, he died in 1967. He, Edward had learned the hard way, justice wasn’t for every man and woman alive, it was for the best and richest, and champions of the world. The best the others could do was hope for a chance at it, but not to expect it. America was no different when it came to money, if a man wanted to blot you out, it was a matter of ‘how much.’ Somehow Edward knew, but didn’t say: he talked too much.

5-29/30-2009
No: 2005..

Upon the suicide death of Mr. Edward Morrill, in 1966, on the prison wall in his cell, next to his bed, he wrote the following poem:

The Mind’s Prison Cell
By Edward Morrill

In my prison cell
An evil knight was born
In a hate sea-roaming
This devil’s noble
Unsheathed his sword,
For my sire of old
Once a star
In the heavens…!

And said I, I to my sire
Of old, trapped on land
Slave to the whims
Of this cell in prison…!
Life slowly suffocating
I’ll give my soul
To become a selkie
To have power of men
Or a merman or sea spirit
Of various forms, thus…

I shall cast off my skins
And come ashore
As a seal, to a selkie
And with time
This valiant-hearted,
Child of longing,
Chosen of an imp
Shall kill the human
That put me forth
Into this lasting prison,
And return with my soul
For his keeping!

5-30-2009; No: 2614

The Day before Yesterday
((A Shannon O’Day Story) (1916/1966))

Part Two of Two

Chapter Five
Skeptical Shooter

(In a Guesthouse, France, 1916) “What?” The waitress said in German.
“I said where the French compound is? It’s getting late.”
It was near twilight, he was looking for his battalion, had left The Village of Douaumont, left it the day before yesterday, the battle of Verdun was over, a three-hundred day battle, and he was left to die, but he didn’t die, and as he had asked, and the waitress had said: there was some kind of ammo dump at the edge of the woods, several miles away, and so he went in that direction she had pointed out, stepped over trenches, and a few dead bodies still in them, dead men’s faces eaten by rats, others with other deformities, he walked by a corn storage shed (reminded him of Minnesota), and then saw a military compound surrounded with barbwire. He headed to the main gate, “Halt,” a French Sergeant commanded. A shooter on the tower looking down with a pointed rifle barrow,
“Let’s see your ID soldier?” he said.
Shannon O’Day pulled it out of his back pocket, and looked strangely at the man.
“Why you staring at me soldier?” asked the sergeant.
“No reason,” he said, but was staring because the sergeant’s nose didn’t have bone in it, and when you looked at him, you could see right up his nostrils, like a pig.
“Your battalion, or company isn’t here, they went onto Paris for leave.” Said the sergeant; then he pulled his revolver out, and ordered him against the guard shack’s wall, “You look like a spy?” he questioned Shannon, in French.
“Do I talk like one?” asked Shannon, “I’m an American in the French Army, and was wounded and lost, and now I’m healed and still lost. I need a drink of water—please.”
“No,” said the sergeant. “Just who and what are you doing here, coming out of nowhere? Maybe you’re a deserter, not lost but simply done hiding since the battle is now over and want to go home like a hero?”
“About three weeks, I’ve been gone three weeks, maybe two, I lost count.”
“Can I be of any help Sergeant?” asked an officer as he walked by.
“No sir,” said the sergeant, “I’ve got it under control.”
“Just so you don’t shoot one of our own,” he uttered.
Then the sergeant shoved Shannon savagely out onto the thin platform, away from the wall, “Three weeks is a long time to be out there on your own soldier?” said the sergeant, “something smells fishy here!”
The shooter was still looking, halfway aiming his rifle incase he had to bring it back up to his shoulder in a hurry.
“I’m no trader, I was wounded, and some woman in that village called Douaumont put me back together!”
“That’s one big cock and bull story,” said the sergeant now in English.

From behind them you could hear the incoming whisper of engines in the air, and so Shannon crouched, looked up, the planes looked like two dark long winged ducks, dropping down quickly, the sky was gray and dim, and they were heading toward the ammo dump behind the guardhouse.
“Listen,” the sergeant said to Shannon, “…grabs the rifle in the guardhouse and shoot at the plane,” the sergeant was too far away, and the plane was now shooting its machine guns madly all around them, and the shooter in the tower could not get a good shot, and he had a roof over his head, and hid behind the tower’s wooden frame.
“The mad Germans are shooting everywhichway,” said the Sergeant.
Shannon now had his rifle in hand, a soldier came running up toward the sergeant, dived to the ground, side by side, “Don’t get in that soldier’s way with the rifle, let him shoot,” said the sergeant, “take the shot soldier,” yelled the sergeant.
The plane dived close overhead, Shannon watched the sky and the lightening tracers of the machine gun, and fired one bullet—a breeze fell on the face of Shannon, with the moon rising overhead, and then you could hear a crash. The second plane emptied its load over the darkness, and missed the main stockpile of shells.

