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Unexpected eventuality from Self-Evident: We Hold These Tooths
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I believe I’ve been honest with you from the get-go1 and here I have to admit that the odd character which serves as the title of this story leapt onto my screen with not so much as a “by your leave.” It didn’t even knock.
It is clearly a “B” yet not clearly what we’d call “native.” It has a sort of foreign flavor as if it were introduced by an insidious undercover agent or who knows what? An undocumented foreign worker-person with ulterior motives? Someone affiliated with a fifth column? A golfer?
That last really concerns me. It would be worse than wrong. If a golfer has infiltrated my laptop, played through so to speak, I need to procure a new one. It would so tee me off.
Seriously folks. I inadvertently hit a couple of keys at the same time, and there it was!
If not for the tragedy related on page 57 I would ask Ben. If any of my characters have (or, in his case, had) a clue regarding how I came to create the ß which is floating up there, and frankly, distracting me as I try to move along, he would ß (or would have ßeen) the one. (I can’t help but eye it with suspicion.)
Its appearance led to the obvious question. To ß or not to ß? And here, full frontal, I need to admit that while I have a great deal of fun with Shakespearean references, as also with my frequent interjection of French words and phrases (non?), I am profoundly taken with the latter, and have never seen a live production of a Shakespeare play that much moved me. Some of the film adaptations, yes. But the live shows? Meh. Particularly Shake in the Park where you can’t hear half of the lines and mosquitoes are eating you alive. Donna agrees with me on both scores, so you can easily imagine I hold her in high esteem and thus decided to let her in at this point. [She knocked.]
[Say “Hi.” It’s only polite.]
It seems Donna doesn’t know any better than I whence the ß, so it’s likely a good time to move along.
In her work with the National Forest Service Donna has seen it all. She started in a Kaibab fire tower and worked her way up—which is pretty darn oxymoronic—one of those “jumbo shrimp” idioms. The only way to rise in the forest biz from people-ing (person-ing? womanizing?) a fire tower, is to work your way down. The one time she actually went up from that job was when Rick showed up with a baggy of weed2 … but I guess we shouldn’t go there.
Moreover, while she saw a lot from that high perch, the “all” came later. Mostly she saw treetops, peaks and clouds, many exquisite sunsets, and a few times over three seasons, smoke.3
None of those fires amounted to much, for which she was grateful, being a friend to Smokey and all the other forest critters.
When Donna moved down (or up) to full-time employ she became a real Forest Ranger! With a uniform and a gun! She roved campgrounds and trails, admonished miscreant hikers, joined search parties for lost souls, picked up after people, chased bears away from picnic baskets and did all the other fun and interesting things that come with the job.
The best days, of course, were the ones where she saw no other person. Everything is pretty pacific in the woods when there are no humans present to muck things up.
The exception that challenged that rule came on a rainy Thursday afternoon when she was tasked with checking in on the Hull Cabin about a mile south of the Grand Canyon. When it was rented out rangers would drop by, unannounced, from time to time to make sure everything was on the up and up.
People, as noted above, can be troublesome. You don’t want the oldest cabin in the Kaibab burnt, besmirched or broken by some idiot with a half-gallon of whiskey, matches, a knife, a gun or a weird sense of humor. No indeed!
Who did she meet there but … yes! Rick! From the “Festive Frolic in the Firetower” as it has just now come to be known. They had been a pretty serious item back in the day but hadn’t seen each other in years. (If she’d bothered to read the rental report she wouldn’t have been surprised, but then this story wouldn’t be so exciting. Would it?)
She knocked. [He, like me, answered her beckoning tap.] She did a double take. [See how exciting this tale has abruptly become? Everything turning on a dime!]
“Rick? Is that you?” [Which is about as lame a bit of dialogue starter as I could come up with.]
He grinned, that winning, toothy grin (dimples and all, like our friends Clarence Prentiss and Ed “Speedy” Wink, whom we met somewhere upslope.) “Donna. You’re a ranger now!” [Whoo boy, I’m not sure I should stick with this conversation.] “It’s been too long. Way too long. Come in out of that rain!”
“I thought you landed in ... wasn’t it Charleston?” [Takes off her Smokey Bear hat and Official Jacket and shakes them.]
“Yeah. Four years in South Carolina was too much. Had to come back west. Some people like sticky and wet, I’m more into hot and dry.” He closed the door. “I’ve never hugged anyone in uniform. Is that against the rules?”
She laughed. “Guess I wasn’t wearing a uniform last time, was I?”
“If memory serves, you weren’t wearing anything.”
[They both laugh, and embrace.]
For the balance of the afternoon they traded stories of the missing years. His work as a paralegal had led to his seeing about as much “all” as her forest gig. Criminal law involved a host of the sort of people who shouldn’t be left alone in the woods.
