Cloris was ill.

We assumed she was recovering, she'd been shot before, but she seemed to lose her…will.


She had no family. Didn't believe much except a Sigg beats a Glock in the heat and, well, I don't know what else she believed.


We weren't fighting for America anymore. Maybe we lost focus. Once we got the baby to Berlin everything changed.


You're not supposed to think you can reach out and touch the matrix…that's absurd. But we delivered the child of Mohammed to the The Council, thwarting the Vatican and all of Islam. Jesus H. Christ would they be pissed.


The Jews offered the most money for The Babe, but the vinyardists won. They get everything anymore but there is nothing we can do.

Nothing.

We'd be damned fools to try.


Cloris adored her mates in SBS, they saved her bacon in Afghanistan…long enough for us to spend a dear bit of time together.


It was beastly. The whole thing.

The fight of the future will be for Jesus…any victory will be dark, brutal, insane, but hopefully just.


Fighting urges or fighting urchins…our form of relative relativism works well on the job Smart people don’t need so much wisdom…stupid people need wisdom.



On the watch…ready to capture a wandering idea, an elephant in the dark…a tiger in the wind.


The massive old Dominica Hotel, always a favorite when I visited the area exploded in a shudder of churning brick and mortar, a glass and timber cloud that hovered momentarily, then collapsed into itself.



My mind raced to all my friends working and staying at The Dominica. Some could have predicted the jet in the night…we all thought about it from but nobody could have been ready.


Two more jets approached from the north, heading dead into me…frozen spots in the sky.


I looked for Cloris…I couldn’t recall if she’d been with me when..

A heavy pistol shot, probably a long-barreled .45, shattered the terrible, murky night ripped by vicious winds, slashing rain and marbled arcs, bolts and shards of lightning.

A rage of nature swallowed the blast, close enough to raise the hair on my neck, but out of sight.

It took a moment to come to my senses, I must have been sleeping a long time in the Hummer…but it wasn’t dark when I was dozing, and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, as

I recall.

I don’t know how I could have been sleeping for so long. Don’t even remember being tired. My gear was within arm’s reach in the back seat.

I dragged the assault pack up front and strapped it on, yanked the utility belt out of its case and clipped myself into it.

The Hummer keys were gone. I flipped on the walkie-talkie, slapped clips into the Glocks and smashed the dome light with the butt of my combat knife.

Sliding out the door onto the ground I left the vehicle for better cover in the brush. A gash of lightning ripped overhead and thunder rushed in from every quarter.

I pulled the .44 from its holster strapped to my thigh and slapped a Surefire flashlight to the barrel. I pulled the hammer back and moved toward the area where the shot was fired off the left front bumper, off in the windscrambled brush, maybe ten meters distant.

Thunder and wind covered my sound as I pushed through the brush and backed up to a tree, clinching my throat mic to my neck and checking for contact with Cloris.

Straining my eyes for anything out there. Nothing… But in nothing can everything. I snapped on the flashlight just as bushes parted and a face loomed: a blast, a whizz…I fired and a stranger dropped hard into the mud.

With my light in his eyes I rushed the down shooter, stomped his gun hand in the mud and snapped a neck with my boot.

I grabbed the weapon, a big Colt, and slid it under my utility belt, snapped off the light and moved away from the stiff and into the sloppy vegetation under cover to see if I could raise Cloris.

“Waltraute… Baby, kann Sie hören mich?”……

“Wal….” “Der Kampf von der Zukunft wird für Jesus…irgendeinen Sieg wird sein dunkel, brutal, unsinnig, aber hoffentlich nur sein.”

Cloris drove the Hummer out of the dawn and into the day.

“Vous êtes de votre esprit, Homeboy.” She shook her head patiently. I jumped up with a start and looked around. The Hummer was rolling tough into the dark, green foothills.

I wiped drool from a lip and looked over at the driver.

“Waltraute?” Cloris ground her eye into my cheek.

We drove at Dawn.

Cloris drove the Hummer while I stared out the window, her mug of coffee lukewarming my duke. She listened to xm radio and I tumbled through my mind, trying to excavate events from the evening.

Despite my training, I couldn’t extract any key evidence…no feelings, no memories (dammit). I could only assume my innocence, and began to feel pretty decent about myself.

The girls tricked me to stay warm, no more.

“I smell Chocolate.”

“You can’t smell chocolate, Cloris..I..” She turned and smiled at me. I withered.

“I told the Twins to hold you until I got there. Can’t be late.” Cloris smiled, both hands at the wheel, hair blowing in the wind.

I drifted off, raking my dreams for any sign of life. By the time I discovered my sleep, I no longer remembered why I cared. But I did, so I found myself wedging my finger’s into Cloris’ mind, seeing if there was anyway I could let myself in without her knowing.

I wanted to know what it could possibly be like to be her. What, I suppose Cloris thinks of me. My devotion.

“Are you in my underwear?” Cloris chuckled. “I thought you were trying to get into my mind.” She turned the radio down, a sly bit of Strayhorn via Ellington.

“You’re prying on me…chocolates?..you know they make me romantic.”

She smiled.

I turned to stare out the window. Whatever happened with me and the Feltons (whatever it was, it was duty), was as much fun as I could look forward to into the near future.

Sam knew I was going away. A decent dog knows these things, it's part of the job. A dumb dog goes hungry. When the dog ascertains what’s going on without being told, it takes corrective actions.