“You know corporal,” said the Sergeant, “I realize you had a lot of pressure going into that shot, but next time, don’t wait so long.”
The stress of the day, and the day before yesterday, was too, too, mush, a certain amount of nausea befell Shannon. He had been anxious to find his battalion, his outfit, and here he found an ammo dump, with a sergeant calling him a spy, and German planes trying to shoot at him.
“Want to know my name, corporal?” asked the Sergeant.
“No, I just want a cot to sleep on.”
“Just call me Wes, I’ll have someone bring you to the ammo battery, and sorry I called you a spy. Looks like you had a concussion?” asked the sergeant.
“I guess I did,” there was a long pause, “can I go now sergeant?”
“Private, go on and take the corporal to the ammo battery, give him a bunk and some grub.”
“Yes,” sergeant, said the private, “This way Corporal” said the private to Shannon.

Chapter Six
The Door

(1966) The Door

There was a knock on the door, Shannon tossed over to one side, heard a voice say, “Youall a-wake in there?” (A voice from the past.)
“I got some news fer you Shannon!”
Slowly Shannon found his feet, and pushed them over and onto the floor, then pulled him-self up to get up and out of bed
“Sounds like you Otis?”
“Yessum, it me all right, let me in.”
Shannon opened the door, “Otis Wilde Mather, what the heck are you doing in town, thought you were down in Ozark?”
“Jes’ thought I’d stop on by have a drink with Youall, and give you the good news, Edward Morrill, committed suicide in prison.”
“I guess I’m not all that sorry about that, and perhaps not all that surprised. How did you find out?”
“My third cousin done called me up and told me. He’s in fer life.”
“Hum…m, sounds a bit suspicious to me, like he was keeping an eye on him for you.”
“I heard you talking in your sleep, getting those damn nightmares again, or what Youall call them things—nowadays?”
“Nightmares is good enough Otis, just plain old nightmares, sit on down, I got us some good old corn whisky, if you got the time?”
“Yessum, jest like old times, that waht I like ‘bout yaw Shannon, you never change.”

Written 5-30-2009, No: 406

Inside Job: Stillwater Prison & The Day before Yesterday

2009-05-30T23:18:00.000-07:00

Inside Job
(Stillwater State Prison) 1961-63

Part one of two

Dana Stanley, born September 27, 1942, met Edward Morrill born August 28, 1930, while working as a teacher's aide in the Dakota County school system…

Forward: Shannon O’Day was the cause Edward Morrill had been sentence to five-years in prison for his affair with a minor, Dana Stanley, during the fall of 1958, and it was now December, 1961. He had served a little over two years, with good behavior, he was to get out in another year 1963, September, and was going up for a board hearing and hopefully be placed on parole, thus, at this point and time he had a parole hearing come September of 1962, one year from this date, and he had told his roommate, he was going to kill the person who put him in this prison when he got out, and the person he told (kidding or not), was Otis Wilde Mather’s third cousin, and when his name came up, Shannon O’Day, Oscar Lewis Charleston, had written Otis, to visit him, saying it was urgent. And he did just that, and gave Otis the information of his roommate, inmate friend, and Otis, gave Oscar enough chewing tobacco to last him the year out. But now something needed to be done to stop this potential hazard in the making.

And Otis’ plan was two fold. Get him a new sentence, another five or ten years, or do him in. Whichever one was favorable, under whatever circumstances prevailed, in accordance to the time period; and the less people that knew, the better off, to include Shannon O’Day himself.

The Story

Chapter One
The Meeting

“Youall do me this here favor cousin Oscar Lewis and I’ll give Youall $200-dollars for you time. Ef-in that be okay with your conscious, and it dont go against your nerve,” said Otis Wilde Mather at the Stillwater State Prison, in Minnesota, during his visit with his third cousin, Oscar Lewis Charleston.
They both looked at one another, and Otis pulled out two-hundred dollars, “Ef-in I takes the money the guard here, I mean, the po-lice man, he a-goin’ to take it away anyhow, I wish I could buy a-whore, but there aint any here, we’all men here and we can do what women cant I reckon…so give da money to some poor sucker,” he said.
“Waht!” said Otis, “Youall sure you wants to do that?”
“How you mean, wants to do that? Jest finds someone who aint got a cent and give them two-hundred dollars worth of those cent’s, all right cousin?”
“We’ll,” said Otis, “ef-in that makes you feel a little better, how about that white girl, Dana Stanley, Morrill got her a baby, and she a-liven on her own in some shack on the levee in that there shanty town down by the Mississippi River, below the cliffs, in St. Paul?”
“Well, I’d like to see a color folk git da money, but poor white is fine I reckon. Waht do he do to her?” Asked Oscar.
“He done treated her like a whore and she waz only fifteen at dhe time, and turned sixteen, then he gits a heart to confess, and gits mad cause Shannon O’Day, he gits the Judge to put him away for five years. Oh I suppose she did her flatiron, but she as poor as a mouse with no cheese. So I’d say if anyone deserves that-there two-hundred dollars, its Dana.”

A woman started screaming in the visiting area, some inmate was running around trying to open up his fly, and everyone started looking, and his wife tried to settle him down, and by the time the guards got him, settled him down he had his britches half off wanted to do whatever he could do with his wife, right there and then, and his wife’s hands were over her face embarrassed, just shook her head. And a guard said loud and clear, “We got to cut visiting time short today folks—all right everybody leave please.”
Otis, hushed up, as the guard pulled the man’s britches back up around his butt, and zipped up his front. The guard said to the inmate,
“You’ll be walking a tightrope for along time Henry!”
Otis was done talking anyhow, and when he reached the last steps to leave the prison, hearing the heavy metal doors, steel bar doors, clang, and catch the lock, and click as if death itself, burped, close behind him, he took in a deep breath, and let it out slowly. Then he unfolded the money he was about to give Oscar, and put it into a separated department in his billfold. It was that very afternoon Otis visited Dana, and gave her the money on behalf of Oscar. “Do me a favor,” Otis, told her, “Write him a thank-you letter, ef’in that aint too much.”
She brought a beer to her little kitchen table, and opened it for Otis, “All Right,” she remarked, “just give me his full name and how to sent it to the prison, and I’ll do as you ask.”

