Freedom Fiction Journal

Pulp to grind your senses!!! An eclectic mix of all flavours of genre fiction

FREEDOM FICTION JOURNAL
Annual Anthology Vol. 03

ISBN: 978-1-105-46586-4
Cover Art: Eleanor Bennett

Buy your copy today by following this link (click me)

An eclectic mix of all flavours of genre fiction

The very best of fiction from 2011 now on sale online. A grand compilation of 196 high quality 8.5 inch × 11.0 inch pages containing 19 spectacular tales that will entertain you every time you pick it up.

Contents:
“Trash*Can*Sam*” by Chris Castle
“Speech Bub” by Chris Castle
“How Do You Say This In Russian?” by Alexandra Burt
“According to Lizzy” by Aloysa
“Quit” by Jon-Paul Stracco
“Jury” by Jim Spry
“They Call Me Madman” by Andrew Bud Adams
“The Eye Of The Beholder” by Rob Ambrose
“The Thunderbird” by Emal Rustemi
“Vanguard” by Sam S. Kepfield
“Jackson Jones: PPI” by Nicholas Coriz
“Ravana” by James Newman
“Cleaning Man” by Tom Larsen
“Playmates” by Thomas Cannon
“I, Sita” by Shefali Choksi
“That Holiday Newsletter” by Diane Arrelle
“Last Bus To Home Planet” by Ujjwal Dey
“Beginners” by Chris Castle
“Voodoo Radio” by Chris Castle

Check “Twisted Tales” section for past anthologies (vol 01 and vol 02).

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

FFJ Vol 03Editor’s Note

Welcome to all connoisseurs of fiction and pulp. What a year it has been. The quality of Freedom Fiction Journal (FFJ) publication has grown leaps and bounds through the incredible talent it attracts from the whole wide world. The exceptional authors presented throughout the year have made an impactful presentation of what FFJ now stands to be – a home to diverse and eclectic mix of all genres of superbly crafted short stories.

We launch this third Annual Anthology Edition with great respect and gratitude to the authors, artists and fans who have made us a common name on the internet. We hope to continue bringing a weekly dose of the best and most entertaining fiction spread in the new year as well.

We start of this anthology with back-to-back stories from our most successful and prolific author, Chris Castle. He weaves magic with words. The emotions and sentiments he brings to the fore with his human tales are unmatched so far in FFJ in all its years of existence. So two of his stories start the anthology and then two of his stories end the anthology.

We discovered many new brilliant writers in the past year. Alexandra Burt, Aloysa, Rob Ambrose and Emal Rustemi have brilliant new pulp tales that will make you wonder at the possibilities of fiction and how it can be used to map the human consciousness, endeavours and attitudes. Andrew Bud Adams, Jon-Paul Stracco and Nicholas Coriz surprise us with passionate writing that adds to genre fiction’s best.

Our last year’s favourite, Sam S. Kepfield returns with a historical fiction saga that will warp your mind. James Newman also returns this year with a modern take on a mythological villain. Lot more to name and discover but I won’t spoil your fun. I will simply state that we have 19 spectacular tales awaiting your pleasure in this book.

We provide an eclectic mix of fiction from varying genres in short stories. FFJ is listed in both Ralan.com and Duotrope.com literary guides and meets their guidelines to be listed in their respective websites. We have contributions in fiction and/or art from diverse countries such as: USA, UK, Ireland, Canada, Australia, Germany, Sweden, The Netherlands, Slovenia, Israel, Philippines, Thailand, India, etc. We at FFJ enable sharing of thoughts and expanding of horizons. We also nominate stories for the Pushcart Prize every year.

We have a delightful spread for you in this Anthology. So let the ink flow, behold the canvas – the third Anthology is alive.

