Friday Flash: The Dancer and the Shattered Shell

Chuck gave us another ten random titles this week, and this time I used the random number generator to pick one for me. So, in 1000 words, here is...

The Dancer and the Shattered Shell

The glade spun past the dancer. His eyes took it all in as a blur of color, motion so fast it ceased to move, became a water-color scarf in which to wrap himself.

Alec let himself spin gradually to a stop, watching as the trees sorted themselves back into individual trunks and branches, and smiled. The boys who made fun of him for dancing—had mocked him until he’d retreated to the woods to dance for only the trees—knew nothing. He finished his dance, bare feet tapping the meadow grass, and bowed to his arboreal audience. Alec liked dancing for the trees. When he thought about it, he thought that being forced to the forest was the best thing that had ever happened to him.

Panting a little from his dance—the music in his head had been fast, a driving beat that kept him moving—Alec trotted off to the big oak to check the nest.

The oak stood in the center of the forest, and felt like a relic of an older time. Where most of the trees were slim-trunked and straight, Alec could not reach around even half of the oak’s sturdy base. And the branches, rather than climbing in neat ladders, reached in all directions with a randomness that still managed to be graceful.

Alec liked climbing trees, and the oak was perfect for it, the broad, sturdy branches at just odd enough intervals to be interesting. He had been climbing the oak for years, and he’d been hiding there when he found the nest.

Alec remembered the day. Most of the time the woods were his own, but on that day the neighborhood kids penetrated deep into the forest, not following or chasing him, but looking for crabapples to throw at stray cats. Alec climbed the tree to his usual level then, hearing the boys coming closer and afraid they would see him, he turned and climbed higher, to where the leaves and branches hid the ground completely. He knew that people hardly ever looked up, but he would take no chances. After a time, he forgot the other boys, and climbed for the love of climbing, and for the love of the tree.

He had come on the nest in the highest branches that would support his weight. It was big. Big enough that he looked quickly around to be sure the occupants weren’t home, though when he peeped over the edge, the nest was empty of both birds and eggs. It was just a huge nest, suggesting a larger bird than he had ever noticed about the forest.

After that day, Alec climbed several times to the highest branches of the tree to look at the nest. In the spring, a single, large egg appeared, and he became more careful about getting near the nest. He knew now what bird lived there, and had no desire to meet with beak and talons designed to rip apart small animals. He stayed away for the summer, once climbing a nearby tree to see if he could peek in. He could see nothing and didn’t try again.

Now it was fall, and when Alec had danced the changing seasons, he went again to see the nest. If the egg had hatched, the fledgling must by now be flying and independent, or it would not make it through the winter.

He had missed the tree. It felt like home. Rather, it felt like what he thought home ought to feel like. It covered him, hid him, made him safe. It brought him to the adventure of heights. And it gave him the nest.

Alec scanned the trees and the sky to be sure that there were no large raptors hanging about, ready to defend the nest. They should be long gone, or did birds like that leave their nests in winter, the way the robins and wrens did? He wasn’t sure, so he looked hard.

Then he peeked over the edge of the nest. There they were. The shattered shards of the huge shell, kicked aside but never fully destroyed, despite the activity that must have filled the nest for weeks after the chick hatched. Alec held his breath, wondering if he dared.

Almost without willing it, he reached out a hand, and touched the largest piece of shell. Then, hurrying, eyes as much on the sky as on the task, he scooped up as much of it as he could, stowed it in the hood of his sweatshirt, and climbed back down the tree. He looked about, hoping the bird would understand, then forgot everything else in studying the shell. The colors, the curve of the broken pieces, the smoothness of the surface. It all fascinated him, and filled him with delight.

The space under the tree was clear. Little grew in the shade of the great spreading branches. Alec laid the shattered shell on a patch of moss and began to dance.

He didn’t know that the great birds watched as he danced the hatching and the flight.

He soon learned, however, that the neighborhood bullies had been watching. They circled him, mocking. Alec gritted his teeth, ignored them, and kept dancing. When he felt the first rock, he flinched, but did not lose his rhythm. In any case, what could he do? If he fled, they would follow, and he would go down under a pile of fists and kicks.

When he danced, they never quite dared to touch him. Alec didn’t know why. It was his dancing, as much as his poverty and loneliness, that made them hate him. And yet, to dance was to be protected. Until now.