Chapter Two
The Decision

Oscar had told his roommate, Edward Morrill, who slept on the top bunk bed, “Every inmate has a right to try and escape, the guards expect it. And I got life, or twenty-years in this cell, fifteen more to go if- I keep my behavior well. Then I am free, jest like that, free. But I aint got fifteen years in me left, I’m forty-eight now, I expect I be dead by then. And I reckon every guard has a right to shoot anyone who tries to leave this prison without the proper paperwork. I need your help, cuz my fate is doom, I aint goin’ to run out of her, Im goin’ to walk.”
Morrill didn’t know of course he was being set up, and that he should have known all along he was being set up, because he didn’t need to help anyone, he was not getting a promissory note for anything but trouble, but he said, “What is it you’re asking me to do?” So he even asked before he had to, what Oscar wanted him to do. Oscar had made sure he owed him a favor, a few black friends were going to blackjack him, threatened to slash his head with whatever they had if they couldn’t find a blackjack, and rape him. And Oscar put a scare into those fellows, and Edward was grateful. On the other had, Edward had wished he didn’t even know as much already as he did. In fact, if it was left to him, he would have likened to have been locked up in solitary until Oscar was over his escape theory.
“Don’t brag; just tell me how you expect to do it? I guess I’m under a small bond to you, I want to do what I got to do and wash my hands of you.” Morrill asked, and remarked.
“You don’t need to worry any,” Oscar said.
“What?” he said. “Why would you say that?”
“I said you don’t need to worry, nobody got anything against you and all I want you to do is go into the laundry room, pick up a bag of laundry, from Marcus, my friend in there, and bring it to me in the men’s room, during visiting time Saturday, its got women’s cloths in it, and my sister is going to visit me, and I’ll dress up like her, and she’ll say she lost her ID, and I’ll walk out of the place dressed like a female before her.”
“Yes,” he said, “but you’re going to be one ugly female.” And they both laughed.

Chapter Three
Two Days Later

The Warden called Edward Morrill to his office. “Sit on down,” he told him, “listen up” he said, clearing his throat, and then stated (his voice sotto-voce, and curious): “What in the heck did you do it for? We all thought you were of sound mind. That’s what your records say anyway, and that’s what you told us.”
“That’s right,” Edward said.
“Didn’t you know it wouldn’t work?” the Warden asked.
Edward got up, wanting to leave, and the Warden said, “Wait, didn’t you realize you’d never get away with it?”
“Oscar told me he wanted to escape, but when I brought the bag of cloths into the bathroom, and came out, he was gone, and his sister was gone, and I was standing there by my lonesome.” The Warden looked at him; he looked thin and frail.
“Oscar doesn’t have a sister, he ought not to have fooled you but he hasn’t anything to lose, and when I talked to him, he denied he had anything to do with the women’s clothing in that bag, the guard saw you bring it into the bathroom. You would have got out in just another year, and I warned you to keep your nose clean, not to help three-time losers.”
“He never had to do that to me,” said Edward.
“Well he did it, and you’re going to get another five-years added onto your original sentence, so forget about getting out early, you’ve got until 1968. That’s right Edward Morrill, the champion of champion dummies. And I’ve given you a private cell all to yourself. Some folks just never learn.”
“I thought I only had one enemy, Shannon O’Day, I guess I now got two,” said Edward.

Chapter Four
Sotto-voce

He, Edward Morrill was different now, as if his youth was going to be warn out before he got out of prison, over a statement he had forgot he even made. Immolated youth and hope had set into Dana Stanley likewise. The leather-toughness that he once had was now physical exhaustion; he had robbed the innocence of a young girl, and set a burning fire to his youthful years. Years would pass; those very same years that he was suppose to have been free. Had Edward had a better lawyer, he might have done better, he had forgot, secrets are no longer secrets once told. That was now. And now he belonged to the State of Minnesota, the Government. At first he was embarrassed, at what he did, but held some pride, respect for himself, because he hadn’t gotten caught at it, and had willingly brought his crime to the attention of the authorities, but he had forgiven himself, but now it had become a kind of reflection of someone’s amusement: someone beyond those steel bars, and his guilt, along with that other person’s unforgiving guilt he wanted to plant into him, who was trying to make his guilt into shame, someone beyond Oscar to have tricked him, now he felt foolish, and that old guilt came back and had turned into deep shame, hurt and anger.