Best Wishes,
Ujjwal Dey
Editor for third year of FFJ
http://freedomfiction.com/

FREEDOM FICTION JOURNAL
An eclectic mix of all flavours of genre fiction

December 2011

Download the latest: Journal Issue 11; Volume 03

* “The Eye Of The Beholder” by Rob Ambrose
* “Quit” by Jon-Paul Stracco
* “Last Bus To Home Planet” by Ujjwal Dey
* “That Holiday Newsletter” by Diane Arrelle
* “Voodoo Radio” by Chris Castle
* “Storyteller” by Mark Kiewlak
* “Jackson Jones: PPI” by Nicholas Coriz
* “Vanguard” by Sam S. Kepfield

Check “Twisted Tales” section for past issues and anthologies.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Hello Freedom Friends,

Another successful year completed by FFJ. Many thanks to all our authors, artists, fans and Freedom Friends. It is your dedication, love and passion that keep us going into the 4th year of Fiction – an eclectic mix of all genres of short stories. Welcome to 2012 folks.

We promise to keep you enthralled week after week with new weekend reads and more fun through connected RSS feeds. Yes, those links you see in the left-side column is also for your entertainment and information. Linked there are: Guardian UK Book News, Bizarro Blog and Comics, Hot Air Cold Love book and movie reviews and of course the new entertainer Gyan Dube P.I.

Gyan Dube P.I. is the new feature presentation from the established stables of Freedom Fiction Journal. Is it a serialized novel? Is it a graphic novel? Is it a comic strip? No, it is “A Novel In Cartoons” – vivid experiences of a metro-based private investigator serialized along with funny images from his daily life and lifestyle. This was launched in December 2011. Don’t forget to like his Facebook Page soon.

As always, this quarterly edition collates the fiction published this last quarter of 2011 into a free downloadable PDF file, for your archives and benefit of reading on mobile devices on the go.

Chris Castle returns with a fourth masterpiece in 2011. He is our favourite and you will fall in love with his words. Newcomers, Rob Ambrose and Jon-Paul Stracco surprise us with insightful and hard-hitting pulp fiction. Very promising authors these two and we keep an eye out for them. Sam S. Kepfield returns this year with a superb and epic historical fiction. And there is still more to brag about the other authors’ tales but let’s not spoil the fun. Read on and enjoy.

Pulp To Grind Your Senses !!!

Best Wishes,
Ujjwal Dey
Editor for Issue 11, Vol 03.
Freedom Fiction Journal | http://freedomfiction.com/

Editor’s Note: Another story? Didn’t we say the previous story was the last one for 2011. Well the demand for good weekend reads doesn’t stop on New Year’s Eve it seems. So your Editor has penned some fun for the morning after the party. It won’t cure hangovers, but may help bring cheer and fluent bowel movements…promise! Happy New Year 2012! – Ujjwal Dey for FFJ

Synopsis: What happens when you wish to run far away from everything familiar? To escape the dreariness of our daily lives? Why of course you start afresh somewhere else and enter a new world of dreariness or dread!!!

About the Author: Ujjwal Dey is a widely published pulp fiction author and also the Editor of Freedom Fiction Journal. Most of his fiction find a home at Bikernet.com magazine. He loves riding his Enfield Bullet motorcycle on long trips. His travelogues are published at royalenfield.com since 2007. He reads and writes fiction in various genres. His choice in music and movies also spans various genres.

In this humourous science fiction, Mr. Joe King will ship himself to another planet for a job and then retrun to Earth for good accompanying two delightful imports.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *


Last Bus To Home Planet
by Ujjwal Dey

“Men are from Mars. Women are from Venus. Computers are from hell.”
- Anonymous user

The siren grew louder as we approached the terminal. The evacuation of Zeebu-5, a barely habitable planet, was almost complete; except for me and Kelly. High among the pile of rubble dug up by the robotic mining machines, the sun was setting for the second time today, completing my last hour on this planet which was rapidly spinning out of control. The dense atmosphere looked amazing in its spread of rainbow colours stretching across the entire sky like a canopy over a raving mad circus of freaks. The changing skyline, however, suggested impending doom – not only was the planet spinning faster with the influx of gigantic comet RT-207’s gravitational pull, but this tiny planet was also going to lose its North Pole as the comet surged along upwards and around in a loop. The comet had been unpredictable with the gases running out of steam, not before one brilliant finale, a spectacle of intense incineration catapulting it without direction. But this was the least of my troubles.