Sam knows when I’m leaving, even before I start messing with my gear. Sam always knows when I’m on my way home.

Even when I board a plane in Singapore bound for Seattle.

Sam starts pacing, waiting for my key in the door, my bags to hit the floor and the one-time permission he has to put his paws on my chest and get a full-body scratch.

He’s always well taken care of. Always has a babysitter arranged for by the agency. Cloris has a hand, it seems, in nearly every aspect of my life, yet I hardly ever see her.

It’s a mission thing with her. Hard. Hard as fucking nails. I’ve bathed with her, I’ve slept with her, but trust me, the only time you touch Cloris is when it’s business.

She needed her back scrubbed ‘cause there’s oil and blood all over it and we were stuck in one tub ‘cause we got 10 gallons of hot water and 30 minutes and we slept together ‘cause we’d been in a firefight for ten hours and after we won we wanted sleep, and a hot bath.

Don’t get me wrong.

Cloris is witchy gorgeous, a trainwreck. Cloris is seven deadly sins packed into a 45 year-old minimalist frame that could disembowel you before you hit the ground.

Test–tube conceived, institutionally reared and Mossad-bred, Harvard and Eton educated and agency trained, Cloris designed her first weapons system, composed her first symphony and got her period simultaneously.

Cloris always was born with deep green eyes…deep as a philosopher’s stone, mysterious as an unfinished symphony, a long night in darkness, a vintage vague and capricious, a gypsy melody come from the secret folds of consciousness.

Jesus. Cloris would snap my neck if she heard me.

But yes. I confess. Cloris is beautiful.

Besides her savagely jade eyes and the deliberately rapacious chestnut curls teasing her golden olive skin, her strong, swan-like, breathless neck falls between (how can I say this, I’m already in deep shit) a couple of the most luscious…thriving…island-like…oh, my God I am so dead.

Cloris can read anybody’s mind.

I know what you’re thinking. Heck, we know a little about each other by now…you want to know if I have the hots for Cloris. Don’t blame you. I’ll explain:

I’d be ape-shit nuts if I didn’t…except for two things. I signed the dotted line and she has, I believe, a boyfriend. An Isreali pilot who is somewhat of a hero.

I can’t be a hero. Neither can Cloris. We do our jobs, we go home and that’s it. We’re a team. We fight for the money. I cannot imagine the damage we do to some lives. It is sometimes unbearable.

I get over it. That’s what makes me dangerous.

Orchids are fun to grow. Grandkids are fun to play with. I do both things and adore them both. I guess I get bored. I figure some ideas are good things.

In my mind, I can draw an arc between some of the great ideas of the Greeks and some of the great ideas of today. Those fools had some of the dumbest ideas back then, but the ideal of a representative democracy is worth a struggle.

If it comes to a fight, heck, that’s what I was born to do. My mentors were John Wayne and Jesus Christ, both equal, but great…like me…like you…like us. I have never needed to be told the right thing to do.

You shouldn’t either. If you do, it’s too late.

Me and Sam took our snacks out to the deck: I had some Maui Vodka on Oregon Rainwater ice cubes with Dungeoness crab and Estrella Farms goat cheese on clay-baked sprouted grain crackers. Man, thas’ some chill grub.

Sam crunched up lamb and rice biscuits dipped in venison gravy. He nosed the deck and smiled at me with his tongue.

We were a couple of happy cats until the phone rang and a horn honked at the front gate at the same time. I wondered what parallel universe I had dropped into and why this happens every time I get prized victuals adjacent to my jaw.

Sam glanced at me, a crumb hanging off his jowl.

He shot for the gate in a rage. As far as Sam was concerned, anybody at the end of his teeth was in grave danger, as long as they were on this side of the locked gate.

Fortunately for everyone concerned, the shiny new Land Rover waited patiently in the driveway its engine running.

It was Cloris on the phone.

“I sent you the Felton Twins. Remember?” She hung up.

‘Damn her. She always does this to me’ I thought to myself.

‘How am I going to get packed with those kids around?’

I slowly smiled, reached for my Vodka and popped some crab.

‘This is the Felton Twins we’re talkin’ ‘bout.’ I thought to me.

I jumped up and made for the gate. Sam’s hair was on end…he raced to and fro as though facing the mightiest dragon of his career. He had the scent and wouldn’t let go.

I had the scent before I got anywhere near the gate. The Felton Twins waved from the Land Rover, blowing kisses and bouncing anxiously.

I fumbled for the key, disappointed by all the excitement I felt as I welcomed The Twins onto the property. They parked the ‘Rover and jumped out to greet me.

Hugs and kisses most felonious all ‘round.

I forgot momentarily what I was doing or where I was as Mia licked my cheek and Mya hugged me with her pelvis. Sam whined, the mighty wolf had no idea how to respond.

For my part, my hands were full of girl. I knew.

The notorious Felton Twins…bold…certain…very web-friendly: if they weren’t contracted to the agency I might wonder. They raced for the hot tub, ripping off tank tops, bras, shoes, shorts and panties in a most ungracious display of customary feminine reserve…but I’m widely tolerant.

I took this opportunity to bust out gear. A car would be here for me at 6am, come Hell. high water or the Felton Twins. I would be ready. Forty years on the job.

But even Gunga Din wasn’t ready for the Felton Twins. I pulled gear out of a fortified closet and spread it on the living room floor.