And now knowing Edward was in for a number of years, more years, Dana didn’t feel like waiting, and she didn’t want to learn how to wait any longer, waiting and listening, and learning what was going on in the prison, and her child getting older. And so she had gone back to her people, her home with her mother and father, and started dating a gentlemen fellow from Stillwater Township, and she went back to Sunday school. And when Edward would get out in 1968, Shannon O’Day, who was old now, would be dead then, he died in 1967. He, Edward had learned the hard way, justice wasn’t for every man and woman alive, it was for the best and richest, and champions of the world. The best the others could do was hope for a chance at it, but not to expect it. America was no different when it came to money, if a man wanted to blot you out, it was a matter of ‘how much.’ Somehow Edward knew, but didn’t say: he talked too much.

5-29/30-2009
No: 405..

Upon the suicide death of Mr. Edward Morrill, in 1966, on the prison wall in his cell, next to his bed, he wrote the following poem:

The Mind’s Prison Cell
By Edward Morrill

In my prison cell
An evil knight was born
In a hate sea-roaming
This devil’s noble
Unsheathed his sword,
For my sire of old
Once a star
In the heavens…!

And said I, I to my sire
Of old, trapped on land
Slave to the whims
Of this cell in prison…!
Life slowly suffocating
I’ll give my soul
To become a selkie
To have power of men
Or a merman or sea spirit
Of various forms, thus…

I shall cast off my skins
And come ashore
As a seal, to a selkie
And with time
This valiant-hearted,
Child of longing,
Chosen of an imp
Shall kill the human
That put me forth
Into this lasting prison,
And return with my soul
For his keeping!

5-30-2009; No: 2614

The Day before Yesterday
((A Shannon O’Day Story) (1916/1966))

Part Two of Two

Chapter Five
Skeptical Shooter

(In a Guesthouse, France, 1916) “What?” The waitress said in German.
“I said where the French compound is? It’s getting late.”
It was near twilight, he was looking for his battalion, had left The Village of Douaumont, left it the day before yesterday, the battle of Verdun was over, a three-hundred day battle, and he was left to die, but he didn’t die, and as he had asked, and the waitress had said: there was some kind of ammo dump at the edge of the woods, several miles away, and so he went in that direction she had pointed out, stepped over trenches, and a few dead bodies still in them, dead men’s faces eaten by rats, others with other deformities, he walked by a corn storage shed (reminded him of Minnesota), and then saw a military compound surrounded with barbwire. He headed to the main gate, “Halt,” a French Sergeant commanded. A shooter on the tower looking down with a pointed rifle barrow,
“Let’s see your ID soldier?” he said.
Shannon O’Day pulled it out of his back pocket, and looked strangely at the man.
“Why you staring at me soldier?” asked the sergeant.
“No reason,” he said, but was staring because the sergeant’s nose didn’t have bone in it, and when you looked at him, you could see right up his nostrils, like a pig.
“Your battalion, or company isn’t here, they went onto Paris for leave.” Said the sergeant; then he pulled his revolver out, and ordered him against the guard shack’s wall, “You look like a spy?” he questioned Shannon, in French.
“Do I talk like one?” asked Shannon, “I’m an American in the French Army, and was wounded and lost, and now I’m healed and still lost. I need a drink of water—please.”
“No,” said the sergeant. “Just who and what are you doing here, coming out of nowhere? Maybe you’re a deserter, not lost but simply done hiding since the battle is now over and want to go home like a hero?”
“About three weeks, I’ve been gone three weeks, maybe two, I lost count.”
“Can I be of any help Sergeant?” asked an officer as he walked by.
“No sir,” said the sergeant, “I’ve got it under control.”
“Just so you don’t shoot one of our own,” he uttered.
Then the sergeant shoved Shannon savagely out onto the thin platform, away from the wall, “Three weeks is a long time to be out there on your own soldier?” said the sergeant, “something smells fishy here!”
The shooter was still looking, halfway aiming his rifle incase he had to bring it back up to his shoulder in a hurry.
“I’m no trader, I was wounded, and some woman in that village called Douaumont put me back together!”
“That’s one big cock and bull story,” said the sergeant now in English.

From behind them you could hear the incoming whisper of engines in the air, and so Shannon crouched, looked up, the planes looked like two dark long winged ducks, dropping down quickly, the sky was gray and dim, and they were heading toward the ammo dump behind the guardhouse.
“Listen,” the sergeant said to Shannon, “…grabs the rifle in the guardhouse and shoot at the plane,” the sergeant was too far away, and the plane was now shooting its machine guns madly all around them, and the shooter in the tower could not get a good shot, and he had a roof over his head, and hid behind the tower’s wooden frame.
“The mad Germans are shooting everywhichway,” said the Sergeant.
Shannon now had his rifle in hand, a soldier came running up toward the sergeant, dived to the ground, side by side, “Don’t get in that soldier’s way with the rifle, let him shoot,” said the sergeant, “take the shot soldier,” yelled the sergeant.
The plane dived close overhead, Shannon watched the sky and the lightening tracers of the machine gun, and fired one bullet—a breeze fell on the face of Shannon, with the moon rising overhead, and then you could hear a crash. The second plane emptied its load over the darkness, and missed the main stockpile of shells.

