Greg Lippert
They Shoot Horses, Don’t They
Response

The Derby
By Robert Haydon Jones
Inspiration

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Greg Lippert
Reflection
Inspiration piece

WW11
By Robert Haydon Jones
Response

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Note: All of the art, writing, and music on this site belongs to the person who created it. Copying or republishing anything you see here without express and written permission from the author or artist is strictly prohibited.

Greg Lippert
“Summer of Jimmy”
Inspiration piece

The Good Humor Man
By Robert Haydon Jones
Response

There were 83 children under 16 living in 17 houses on Jimmy O’Hara’s lane. Jimmy was the oldest of six. His mother had managed to scare off all but one of the ice cream trucks. The Good Humor Man still came every weekday at 7pm and at 1 pm on weekends.

His mother had confronted the Good Humor Man. She had accused him of disturbing the peace. She had threatened to call the police. He wasn’t fazed. The police wouldn’t bother him. The town had given Good Humor a permit to vend on this lane and other streets like it clear through Labor Day. But he would be glad to come at a scheduled time if that would make things easier.

Mrs. O’Hara set the times and the Good Humor Man honored them. He came after dinner on weekdays and after lunch on weekends. Jimmy first walked up to the truck on a Saturday early in June.

He was just back from Prep School, where he had struggled most of the year. Then two varsity pitchers had gone down with injuries. Jimmy had been promoted from the JV squad and named the starting pitcher against his school’s archrival.

While he was warming up, his catcher ran out and asked him if he really meant to throw all change ups. It turned out Jimmy was choking the ball, holding it deep in his hand. His eased up on his grip and went on to have the game of his life.

By season’s end, he was the number one starter. Even though he was only a sophomore, he was named to the first team of the All State squad. He was a star! Life at his Prep School got much easier.

The Good Humor Man was pretty young – in his mid twenties. Jimmy ordered a raspberry humorette. “I hear you made peace with my mother”, he said. “Yep”, said the Good Humor Man. “It was a good move too. Believe it or not, your Lane is the highest profit street in town for Good Humor.”

The Good Humor Man’s name was Lincoln – he went by Link. He had been in the last lot of draftees from the War and had just been discharged in mid March after two years in the army. He was glad he was out. Korea was chewing up all kinds of casualties.

Link was from an “old Yankee” family a few miles up the line. He was living with his girlfriend right in town. They had a garage apartment at a great rent. Jimmy noticed that Link had several books stacked under the counter. He was not reading for college – he was reading for pleasure. He handed Jimmy a book.

“I just finished this”, he said. “It’s pretty wild. You want to borrow it?”

The name of the book was The Trial. The author was Franz Kafka. Jimmy didn’t hesitate. He snatched the book up and said, “Sure.”

That was the start of his friendship with Link. In time, the bond he had with Link, would become the linchpin of his personality and influence his life forever. Franz Kafka was a great icebreaker. John O’Hara did the name proud. The poems of William Carlos Williams looked at the world like Jimmy did. EE Cummings was the same sort of rebel Jimmy was – only braver.

The best thing was that he began a correspondence with Link that went on for years. Link’s letters to him started, “Oh boy-faced man.” and spun on for single spaced page after page from there.

His parents knew about Link. In the beginning, before he was old enough for a license, when he arranged a visit, he needed a ride to Link’s garage apartment. He would stay for hours, talking with Link and his glamorous girl friend, Olga. Link would give him a ride home.

They stayed close over the years. Link was the Good Humor Man for just one summer. Then he got a job as a copywriter for a small advertising agency in Manhattan. The next summer, Jimmy landed a summer internship at an agency near Link’s office. They met for lunch whenever they could. Often they would stroll across the Brooklyn Bridge.

Link did most of the talking. Jimmy’s heart would sing as he listened. The Brooklyn Bridge was a generation’s reach for the stars. A daring venture many expected to fail. When at last, after 14 years, it was completed in 1883, the Bridge was a soaring ode to beauty. This was a beauty no one had really expected. Crowds still surged across the Bridge’s broad promenade. Every walk Jimmy took with Link back and forth across the Bridge was a celebration.

They stayed close. Their letters kept them in dialogue. Jimmy joined the Marines. Link and Olga got married. Jimmy fell for a sweet girl at college. Link and Olga built a house deep in the deep woods. Jimmy got married and kept going to college.

Then Jimmy, rather suddenly, enjoyed some quick success as a writer for Ad Agencies. He was making good money. He had three sons. He was drinking way too much. He was out at the racetrack a lot. He hung out with a lot of wise guys. He had girl friends. He stayed in the city way too much. He lost big jobs. He got big jobs. Every so often, he would get a letter from Link: “Oh boy-faced man.” Link wasn’t doing all that well. Jimmy couldn’t understand it. Link was a brilliant writer and yet he kept being trampled by third-rate agencies.

Jimmy opened a new agency in his hometown with several large profitable accounts. His company occupied an entire building right near the center of town. Business was good but Jimmy was down. He was drinking too much. He was depressed. His wife was talking about separation.

Jimmy had hired a top Account Services executive to manage the business – and things ran smoothly enough. But the costs were high. His Account Executives were making good salaries – plus they expected Jimmy to lease them a car. His clients were very, very, happy. Jimmy’s marketing was working extraordinarily well. But Jimmy wasn’t seeing the profit that he expected.

He heard that Link was unemployed again. Jimmy called him and hired him right away. Link took over the roll out for a financial client. It had been draining Jimmy’s energy. It was strange – now they were in the same building and yet they didn’t get to talk much. Jimmy was tangled in business and personal problems. Link’s work had him busier than a one-armed paperhanger.

A few weeks later, Jimmy got a call on Saturday from a banker in Rhode Island. Two years back, someone had opened an account at his bank in Jimmy’s name. About a third of Jimmy’s monthly throughput was being deposited in the account. The strange thing was that the only outflows from the account were checks to the Account Services executive Jimmy had hired to manage administration. The banker apologized. Jimmy should have been notified right away.

Jimmy was alarmed but he figured there was some simple explanation. He left a voice mail for the executive suggesting they discuss the matter when Jimmy returned on Thursday from his college exploration trip with one of his sons.

When he returned Thursday, he walked into an empty building. Only his office and that of his secretary were still furnished. He asked his secretary if she knew what was going on. She said she did know. She gave Jimmy a slip with a phone number. Then she left the building.

Jimmy called the number and was connected to an attorney. He was informed that his executives had convinced his clients it was in their best interest to move their business to a new company staffed by his people. His clients were under the impression that Jimmy had approved the move. He was exhausted. He needed rest. He needed to retire.

All of his company debt had been paid. If he agreed with the move and signed a release, he would be given a Certified Check for $150,000. Jimmy asked if all of his people were in on this, He was told they were. Only Lincoln Selleck had misgivings but said he had to think of his wife and kids.

Of course, Jimmy was devastated. Actually, when the lawyer started to talk about Link, Jimmy threw his right arm up over his head as if he were trying to deflect a blow.

He never talked to Link again. Years later, after Link had died after a sudden heart attack, his oldest son called Jimmy. Link had always felt bad about the way things finished. His son told Jimmy that Link didn’t know what to do. Link said he had to think of his family. Jimmy said he understood. It was a lie. He was still crushed. He had been murdered.

Decades later, he thought of Link and was swept away by love. Of course, he forgave Link. He wished he had understood right away that his love for Link trumped all pain. He wondered if there was anything he could do now. Olga had died a year back at 93. The son was reachable in Iowa.

He would think on it. He had been rescued. He had basked in love. He had ambled back and forth with Link on the Brooklyn Bridge. “Oh boy-faced man!”

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Note: All of the art, writing, and music on this site belongs to the person who created it. Copying or republishing anything you see here without express and written permission from the author or artist is strictly prohibited.

Greg Lippert
“You Don’t Know What Sad Is”
Response

Nelson at Spithead
By Robert Haydon Jones
Inspiration piece

Little, 5-year-old, Jimmy O’Hara was about to be murdered and there was nothing 
he could do about it.

His grandfather had Jimmy by the ankles and was spinning him faster and faster 
around and around over his head. His grandmother was on her knees screaming, 
pleading with the big man to stop.

“Please, please”, she screamed. “Please don’t kill him. I’m begging you. Please stop.”

Jimmy was frightened. He knew he was about to die. He was spinning faster and faster. His grandfather was about to hurl him against a wall and dash his brains in. Just like the SS Storm Troopers were doing to kids in Russia.

Jimmy cried out, “Please!” It was a pitiful squeak. So, he just screamed with all his might.

His grandmother kept screaming. “Stop! Please don’t kill him! I’ll do anything you want.”

His grandfather grunted. Then he suddenly slowed the spin and gathered Jimmy in. He set him down next to his grandmother, turned on his heel and walked away.

“Oh, thank God,” his grandmother said. “Thank, God.” She was trembling.

“Darling boy, are you okay? Your grandfather gets crazy some times. I should 
never have left you alone with him.”