The utility pack: I would curse whomever designed this thing, except it was myself…two compasses in a pouch, a multi-tool, two throwing knives; one small, one large, a Glock .380 with silencer (if you need a knife, its already too late), a S&W .44 Mag, a very powerful flashlight, two-way radios, bear spray, Mace, headlamp/batteries/charger, two cell phones, Satellite phone, GPS, digital recorder, first aid kit, a water bottle, another Glock .380 and four clips, two stun grenades, two folding knives and a second water bottle, binoculars and a night-vision scope.

It would seem funny… unless I were after you.

Sam slowly trudged out to the hot tub to keep a friendly eye on the girls. The Felton twins may only be twenty years old, but they have forty years of experience between them. I pulled my short pump shotgun out of the closet, zipped in its case, along with an ammo box full of cartridges and clips and cleaning kits.

I packed a cargo duffel with clothes, maps, rope and grappling hook, boots and rain gear, a box of chocolates for Cloris (you never know), a towel and my Dopp kit.

Good gear can help us do our job immensely, but we have to be effective without it. At any rate, it is dangerous to lose this stuff. Every piece is evidence.

Nothing says war like steel, but work done behind the lines is mostly quiet work. Assembling scraps of intel, calling and meeting people, doing assignments swiftly and silently, with deadly force, if needed.

I surveyed my gear with a Quartermaster’s pride as Mia and Mya sauntered through the front door, completely naked, wet and steaming, dripping on the tile as they held hands and giggled at me.

Grinning through grilled choppers, they showed off their absolutely flawless feminine forms, pairs and quads of everything a sensible human craves, devoid of body hair below their scintillant blond tresses; breathtaking…I…I..

“Colonel Mars? Are you okay?” It was Mia.

“We wanted to show you our new tattoos!”

The Feltons spun around in unison, bent over and stuck out their jiggly little butts. My heart kicked hard and my man wrestled with his measure. My mind wasn’t anywhere to be found.

“What do you think?”

My mind staggered, alone at night in Baghdad. Lost.

Mia was on the left, her right butt cheek featured a pink and red heart with an arrow through it pointed at Mya’s left butt cheek on the right, which displayed the same elegant heart with an arrow pointed at Mia’s little patootie.

They stood up, spun around and gave each other a deep kiss and took off to the bedroom. Sam stood there, his shaggy head slightly lowered, a sheepish, idiot grin on his lip he followed them with his wolf eyes.

And then followed them.

I wondered what kind of grin was on my lip as I reached for my drink. It would take another stiff one to settle my nerves.. I settled into my big chair and put on some Rachmaninoff to cover the sounds of the twins’ furious lovemaking.

I sucked at my drink and went over my lists mentally, occasionally curious what Sam was up to. I looked through Sam’s eyes, tried to see what Sam was watching, sort of an old Indian trick my Dad taught me when I was a kid.

Some head of security Sam will prove to be after tonight.

The second tall vodka put me down pretty good so I decided to sleep in my chair for a few hours, until the twins came in to do yoga. Due to a fortunate Karmic impasse, I’d neglected to turn off the lights.

I slowly fell asleep watching Mia and Mya replicate each furry animal in their repertoire, their graceful, pure bodies straining, releasing the fragrance, alluring, hypnotising…

Cloris is going to fucking kill me.

Sure enough, at 5:30 am, Cloris let herself in through the double-locked door, and as I slowly awoke she stood over me, looking down at me from between her breasts, her fiery jade eyes piercing her cascading chestnut locks.

Cloris chuckled.

I sat up and pulled the blanket around my naked self, but a twin on either side of me murmured and turned over to wrap their arms around me for warmth. I was locked in boobs.

“I…I..”

“Aye, carumba, hot stuff.” Cloris grinned.

“Get some clothes on. I’ll make coffee.”

A body
needs quiet
from time to time
A place apart from others
a temple of solitude where weight
of the world is lifted from our shoulders
With a mailbox at least a few miles distant
The moss begins to gather on the hinges
we realize we owe a debt for our lives
Psychics, songwriter’s can’t explain
how to find the way to this orb
Science and poets explain
real meanings of life
empty stampedes
explore destiny
A hollow space
free from the dust
of a million frantic feet
The noisier a life becomes
The harder it is to find quiet
places dignified and refined
Perhaps the less one has
the more one can gain
from the experience
Philosophy’s tools
navigate crowds
of life by ourselves
Our breathing is enough
to chart a course in a journey
It is good that the wisest find this place
There isn’t room enough for everyone to be alone
The one who requires the least ultimately wins solitude

Sam and me, dog and man, enjoy our solitude together as often as we can find it. We took an after-lunch stroll down to the pond to see who’s there and what they’re up to.

We wound through cypress, pine, cedar and more maples to get down to the pond, my favorite spot on the property.

Every year the pond grows more lush, more sublime…the vegetation, now waist and shoulder-high displaces the carpet of native ferns, dug up and transplanted to the front of the property along the fence.

Digging the pond was the first landscaping project I attacked after I built the ranch house, and its where the best quality of solitude can be found.

A few years ago the area was no more than a tangled piece of woods…probably a lightening hit blew the dank, featureless woods into the bog that’s now a pond.

A quiet place to get away from it all.

Fresh from what I thought was to be my final deployment my new property was my kingdom. Sam, my brand-new half-wolf pup was to be my chief lieutenant, my right hand man.