“You know corporal,” said the Sergeant, “I realize you had a lot of pressure going into that shot, but next time, don’t wait so long.”
The stress of the day, and the day before yesterday, was too, too, mush, a certain amount of nausea befell Shannon. He had been anxious to find his battalion, his outfit, and here he found an ammo dump, with a sergeant calling him a spy, and German planes trying to shoot at him.
“Want to know my name, corporal?” asked the Sergeant.
“No, I just want a cot to sleep on.”
“Just call me Wes, I’ll have someone bring you to the ammo battery, and sorry I called you a spy. Looks like you had a concussion?” asked the sergeant.
“I guess I did,” there was a long pause, “can I go now sergeant?”
“Private, go on and take the corporal to the ammo battery, give him a bunk and some grub.”
“Yes,” sergeant, said the private, “This way Corporal” said the private to Shannon.

Chapter Six
The Door

(1966) The Door

There was a knock on the door, Shannon tossed over to one side, heard a voice say, “Youall a-wake in there?” (A voice from the past.)
“I got some news fer you Shannon!”
Slowly Shannon found his feet, and pushed them over and onto the floor, then pulled him-self up to get up and out of bed
“Sounds like you Otis?”
“Yessum, it me all right, let me in.”
Shannon opened the door, “Otis Wilde Mather, what the heck are you doing in town, thought you were down in Ozark?”
“Jes’ thought I’d stop on by have a drink with Youall, and give you the good news, Edward Morrill, committed suicide in prison.”
“I guess I’m not all that sorry about that, and perhaps not all that surprised. How did you find out?”
“My third cousin done called me up and told me. He’s in fer life.”
“Hum…m, sounds a bit suspicious to me, like he was keeping an eye on him for you.”
“I heard you talking in your sleep, getting those damn nightmares again, or what Youall call them things—nowadays?”
“Nightmares is good enough Otis, just plain old nightmares, sit on down, I got us some good old corn whisky, if you got the time?”
“Yessum, jest like old times, that waht I like ‘bout yaw Shannon, you never change.”

Written 5-30-2009
No: 406.

The Pawnshop (Reflections of Shannon O'Day's Father)

2009-05-28T23:50:00.001-07:00

The Pawnshop
Recollections of Shannon O’Day’s father
(1959, as told by Shannon O’Day to Otis Wilde Mather)

I wasn’t born yet, so it was Gus my brother who was ten-years my senior who was old enough and big enough to remember for it all to make sense. That is, it was Gus and Sally O’Day, my cousin, my father’s brother, Uncle Marty. They both—Sally and Gus were nine-years old at the time, both born the same year as one another. My mother, Ella, her sister Emma, married my father’s brother. But when Gus just called her Sally and dropped the cousin thing—he said it sounded too bonehead like, well, so did I when I got born, and was old enough to reason it out. We all lived in the same city, of St. Paul, at the time. Anyhow, I still hadn’t gotten born yet, so this is what Gus knew and Sally knew until I got born and big enough for them to tell me about it. And so when I say—we, I mean, all three of us, and the city of St. Paul to boot.
One day one fall, my father drove up an alley with Sally and Gus in the back seat, and some merchandise to sell at this here pawnshop. A friend of his owned it, down on Wabasha Street by the Lyceum Movie Theatre, across the street from the World Theatre. Hawk Gordon owned the shop, and drove this big yellow Cadillac of his. He kept the yellow beast for twenty years, I even remember it.
Gus saw through the back window of the pawnshop a man with red hair (Hawk Gordon), grease all over his hands and shirt and face, wiping his hands on an apron—Gus said he thought he was working on an old clock, a short kind of fellow, thin, unfriendly looking chap, with deep embed eyes, in square eye sockets, sunken deep into the pits of his tiny head, with a fat smashed-in nose, like a wino has with big pore holes in them, his hair sticking out everywhichway.
After that meeting, Gus and pa carried all those items he had in the trunk, and front seat, and back seat and on the floors, into the pawnshop, and mom and pa and Gus moved into the backroom, and six months later I was born.
“I give you six months and you’ll be drinking and drunk out on the street again,” Hawk Gordon told my pa.
That was the first fall, of 1899; the first time ma even had met Hawk Gordon. He was shrewd, and pa was working for nickels and dimes from him at the time, but I got born in a warm room, that’s about all I can say, he was a piece of work that’s for sure, if you know what I mean.
But all ready pa was spending his earnings on food and whiskey and gambling, he barely seen us boys, and mom did the required work at the pawnshop.
So pa didn’t know at the time he would go up to Alaska to work, he didn’t even know yet he would ever consider it seriously. But he did tell Gus, talked to Gus about it, said; “I’d like to go someday to Alaska.”
It was a nice thought to keep in mind, and to ponder on deeper, but with pa’s drinking and all, he was going to hell in a hand basket, quick. Mr. Gordon wasn’t all that wrong about pa; no flies on him.
He and Gus got to talking a lot, in those days, I suppose because pa only went to 8th grade in school, spent much of his younger years drinking and travelling, and Gus sounded smart, and told pa he was going to buy a farm, and he did buy a farm in years yet to come. Pa was born in 1874, so at this time he was all of twenty-six years old, but looked twenty-years older.
He, pa, started to sell vacuum cleaners on the side for awhile, he said he sold them before when he travelled, along with doing some swapping and trading, he was good at that.
Pa didn’t like the South, he told Gus many a-times, he said he hung around and played cards with some black folks, down in Huntsville, Alabama. And the white folk got wind of it, and told him to get his ass out of Alabama before they hung him, which would have been by the KKK, the next day, and so when the next day came, pa was gone. It was a poor Blackman’s farm house trifling farmers, and pa seemed to get along with them quite well.
I asked Gus “What made pa go to Alaska?”
“I don’t know,” Gus told me, “whatever it was, Sally’s father Paul went with him,” Paul Cotton. “I suppose they thought Alaska would be safer and a man could make lots of money. Or at least more than at Hawk Gordon’s pawnshop, and what they found in Alaska, the first winter was one horrid winter, and knew nothing about its environment, its wildlife.” Gus explained.
Between Gus and his thoughts, his talking to me was vague at best on pa, and Alaska—at first anyhow. Some hidden grief maybe, under his thin hair, and skin and hard skull bone, because when mom passed on and I moved in with Gus and his wife, to live until I went to War, the Great War, he got an official letter from the State of Alaska. And all that information about pa’s death was in that envelope, it took those official fellows, over ten-years to get him that information.
“Oh ay,” I remember saying, “let me in on the secret,” I told Gus as he chewed his fingernails wanted to open that envelope up, but not opening it up, because once he did, he’d know, and knowing he was dead for sure was worse than not knowing and thinking he was alive someplace in Alaska drinking away like he always did, laughing and poking jobs at things that were not funny, and slapping the behinds of pretty young waitresses.