A second boy bent and picked up a rock. They had found a way to touch him without touching him. The frenzy of a mob told hold, and three rocks struck Alec. Still bleeding, he kept dancing.

Then the giant birds swept down, beaks and claws extended.

©Rebecca M. Douglass, 2016

Just  few more days to enter the Goodreads Giveaway for Death By Trombone!

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Death By Trombone

by Rebecca Douglass

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Friday Flash Fiction: Cleats

This week, Chuck Wendig gave us a list of 50 computer-generated characters (a little repetitious, but with some interesting ones).  Our mission: pick 5 and write up to 1500 words about them.  I used a random-number generator to pick six (five plus a spare, so I could reject one that just didn't work).  Here's their story.  I'll tell you who they are at the end.

Cleats

Alex laced up the soccer shoes.  Not a bad fit, and they were only a little worn, not like the first pair he’d found at the thrift store.  Those had been ready for the dumpster.  He looked around.  No one was paying any attention to the skinny kid by the shoe bin.

He’d worn his baggy sweatshirt to give him a place to hide the shoes, but as he looked from the nearly-new cleats on his feet to the ragged sneakers he’d been wearing, Alex got a better idea.  It would be a bit awkward, because the cleats made walking on hard surfaces a little weird, but lots of the kids wore them into McD’s and places after games, and no one paid any attention.

With a final glance around, he made up his mind.  He dumped his old sneakers into the bin and stood up.  “Exchange isn’t stealing,” he told himself.

A woman in a flowery skirt and a black leotard watched unseen from behind a rack of clothes, but said nothing as the skinny 12-year-old sauntered out the door with a smile and a wave for the old lady behind the cash register.

“Didn’t you find what you needed?  Better luck next time!”  The kindness in her voice shamed Alex.  He blurted “See you later” and fled out the door.

Once on the street, he calmed down.  It had worked!  Now he could play in the game that afternoon.  He’d already missed two because he didn’t have cleats, and the ref wouldn’t let you play without them.  Smiling, he looked up, right into the pinched face of Mr. Morales, his history teacher from the previous year.  Alex’s smile vanished as Mr. Morales looked down his nose at him.

“And what have you been up to, young man?  You should be at home doing your homework.”  He claimed he called the boys “young men” to remind them that they were nearly grown.  Alex thought it was because he couldn’t remember their names.

“Nuthin,” he muttered.  “See you in school,” he added to be polite.  He started to edge away.

“No, I, ah, won’t be, ah, returning to Central this year.”

Surprise stopped Alex in his tracks.  “You won’t?”  Who would the seventh-graders play tricks on, then?

“I, ah, I’m seeking other employment at this time,” Morales said.  “Hard work makes us better people, and change is good for the soul.”  He was still watching the boy and murmuring platitudes as he entered the shop, and he almost collided with a woman coming out.  She executed a deft pirouette to avoid him, and landed on the sidewalk with her skirt swirling around her.  Morales frowned, then forgot about her and Alex as he faced the old woman behind the counter and asked for an employment application.

#

Alex was in time to join the rest of the team as they warmed up before the game.  His teammates were happy to see he had the shoes and could play at last.  He was their best forward, and they’d need him.  They were playing against Lincoln Junior High, always their toughest opponent.

Central was a rough school, and the boys on the team were not always polite.  Lincoln was on the rich side of town, and those boys were far nastier than Alex and his friends.  Jack Wright, the referee, sighed as he contemplated the two teams.  Keeping this lot in order would be no joke.  Every play would bring up some kid ready for his Oscar, claiming to have been most foully fouled, and Jack’s job was to sort out the truth of it all, assign blame, and keep the game moving.

He’d also have to stay out of the way of that big kid from Lincoln, the one who ran over everyone, including refs, all the while scanning the stands to be sure his big brother had noticed.  Jack knew the brother, too.  He was another bully, the worst sort: an adult who had put himself in a position to bully children.  The younger brother just wanted his idol to praise him, but the older one was a real bastard.  And they said the kids from Central were a bunch of toughs!

An hour later, Jack Wright was still unscathed, due to his ability to dodge and turn.  The big kid hadn’t been able to run him over even once, and had moved on to taunting the smaller boys from Central.  That would be trouble if he didn’t stop it.  Jack glanced toward the stands.  The stranger was still there, the woman with an odd outfit and an alien look, who had perched herself on the top railing.  He’d noticed her early on, dividing her attention between the kids on the field and the bully in the stands.