The pond was the first project we started after we moved in. One bright Saturday morning a flatbed truck pulled up the driveway and unloaded a backhoe, which churned down the ancient rail winding through the mostly untouched forest toward the Sound.

Dust plumes hung fat tires and hung unsteadily in the air. Centuries old, the trail hadn’t suffered a vehicle for decades until the greasy, gnarling insect-like machine roamed through the stately, mature forest on its way to the bog.

The machine paused at a soggy spot in the trail where a tiny spring trickled into the bog. In lieu of a path a raggy collection of boards and branches kept me from sinking into the slop.

Agile, powerful, the backhoe lunged and retreated. A claw on one end ripped at the earth near the muckhole. A bucket on the opposite scooped the torn earth and dumped it in a neat pile at the edge of the cedars

Churling, grinding and snarling, it snapped roots, scooped up rocks, tore with its claw at the tender vegetation that remained after the ferns were transplanted. It proved itself a wrecker of things.

As the sun edged the low horizon and the light grew weary, the backhoe spun around and disappeared up the trail and back to the truck.

It left a hole capacious enough to contain the monster that created it, as though the machine, limited to industrial logic and hopelessly dependent on petroleum, could perceive its own demise.

A hole in the ground will eventually attract something, due mostly to the simple laws of gravity. The hole collected rainwater and debris, and over a few years the trickling spring filled the hole up to its stagnant brim, burying the muck and clutter below.

The mound that rimmed the murky pond held the darkest soil from the deepest part of the hole, yielding the richest color, like ground cocoa.

The mound around the rim sprouted immediately, and over time the pond’s turgid water cleared, its contents settled to the bottom and rime became a shore, of sorts.

Naked soil grew resplendent with plants, shrubs and saplings, every empty area jammed with burgeoning iceplant.

The pond morphed slowly from a soggy visual nuisance to a glorious Eden, brimming with life, noise and color at the end of the trail.

Today, a trickle runs from the pond’s mossy lip and disappears into the woods. Lillies float on the surface, squirrels sun their fat bellies while birds bring daily offerings to the mounded shore encircling the translucent, green water. Sleek orange and red koi slide elegantly below.

Seems now the pond has always occupied its present rarified territory. Mayhaps a roaming brontosaurus could have paused to tilt for a drink one afternoon in this lush place of peaceful contemplation, oasis for hundreds of living things born from the air.

They came and went, they come and go…some stay longer than others, but always the strong survive. The pond has become proof of life, a scratch in the earth infected with vigor and flourish.

Me and Sam sat on the shore and stared into the water. I think Sam was studying his reflection, a well-earned case of canine narcissism, if you ask me. He seemed pleased.

The heat, rare any time of year, began to build, casting a pall that slowed slightly the pace of every living creature…except the annoying ones.

A ladybug buzzed lazily along a low trajectory through the trees when it spied the pond and circled to reconnoiter the area. It cast a tiny shadow over a knot of striders, spiderlike insects skittering across the pond’s surface.

The whole tribe snapped to attention, spoiling for combat.

As me and Sam gazed thoughtlessly into the pond, the ladybug slammed into the water on its back. From a strategic standpoint, the ladybug was in about the worst place possible, splayed on her back, stuck helplessly in the water, half-submerged and completely confused.

The striders jumped, almost in unison…a hoary mass of long, sticklike legs.

The mightiest of the crew siezed first upon the ladybug and held it with several legs while fending off hungry sisters with several others. Her remaining legs struggled toward the shore and strategic advantage.

There, in a brilliant display of Amazon multitasking, the warrior bug snapped legs at the joints, ripped heads clean off fat, shiny bodies as she beat back the mob and dragged her drowning dinner into the iceplant and enfilade, a more defensible position.

The battled raged, though the striders grew weary as their bodies dried in the unusually warm sun. Soon, the ladybug regained its breath, and flexed its wings inside the strider’s many grips.

The ladybug broke free and soared off into the evening sky in a widening circle that flattened out toward the Sound.

The strider tribe stood motionless for a moment or two, then strode collectively across the water and collected in a knot at the opposite shore of the pond in the shadow of a stately and benign century-old Spruce, undisturbed through the proceedings of a long, slow life.

Sam and me were thinking the same thing.

My life, on the other hand, has hardly been slow, and only relatively dignified. It is somewhat quiet now, thanks to continual diligence and keeping aware of my limitations. It wasn’t always like this.

After I left Poaster’s joint I got on my feet and moved into my own place. In time my physical wounds healed, but I fell more deeply infatuated with Tara Vinson then I would have planned. The one limitation for which I had never prepared.

It was weird to be alone in my new place, away from my regular life.

“Look at this cave I’ve made for myself.” My TaraTemple.

I pawed drool from my lip and stared with swollen eyes at the stolen woman plastering blue carpeted walls. I sat for days at a time in an old rocking chair talking to myself while Americas Most Wanted stared gloomily back at me.

A framed, halogen Pocahontas, a feather in her braids, gazed wistfully from a rock by a waterfall, trapped in innocence by the predations of the long lost artist.

The dancing girl in a grass skirt on a ceramic vase of dead lillies shimmied grimly in her tease. Chante Moore’s placid face hung from the cover of her CD jewel box.

Chante, earth mother, how could I have loved you a little without loving you a lot?

And my accordion…Lord, you’ve got to be devoted to play the squeezebox. I’d been dragging it around for years. I spent weeks composing a waltz for Tara Vinson on that thing, figuring one day She’ll be older and might be interested. For sure, one day She’ll seem older.