She kissed and kissed Jimmy’s cheeks and hugged him. He could taste her tears. Her gold bracelets jingled.

“You must never tell anyone about this. We don’t want your parents to worry. You will always be safe with me.”

Jimmy kept the secret. He never told anyone. He never learned what it was he had 
done that had set his grandfather off. Jimmy thought about it hard over the years, 
but he could never figure it out.

In the days and weeks and months and years to come, when he stayed with them, after breakfast, Jimmy would accompany his grandfather to a nearby park where he 
met with friends. Jimmy would dig around in the brush in a ravine below the benches. 
When he found something interesting, he would put it in a little basket, shake the basket 
and his grandfather would haul it on up. It was fun.

Jimmy’s grandfather’s grandfather had served five years in the Welsh Fusiliers and sailed 
for America with his wife a week after they were wed. In 1849, he trekked to California 
and struck it rich. He returned to Ohio in 1850 with $43,000 in cash and six big nuggets.

By 1853, he was flat broke and back in the mines. His problem was, “…He crooked his little finger too much.” In 1861, he lied about his age (51) and enlisted in the Union army. He was 
badly wounded in the stomach but recovered after a year and reenlisted for the duration. He was captured at Cold Harbor. In September 1864, he died of scurvy and dysentery at 
the Confederate Prison in Andersonville, Georgia.

Jimmy’s grandfather’s father was also a Civil War soldier, who after the War, went on 
with the Cavalry to fight in the Indian Wars.

Jimmy’s grandfather was born in 1870. He grew up in a coal-mining town in Ohio. 
As a child, he showed he had prodigious ability as an artist. When he was 14, a collection 
was taken up from the miners and he was sent to the Cleveland Art Institute.

He did well there. He had unique ability as a sketch artist. He worked as a part time janitor and extended his stay at the Institute for two years. Then, he decided to go to New York City and seek employment as a sketch artist with a newspaper.

He failed at that. He was lucky to get a job as a deckhand on a cargo ship that made two round trips a month from New York to New Orleans. After nearly two years, he was 
off duty when he happened on a fire at a well-known hotel in Manhattan. Firemen quickly extinguished the blaze, but his grandfather was able to make a fast sketch of the action.

He brought the sketch to the Editor of the New York Herald, who bought it for $10 and added him to his staff.

Over the years, his grandfather would tell Jimmy the standard Cowboy & Indian stories 
and sprinkle in some stories of his life on the job. Sitting Bull had become enraged when his grandfather did a sketch of him and his grandfather had to flee to avoid being knifed. 
Pat Garret, the sheriff who had killed Billy the Kid, liked to play poker.

During the Spanish American War, his grandfather had been captured in the bush in Cuba 
along with a Hearst reporter. They were taken to El Morro, and sentenced to death as spies.

At dawn, two days later, he was blindfolded and transported to a ship. As he stood there in 
his blindfold, several drums rattled. He was sure he was about to be hung. Then his blindfold 
was removed. Rather than a gallows, the first thing his grandfather saw was our flag. He was 
on an American ship. He and the reporter had been exchanged for several Spanish officers.

That was his last war. But not his last adventure. He was a tall, powerful, handsome man – 
well over six feet like his grandfather before him. For decades, he was a famous sketch artist 
for big newspapers across the country. He was a good artist and quick. He was referred to as 
The Human Camera in the promotions the papers ran about him.

Of course, Jimmy never could trust his grandfather. They never discussed the horrific spinning incident. But Jimmy knew he had come very, very close to being murdered. His grandmother and his grandfather knew it too.

Over time, Jimmy learned that his grandfather had a weakness for alcohol. He was just one in a long line of his ancestors… “Who crooked his little finger too much.” Jimmy’s mother and father also had their problems with alcohol. A lot of people did.

His parents traveled a lot and they were having more babies, so Jimmy spent a big chunk of time with his father’s parents, who lived nearby. Then his grandfather did an 
oil painting of Jimmy – and it was so bad, his grandfather went to see an eye doctor.

It turned out his grandfather had real bad cataracts in each eye.

He had surgery on both eyes. In those days, you had to wait two weeks before you 
could remove the bandages. Jimmy kept his grandfather company while he waited. His grandfather was very disturbed. It was as if he had suddenly gone blind. He couldn’t sketch. He couldn’t meet with his friends at the park. He couldn’t see his own sketches 
and paintings, except in his mind’s eye.

So, he told Jimmy a lot of stories. Once he had been drinking with some men on a train bound for California and they ran out of whiskey. One of the men offered to share some 
moonshine he had purchased at a town down the line where they had stopped earlier for coal.

His grandfather declined and went to his sleeping berth. In the morning, he learned 
that two of his drinking companions had died and one was blind.

His grandfather’s father had gone on with the Seventh Cavalry to fight the Indians. His grandfather had a letter his father had written just after his brigade had used their 
new repeating rifles for the first time against the Plains Indians. “We fired a volley at them and they came on us directly, expecting to be on us before we could reload. We let them 
come for a bit and then fired volley after volley at them. We had ourselves a regular Turkey Shoot!”

Finally, the two weeks passed. The Doctor and his assistant came to remove the bandages. They made sure the blinds were drawn. They removed the bandages very carefully. Then they meticulously cleaned off the eyelids. His grandfather opened his eyes slowly.

He could see wonderfully well.

Decades back on their extended honeymoon in Europe, his grandfather had done a watercolor portrait of his grandmother sitting under a grape arbor. He had done the trellis – but had not put in the grapes – meaning to finish the painting later. After the bandages came off, he thanked the Doctor and barked at Jimmy to fetch the watercolor 
of his grandmother. The Doctor was still taking his leave while Jimmy’s grandfather 
furiously added the long lost grapes. His grandfather had obsessed on them for 14 days.

Occasionally, Jimmy was with them on weekends. On Saturday night, at 7:30, they would gather by the radio and listen to The Lone Ranger. Jimmy liked The Lone Ranger all right, but he was very surprised his grandfather was such a fan.

Jimmy’s family moved away from the city to a small Connecticut town by the sea. On VJ day, his grandparents came and they had a wonderful party. Everyone got a little tipsy. The next day Jimmy and his father took the grandfather fishing in a small motorboat. They were just out of the harbor only a small way when Jimmy’s grandfather got very 
seasick from the mild chop.

His father was very solicitous about the old man but he was very sick until they all got to shore and got out of the boat.

He was very sick and very embarrassed. “Just like Nelson at Spithead”, he said two or three times. There was a family fable they were descended from Nelson on the bar sinister, but his grandfather never believed it. It was a sad experience for all concerned.

A few years later, Jimmy was just home for the summer from Prep School, when his father took him to visit his grandfather at an Old Age Home a few miles away.

His grandfather was in bed. He smoked his cigarettes in a rubber tube to minimize 
the risk of fire. Jimmy sat by the bed while his father and grandfather talked. After a time, 
his grandfather said, “I’m very, very sorry I wasn’t a better father for you, son.”

His father replied, “You were a good father, pop.”

“No, I wasn’t,” his grandfather said.

“No, I wasn’t. I am so sorry.”

On the drive home, Jimmy told his father it was sad about his grandfather.

“Sad,” his father replied. “You have no idea what sad is.”

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Note: All of the art, writing, and music on this site belongs to the person who created it. Copying or republishing anything you see here without express and written permission from the author or artist is strictly prohibited.

Light at the end of the tunnel

Inspiration
By Greg Lippert

Awake!

Response
By Robert Haydon Jones
©2018 RHJA, LLC. All Rights Reserved

When Bud Monroe, his cardiologist, told Jimmy O’Hara his aortic valve was failing and must be replaced – Jimmy had an overwhelming urge to ask God to help him, even though he hadn’t said a prayer or even believed in God for
many years.

He was out of touch with God. Like he was out of touch with his friends from his youth. Nothing formal. Just time and tide.

Time and tide. Jimmy suddenly remembered that the last time he saw Bruce,his best friend all the way from high school to his early thirties, they had been out fishing. Bruce had driven them back to Jimmy’s house on the river.

Jimmy got out, slammed the door, and said goodbye like it was forever. For the life of him, Jimmy couldn’t remember why.

That was his last time with Bruce. Forty-two years later, one of Bruce’s daughters emailed Jimmy that Bruce had died of cancer and asked Jimmy to come to the wake and funeral – but Jimmy was in Hawaii for February and even if he had been home, 
he probably wouldn’t have gone. Although he really couldn’t remember what the problem was.

That was sort of crazy because Bruce had saved Jimmy’s ass back when he was sixteen and in a world of’ hurt. Jimmy couldn’t take another night at home – andBruce had invited him to stay with him and his two younger brothers and his Mom, Hilary.

They lived in a yellow Federal perched on the edge of the town’s biggest graveyard. Jimmy stayed for months. Bruce’s brothers were two and three years younger, but in those days, that was much younger.

The father had been gone for a long time. But Hilary was pretty and fresh. This was way before people started using the phrase, “Single Mother.” Hilary appeared to Jimmy to be undaunted. She had a good job. She wore very stylish clothes. She smiled a lot.