You’d think a teacher would be more responsible, but Morales just spewed his moralistic claptrap about hard work and prosperity, and imagined that somehow made up for his failures to actually teach his subject.  Now he had a pair of ratty shoes in his hand, and Jack spared a moment to wonder why, before turning his attention back to sorting out the latest scrum.  He listened to all the complaints, decided who was telling the truth, and issued a red card to the bullying Morales kid.  He could go sit with his brother.

Alex watched the big kid from Lincoln climb into the stands with a mixture of relief and apprehension.  He paused a moment, scanning the crowd, then made a bee-line for the top.  Why was he going to sit with Mr. Morales?   Crap, was the teacher his dad?  No, Alex could see that Morales wasn’t old enough to have a 12-year-old son.  Brother, then.

Alex’s heart nearly stopped.  He saw that Mr. Morales was holding a familiar pair of ratty sneakers.  He knew.  And soon everyone would know.  The boy began talking to the former teacher.  Mr. Morales nodded, looking from the shoes to Alex, and reached to hand them to the young bully.

Before he could complete the move, the woman who sat above them reached down, hooked the shoes out of his hand, and vanished over the back of the stands.  Mr. Morales rushed to the railing to look.

Alex had stopped running after the ball to watch the action in the stands.  He had to get back in the game when the ball bounced off his head.  The shoes were out of Morales’ hands, anyway.  Maybe he wouldn’t be in trouble just yet.  He finished up the game, moving faster and playing better than he ever had before.  After he shot the winning goal, he glanced back at the stands.  There, in the shadows underneath, stood the strange woman.  She held up the shoes, put a finger to her lips, and smiled.

For some reason, he had a friend.  He’d broken one of the commandments, been found out by the most two-faced moralistic teacher at the school, and not been turned in because someone he didn’t even know had rescued him.  He broke into a smile.

Life might be worth living after all.

©Rebecca M. Douglass, 2014

###

Here are my characters.  I stretched the definitions to suit my own ends.   As usual.

An aggravated thief needing a friend (Alex)

A graceful official searching for the truth (Jack Wright)

An agile, serene traveler (the unknown woman)

A strong actor searching for a family member (Morales, Jr.)

A clumsy, materialistic, moralizing teacher reaching for employment (Mr. Morales)

Flash Fiction Friday: The Bartender and the Pirate

This week's Wendig Challenge had us rolling dice for three story elements: main character, setting, and conflict.  I rolled a bartender, a pirate ship, and and encounter with a nemesis.  For extra fun, a second roll on the first column gave me a detective.  I had the choice of making the second roll another character or an aspect of the main character, and opted for the latter.

Wendig gave us 2000 words this week.  I used 1804 of them.  I thought it was going to be light, but although there's some humor, it's not a children's story.

The Bartender and the Pirate

Lira stood at ease behind the bar, wiping glasses and listening to the words flowing around her.  No one ever paid attention to the bartender, and you could learn an amazing amount that way.  What Lira was learning tonight was that the pirate ship was back in the local waters, and people were afraid. No one seemed to know who the pirate was, whose ship had been haunting their shores off and on for several months.  When there were no fat merchant vessels to take, the pirates would land and take what they wanted, from livestock to women.

She shrugged to herself.  Pirates had been raiding this coast for years.  Centuries, probably, ever since the first boats sailed in and out of the harbor.  Pirates were a part of life along the coast.  Then a bit of conversation caught her attention.

"Dead, he was, just a-lying in the field with his throat cut, I tell you!"

"Never!  And him saying he could outrun or outfight any man on this coast."

"Looks like he was wrong."

Lira glanced down the bar.  Two grizzled shepherds had their faces buried in their beers, but she was pretty sure they'd been the speakers.  She recognized them, of course.  She knew everyone, even those who never came into a bar, or who would never come into a bar run by a woman.  "Taint decent," was the verdict of most of the women, but the men didn't care.  They came for the best beer and the chance to be waited on by something female.

And they told her things.  Enough that she had a guess, looking around the bar, who might not have been as fast or as fierce as he'd thought.  If she was right, he was no loss to the community.  Basher Gaffen was a bully and a coward, and if the pirates had taken him out, so much the better.