You know, we read something like Moby Dick and wonder what makes a guy so crazy…who would start something that can’t ever be finished?

I knew my problem, but hid it with words, being a cunning, lingual, cannibaldude, unstrapped by verisimilitude, trapped in my chair, lost within Her stare, no sense left to impair, listening alone to the dream only I could hear.

I had no plans to out-dick Moby, sitting in that chair, just wanted to sit there, listening to Her stare. Confronting my Other, a struggle to finish the start at the altar of my ego, the Mother of my art.

I talked to the walls, they spoke to me, my anodyne set me free. It was a game I played, one cautious, fatal move at a time with no second chance.

Every thought I had was to salve The Muse. The touch of passion known forever to hurt so much prevented me from loving, from feeling, from my duty and service, prevented me from myself.

The Other was always beyond my reach. It was an inspired game, nothing more, plotted hopefully to deliver The Muse from my soul.

A union of one mind aching to create a whole.

And then the bugs came, the ants for what food remained, the flies for me.

They were everywhere in that public house of mine, their steady drone accompanied the sinking of my heart. They darkened the food the ants methodically hauled away, no longer fit even for me.

Every time I made a move I’d disturb one in flight.

They fucked constantly, mocking me who could not. They offered their steady drone in consolation, hoping to seduce me while I bored away my time.

They didn’t want to drive me away, yet they knew I couldn’t leave. They tried to seduce me with their steady drone, waiting only to bury their eggs in my rotting corpse.

I heard a knock on my double-locked door one day, but as usual, didn’t bother to get up to answer.

It was Cloris, who let herself in. Professionally. Quietly. If she hadn’t worked for the agency for so long, she may never have found me.

It took her a minute to deal with the fact that I thought she was Tara Vinson, but she got over it. She hauled me out of there, cleaned me up and got me back into the trade. We shipped to Bosnia together and into a new war. Still over petroleum, of course, but with sorry religious overtones.

You can take a man out of The Crusades, but its much harder to take The Crusades out of the man.

Men always have motives for war. It’s a Greek thing. A suicide bomber is acting out from a deep sexual psychosis and probably a lousy diet.

Hate itself is a twisted manifestation of sexuality. Hate is joined at the hip with Fear, which is the very ink of most religious doctrine.

That dark fear is part of humanity may never fade away. The soldiers of Fear are diseased people who can no longer manage their lives, so must destroy all hope of peace.

Bottom line: men can’t keep their hands off each other.

The man-hungry soldiers of Islam promise to keep us busy from here on out. They’ll keep us occupied until we’re all dead. Freud was, of course, right. More right than Buddha, more right than Jesus, more right than Mohammad.

Men willingly die to impress each other.

They don’t die for their countries any more, they die for ideas. Marketing ideas controlled by Capitalists. No matter how much people suffer, the Capitalists always win.

There is always profit in loss.

Sam came over, settled down and lay his muzzle on my knee. He sensed things were a little dark for me, what with Poaster’s demise opening a flood of unsolicited memories.

I thought I heard Sam suggest we go up to the house for a drink and a snack. That snapped me out of my funk, and I congratulated him for his perspicacity, his compassion and evincing wit. A hell of a dog, a natural-born killer.

I gave him a scratch. His favorite reward.

We should learn
to love ourselves.
We are each free
to set our own limitations.
We should respect
and give comfort to, our nation.
We are all responsible
for everything, live green or die warm.
We should clean our own
porches before going to visit our neighbors.
We should practice justice as
satisfaction instead of satisfaction as justice.
We should respect the mother and
the child and respect the skies and the earth.
We don't have to accept anything until
we are old enough to understand the meanings.
We are born as individuals. We are great
because of this fact. We are equal because of this fact.

From where me and Sam sit taking in the morning sun a carpet of lawn stretches from the deck down a hilly pasture to a grove of pawpaws and blueberries bordered by blackberries and salmonberries and the first ranks of pines, maples and firs.

Off to the north and the east lie three mountain peaks that greet me through my window. I climbed all three last summer as well as four more downstate you just can’t see from here.

It was a busy summer, but not nearly as busy as this morning was shaping up to be. Sam started laying up a ruckus and shot off the deck toward the hollow, down there where nobody ever goes.

I figured it was Darral, the neighbor on the other side. His property butts up to mine in the maple grove, where he has a stand of cherry trees, carved out of the maples after years of hard labor.

Sam wouldn’t let Darral be, and sure enough, he was leaning on his rake by the fence “a-hopin’ I’d show up” as he likes to say.

He always had a story for me, and this day wasn’t shaping up to be any different.

“You know, Colonel, it’s funny how you meet people in your life you never think much about at the time, but later on they creeps back into your memory like they was always there.”

Darral pushed his hat way back on his head.

Instinctively, Sam curled up at my feet, as though he was in for the long run, ready for a jawburner.

“This ol’ guy showed up on the job one day, we called him Pickaxe man. Never paid no attention to him at first…”

Darral poked a toe into the straw at his feet, as though he couldn’t figure out why it was there.

“But I noticed he was always smokin’ cigrits.” Again with the toe-poking business, odd for even Darral.

“You know how it is, well soon I was borrowin’, that is, me an’ the guys was bummin’ cigrits from Pickaxe man.”

Darral stared at the ground for a minute, collecting both his thoughts at once.