Everyone had a chore. Bruce had to keep the furnace going and mow the lawn. Jimmy had to dump the garbage and the trash and the ashes from the furnace.

Hilary left very early in the morning on weekdays. The coffee she made was good. But he could not remember ever sitting down for a meal with Hilary and her boys. He had no memory of eating in the yellow Federal. The food thing was a mystery.

Jimmy and Bruce were sitting side by side in civics class when Melanie O’Donahue first came through the door. She had moved from Detroit. Bruce was immediately enchanted. He married Melanie after they graduated from college. Jimmy was newly married then too.

They were a foursome right away. Even after Jimmy moved to Manhattan, they got together in Connecticut on weekends. In the summer, Bruce and Melanie would visit Jimmy and Karen at their cottage way out on Fire Island.

But now, Jimmy could not recall anything specific about all the time he had spent with Bruce and Melanie. Not a moment. Not a scene. Nothing. He assumed they were surprised when he left Karen and started up with Anne. In time, Jimmy and Anne began to socialize with Bruce and Melanie. Then he went fishing with Bruce and that was it. What on earth was the problem?

He asked Anne if she recalled if Jimmy and Bruce had some sort of issue way back then. He said, “I know I had some sort of problem with Bruce, but I can’t remember what it was.”

Anne said, “The night before you went fishing, we were having drinks at the river house with a few people. Bruce was there. Melanie was away. You were drinking way too much and being just terrible with everyone. Anyway, Bruce hit on me – and the minute he did, I could see him realize how crazy and wrong he was being. I just turned away. I never told you – I knew how important Bruce was to you. Then you went fishing the next day. You never said anything. When we didn’t see Bruce and Melanie any more, I didn’t give it much thought. I had no idea you knew.”

Jimmy said, “I didn’t know. I knew something was wrong but I didn’t know what.”

All these years later, Jimmy was shocked Bruce had hit on Anne. She was a beauty and lots of men tried with her – but Bruce was his friend. They had been drinking hard. Jimmy was acting crazy. So Bruce had run his own nut job show. It was sad Jimmy hadn’t known about it. He had never realized how angry Bruce was at him. Now he did.

Bruce was dead. But now, forty-two years after they had parted, Jimmy was back in touch with him.

In the years that followed his parting from Bruce, Jimmy made no new friends. His business was going very well — so he met a lot of new people — but these were business contacts. He loved Anne but their marriage was a very rocky road.

They traveled a lot. Jimmy was succeeding even though his drinking was increasing. One night in New York City, a new business acquaintance turned Jimmy on to cocaine for the first time – and that occasion – when Jimmy was forty-three – changed his life forever.

Jimmy became a cocaine addict on his first toot. It was the first time in his life he felt okay. Actually, “okay” is a frail, sadly insufficient word for how he felt. He felt deep down good. It was a wonderful way to feel.

Three years later, he weighed 132 pounds. He went into treatment at a rehab. He relapsed. His wife organized another Intervention. He did well in treatment but relapsed 52 days out. After he emerged from his third rehab, his wife surprisingly got pregnant. The child was born with a genetic disability and in intensive care for months. Our hero left the second night.

He had a heart attack in rehab four. There was a 3-bed intensive care unit in the little hospital in Wisconsin. He saw his lines go flat on the monitor. A stocky nurse named Ann-Marie punched him in the chest and his heart began to beat again.

Back in Connecticut, they thought it had been a mild heart attack. When they checked via a Catheterization, one of his arteries blew out completely. There was nothing left to bypass.

He kept on using.

Finally, he went to a new fangled rehab in Arizona that approached treatment for addiction as an educational experience for people who had been traumatized early on.

He was there three months. He got good healing. He had two very minor slips and then stayed clean and sober.

Of course, the 12 Steps of AA were at the center of his program. And the result of the 12 Steps was “a spiritual awakening.” But he was way out of touch with God. When he worked his program, he used the entire Membership of AA as “a Power greater than ourselves.”

Looking back, he realized, he had disqualified himself as a God consort, when he was using. Back when he was using, cocaine was his one and only God.

“One and only God” were just words. It seemed to Jimmy that you had to be an addict to know what they really meant. For years, if you had asked Jimmy O’Hara if he would choose his next cocaine run over God, he would have replied, “Absolutely.”

Since he had made that choice again and again over the years, Jimmy had figured his disqualification was permanent. Even though over his years of recovery a spiritual awakening had bloomed and leafed out in him. Even though he often said the 
Serenity Prayer. Even though he joined the Unitarian Church and attended there regularly for years.

Like Lucifer, Jimmy had been cast out. Actually, he had jumped out. It seemed fair.

Now Jimmy realized that what he had accepted as a just verdict was actually the misshapen pronouncement of a crazed addict. And he had borne it – and even occasionally brandished it – all through the years of his recovery.

However, when he got Small Cell Lung Cancer — right before he went under and they cracked his rib cage and extracted the peach sized tumor and the upper lobe of his left lung, he thought the words, “Into your hands I commend my spirit.” He felt safe.

He healed from the operation. It was very painful. They had cracked his rib cage. He recovered. They kept running tests. In those days, hardly anyone recovered from this cancer. But Jimmy stayed cancer free. It was a happy surprise.

But Jimmy forgot about how safe he had felt right before they cut him.

He went on with his life and his recovery one day at a time. However, he was still mired in his addiction much, much, more than he knew.

Then came the diagnosis and the yearning for God’s help and the memory of his last time with Bruce and the crimson dawning deep in him of the realization that he was heavy laden and needed rest.

The Last Out

Response
By Greg Lippert

Curtains

Inspiration
By Robert Haydon Jones
©2018 RHJA, LLC. All Rights Reserved

For five years now, every six months, Jimmy O’ Hara would visit his Cardiologist to learn if the latest test showed his aortic valve needed to be replaced and he couldn’t be an umpire any more.

It was a big practice. Today, as always, the office was crowded. There were three receptionists. Jimmy ended up with the middle one. She was a squat, dark-haired, woman in her early fifties. She was 
wearing an outsized, gold plated, necklace with six large onyx stones.

“That’s some necklace,” Jimmy O’Hara said.

“It’s a real beauty. Onyx never looked so good.”

The receptionist raised her chin and looked hard at Jimmy. Then she smiled. The smile transformed her dour face, like sun after rain.

“Well, thank you, Mr. O’Hara. This necklace is from Sicily. It was left to me by my great aunt, Maria. Okay. We’ve got all your paper work. 
Doctor Monroe will see you soon. Have a nice day.”

Jimmy had just opened his Kindle and started in again on Grant when a man called his name.

“That’s me”, Jimmy said.

It was a stocky young fellow in dark blue scrubs holding a clipboard. Jimmy followed him into an exam room and the kid took his BP and 
ran a cardiogram.

Afterward, he crumpled the packing for the leads into a ball and tossed it
 with an easy move into the bin. You could tell he had the good hand/eye.

“You’ve got the good hand/eye”, Jimmy said.

“Did you play baseball? Were you an infielder?”

“Well, I started out an infielder,” the kid said.

“Second base. But I could really run. I was the fastest guy on the team. So, they moved me to center – and that’s where I played for three years. When I was a senior, we won the Double L State Championship.”

“Really? Where did you play?

“Right here in Fairport.”

The kid was in his early thirties. So, 14 or 15 years back, Jimmy might have umpired some of his games.

“Are you playing now?”

“No, I had to work after high school and then I decided to be a nurse and there wasn’t time to do anything but work and study.

Jimmy said, “Well you could be playing now if you want to. There’s an over-25 League that’s going strong. Fairport has a team. Give me your email and I’ll connect you up with the Head Coach.”

The kid jotted down his email and gave it to Jimmy. You couldn’t tell his name from the email.

Jimmy said, “What’s your name?”

The kids’ name was Philip Caruso. He wrote it down. Jimmy told him to write down his phone number too. He did.

“It’s March”, Jimmy said. “The perfect time to get hooked up with a team.”

Philip Caruso thanked him. He had been playing a little soft ball now and then 
over the years but it wasn’t the same. “It’s definitely not the same,” Jimmy said.

About a minute after the nurse left, Doctor Monroe strode into the little room. “James J. O’Hara”, he intoned. “The one and the only.”

Bud Monroe had become Jimmy’s cardiologist fifteen years back when Jimmy’s 
Internist referred him about the palpitations Jimmy was having.

Monroe, a tall, lithe, man in his fifties, with curly blond hair, was a star cardiologist at Yale New Haven. Women still chased him. He had two sons in their twenties. Three years back, he divorced his unhappy wife. Now he had a happy girl friend.

He had managed Jimmy’s arrhythmia brilliantly with a variety of meds. Twice, while on assignment in Europe, Jimmy had called him and Monroe had quickly arranged to get him a new med to deal with a runway heartbeat.

Finally, seven years back, Jimmy had rushed to Monroe’s office in big distress. His heart felt like it would jump out of his shirt. He sank to the floor in the exam room. An ambulance took him to the hospital.