Mother died, worked herself to death when I was thirteen or near thirteen, or perhaps I was fourteen, I rightly can’t remember now, it was that simple, it was that there was not enough of her to go around, just to small for any human female package to hold onto, so much life to deal with, too much of perhaps, doom, too much assortment in life.
I can’t say for sure, no gratitude from Gordon, just for her being his, off and on, mistress after pa was found dead, eaten up by hungry wolves, something Gus knew, but had no proof of until he got that envelope that one day from the State of Alaska. And Gordon being a male and ma in his space and time, and lonely and hurting, and trying to feed two boys, forever in a kind of despair, because she knew, and Gordon knew, there would never be enough of her of any one woman to hold onto grief, and no other men would ever do. That was what he discovered in time; Paul, he died of a heart attack that same year, in Alaska too, and mom of double-pneumonia.

Otis Wilde Mather:

“And that yellow Cadillac, what ever happened it Shannon?”

“Every year or so, someone wanted to buy it. It was a wild yellow, like a canary: when Hawk Gordon died, in around 1940, he put in his will to bury it with him. Well, his children got wind of that, and said ‘no dice,’ and sold it, Judge Finley said it was okay, after, one of the kids went into his back room in the courthouse and offered him 10% of whatever the auction would bring.

Written 2-28-2009 xx No: 409

"Feeding a Dead Horse" ((The Case of Dana Stanley)(Codchild to Shanon O'Day))

2009-05-28T13:47:00.001-07:00

Feeding a Dead Horse
The Case of Dana Stanley
(Godchild to Shannon O’Day)

State of Minnesota, Appellant vs. Edward Morrill, Respondent Filed September 29, 1958; Affirmed Finley, Judge; Dakota County District Courthouse

FACTS

Prosecuting Country Attorney: Steve Ramsey (Speaks to the court):

Dana Stanley, born September 27, 1942, met Edward Morrill born August 28, 1930, while working as a teacher's aide in the Dakota County school system. Dana was a student at the High School. Sometime during the school year of 1958, Edward Morrill engaged in consensual sexual intercourse with Dana Stanley, whom was sixteen-years old at the time, and Edward, some ten-years her senior. He had met her while in one of her classes, and thereafter, slowly the acquaintanceship became a relationship, and sexual. Edward fell in love with Dana, and she wrote several love letters to him, expressing her desire to marry him when she was of age.

Mr. Morrill, came to the realization, the relationship was improper, so he says, and brought it to the attention of the school principal, William Ingway. And according to Ingway, Mr. Morrill, was very sorry, and felt he made a mistake, and wanted to come clean, to remove it from his mind, off his chest, get it over with so he could go on living, and by doing this, he could bring forth exactly what the situation was. As was this following statement given to the state’s investigators thereafter, Sheriff Fauna, was present and had this to say:

“He told us that he had fallen in love with Dana and I believe it, he also said it was his first love that I think is a lot of rot, although it may have been her first love. I do see him as a sexual predator of some kind, although the principle Mr. Ingway, don’t see it that way, but then he has his schools reputation to consider, doesn’t he. I wouldn't think there would be any type of pattern to his predator way of life, it is perhaps what he sees, and what he likes he goes after, but I am no psychologist. Mr. Shannon O’Day, the godfather of the child sees it my way also, said he picked her up from school a few times, and Mr. Morrill had always an evil eye on her, he said. To me it is plain as trying to feed a dead horse, He got involved with a student and this kind of behavior cannot be allowed because he says after the fact ‘I’m sorry,’ the sorry doesn’t’ do a damn bit of good. When he goes to prison, I’ll accept his sorry, and so will his godfather, and so will the mother and father, who seem a little more passive on this issue.”