“Pickaxe was older then the rest of us, an’ at first that didn’t set too well. Nobody could figger out why a guy his age’d wanna work so hard t’make a livin’.”

Darral pulled out a Lucky Strike and lit it up.

“The young guys, they was the ones always talkin’ about the women folk and drinkin’, an’ as they worked the trenches they sang their songs about drinkin’ and wimmin’ and broken lives and pain.”

Darral wiped his brow for emphasis, more than a result of any sort of perceived effort.

“But they wasn’t none of them guys could work as hard, not near’s hard as Pickaxe man.”

Sam rolled onto his back, his tongue lolled out of his mouth as he began to snore. A real, unapologetitic rumbler.

“Most guys show up on the job are ‘spected to do just about anything is throwed they ways. An’ some guys is always able to do more then others…some guys, say, will put in pipe, some guys go on to do other things.”

This profound observation finally rapt my attention.

“When Pickaxe man showed up on the job ever morn’ at seven, he lit a cigrit, picked up his pickaxe and settled hisself in front of a mark. Soon there would be a trench, an’ nobody could do it faster.”

Darral focused his good eye on mine.

“You’d walk along Pickaxe man’s trenches and see his cigrit butts still a-smokin’ in the dirt. The only time he stop swingin’ his pickaxe or a-haulin’ his shovel was when he stopped to light another cigrit with the wooden matches he carried in his pocket.”

Darral hovered around his shovel as though he carried a map of untold treasures stuffed in his coat pocket.

“Guys on the job is always foolin’ roun’…you know how it goes. It’s hard work, as hard a work as a white man can do. We joke about what we’d like to do to the boss, or to the boss’s girl.”

Darral broke a leer on his bearded, smoky face.

“I said we should tear the boss apart, cook his body parts over a slow fire and eat him with salt. Young Bart chimes in with a ‘Fuck no! Let me fuck em’ first. Har Har.”

The old farmer and retired sea merchant swelled at his storytelling, proud to spin a yard as best he could.

“Bart makes us all sick. He smokes cigrits ‘cuz he know pickaxe is never without a fat pack. He don’t mind sharin’ if’n you’ll leave him alone. Anyway, sometimes when we was all makin’ stupid jokes, Pickaxe man will sort of look up from his trench and smile. It was the sort of smile that made you glad you were kind of a friend.”

His voice grew quiet, an earnest monotone…

“One day the boss’s girl came out to the job. Now, you kind of had to wonder what made a gal come so far to bring her man lunch. It wasn’t like they was married or nuthin’. But, there she was one day.

She had a big basket, and you know it was packed with all kinds of good stuff to eat. And in the hot sun, dressed as she was in thin garments and all, she appeared to be a pretty good thing to eat herself."

Darral’s voice grew in power and resonance.

“It was at this point that Pickaxe man stopped his laborin’ in the trench an’ looked up. See, we was never allowed to take no lunch. Fact is, we never even got no breaks at all. Boss always reckoned that if we worked straight through the day with no time off, well, then we could all go home earlier.”

Darral rolled the equation around in his head:

“He knew, like we did, that none of us could actually put a lunch together anyway, and that none of us had nothin’ to go home to. No home.”

Again, the old farmer poked the moss with his boot.

“Workin’ in the trenches is what we done, asides from drinkin’ n’ sleepin’.”

A pause, pregnant as a heavy wind, stole his breath.

“Anyway, the bosses girl was carryin’ that basket of good stuff over to the boss’s office when pickaxe man was a-starin’ at her, I mean, he could not take his eyes offn’ that gal.

She stopped in her tracks and slowly turned to look at him. Pickaxe done struck another wooden match on his thumbnail…and then lit a cigrit. He took a big draw, threw the match and picked up his tool.”

Darral took a long draw on his ‘Strike.

“Boss come outn’ his office n’ seen the whole thing.”

He exhaled fully.

“It was months later we finally got the job done, and not all of us made it to the last. We all wondered why Pickaxe left so soon. And we sorely missed the job he done.

None of the young guys could work as hard as Pickaxe man.”

Darral turned for a long moment, his shoulders lowered.

“One day we was sittin’ in the dirt. Boss was gone, and we wuz takin’ a little rest. We decided that wherever Pickaxe man was, he was diggin’ a trench, smokin’ a cigrit.”,

Darral shook his head slowly an shuffled away, exhausted by cultivating his imagination with a short-handled hoe his performance had worn him out. His pointy-toe boots lef this trail in the moss and leaves.

Sam sat up, looked at me and shuddered. He shook his furry head and wandered up the hill, leaving me with whatever thoughts I’d had. I was thinking it’s an extraordinary morning, though I can’t for the life of me remember why.

I trundled up the hill in Sam’s wake, the distant ringing of my phone dogging my otherwise silent thoughts. Sam knew I would not hurry my pace. I’ve hurried my pace over six decades, for Christ’s sake. I’ve never been on time for anything, if I were I’d consider myself late.

I’m Bavarian, so I’m always early. Always.

To think of it, I was late once, in Bosnia. I was expected to attend a meeting in a church at precisely eight o’clock. I chose to be late and the building was blown to smithereens, though that's not a precise military term.

They say people who listen to their guts fall prey to their own routines and expectations. My gut always tells me when I’m being lazy. Like in Bosnia.

Right now, it told me I was hungry, whatever message lay await on the phone was going to be held at bay while I made a sangwich. I eat whatever kind of sangwich I want after being shot by a doctor one night in Saigon.