"Funny, though," the older of the two elders said, coming up out of his beer as though he'd heard Lira's thoughts.  "Ol' Basher wasn't killed with a cutlass like the pirates usually do.  His throat was slit as neat as neat, like a butcher with a hog, it was."

Lira grimaced.  That wouldn't be very neat--blood all over, more like.  But throat slitting with a fine knife--it didn't sound like pirates, though they'd likely enough get the blame.  She sighed.  No doubt that was what the killer intended.  The only question was whether she'd put it right.

Two hours later, Lira knew she would let the pirates take the blame.  That was when she finally met the unknown pirate.  The unknown pirate was all too well known to her.   She would let the bastard hang and dance on his grave.

First she had to escape.

Lira had gone to look at the place where the dead man had been found, after the bar shut down.  It was the middle of the night, but since she didn’t expect to find anything there anyway, she figured a lantern would cast enough light to show her that any evidence had been trampled by those who came to take the corpse away.  She could then agree that whoever had done it, they’d done the village a favor, and could go get some sleep.

The lantern gave away her location to the pirates, who had come back and were in a nasty mood.  Lira knew she was in real trouble, but it might have been worse, at least in the short term, if the Pirate King himself hadn’t been there.  As a result, she was still alive and whole.  She was also bound, gagged, and parked in the bilges awaiting his decision about how to kill her, but that could be overcome.

The pirate king’s real name was Norman, though none of his men knew that.  Or none had known, until they’d taken Lira.  She’d recognized him at once, even though it had been years since they’d been in school together, and he’d grown a lot since then.  He’d been a victim back then, a scrawny kid struggling under the burden of a name that invited teasing.  He’d retaliated with underhanded plots that got other students in trouble for things he did, usually those with no one to defend them.  Just the way these pirates operated.

Now Norman was the fierce and feared Pirate King, and he would not forgive Lira for revealing his true name to the men he led.

She would never forgive him for getting her tossed out of school.

Lira cursed herself for a fool.  She knew better than to go roaming in the night when the pirates were on the loose.  The Pirate King had decided they were his personal supply house, and Lira stood in his way.  She figured she had at most an hour or so before he made up his mind whether to skin her, hang her, or just throw her overboard.  And that would almost certainly be after giving her to his crew for a while.

She had no intention of sticking around for any part of it.  Working off her right shoe, she bent down until she could hook a toe into the gag.  Fortunately it was a warm night, and she wasn’t wearing socks.  The gag wasn’t tight—Norman had only put it on to stop her telling the men about his past; she wouldn’t get anywhere by screaming in any case.  The ship was standing about a half mile off the shore.

With the gag removed, she could use her teeth on the bonds securing her hands.  It took a long time, but Norman had insisted on tying her up himself—probably to keep her from telling his men what he really was like—and he still wasn’t any better with knots than he had been as a boy.  If a real sailor had done it, she’d have been sunk.

Lira dropped the last loop of rope into the stinking bilge water and stood up cautiously.  She felt around for her shoe and slid it back on, unwilling to risk stepping on something nasty in her bare feet.  The only question now was if she would expose Norman to his crew and let them take care of him, kill him herself, or play it safe and just dive overboard and swim for shore. 

The pirates decided it for her.  When she crept to the hatch and peered out, hoping to find the crew asleep and only perhaps a single watchman dozing by the wheel, she found instead that the entire crew was gathered around the Captain’s cabin, where Norman was engaged in a heated argument with someone she couldn’t see.

Lira stepped out of her shoes.  They would make a noise she couldn’t afford.   Moving silently from shadow to shadow, Lira got close enough to hear the discussion, and she smiled.

Norman was in trouble.  His crew wanted to know how a guy named “Norman” could make himself a Pirate King, and why they should follow him.  He was soft—too soft to even kill a troublesome female.

Lira was in trouble, too.  The crew was making it clear that if he wanted to remain a Pirate King, Norman was going to have to prove his bloodthirsty credentials.  On her.  And she had no doubt that he would.  Nothing she’d heard suggested that Norman had learned mercy since leaving school, and she was willing to bet he’d moved on from sneaking to murder.  He wasn’t a scrawny kid any more, and he’d never been soft. 

The knife he wore as his belt, as she’d noted earlier, was sharp and lethal.  Exactly the sort of knife that had ended the life of Basher Gaffen.  And Basher had been one of those who tormented Norman back in their school days.  He’d tormented everyone, right up until Norman had slit his throat in the field on the far side of the harbor.