(Steve Ramsey speaks to Judge Finley and those in the courtroom :) your honor, this following statement was given to the state’s investigators also, by Shannon O’Day, the godfather:

“In my opinion, I would agree with Sheriff Fauna, I had an opportunity to talk to Mr. Morrill, last summer, actually during his summer job, aiding teachers at summer school, those kids that are too lazy to work during the normal school year have to go to the dumb school to catch up.
I was working on my brother’s farm, he died last year, and his wife needed me to do some handiwork, hired me for a-spell, and I got a hold of him on his off time to work, and I got to know him probably on a little better basis and uh, I do see it as a problem and he should get his penis cut off, the horrid son of a bitch. You should hang him, not put him in prison, it is like feeding a dead horse, he’ll just do it again, and again.”

(County Attorney Steven Ramsey) From the documents submitted, specifically the letters from the County Sheriff and Mr. Shannon O’Day, and the statements from the Principle Ingway, which I have aggressively pursued in this relationship between Morrill and Dana Stanley, disclosed relationship because it might never have been, had Mr. Morrill never have brought it to the attention of the school’s principle, and now that he has stopped initiating contact with Dana, and him voluntarily submitted to and paid for a psychological evaluation perhaps his social immaturity and poorly-developed social skills, can be readjusted during some kind of treatment which he says he doesn’t mind attending, if he doesn’t go to prison, which I recommend he does.

The morning trial took a recess; and Mr. Morrill’s counsel delivered an affidavit signed by Mr. and Mrs. Stanley, saying in essence to the state, and district court, and it was given to Judge Finley:

“…Morrill and Dana we understand had a consensual sexual relationship that occurred as a result of affection they both held for one another, this we understand, and a long trial would not be in my daughter’s best interest, nor allowing Mr. Morrill to go completely free, even if he pleads guilty to the charge or not, and we understand he has pleaded guilty on the basis of a stay of adjudication, and as I understand that to mean, no prison time. So we feel the best way to resolve the matter is to have the court sentence him on a stay of adjudication. It is what our daughter wants too, although we know his Godfather is against this, but that is his nature. So there is no reason we see that the state should not go along with allowing our request.”

(Narrator) The state did say it would look at, and consider a stay of imposition. The district court told Morrill that it could not promise anything, only indicated a strong willingness. And so Morrill decided to plead guilty to the charge cited in the complaint. During the states questioning of Morrill and opposed to a stay of adjudication, the final decision on sentencing would be "up to the judge."

(Narrator) At the sentencing hearing, the district court determined that there were "special circumstances" (and the judge had considered, behind closed doors before he talked to Shannon O’ Day allowing Morrill to be put in jail for 120-days, and 600-hours of community work, and five years probation, alone with restricting him to have any contact with minors without being supervised, but Shannon O’Day’s friend, Otis Wilder Mather, who still had frozen, if not hidden anger for the state of Minnesota and its off the wall law system, gave, free of charge $5000-dollars to bribe Judge Finley, to execute the worse punishment he could on the offender).

Judge Finley’s Decision:

“The state challenges the district court's conclusion that this case presents special circumstances in which a stay of adjudication is not justified. Generally, the charging function is within the broad discretion of the prosecutor, which should not be subject to interference by the district court. However, a district court may stay adjudication over the prosecutor's objection, if the case exhibits "special circumstances." In the present case, the district court found no existence of prior or identical "special circumstances" to allow this. And I see that the state had reached no plea agreement worthy of the crime. Therefore, over the objects of those concerned for such a ruling, as the case warrants which is a sentence of no less than five years in the state penitentiary, at Stillwater, Minnesota.”

Lawyer for the Offender: “But your honor, Mr. Morrill has no history of aggressiveness, and his part of the relationship with Dana Stanley was consensual and they both appear to want to get married, and the mother’s statement.”
The Judge: “In this case, since you bring it back up, Mr. Morrill in addition is ordered to pay $500-dollars for court fees to the public defender’s fun, and if you question my ruling, I will fine you. And the more you talk, the more you dig a hole for your client, this is a severe breach of moral conduct, happen right in a school system. And for your understanding, he does now have a criminal history. I do not, nor does the public support this characterization. Affirmed.”

Note: this is a fictitious case, as are the names. Written 5-28-2009

Closed Out (A Shannon O'Day Short Story)

2009-05-27T23:22:00.000-07:00

Closed Out
((Shannon O’Day, 1956-57) (Part Three of Four Parts))

When Gus O’Day and his wife had come back from Fayetteville, North Carolina, he heard about Shannon’s run in with the law, not to mention his reckless try at farming had ended, but “Thank God for that,” he told his friend Ronald Short, the county attorney.
Why in fact, Mr. Short was initially confused on the Kent Peterson murder he didn’t let out, but the sheriff, Dakota Country, Sheriff Terry Fauna, never pursued the murder, or his inquisitive nature, just let it go, again both Gus and Short were puzzled. It appeared it never needed the law to close out the case; it just did on its own, as if someone pulled the blinds down. Now instead of Shannon hanging out with Gus, because of his browbeating over wanting to know the details of the killing, what wasn’t brought out in court, wanting to know, what he didn’t know, or pretended he didn’t know, but he should have known, if indeed he did kill Kent, and he did of course kill Kent, but hanging out with Gus might bring things to light, and Shannon was alright with the results of the Court, so he started hanging out at Dickey’s Diner, he ate there before, he just didn’t hang out there, and now he was hanging out there, got to know Old Josh the cook quite well, and a few waitresses, and some young guy blind who played Ricky Nelson songs, and some little black lad who came in and tap-danced, called Zam Zam.
It was a Friday night, Shannon, he had left the Diner, leaned half the night against the lamppost looking at the empty lots about, you would a-thought he could a-held his staring indefinitely. Then he stumbled on back to his apartment on Wabasha Street, by the World Theater, where he could do no harm to his-self or anyone else—to include innocent bystanders or perhaps all three.