The next day, a “cardio-electrician”, as Monroe called him, administered an 
Ablation procedure and Jimmy’s heartbeat immediately returned to normal. Jimmy’s life without the palpitations coming when ever was so much better he didn’t even realize it mostly — except once in a while — when he thought 
about it.

He had developed a relationship over the years with Doctor Monroe, strictly from his brief times with him in the exam room and in his office. It was not exactly a friendly relationship. Doctor Monroe had been very forthright about his admiration for Jimmy’s wife, Anne.

Dr. Monroe was also Anne’s cardiologist and when he first talked about her to Jimmy, he thought Monroe was kidding. “A stunning beauty, a fascinating intellectual with a great sense of humor.”

Monroe wasn’t kidding. Anne told Jimmy that Monroe had talked to her 
for nearly an hour after he ran her cardiogram. They read the same books. 
They were both very serious about working out. Anne told Jimmy, “You know, I’m maybe 15 years older than he is, but he really loves me. In a good way.”

So, Jimmy trusted Monroe as his cardiologist but he wondered. Every time Jimmy’s Ablation procedure came up, Monroe would say, “Yeah that time you fainted in my office.”

It pissed Jimmy off. He remembered when he got light-headed in Monroe’s office, he worked very, very, hard to stay in control and not faint – so he was 
able to sink slowly down on the floor. Even so, every time the Ablation came up, Monroe would say, “When you fainted in my office.”

Five years back, Monroe had told Jimmy he had a problem with his aortic valve. It was narrowing. They would monitor it with echocardiograms. Jimmy could still umpire if he really wanted to. He should report any incidence of pressure on his chest or dizziness. Dizziness was the main symptom of an aortic valve problem.

So, Jimmy had the echoes’ every six months. His aortic valve kept narrowing but 
Monroe told him he was still good to go “ … if you really want to.”

Jimmy was the oldest active ump in the Umpires Union. So he was assigned only JV and freshman games. Jimmy didn’t mind. He was right where he was supposed 
to be. He loved being an ump. Even if it was a JV game, he loved being on the field
 in the middle of the action.

His family, especially two of his sons who had played for Jimmy forty years back, when he had managed a powerhouse Legion team, kept urging him to quit. 
Jimmy had never understood why his sons had not gone on with the game in college. 
They could have walked on.

“You gotta love it!” That was a phrase Jimmy and his umpire friends would use 
when they were having a tough game in the rain. It said it all for them.

So, now here was Doctor Monroe — Jimmy’s cardiologist and rival. When they had first met, Monroe had commented on the large puckered scars on Jimmy’s chest. 
Jimmy a former Marine, was a small cell lung cancer survivor. At the time, hardly 
anyone survived this cancer. Monroe had pointed to the largest scar and said, “See what happens when a bad ass Marine smokes.”

It pissed Jimmy off. Everyone thought his survival from small cell lung cancer 
had been a miracle. Evidently, Doctor Bud Monroe was not impressed. He told Jimmy he’d heard he was a good baseball coach, “Back when you were young.”

He said he had read two of Jimmy’s short stories and found them “diverting.”

Had he published anything after he turned 70?

Monroe listened to Jimmy’s heart for about a minute, took his BP and told him to get dressed and meet him in his office, just like always.

When Jimmy went into the office, he noticed it was redecorated with new photos and a couple of watercolors. One of the photos was of Babe Ruth standing at home plate in Yankee Stadium in front of a microphone. Ruth was leaning hard on a bat.

A young Mel Allen, the Yankee announcer from back in the day, was on the other 
side of the mike. It was Ruth’s farewell appearance a few weeks before he succumbed to cancer.

“What a great shot,” Jimmy said. “I’ve never seen it before anywhere.”

Monroe was smiling broadly. “Isn’t it great? The photographer was the father of one of my patients. We got talking and a week later, it was delivered to me in the frame.”

“It’s a real treasure”, Jimmy said.

“So,” Monroe said, “Any dizziness or pressure on the chest or difficulty breathing?”

The truth was that Jimmy had been having dizziness issues for a couple of years. Recently, it was getting worse. He worried about what would happen if he got dizzy while driving on the Parkway. The dizziness didn’t last long – just a few seconds.

“No pressure on the chest, no palpitations, no problems breathing,” Jimmy said. “Recently, I’ve had a few, very brief, dizzy moments. Literally just four or five seconds.”

“Well, Jimmy,” Monroe said. “I am advising you to stop the umpiring. I’m not ratting you out with your Union, but I am putting it into my notes in case you drop dead on 
the field and the authorities come and ask me how I could let an old coot with a 
defective aortic valve on the field.”

“Jesus,” Jimmy said. “Really? It’s just a momentary thing.”

“No, Jimmy, we’re talking classic precursors to fainting spells. I’m going to set you up with the Committee that has to approve you for the valve replacement procedure so Medicare will pay for it. They will contact you shortly”

“I can’t believe it,” Jimmy said. “I’m done. Say it ain’t so, Doc.”

“You’re not done, Jimmy,” Monroe said. Your new valve should last a good eight years.”

On the drive home, Jimmy thought it through. Monroe wasn’t telling the Umpire Union Jimmy’s aortic valve was busted. He could book his games for the upcoming season just 
like always.

When he got home, he went straight up to Anne and told her Monroe was booking him with the Review Committee for Medicare approval of the valve replacement procedure. Anne said she was frightened.

Jimmy called his ball player sons and told them they could relax. He was done umpiring. 
He was in the approval process for a valve replacement. His boys sympathized and told 
him they were relieved.

Sean, his eldest, said, “I’m relieved for you Dad — and for the kids. Imagine what it would be like if an old ump croaked right in front of you on the field.”

Jimmy said he had a point.

Later that night at dinner, Anne said, “So, good old Doctor Bud Monroe told you 
he wasn’t going to tell the Umpire Union. Right?”

Jimmy said that was so. Monroe was just putting it in his notes. That was why Jimmy had to tell Anne about it right away.

“What a bastard, “Anne said. “What a freaking bastard.”

Animated image here: Breathe
Breathe
by Greg Lippert
Inspiration

Force of Nature
by Robert Haydon Jones
Response

This is about a heinous, rape-murder.

If I were writing this expecting to get money for it, (expecting you to pay money for the magazine carrying this story like the Police Gazette or the National Enquirer), then I would be writing this in the third person narrative that pro writers use these days because in the words of one pro writer I know, “When the Readers at the big houses see a manuscript written in the first person, they just throw it straight to the reject pile.”

Honestly, I tried telling this story out in the third person, but it came out hollow. Like Hemmingway said, “The most important tool a writer can have is a built-in, shock proof, crap detector.”

I want to get money for telling this story out to you, but the problem with the third person narrative is that it could be anybody. I am the perpetrator. I need to spit this thing out of me to be rid of it. And somehow I have to do that and keep you engaged so you don’t throw me on the reject pile because I am using the first person and spitting things up in front of you.

Like I said, this is about a heinous, rape-murder.

Kim Donnelly was a wiry, brown-haired, freckled nineteen year-old sophomore, from Ashtabula, who was best friends with Amanda Jackson a chubby, blonde junior from Akron, with beautiful, fluffy breasts the size of airplane head pillows, who I had relentlessly ravished day after day and night after night for nigh on to three weeks until I told her firmly that I couldn’t see her any more, not even once more, because I had a fiancée I had promised to marry, waiting for me back East, when I graduated in two months,

I was a vet, come back from the Marine Corps, finishing college on the G.I. Bill at a state school with a Georgian campus set in a rural farm town in southeastern Ohio.

This university featured some pretty darn good football teams over the years. Even so, it always had far more female than male students. In fact this university graduated more elementary school teachers than any other school in the Midwest.

When I arrived there from the Marines as a 22 year-old junior, I felt like a wolf in the henhouse. And, believe me, when I tell you, I behaved just like I was a wolf in the henhouse.

Because that is precisely what I was. I had returned with nary a scratch from terrifying times in shit hole after shit hole. I morphed from a green idiot expecting the certain death I deserved for being a green idiot to a hardened, merciless, survivor counting down the days till I came improbably to the final sleep and wakeup and then miraculously I marched aboard a silver aircraft and was borne away from the final shit hole to the craven glory of honorable discharge and safety from the certain death and/or disfigurement I no doubt did deserve.

I had left the pretty girl who wrote me every week while I was in the Marines back East because she was finishing college back there and we had both promised our parents we wouldn’t get married until each of us was graduated.

So there I was in the henhouse with hundreds of beautiful young women fresh out of high school, many of them away from home for the first time. Many of these hens were without a boy friend or even the prospect of a viable date. Most of the men at the university were actually still foolish boys – much more interested in drinking, drugging, and fraternity house activities than women.

So this “older man” the lean Marine, was like a pig at the trough and I helped myself at every opportunity. My years away from my girl friend had supercharged my lust. When we made love on my return, I was swept away with the sheer pleasure of it. I really couldn’t get enough.