“An’ let’s see you lead us in and clean out that stinking town once and for all!  We’ve had enough of sneaking.  Burn it, kill ‘em, take all the women.  Unless you’re some kind of sissy!”

Lira had heard enough.  She moved silently back away from the crowd toward the bow.  Shedding overshirt and skirt, she slid through the hole where the anchor chain ran, swung as low as she could over the water, and let go, pointing her toes to enter the water as cleanly as possible.

She wasn’t quite silent enough.  Some keen-eared pirate had heard the splash.  A yell and the sound of many bare feet crossing the deck warned Lira, once she’d resurfaced, that she’d been spotted.  She struck out for shore with a steady stroke, diving once or twice when she heard pistols fire.  The single-shot monsters were not terribly accurate, and she kept her course. 

It took the pirates several minutes to bring the vessel about to follow her.  Even as she swam for her life, Lira thought Norman must not be the seaman he imagined himself, or he’d have lowered a boat, rather than bringing the ship in so close to shore.  The men had their blood up too and no one was thinking.  Raising her head to orient herself, she saw she was directly off the headland to the south of the harbor.  There was enough moonlight to make out the form of the land, but not enough to see what lay in the water.

She glanced back.  The ship was coming after her.   The wind had picked up and the pirates came on at speed.

With a grim smile she set a faster stroke and made for the point.  She would pass over the rocks, mostly.


Lira stood dripping and half-naked on the shore, shivering even on this mild night after twenty minutes in the cold waters.  She was cut and bruised from a landing among the rocks through rough surf.  But she smiled as she watched the pirate ship, sails still set, wallow and break apart against the rocks that had lain hidden just below the waves.

She’d never finished school after he’d gotten her kicked out for lewd behavior.  But she’d done just fine.  Norman had finished school, and it had made him a Pirate King.  But he wouldn’t trouble anyone any longer.  Some of the men might make it to shore.  Norman would not be among them, even if he thought to shed sword, cutlass, knives and pistols before they dragged him to the bottom.

Norman couldn’t swim.  Basher had made sure of that.  It made a nice sort of circular revenge.

The case, thought Lira, was nicely wrapped up.  She turned toward the village, cursing a bit as she realized she had to walk a mile home barefoot.  Still, it was a small price to pay.

#

©Rebecca M. Douglass 2014

Flash Fiction Friday: Peggy's Story

This is another in my random and growing collection of stories from the denizens of Skunk Corners.  Peggy Rossiter is one of Big Al's students, and secretly wanted to learn even before the Ninja Librarian came to town and made it okay.

Photo by Tom Dempsey, c. Photoseek.com.  Used with permission

Peggy’s Story: When Big Al Came to Town

So, Mr. Tom wanted me to tell you about when Big Al came to Skunk Corners.  It was a few years ago, so I was only maybe nine or something, and still stuck in the Second Reader.  I might not remember everything, but I saw Al come to town.
   It was like this.  I guess I was the only kid who hadn’t heard that Jake and Harry had chased off another teacher.  They used to make the schoolmasters’ lives miserable, until they’d just up and leave.  One time we had a schoolmarm, a real cranky old maid you wouldn’t think had ever had a soft feeling in her life, and she left in tears after just two days.  The boys never laid hand on any of them, not like how they treated librarians.  They had other ways, being bound and determined not to go to school, or to learn anything when their folks walloped them into going.
   I guess the last laugh was on them, come to think of it, but you know all about how they ended up coming back to Big Al to learn to read.
   Anyhow, I’d come into town that morning for school.  Even then I kind of liked it, though I wasn’t making much progress, what with never having a teacher for more than a few weeks at a time.
So I was standing in the street by the empty schoolhouse at sunrise when someone walked into town off the trail from Endoline.  I could tell it was a kid, dressed in his Pa’s clothes and hat, which were just a little too big.  You could see he was pretty uncertain.  He looked around a bit, then his eye lit on Two-Timin’ Tess’s Tavern, and I saw him nod.  Of course, there was no one up at the Tavern at that hour, so the kid just walked on up to have a seat under the tree.  That was where I was, but I guessed he didn’t see me, not until he was already sitting down and I spoke up.
   “Hey.”
   Then the kid jumped a mile, before getting a grip and looking at me.  Then he said, “Hey yourself,” and the voice sounded like a boy who’s just starting to change, so I guessed he was maybe 14 or 15, but big.
   “I’m Peggy.  What’s your name?” I asked.
   “Al.  Some call me Big Al, I guess cause I’m big for my age.”
   “What’re you doing here, Big Al?”
   “Looking for work.  What’re you doing?  Dodging chores?”
   “Naw.  I came for school.  But looks like the boys chased the Master off again.”
   “You like school?”  Seemed like the kid wanted to talk.  I think talking was better than thinking, but then I was just kind of flattered that a big kid would pass the time of day with a squirt like me, and I was curious.
   “Well, I like learning,” I hedged.  “School isn’t so great.”  That got a bit of a smile out of the stranger.
   “Me too.  Guess that’s all done for me now, though.”  He turned away and didn’t say anything more.
   After a bit I said, “I suppose if there’s no school, Pa’ll expect me to come home and do chores.”  I didn’t get up.  “What’re you doing?”
   “Waiting.  My Pa,” I saw him swallow hard, “Pa talked of Miss Tess and this here Tavern, so I thought I’d ask.”  Suddenly sounding angry, the stranger said, “You’d better shove off then.”
   I’m no dummy.  I figured there wasn’t any Pa any more, and maybe the kid needed to cry, so I took off.