An Army medic saved my life. Haven’t seen a doctor since.

Today it would be toasted whole wheat, some Romaine lettuce and sliced tomatoes from Walla-Walla (the inmates grow some great heritage varieties, and I’m able to provide for some of their needs), some sweet onions from the same place and leftover Dill-roasted lamb, sliced thin and layered with mayo and chipotle-jalapeno sauce, some Vlasic pickle spears assembled along a tray of macaroni salad spiked with Bohemian ground mustard, Alturas horseradish, a tankard of Dutch Pilsener and Christiana Amanpour on CNN.

She could interview Satan and still be the only one making sense.

I put some Tara Vinson on the sound system and took my prize out to the deck. With a few savory biscuits for Sam, I spread the repast before me on the glass table, tossed a biscuit to old faithful dog and settled my bum into a lounger when…the phone rang.

My sangwich filled my hands, from thumb to thumb it spanned both palms mightily, a juicy delicacy backed by a spirited side dish and the crunchy…

The phone rang again and again. Finally:

“Colonel, are you there? Please pick up.” Silence, as though whoever rested on the other end of the signal knew with absolute certainty I was there, and that he/she would be interrupting some valuable moment if I did chose to pick up.

It could only be Cloris. And it could only mean trouble.

I lay my mighty meal on it’s plate and wiped my hands with the napkin I used to cover my lunch, already spied upon by every winged beast, animal, insect, bacteria, mould, virus and needy person in the vicinity.

Sam chewed his biscuits as I vacated my chair. Cloris was not happy to tell me our fearless leader Major General Phineas Poaster was deceased, victim of a roadside bombing outside Baghdad. He was 95, for God’s sake. Still on a mission. Wouldn’t have it any other way.

I went back to the deck and sat down with Sam. I scratched him behind the ear and he seemed perfectly, predictably content. My mind was spinning as I recounted the years I’d spent with Poaster and Cloris.

Poaster was there after I’d bottomed out. I was fighting malaria I’d picked up in some nasty places somewhere in Africa and a souvenir bullet in my leg, removed by a drunken witch doctor who looked and sounded like my ex.

By the time I found Poaster’s flat in Chelsea my career was about shot. Retired, he had more pull than many active brass. He put me up in a room down the hall from his, gave me cover and sanctuary, and talked to me frankly about my obsession with Tara Vinson, grown less managible since my disease and injuries seemed to take hold of my life.

He no longer carried himself like I remembered…the huge man I recall seemed smaller than me. But he had the fire in his eyes, and as he welcomed me into his apartment I felt immediately at ease, despite our often fiery past.

He fumbled about for a moment, I suspected he didn’t know whether to offer me whiskey or tea…or coffee. The sun was slowly drifting away, so he decided to light a candle instead.

Gazing at him fondly now, it’s so hard to believe what he had seen in his life, every hot corner of the world for fifty years.

He and his friend Augustine Tocolat, that is, because Tocolot was always there with Poaster. Always on mission, always on point: Poaster and Tocalot. They even wrote a military manual together, but later it seemed a bit of a high-spirited albatross not mentioned among even close friends.

I watched the Kronely chase the gray from the table by the wall. Poaster would have a bit of something he would only throw away. Poaster’s got enough on the edge of his plate to trade for a little taste of glory.

Ah! The stories we could share if only he remembered.

Poaster’s joint seemed eclectic, even for a war-ravaged, shellshocked old soldier who hadn’t lived anywhere very long for decades. Steamer trunks lined a windowless wall hung with backpacks, rucksacks and frames, coils of climbing rope and shelves of assorted boots, tents, stoves and field gear.

Another wall displayed a lifetime of war mementos: photos, medals, plaques, books, maps and military gear: an AK-47 hung from a hook by its strap, a ceremonial cap from the 101st Airborne, three purple hearts in brass and heavy glass, a ream of ceremonial documents signed by three presidents, a Queen and two Prime Ministers, some University Presidents, several military academies and the Pope.

Poaster always kidded about that one. He had a friend in Manila fix up a document signed by the Pope. Who reads Latin, anyway? I can. It says “if you can read this you have too much education.”

Thing about Poaster is he’s wily. He doesn’t shoot from the gut like me, he works from a matrix he developed as a kid. He’d sit in a 100 year-old elm tree on his family’s dairy farm south of Devonshire and think about stuff. From his aerie it appeared the world was a green patchwork, orderly in it’s chaos of shifting hues, seasons, moods of the day.

War would change all that many times over. The only place the decrepit buzzard could roost now was in his flat on Flood Street, a stone’s throw from the Thames. Now, the old goat thinks the inside of his dreary premises is as real as the sky outside, which he probably hasn’t seen in years.

He tried to tell me about his secret visit with His Holiness as he stuffed a napkin into his collar and waved me to a seat at the end of a fine English black walnut table commandeered from a bombed-out castle (evidently his own proud work) on the Rhine during the Big One.

Poaster waved a shard of forked sausage in the air:

“I’ve been thinking about you lately, Colonel!”

A hairy white eyebrow lifted into an arch its serpentine mate coiled in residence, ready to spring for emphasis at the sign of a threat.

“And you’ve nothing to hide.”

Poaster knew things about me I barely knew myself. He knew of my growing obsession with Tara Vinson, probably had pictures of me wandering around Haiphong Harbor with my headphones on, listening to Her. Somethings are hard to explain, other things are even harder.