Sex was a tonic for me. For some unaccountable reason, I felt bad most of the time. Bad and ashamed of myself. Not of anything in particular. Just ashamed of me. Sex made me feel good about myself. Good and strong and powerful and worthy. And deep down deserving of the long, glorious, orgasms I was having and having and having.

I was smart enough to figure out that to get the sex I needed, I had to have a willing, enthusiastic, partner easily available. So, early on, I decided to be a very considerate lover, even though it took a lot of effort. Actually, once I got the technique down, it wasn’t all that hard to take my girl friend where she had never been before.

She had been around quite a lot before I met her. She told me straight out that I was a genius lover compared to my predecessors. I told her it was because I loved her so much and I guess she accepted that. I liked her all right. She sure acted like she loved me and I was good with that. She was very, very pretty. A real knockout. I really liked having her on my arm. I liked her parents. She liked my parents. She called me; “The Master Marine” and I liked that too.

So at the university, right from the first, I developed a routine and a persona with the girls that I met which enabled me to be intimate with them on a friendly basis rather than as a candidate for a lasting relationship. In fact, this friendly persona enabled me to get closer to them much quicker than if I had been a “regular” suitor.
The fact is they were all horny out of their minds for sex even if quite a few of them weren’t really aware of it. Believe me, once Yours Truly started up with them with my “considerate” technique, almost all of them turned into little freaks. I no longer had to ask them out. They called me. I no longer had to do beer or a movie or a recital up front.

When we met up, our first order of business was finding a place we could go to get it on. In bad weather, we would look for empty classrooms, storage rooms, even remote hallways. Some times we had to go to a motel a few miles away. As a vet, I was one of the few students with a permit to have a car on campus. So, we’d drive to a motel. I always insisted the girl pay $25 toward the room. Since I got the room on an hourly basis, the $25 usually covered it.

In good weather, we used the great outdoors to do the friendliest thing two people can do. I had a poncho from the Marines that rolled up tight and worked real well. Although often, we would roll off the poncho and thrash around on the grass and after a while, I figured just how the title to the song, “Green Sleeves”, had originated.

I treated many a love discourteously. My favorite outdoor venue was an old graveyard that had been filled up in the 19th century. I enjoyed idyllic, bucolic privacy with one exception. One afternoon in early May, I had decided I had come to the end of foreplay and was just about to swing into action when a large brown shoe entered my field of vision. It was a Boy Scout Master with a troop of about 20, strung out single file in back of him.

“Oh, sorry, sir”, I said.

“No worries, young fellow,” he replied.

He was a burly man in his mid forties. He had on the full brown suit, replete with medals and badges. He had a thick black mustache. He pivoted and beckoned to his troop with the same signal we used in the Marines.

“Follow me, lads”, he yelled authoritatively.

He marched away and they followed. It was pretty impressive. I couldn’t help but notice that they kept a proper interval. We waited a little while and then we got down to it. It was better than ever.

So, my routine, my persona, went like this: “I am lonely and I am so happy that I have found you and that we can be friends and be good to each other – but it can’t ever get out of control beyond friendship, which will be so hard because I am so drawn to you, but we must never let that happen because someone very much like you is waiting back East and I promised her I would be back and she said okay than I could have friends like you if I promised on my honor.”

So that was the Holy Ground Rule. It enabled me to have all the wild sex I wanted without any fear of entanglement. I’ll tell you what – it enabled me to really be nice to these women – to really like them – okay, maybe even love some of them – without any fear of being snared. It was a foolproof ticket to genuine abandon.

Much as I hate to admit it, a few of them, declared it was time to stop before I did. I never argued, although, frankly, it pissed me off. In any event, 95% of the time, it was me that made the announcement that I was being drawn so close that any more would overwhelm me and make me renounce my Holy Promise. I experimented making the announcement before or after love. The best time by far was before. Afterward, there really was nothing left to say. Afterward, almost 100% of the time, we were both very, very happy campers.

The Holy Ground Rule also had another benefit that I had not foreseen. It generated a natural “Daisy-Chain” effect. Since I always parted as the best of friends, my left girls were inclined to pass me on with a golden recommendation as the sort of man any girl would be glad to have as a friend.

That was how I had arrived at my favorite graveyard with Kim Donnelly. Her best friend, Amanda Jackson, had put us together. According to Kim, Amanda said I was a prince of a man and the greatest, most considerate, lover on earth. She had only let me go because I was such a good person who had made a vow to a good young woman back East.

So, I guided us to my favorite spot in the graveyard and spread out my trusty poncho. Kim was in a league of her own as a kisser. I mean she was hot and she was a real expert. She had a hard body but she pushed up at me and I was enveloped by her voluptuousness. She kissed my neck and then licked it slowly and I almost lost control. Then she reached down to my crotch and stroked me. She really knew what she was doing.

I reached under and up to take her panties off but she resisted, so I moved them to the side and started pleasuring her with my fingers with the utmost consideration. She moaned and gave a deep shudder and said my name again and again.

I pulled off my pants real quick and maneuvered so I could get in her but she pushed back with a surprising amount of strength and she said, “No, don’t!”

I knew she wasn’t serious. A lot of girls put up a “No” the first time we do it. As a matter of fact, Amanda Jackson had run a whole string of no’s at me before I got her to say yes, yes, yes.

So I just pushed down steadily. I was holding myself up above her and my hands were by her neck. “No”, she said. “Please don’t. I’ve changed my mind.”

Well, I absolutely knew she couldn’t be serious. So I kept pushing. “No.”, she said again, and I kept pushing – I had been here before. Then she said, “No” again and sort of wriggled under me – so I pushed down real hard and then she stopped.

Well, the time had finally come, but as I made ready to enter her, I looked down and a green, bubbly, foam had seeped from between her lips and she wasn’t moving at all. I rolled right off her and looked again. She lay still. The bubbly green foam drooled off her lips on to her chin. She wasn’t breathing! I put my ear on her breast. There was no heartbeat! I touched her carotid. There was nothing! She was dead!

I was horrified. I was terrified. I was a fucking murderer! My life was over!

I wondered if I could hide her somewhere and go get a shovel and bury her in one of the old graves. But I realized that wouldn’t work. When Lisa went missing, Amanda would tell the police she had introduced us – and where we probably had gone.

Even if I could bury her quick, they would find the fresh grave…. or if I was able to mask the grave, they would probably use dogs who would find poor Kim. She was dead and so was I!

No one would believe me that it was a total accident. I had been a little rough like this in the past to get around the no’s and everything had worked out. No problems.
My only chance was to hide her body, get my car and run fast somewhere far, where maybe I could build a new identity.

About 40 feet deeper in the graveyard from where we were, there was a clump of Rhododendrons that surrounded a little spring. I figured this was the best place to hide Kim.

As I approached her to put her in a fireman’s carry, her eyes started to flutter. It startled me. I must have jumped a foot – I figured it must be rigor mortis starting. But, no, because now she made a gagging sound and then a low moan. She was alive!

Then her eyes suddenly flipped open and she looked right at me and smiled. “Wow,” she said, ”That was intense. I must have passed out. You were pretty rough on me.”

It was the most thrilling moment of my life. I think it still is. It was like two people had come back from the dead.

Yes, it turns out this is not about a heinous rape murder after all!

“Gosh, I’m glad you’re okay,” I said dumbly, like I was reading from a nerd script. “I’m real sorry – you’re just so dam sexy – I got carried away.”

“I’m going to have to throw away my undies”, she said. “I soiled myself. Turn your back – I’ve got to clean up.”

So, I turned my back and I could hear her rustling around. Then she said it was okay for me to turn back around and there she was standing there looking at me.

“Are you okay?” I said. Do you want to rest up?”

Well, the minute I said it, I regretted it.

“No”, she said, “I ‘m okay but I want to go back to the dorm and take it easy for a while. You were pretty darn rough on me.”

When she said that, a fear bolt coursed through me. Would she report me?

“Well,” I said, “I sure am sorry. The fact is — we both got carried away.”

Even now, I think it was an absolutely brilliant thing to say.

I saw her consider it.

“Are you okay without your undies?” I asked solicitously.

I saw her consider that too.

“Yeah, I’m okay”, she said. “Things did get out of hand. Are you okay?”

I told her I was okay. I walked her back to her dorm. I never dated her again. Amanda called me and asked me if everything was okay with me and Kim and I said it was – but that I had decided to completely eliminate dating these last two months out of fairness to my girl back East. And that is exactly what I did.

You might say I was scared straight.

So now, many years later, I am a respectable citizen. In addition to working hard at a job I love, I am a volunteer at the prison two exits up I95. I’ve often counseled men doing hard time for sexual assaults not all that different than my near catastrophe with Kim.

I’ve also worked with two men doing life for rape murder. They claim the sex was consensual and they just got carried away.

All I can do is tell them I understand.

©2015, RHJA, LLC. All Rights Reserved

Yonder
by Robert Haydon Jones
Inspiration

His first flight happened while he was sleeping – and although he had long nursed a quiet terror of bedtime ever since his father had died in his sleep – Jimmy O’Hara wasn’t at all afraid the first time.