   That night my Pa started talking about the school, and how the townsfolk thought maybe it would be a good idea just to leave it closed, seeing as it cost money and no one was getting much good out of it anyhow.  Pa glanced my way when he said that, being as he knew I liked school.  I felt pretty low.
   But next day I went into town, and Mr. Burton, who calls himself the Mayor, was saying that they had to get a new teacher, because the School Inspector was coming and we’d be in big trouble if our youngsters weren’t in school.  So they were pretty desperate for a teacher.  Mr. Burton was asking around for who could read, but of course all the grown folk who had any learning were either long gone from Skunk Corners, or they had work already, and no time to teach a pack of mostly unwilling youngsters.
   Now, don’t you tell Al, or I’ll end up in the creek, but I up and told the Mayor that this Big Al fellow, seemed to have maybe been to school some.  I was making a wide guess, but I wanted my school, and maybe I felt bad for him, because he hadn’t found any work yet, and was sleeping in Tess’s woodshed with the mice and spiders.
   Al dodged a bit at first, but five dollars a month and a room to sleep in must’ve been a powerful temptation, because pretty soon we had us a school again.  That’s when the fun started.
   Everyone always came to school the first day with a new teacher, to see the fun.  That meant Jake and Harry, too, and they set right in with their usual tricks.  They figured that Al being younger’n them, he’d be easy pickings.
   It took about a half a day before our new teacher had had enough.  The boys were making comments about Al being some kind of sissy, or even a girl, on account of his voice not being really changed.
   Instead of bursting into tears or anything, Big Al walked down the aisle past the rear desks, where the big kids—Jake and Harry and a couple of girls—sat, and opened the door.  Of course, we all thought our new teacher was going to walk out.  But instead, Al came back, grabbed one of those boys in each hand—and now we saw that even though Big Al wasn’t any taller than them, he had a lot of muscle.  Next thing Jake and Harry knew, they were out the door, and Al stood on the top step saying, “You are done with school.  I don’t want to see your faces here again, unless and until you actually want to learn, which I don’t reckon will happen in this world.  Idiots.”  Then Al closed the door and walked back to the front of the room.
   “Anyone else?  If anyone doesn’t want to at least pretend they want to learn, you can join those boys in the street.  Just because I’m a girl doesn’t mean you can get away with anything here.”
   Well!  You could have knocked us over with a duster full of feathers!  There Al stood, looking just as much like a boy as ever, saying she was a girl as though we’d known all along.  We were too stunned to move.  After that, I think most stayed out of curiosity about this girl who dressed and acted like a boy, and could throw bullies out without breaking a sweat.  I’m not saying many of us did much learning.  But I’ll tell you, no one ever tried to make Al leave.

  

So that’s how Big Al came to Skunk Corners and how she became our Teacher.  I guess maybe Tom would like to know more about why she came and all that, but she’s never said, except that bit the first day.  Al’s private, and I guess Mr. Tom’s the only one could ask her about it and not end up in the creek, unless maybe Tess could.  I’m not asking.  I’ve no hankering for a swim this early in the spring.