Poaster also knew I’d divined, by most scurrilous methods, a copy of he and Tocalot’s manuscript: ”Men in the Field.” It sure discussed men a lot…and men in the field. Now, I’m pretty far from a literary critic, Hell, I’m a fighting man. But I know a yarn when I hear one. As much as Poaster and Tocolat’s “manual” talks about men, and men in the field, the only men they had in mind were each other.

Poaster lost his buddy in a firefight in Kabul.

“Mrs. Neck has made such a nice supper for us, we can have some Merlot and discuss your recovery.”

He poured a delicate, saucy, vintage Cabernet.

“I think you’ll like this splashy little Sirah.

I began to feel as though Alice had invited me to dine at the rabbit hole.

As we sipped, Mrs. Neck came into Poaster’s apartment with a plate of shrimps and cheese on toothpicks. Mrs. Neck kept an eye on the ancient warhorse for many years.

They met in London during the Blitz, both were nurses in bomb shelters.
They met again in Tangiers. She was an Army nurse and Poaster an RAF fighter pilot shot down over the strait.

He was a goner, they said, but Mrs. Neck was one of the first medics on scene, and she nursed him back into the war and taught him the tango, the foxtrot, and how to stop a world war long enough to find a little, tiny bit of satisfaction.

The shooting stopped a long time ago, but without Mrs. Neck, the bone-snapping, bridge-bombing, jungle-flaming fury of it all would continue to rage in Poaster’s mind.

She was delivering plasma in Fallujah when a car bomb blew a nurse and two doctors she was riding with to bits, but Mrs. Neck miraculously survived. Hard of hearing and a little slow, she gave up volunteer work to tend to old Poaster.

Cloris, of course, still drops by when she’s in country. More and more though, she spend her time with Raphael(a) on the farm in Bolivia. She still does some mission work.

He filled my plate and delivered his wisdom with a generous touch of sage. He ladled two bowls from a tureen of cucumber soup on a cart.

Mrs. Neck, a stout woman in a mundane shift, battered slippers and a towel around her head, glided into the room in mock admonishment.

“Good Lord, General, let me do that for y’all, please set down.” She pattered around the General. You’d never know this woman was a retired Mossad agent, an ex-Navy SEAL trainer (not the kind with big red balls), climbed Mount Everest and ran in her last marathon a scant four years ago.

Poaster followed her orders, no questions asked.

“Truly fascinating, love and rage. They share the same heart.”

Poaster poached a baguette from the cart and tore it in half, maybe thinking somewhere he was fighting a guerilla, snapping a knife-wielding arm.

Mrs. Neck slid past, pulling the mauled bread from the ancient mariner’s hands and tossed it on a platter. He stared at his hands, a vacant beam in his eyes. He eventually regained himself as the room filled with fragrances: the soup, bread, the coffee brewing in the kitchen, all courtesy of Mrs. Neck.

“Don’t try to make people think. Give them a laugh!”

I thought this odd coming from one who displays the tactical humor of well, a shark. With bread and soup and sausage, his company was rare, and I…the lovestruck beggar with little but stories to share.

I told Poaster I’d discovered an ancient document.

“I’m not going to be a small-time Charley any more.” I said, buttering my baguette like one who owns the joint.

“Let me guess.” He sighed, filled his plate with kraut.

“You found Tocolat’s document.” Poaster aired a fork.

“It’s a running joke around here…how academics think.”
He raised a finger, waved it in the air.

“Mrs. Neck. Put some Tara Vinson on the record player if you would, please. How delightful! Colonel Mars should enjoy this. I know I will.”

He leered like a four-year old.

He crossed his hands in his lap and smiled.

“As far as Tocolat’s fictitious document is concerned, it’s best to put it back and hope no one’s found you out!”

He shifted once or twice in his leather chair.

“I only let him use my name because he was afraid he couldn’t sell his little “manual” without me.” He seethed.

He worked his hairy jaw and sank a watery eye into my face. He freshed my glass. Poaster was the only friend left in the world.

“Try the asparagus, old Cod. It comes from New Brunswick.”

Poaster and I found each other again after all the years, even if for only a moment, and it was over food. After our supper Mrs. Neck brought us Hugo de Grotas and we sipped a slippery, leggy Herez.

He read his Times, I stared out the window at silvery rain falling on the Thames.

“You live in a fantasy world peopled by great minds of literature and Her. But you are, in fact, a soldier of fortune. Aren’t you concerned about your focus or is a life of desperate dissolution suitable you, the great warrior I once knew?”

“She’s my savior and foil,” I explained.

“A cyclonic love that rattles my mortal coil. I’m sustained by vapors, the breathless atmosphere of devotion. I don’t hear a noisy world, and am free of all its commotion.

In Situ Taria, this place where I sit with Tara, the bond is real.I cannot defer to this agony, nor can I begin to mask my zeal. I don’t want to be with anyone, I’ve so much of me to love. I simply want to spin Her disk, that’s all I’m dreaming.”

I gazed beyond the Thames to the murk.

“Just spin ‘round my axis mundi, the ultimate connection. My dreamy head swollen with her sweet confection.”

I remember the old General’s last words to me.
“Fuck, man…you need a shrink.”

I put the phone down and walked out to the deck, where Sam stood guard by my lunch. I pulled out my Osborne and sliced the huge ol’ sangwich in half.
It looks good, but you gotta know your limitations.