Actually, Jimmy didn’t even remember that he had been flying until two days later when he stood just off the plate as the home team pitcher was completing his warm-ups at the start of a high school baseball game Jimmy was umping.

The pitcher had two more warm-ups left and Jimmy said, “Two more” – and then suddenly, he remembered he had flown for hours two nights back while he was sleeping. Jimmy said, “Jesus, what the hell was I doing?”

The kid catcher said, “What did you say, sir?”

Jimmy said, “I said ‘Bring em in – throw the next pitch down.’ ”

The kid threw down to second and Jimmy brushed the plate off, checked his ump partner at first, and then bellowed, “Play Ball!”

The game commenced and it was a pretty good game. The home team broke a 2-2 tie in the sixth with a triple and a sacrifice fly and then retired the visitors in order for the win. Jimmy was pleased with his performance. With the exception of two borderline third strike calls, he was positive he had gotten them all right.

And that was amazing, because all during the game he had been haunted by his sudden recall of the memory of his flying while sleeping. It had been a quick, crisp, game — so for once he got home early before his wife. He took a long, thoughtful, shower.

Anne, his wife, was still at Memorial, in her office in the old, federal style wing, dispensing advice and meds, as needed, to trauma victims. Jimmy wanted to tell Anne about the flying thing – but there was no way on God’s green earth that he would.

So, when she got in about a half hour after his shower, she was happily surprised he was back from his game and all showered and changed. He told her his game had gone well and that the local high school had won. She said the highlight of her day had been when two of her PTSD grads had come in for an unannounced visit to tell Anne and the staff that happened to be around that they were doing well. They were both working. One had moved back in with his wife. They were clean and sober and still happily attending 12-Step meetings.

Looking back, Jimmy felt that right then, when Anne was feeling good about the two Marines, would have been the perfect time for him to tell her about the flying thing. But he didn’t. His rationalization was that he didn’t want to mess up her happy day. But, of course, that wasn’t really it. Jimmy was worried what she would think.

Not telling Anne was a stupid mistake. From then on, she sensed, no she knew that Jimmy was holding something from her. This was Anne – really Glinda the good witch of PTSD – and you held nothing back from her really – because she already knew everything you were holding even if you didn’t – and even though she knew it all, often way before you did, she was still talking to you and still sleeping with you now and again.

So that’s how the flying thing got to be a secret thing with Jimmy. And somehow it was a secret of something wrong. Jimmy knew that the only possible antidote to this being the secret of something wrong was telling this secret out and standing back and seeing what happened. That explains why, later, although he was terrified of doing it, he did tell the secret out.

But that night was when Jimmy’s flying thing entered their relationship to stay forever.

Anne washed up and changed into a peach colored dress with red polka dots and her very stylish red spike high heels from Florence and they went on out to their favorite Italian restaurant. They dined with a young doctor and his wife from Memorial and Carmine an art director Jimmy used from time to time on freelance marketing jobs and Carmine’s latest squeeze, Amy, a young, red-haired, impossibly buxom Assistant DA.

They had a fabulous dinner. Joe, the garrulous owner chef, was a true genius and the room was jammed with foodies grateful they had enough money to afford such amazing food along with lots and lots of good drink on a lovely night in mid May.

Jimmy didn’t drink. But in his way he got giddy along with everyone else at his table as the night went on. Over desert and the three-drink noise at the restaurant, Jimmy suddenly said, “I flew in my sleep the other night and I’m wondering what it means.”

Carmine said, “Who did you do in your sleep.” Buxom Amy blushed and smiled.

The Doctor said, “What was that Jimmy? What did you do?

Anne said, “What did you say? What are you talking about?”

Just then, Joe, the owner, came over carrying a big bottle of Grappa. He put it in front of Amy and said, “Dump this weirdo and come with me. I have an inexhaustible supply.”

Well, the Grappa whizzed around the table and in the end everyone was glad that Jimmy was a Permanent Designated Driver. He and Anne got home late. They went to bed and had sex like Jimmy knew they would ever since she had selected her dress and shoes. Just before they started, Anne said, “I heard what you said about flying. I really don’t want to hear more. I don’t want you going weird on me. I’ve got way too much on my plate.”

So, from then on, his flying was a secret. And, from then on, he tried to fly every night.

At first, at least for the first three months or so, all of his flying was “blind.” As he drifted into sleep he would sense the acceleration’s presence and then (on a good night) the acceleration would come closer and closer until he gingerly engaged with it and the flying commenced.

In the beginning, every time he started to go really fast, he got frightened and he couldn’t help but pull back a tad – and then he would sort of hang there — flying for sure — but it was more like gliding, until little by little, he would lean into it and his speed would steadily accelerate.

To be clear, Jimmy never felt his body was leaving the bed – but rather his interior. He thought it through and felt real comfortable with the word, “interior”. He could have said “soul” and that might have been just as accurate – but it was no way near as comfortable as interior.

So, he would drift down, engage and start up. After months and months, he learned to push back on his fear reflex as they went to speed and lean right into the acceleration. As he flew, Jimmy was often suffused with rapture. The rapture deepened as his speed increased. Some times he would hear a long, long, attenuated groan in the distance and every time he did, it wasn’t until quite a lot further into the flight that he would realize that the groan was coming from him.

Some times he wept tears of joy. Part of him knew he was weeping tears of joy but he didn’t really know for sure until the morning when he would see that the pillow was all damp and there was salt crusted on his eye lids.

The raptures were wonderful. They didn’t occur every time he flew. The raptures came fairly frequently but not on any schedule that Jimmy could figure. It was a mystery but it sure was wonderful. In time, the raptures left a “feel good” residue with him. He was able to reference them in his waking hours – like taking a breath of fresh air. He was happy.

People began to comment that Jimmy smiled a lot for no particular reason. Jimmy knew that he was smiling for a very particular reason. He felt good. He was good. He could fly.

But, of course, since he was human, Jimmy wanted more. For months he flew blind. As he flew, he couldn’t see anything. He was just sleeping as far as visuals were concerned. He tried to dream in some visuals, but when he came up with a scene — the flying immediately stopped — and he was just asleep and dreaming of something.

So, then he decided to work on the flying itself and that opened up a whole new realm of experience for him. He taught himself how to do loops and barrel rolls and Immelmann Turns and the reverse Split S. Some times he would climb high and then simply dive straight down at great speed until some force would gradually pull Jimmy up before he ran out of space and he would finish off the maneuver with a barrel roll.

Jimmy saw a therapist once a week for many years as part of his after-care for PTSD. Jimmy trusted Walter but he was reluctant to tell him about the flying. It seemed crazy. But he had to tell someone. The secret was becoming toxic because it was a secret. His first impulse at the very first had been to tell Anne – but now, he sure didn’t want her to know. She would chalk him up as a PTSD relapser in need of heavy meds. Right or wrong , Jimmy didn’t want Anne putting down his flying.

So he told Walter. He told him straight out. He talked about his flying for half an hour. When Walter asked him what did he think it meant, Jimmy’s heart sank. Walter was being nice about it — but he didn’t believe that Jimmy was flying.

Jimmy said he didn’t know what it meant. He said he was sad that Walter didn’t believe he was really flying. He said he was a little frightened too. He said he was also frightened and sad that he couldn’t tell Anne that he was flying. He told Walter that the flying made him so happy. That he could feel a residue of goodness in himself now that made him smile.

Walter said he hoped Jimmy knew that Walter would never want to take that goodness away from him. And that maybe he should give Anne some credit too.

At the end of their session, Jimmy shook Walter’s hand like he always did and then gave him a hug like he never had before. He didn’t know if he would ever see Walter again.

That night, he and Anne went out to the Japanese restaurant for a Bento Box. He told her straight out about the flying and what Walter had said and how he had been afraid to tell her all this time and that he was even more afraid now after Walter – but that, of course, now he really had to tell her.

Anne didn’t say anything for a long minute or so. Then she said, “You know, I’ve noticed that you’ve changed. You seem so much happier. Much easier to be around. Even your smile is different. You never used to smile much. Now you smile a lot. For a while I thought it was because we’ve gotten better at being together. I mean you make better love to me now than you did when we first started up – and that’s really something, don’t you think?

“ But I knew there was something. A shadow. I’m so sorry you couldn’t tell me. I don’t blame you. My first reaction right now was, “Oh, oh, he’s going down the tubes again.” But then I had another reaction. I felt your joy. I felt your wonder. So my reaction was, ‘Jimmy may be going down the tubes again – but I sure would like to go with him.’ ”

Jimmy said, “Really Anne?

Anne said, “Really, really. I mean Jimmy you get to fly almost every night. You get a big dose of rapture and no hangover. Does that sound like something that needs fixing?”

So, that’s how the secret came out. Jimmy was grateful. But it wasn’t until that night when he flew again while he was sleeping that he felt utter relief.