“And people hiding out in the wilderness,” she shook her head. “We’ve had some of that. One man accused of murder was stalking me for a while.”4
“No kidding? Damn!”
“He was leaving notes under my windshield wiper.”5
“Weren’t you scared as hell?”
“Nervous. Yeah. But ...” she pointed at the gun on her hip. “I can take care of myself. One time I even fired at him as he raced off on a motorcycle. Over his head. Warning shot.”6
Rick shook his head in disbelief,7 “You’re something else. I thought spending summers alone in a tower was gutsy. But ...”
“Goes with the territory, I guess. You do what you have to do when you have to do it.”
“Did they catch him?”
“Not to my knowledge. Not that I’ve heard.”8
“Do you think he’s still after you?”
“Haven’t gotten a note in a long time.9 No telling.”
“Did you worry about a car bomb? One of the cases I worked on, the client installed a remote starter so he could fire up the engine without being in the car.”10
“Wow. Must have been really scared to go that far.
“Gang thing. Serious. Trouble is, it didn’t work.”11
“You mean it didn’t start the car?
“No, they attached the bomb to the turn signal. It didn’t go off until he reached the first intersection. Kaplooie.”12
“Wow again. Did they catch the perp?”
“Not to my knowledge. On the bright side, our client had already paid the firm a large retainer. I’d say there’s a lot of bad characters running around out there on the loose.”13
Toward evening he invited her to stay for dinner.
“Camp fare, you know, nothing fancy.”
“Sounds super.”
After the meal they moved outside, the rain having ended, and settled in camp chairs. While they watched the sun set, an obvious question came up. “You haven’t mentioned ...” he hesitated. “Well, what I mean ...” he paused again and bit a knuckle,14 cocked his head and pursed his lips. “Are you …?”
“Single? I noticed you were looking at my ring. A gift from someone along the way. Yes. And you haven’t mentioned either.”
“Same. Haven’t met the right one, I guess.” Then, looking her square in the eyes, “And I’ve never forgotten you. Why did we call it off, anyway? Has to have been the dumbest thing ...”
“I’ve not forgotten either.” She leaned over and kissed his cheek. “And I clearly remember why. You were headed for law school but you wanted to marry me anyway. That didn’t make sense ...”
“And you didn’t want to leave the Kaibab ...”
“This felt like a career to me, and it is, and your offer seemed ...” Donna fluttered her hand.
“You got that right. Like I said earlier, Duke Law® didn’t work for me. I really had to scramble for a while. But I’m back.”
“You’re back.”
“To where we left off?”
“We’ll see. I’m not unwilling.”
“Seems to me you were never unwilling.” He winked what could only be described as a lascivious wink.
“Ri-ick. Come on!” She play-punched his arm. “I’m not easy and I’m armed and dangerous.”
Rick raised his hands. “Please ma’am, don’t shoot! I’ll do whatever you say.” Then he grinned his dimpled, winning grin, took her hand in his and squeezed. “I have high hopes.”
“We’ll see. What will ß will ß.”15
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Note per footnotes: Substack renumbers when I post, but footnotes sometimes refer to previous super important stuff in the print version, so originals are in [#].
1 [124] As honest as a perpetrator of fictions can be, that is. I mean, if you’re “telling stories” you are automatically suspect. What I’m trying to get at here is that everything I have made up, to this point at least, is true. As both the composer and the compositor of this melange, I take full responsibility as long as I’m not to be held personally accountable.
2 [125] Yes. As you assumed, they got naked and so forth. The yoga mat came in handy. Fortunately the only smoke seen that day was inside the building. Hey, she was a youngster. Only 22, and our brains don’t congeal until about then. It was a formative experience, necessary to this story, if a bit irresponsible.
3 [126] Seven, actually, not counting the above mentioned incident.
4 [127] She’s making this up.
5 [128] This too.
6 [129] Oh, come on, Donna! Is this the uniform talking? Does it come with built in “macho?” Really. I never. My high esteem is weakening.
7 [130] A reasonable reaction.
8 [131] Well, duh. He didn’t exist in the first place, Donna. Donna!
9 [132] Finally telling the truth. Geez.
10 [133] Birds of a damn feather here. Not true. Trying to one-up Donna.
11 [134] Because of course it didn’t exist.
12 [135] See what happens when you give characters free rein? Sad. So sad.
13 [136] A matter of degree but there seem to be bad characters in this story, too..
14 [137] Back to the unvarnished tooths.
15 [13] I see that Donna’s been looking over my shoulder. But that’s okay. I always let my characters read my stuff and if she’s upset about my critique of her—well, let’s call it what it is, “outright lying”—she’ll just have to deal with it. My obligation is to my readers. I don’t make stuff up when I’m making stuff up.
Copyright© 2020, Cecil Bothwell, All rights reserved.
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