This is when he changed course in his life, which was simple unavoidable—to be—a hazard if he hadn’t. He drank in Gus’ neighbor’s cornfield now, Mr. Orville Stanley (who had retired from the railroad, and had this hobby farm with his wife) Alice Stanley, their daughter, Nadine, and her five year old daughter, Dina.
He knew them as well as anyone else knew them. So of 1956, he asks them without any troublesome interruption, if they wouldn’t mind him drinking among their corn stocks. And as time passed that summer, he’d drop a pint of moonshine whiskey into the old man’s mailbox and when they met and talked, he’d drop a pint into his hind pockets.
So now no one need bother to question Shannon over the murder and he didn’t get that browbeating from his brother, and the way he figured it: out of sight out of mind, or perhaps, what you don’t know, can’t hurt you, or possible, the concept of blood-kin being thinker than water, would not be tested under fire, as Mark Twain would have put it. And that was that, and that was all right with Shannon O’Day.
But it wasn’t the way Gus and that Country Attorney saw things, Mr. Ronald Short, but Gus was not to be as persistent as Mr. Short.
The next, Saturday, Mr. Short and the Sheriff Fauna, both friends, kind of friends, not bosom-buddies but lightly friends, had eaten at Dickey’s Diner, the sheriff believing, and telling Mr. Short in so many words: simple destiny was taking its expected course, and he shouldn’t get too reckless in taking advantage of destiny and poking his nose into the case anymore than he had already, that Judge Finley, had made his decision, and he’d not take a likening should he take this to another level, other than curiosity.
Mr. Short knew, Finley had a short temper, and didn’t care to be questioned on his judgments, and in particular this matter of Shannon O’Day; and Finley had told his dear friend, Sheriff Fauna, not to let Short, get one whiff or light flash of the real picture.
Ronald Short did start to meddle into what Judge Finley thought was his business. Short feeling he wasn’t doing Finely no harm in the process but he was telling the Sheriff about his new investigation into the murder, and forgot that the Sheriff was a dear friend of Finley’s, more so than his.
“No,” he said to Fauna, “what baffles me is Henry Sears, the witness, the very one who saw some stranger kill Kent Peterson then runs deep into woods. And then after the court hearing, he up and leaves the state. I think Shannon had some money hidden, and paid Sears to lie?”

Judge Finley said to Sheriff Fauna, that following Monday morning, in the Dakota County Court hallway, “What in creation kind of County Attorney do we have here, a detective? Ask him if he has a license to snoop beyond the courthouse!”
So for that moment his trust and assurance in Ronald Short shined unsteadily, you could say. For that trying moment he told the sheriff, “Mr. Short could be the victim of pure circumstance, compounded…jest like any one else; if that darn boy don’t believe the old picture show, that he might slip in some alley, or be subject to some outrageous misfortune and coincidence that befell Mr. Peterson, and then we all can rest in peace. Matter-of-fact, if he says anything more about being a detective, burn his britches, and if that don’t work, well, the alley will do.”
Short still never had one second’s doubt that it had been Shannon who paid someone to lie for him, with the clear and simple color of money. But Shannon never had a nickel to his name at this time.
So all Ronald Short needed to do was find out where the money came from, or where the witness was, or work with Gus on Shannon’s guilt, and consciousness, realization to the killing. Anyone, either one would work. And this is exactly what he was determined to do, to pursue, and if need be, persuade, and he was not discreet, having the sheriff provide spies for him, thinking the sheriff was one of his respectable spies himself, with pride in his profession to catch the real killer, instead of chasing shadows, since any little child who could read the court files would have said, ‘hogwash’ to them, and would have known something was fixed.

In plain sight of half the city of St. Paul, evidently going home from the late picture show, nobody could locate Judge Finley to tell him about it. Anyhow, Ronald Short, had found somebody, someone he felt he could squeeze information out of, who called him, and said they had information he was seeking, and Short met this man, in an alley by the Diner, but there was someone behind hidden doors.
He never had anymore sense then to believe the sheriff was on his side, and he could tangle with the old Judge, and walk away as if nothing happened. Not to mention to try and question the witness, and assure him of no ill feelings, and he’d keep it a secret of his identity, but secrets are not secrets when two people know them, they are agreements.
Inside the Baptist church that Sunday morning, Short’s wife had the funeral, and of course Judge Finley and Sheriff Fauna were present, but not Shannon O’Day, nor his brother. They both even brought roses for his wife to lie at the coffin.

That was a lot of money, $10,000-dollars back in 1956. It could have paid for two small houses on the North End of St. Paul, matter of fact it did buy one, for the judge. And as far as the judge and the sheriff were concerned, the investigation was closed out. Forevermore; off the register.

Written 5-27-2009 xx No: 407