Almost from the very first, Jimmy O’Hara knew that if there was one bad thing about the flying it was that he seemed destined to be always flying solo. But that night as he leaned into the familiar acceleration and spiraled up, he felt something new and different. It was a presence. He looped left and the presence looped with him. He did a slow roll and the presence came right along with him. His heart soared with rapture.

This was truly an historic flight. He did an Immelmann Turn nice and easy in celebration. The presence came along. The rapture swelled. What a night! The flying was even better! As Jimmy soared and looped and soared, he wondered what the morning would be like.

©2015, RHJA, LLC. All Rights Reserved

Dog Story
by Robert Haydon Jones
Response

This was way before there was such a thing as I-95, and Jimmy remembered the trip to get the beagle from Boston as more of a journey than just a long drive. Actually, it was two long drives back to back. From Westport all the way to Boston; a three-hour interval to rest, eat and pick up the beagle; and then all the way back. It was pretty much a full day from dark to dark with 400 miles of it on the road.

The beagle lived in Cambridge in a sturdy brick cottage draped with ivy and three kinds of flowers. His owner, Professor McKenzie, was a frail, old man with a close-cropped, white beard. He was the professor who had helped Jimmy’s father get his Art History degree Cum Laude from Harvard at age 19, way back 17 years in 1930.

Jimmy’s father had been one of the professor’s favorite students and they had kept in touch through the years. Now Professor McKenzie was going away. That was why he was giving his beagle to Jimmy’s father.

It was very emotional. The professor welcomed Jimmy with a jug of cider to drink while he and Jimmy’s father had martinis. He told Jimmy he was very pleased the O’Hara family would be taking care of this wonderful dog. Cyrano was the best dog he had ever had, he said. He was Harvard smart. He knew all kinds of tricks.

Professor McKenzie cried when they left. Jimmy’s father cried a little too. He hugged the professor and told him he loved him. He promised the O’Hara family would take good care of Cyrano. They put him in his dog bed in the back seat of the Cadillac. Twice on the way back, Jimmy took Cyrano on the leash by the side of the road so he could do his business.

The next morning was a Sunday, so Jimmy slept late. He and his father had to rush to get to the last Mass. It was Palm Sunday. When they got home with the palm stalks, his mother and his little brothers were all upset. They had given the beagle some breakfast and let him out in the yard to do his business. But Cyrano had dug under the fence and run away. He was gone!

Jimmy’s father drove all around the neighborhood looking for Cyrano. Jimmy and his little brothers looked out the windows. Still no Cyrano. Jimmy’s father called the Dog Warden and the police. The problem was that beagles are so smart that a lot of laboratories look to buy them for experiments. A thief could have taken him.

Jimmy’s mom was very upset. She was the one who had let Cyrano out while Jimmy and his father were at Mass. Jimmy’s father told her she shouldn’t blame herself. Jimmy and some of his friends searched the fields between the swamp and Minute Man Hill. Then they looked around the swamp. Still no Cyrano. Jimmy wondered if they should call the professor. Jimmy’s father said there was no way to reach Professor McKenzie where he was.

It was terrible. Jimmy felt a lot of shame. It wasn’t fair. Everyone in the family was upset. It was an accident, Cyrano escaping, but it never should have happened. To be fair, they had kept dogs in the yard before and none had escaped. Jimmy’s dog, Blue, had played in the yard for years until he died. The problem was that none of these other dogs was as smart as Cyrano, the Harvard smart beagle.

Jimmy was thinking Professor McKenzie should have warned them about Cyrano. When Jimmy mentioned this to his father, he wheeled and raised his arm up like he was going to hit Jimmy. Jimmy cowered back – and his father said in a real raspy voice, “Don’t you blame poor Professor McKenzie for anything. Don’t you dare!”

Well, they never saw Cyrano again. Jimmy looked out the bus on his way to and from school – and he kept a lookout from his bike on his paper route six days a week. Jimmy’s father went on down to the police station to file a complaint – and then he also went to the State Police barracks. It was there he learned that beagles were one of the breeds that thieves stole most. It was horrible to think that Cyrano might have ended up as an experiment at some laboratory.

After a while they stopped talking about Cyrano. He was gone and it was the O’Hara family’s fault. They had to accept it.

Then on the fourth of July, a woman named Edna Smith called his father. She had been Professor McKenzie’s housekeeper. A neighbor had called her and told her that a dog was scratching the door of the professor’s empty house and that the dog looked like Cyrano. Edna hurried over and, sure enough, it was Cyrano! Somehow he had found his way all the way back home from Connecticut.

Well, under the circumstances, Edna felt she had to take him in. Cyrano seemed to be in pretty good shape. He was a tad lean. And he had fleas. But this was easily dealt with. Edna lived only about a half mile from the professor’s house – and Cyrano seemed to accept that this was close enough to his old home. He dug his way out from Edna Smith’s yard a few times but he always came back the same day.

It was a great relief to know that Cyrano was safe. Everyone was happy. Jimmy’s father talked about the power of love. How devotion had sustained Cyrano for two hundred miles over hill and dale until he got back to his old home.

Jimmy never forgot about Cyrano and the power of love. It was an amazing story. And yet every time Jimmy would tell the story of Cyrano, the Harvard smart beagle, people believed him. No one asked him if he ever saw Cyrano again. No one asked him whatever became of Professor McKenzie.

The Facts of Life
by Robert Haydon Jones
Inspiration

Randy’s wife Helen was a low level assistant producer on one of the six teams that reported to me at a big advertising agency back in the day and, frankly, the only distinct memory I have of her before she came down with breast cancer and we all became involved in her treatment was that she had astonishingly beautiful breasts.

Helen’s breasts were full, perfectly formed with a slight upturn as if they had been sculpted from a wet dream. They were made all the more exquisite by the fact that she was a drab, mousey, woman with very thick eyeglasses and a thick Brooklyn accent who excelled at the humdrum administrative tasks most producers despise.

It was common knowledge at the agency that I had survived lung cancer. I had been saved by a special “last-ditch” team at Sloan Kettering. They cut out the upper lobe of my left lung – and then pumped me full of God-awful chemo. I survived a cancer almost everyone died from. That’s why Helen thought of me as an expert on cancer. Anyway, she told Randy I was real knowledgeable and he called me and asked if he could meet with me and discuss Helen’s treatment.

I was busier than a one-armed paper-hanger, but I cleared an hour at five the next day and Randy and Helen came to my office – and they told me what they knew about her cancer – and I told them the only advice I could give them was to go to Sloan Kettering and follow the directions they got there.

I had called my oncologist at Memorial, as Sloan Kettering was known then, and he had told me who the best breast man was there – and he promised me he would help get Helen in to see him.

So that’s how I met Randy. With Helen that evening in my office. He had a dazzling smile and a hard athletic body. His hair was lush and curly and going gray nicely in stages like it had been planned. He was a lot older than me — in his sixties, but in great shape. Like me, he had been a Recon Marine — he had been wounded and discharged, nine years before I served.

It was intense being with them. They were such a two. They were terrified.
I remember being very surprised that he was as frightened as she was.

They were so unabashedly grateful that I had gotten her a guaranteed entre to the best breast man at Sloan Kettering that I felt like a genuine big shot. It turned out that no Doc on the planet could have saved Helen – but we didn’t know that then.

As Helen’s treatment progressed, Randy and I met quite often. Helen may have been the ostensible reason we got together – but we had a lot in common. We were both former Marines. We were both following 12 Step programs as recovering alcoholics and drug addicts.

My years of addiction had cost me my marriage. My former wife had gone on to a very happy union with a good guy. I was lucky she had encouraged our children to keep seeing me on weekends when I was available. I stayed connected to them all the way through into recovery.

Even so, when I met Randy, I was living a solitary life. I was a smashing success in advertising but I was still on a learner’s permit at the business of living.

Randy was happily married to Helen and very successful. After the Marines, he had gone down the tubes like so many of us – but he went to rehab, found his way to the rooms and got straight.

Then he used the GI Bill, got an advanced degree and became a psychotherapist. Shortly after he started his practice, he treated a lot of young actors and it turned out that some were on their way up to stardom — so over time, he’d become the therapist of choice for the Broadway crowd. His calendar was full. If you wanted to become his new patient, you had to wait two or three months.

Randy and Yours Truly became very close. We attended 12 Step meetings together. Each of us had a lot of really dark history from our time as Recon Marines. We didn’t talk much about it – hardly at all in fact. You could say Randy and I shared silence about that phase of our lives.

We were connected that way and, of course, Helen also connected us. At first, it looked like we had gotten Helen to Sloan Kettering in the nick of time. It was a small tumor and they dug it out and the margins looked clean. But then they ran her through a course of chemo – and it was all downhill from there.

Helen hadn’t looked sick at all – even after the surgery – but after the chemo, she was a mess. She lost her hair. Suddenly her skin had a yellow tinge. She had wanted to keep working – even though the agency had her on sick leave – but now she was too weak.

They kept asking me for advice even though I kept telling them I didn’t know much. I was just a survivor of cancer.

Randy was horrified when I told him that when I was diagnosed, my then girl friend, Beverly, told me she couldn’t stand the idea of me struggling with lung cancer. She moved her stuff out while I was at my last day of work before my surgery. I haven’t seen her since. I heard she paired up with a rich guy from Greece and is living in Paris.

I didn’t harbor any resentment against Bev. Half of my friends and acquaintances dropped out of my life after word got out I had cancer. I understood. It’s like a hold over from the plague years. Cancer is scary. The fact is the more you know about it, the scarier it is.

Helen got rail thin. She had lost her appetite. She tried snacking but after a while, she couldn’t eat anything except ice cream. So, Randy organized ice cream parties. He’d ask all of his actor clients and everyone at the advertising agency to come to their apartment for an ice cream party.

The place would be jammed. Like I said, some of his clients were very famous actors and they drew a big crowd – and a lot of people from the agency came for Helen. She was very well liked. I was surprised – she worked at a job nobody wanted. But the agency people loved her. David Buxbaum, the head of production, told me, “Helen is a beautiful person. When you talk with her you can feel a real presence, like an aura. It’s not just me — ask anyone who knows her.”

So Randy threw these ice cream parties every two weeks or so on Thursday nights. People would be drinking and smoking and socializing until at exactly 7:30, Randy would announce it was time to help Helen eat her ice cream. He bought all sorts of exotic ice cream flavors at Fairway. Everyone would get a plate. Then Randy would say, “Ready, set, go!” and we would all start.

Helen would work to spoon her portion down. Two, three, four, spoons. Then she would stop. She couldn’t do any more. It was hard to watch. By 8:15, the party was over and the apartment was clear. Everyone pitched in with the clean up – you would never have known there was a party.

Then, at a pistachio-mango tasting, Helen made eye contact with me and her eyes welled up and tears started coming down her cheeks. I went over to her and opened my arms and she snuggled in.

“Jimmy”, she said, “I’m so surprised Randy is so friggin scared. He won’t look. I’m on my own and I don’t want to be. I thought you Recon Marines were real accustomed to death. That’s what Randy told me when we first came in to see you for advice about my tumor. He said that you would be real cold about it. That you were death dealers and you had to be real cold.”

I told Helen that Randy and I were attracted to terror and the Marines had taught us how to seek terror out and then suppress it. Now, decades later, Randy and I had finally learned how to stop suppressing our terror. We just hadn’t had any practice at living with terror. I told Helen that I would talk to Randy about it.

She stopped crying and snuggled a little deeper. “You know, Jimmy” , she said, “If he steps up on this, it will be good for both of us. It will close the circle. Poor Randy, I don’t think he’s ever loved anyone else. He’s a fantastic lover – did you know that? He’d been spoiled rotten when I met him.

I seduced him easy. He was totally blind and ignorant. I’ve been down a few trails but he couldn’t see it. I helped him learn the love part. He’s so innocent – he’s the best thing that ever happened to me.”

Later that evening Randy and I went for our usual after party walk by the river. I talked to him about what Helen needed as one Recon Marine to another and he got it right away. He practically morphed right there in front of me from blind civilian to the salty comrade you would want dug in behind you.

Two weeks later they checked into Hospice. In four days, Helen was dead. There was a very well attended service at the Riverside church. Then Randy flew on out to the Big Island in Hawaii to sprinkle Helen’s ashes in the Pacific off the Kona coast. He didn’t come back and I lost track of him after that.

I had a relapse and hit yet another bottom real hard. It took me years of struggle to get clean and sober. I ran into Randy again about ten years after Helen’s death at an AA weekend retreat in Morristown, New Jersey. He too had slipped away from the program and fought his way back. He had changed his practice from being the go to therapist for Broadway actors to specializing in helping people in the early stages of recovery.

During check-in at the retreat, Randy said his life was good. “I’m in the EZ Pass lane. I go to meetings, I work the Steps and I take advantage of post-menopausal women a day at a time.”

Everyone laughed and I said, “No mercy –- no prisoners. Right?”

Randy said, “You’ve got that right, Marine. No mercy — no prisoners.”

It turned out Randy’s apartment was two blocks over in the West Village from where I lived with my second wife, Brenda, and her two teenage sons. So Randy and I started up again as a twosome in recovery. We usually went to two or three AA meetings a week.

Brenda liked Randy a lot, so every couple of weeks, we would go out to dinner with him and his current companion. It was rarely the same woman twice. These women were all very, very attractive –– expensively dressed and coiffed — in their late fifties and early sixties — at least ten years younger than Randy.

They would cling to Randy. When he’d meet us at the restaurant, their faces would have a rosy glow – as if they had come to us straight from bed. They smiled a lot. They kissed Randy a lot. He’d wink at us like he was being good-natured about it.

After a year or so, Brenda asked me if I thought Randy would ever settle down. I told her I didn’t think he would settle down and that I wasn’t at all jealous of Randy’s life in the EZ Pass lane.

Then Randy came with a woman, Penelope Rifkin, who had been a principal at a very successful fashion boutique. She retired early to care for her husband, a professor at Julliard. They had struggled for years with his leukemia. Sadly, he had died three years back.

But Penelope was very, very happy when we met her with Randy. We were at a club for dinner and dancing and when Penelope and Randy hit the floor they created an immediate sensation. They both could really dance. People stopped dancing to watch them. When they came back to our table, they sparked energy and joy. It was good to be with them.

They were a good fit. As a dance pair and as a couple. He was a lot older than she was but they adjusted well. They throttled down the dancing and the gawking stopped. Before long she was finishing his sentences.

Brenda and Penelope bonded. Brenda’s first husband had also died of leukemia. We became a very happy foursome.

A year later, we were scheduled to have dinner together the night before Randy and I were to depart for the AA July weekend retreat in Morristown but Penelope called Brenda and said she had to cancel. And also that she was going to her cousin’s place on the island of Elba for the rest of the summer. And to please not judge her harshly.

“Jesus”, I said. “What the hell is going on? Randy loves Penelope. He told me he bought her a ring. He wants to marry her.”

“Jimmy,” Brenda said. “Randy is 75. He’s twelve years older than Penelope. You can’t ask her to set herself up for another agonizing round of caretaking.”

There it was. Plain as a big nose. The cold hard truth. I wondered how anyone could be so cold.

Was it okay for anyone to say, “I love you but some day soon you’re likely to be too much trouble, so goodbye – all the best – but good bye.”

I couldn’t see myself saying that. But Brenda thought it was okay. Did women have a different standard?

The next afternoon, I drove on out to Morristown with Randy for the retreat. He was in bad shape. “I can’t believe she’s gone,” he kept saying. “She says she loves me and then she leaves the country. She tells me she’s never had a lover like me and then she gives me my walking papers because I’m too old.”

At the retreat, after dinner, we split up into small groups for check in. Randy led off.

“I’ve been a widower for eleven years – and way happy with a whole lot of ladies. Now, I fall in love with a beautiful woman who says she loves me. I make her moan, I make her faint. I totally conquer her I think. But when I offer her a ring and ask her to live with me – she takes off for Europe. She says I’m too old. She doesn’t want to be my caretaker.”

George Martin, one of the old timers at the retreat, comes over and hugs Randy. “Hey, Marine”, he says, “ You were the one who said, ‘No mercy, no prisoners’”. Randy shrugs George’s arm off and glares at him. Suddenly there’s a lot of tension in the room.

Then Randy flashes that spectacular smile of his. “You’re right George,” he says. “She’s a black widow alright. She lined me up and blew me away. I’m lucky I’m walking around with my cock and balls set intact.”

“Well, what are you going to do now?”

I’m going to count my blessings during the rest of the retreat.”

“And then what?”

“Do some careful reconnaissance and cut me out a prisoner.”

That’s what happened. The weekend before Labor Day, Randy married Jessica Parker, at her family’s estate on Martha’s Vineyard. She is the beautiful, childless, fiftyish, widow of Senator Ashton Parker of Massachusetts. Her father, Aaron Trevelyan, is the former Chairman of the Federal Reserve.

When they returned from their extended three month honeymoon in France, Randy asked Brenda and Yours Truly if we would resume meeting him and his lady for dinner every two weeks or so.

We did and we do. They are great fun. They are very attractive. They fit together like magnets. They exude zest for each other and for life.

Early on, I asked Randy, if he missed Penelope.

“Of course, I miss her,” he said with a smile. “I miss her in my bones every day. And I know Penelope is in distress because I appear to be so happy with Jessica.

But her real distress will come when I become terminally ill. Obviously, Jessica has all the necessary resources for caretaking me with a minimum of bother. But, of course, I won’t be going that route when my time comes.

I will use my 45. The only part I haven’t figured out is the note. Does Penelope really think a recon Marine would let his woman care-take him down the last trail?

I’ll fire the last shot in this war. Penelope will find out what Marines really mean when we say, ‘No mercy, no prisoners.’ ”

“What about Jessica?”

“Hey, Marine, she already knows what it means.”