Having taken the lousy job of ‘Personnel Manager’ with the space exploration team this summer, I had hoped to escape my loneliness on Earth, while also getting the most spectacular vacation for free. At the age of 30, this was no mid-life crisis; just a logical conclusion that I needed to get away and not just by banging the door against my nosy drunk neighbour’s face. Who needs people? They just sap your strength, take up your time, and destroy your dreams. I could do that all by myself by watching TV all day.

“You single?”

“Yes sir. I had a cat but she too ran away with a fella.”

“Any physical deficiencies?”

“None. Why do you ask?” He stared intently at me, and I added, “My ex-wife was my reference only because she has kept my papers as hostage against alimony.”

“Just routine questions Mr. King”

“Just call me Joe”

“Okay Mr. King, how do you prefer to be paid – a deposit in a bank on Earth or the space currency at Zeebu-5 used by trading spaceships?”

“Well, I am signing up for the two-year contract. So space-money for me.”

He adjusted the clutter of hard-copies on his desk, hit a key on his computer and leaned back on his chair.

“Mr. King, please proceed to the factory laboratory. You will be given a standard test. You should be able to smash the duress chip on a dummy robot within the first 3 attempts,” he paused and looked at me from head to paunch, “you can always apply again after 6 months if you fail.”

I thought about my beautiful, sexy ex-wife. Of being so far away for so long from my parents, my prodigious cousins, my successful friends. I saw the vibrant, bustling city outside the window. I got the job with my first swing of the hammer of course!

So the job of managing robotic personnel on a distant planet seemed luxurious. I mean how much monitoring will a robotic mining machine need anyway? The engineers collecting statistical data and doing minor configurations on these machines were sub-humans – a mix of human cloning and android technology – they had limited functionality because they were custom-made for specific purposes. They also came under my job profile, ‘to manage resources with minimal damage’. What my job really was? I had to use a sledgehammer on the ‘duress’ chip to disable the robot or sub-human who was worn out due to intense labour conditions on Zeebu-5. There was no repair as that was not feasible expenditure. It was just cheaper to replace the bots whenever the mining merchant spaceships landed at the beginning of every week. Based on their condition, the ‘dead’ ones were either recycled or used as fuel by the spaceships.

&&&

I met her only after 7 days of work on Zeebu-5, when I was to head back from the port, having signed-off on the status of my personnel. The mining company’s senior managers would go through my report, a single page listing all the functioning features check-marked. The ships never landed. They just held traction-belts that sucked up the planet’s goodies mined by the bots. The taxi-pods transported the senior managers to the dusty floor of Zeebu-5 for their observations and then back onboard their ships.

“Will you be boarding the bus back to Sector D-27?”

“Huh?!?”

“I am the driver of the company bus ferrying the sub-humans.” She studied me with her pretty eyes fluttering like delicate petals enclosing a blue diamond in each fold. “I don’t think we have interfaced before.”

“Joe! Call me Joe!” I managed to mutter.

“Joe!”

“My name is Joe. I am the Personnel Manager for Zeebu-5.”

“Hi, I am Kelly.”

I took that bus even though I needed to be back at my office in Sector A-11. The stench of the heated plastinated skins of the sub-humans on the bus didn’t matter. All I could smell was the bright red hair of Kelly as I sat in the very front row. The hot, torrid sun of this planet could cook an egg inside a hen, but I was provided sufficient means to subsist with an office that multi-functioned as a lounge and a home and a gym as well. The mining company had built that deluxe office expecting that brilliant, qualified people would be glad to work in space explorations and thus the luxury – now entirely serving me.

“So Joe, how long you been here?”

“Just a week. Didn’t meet any other officers as I am almost confined to Sector A-11. It has the receiving station that feeds on all the data from the mining activities at all active Sectors on Zeebu-5.”

“Busy on a remote planet?”

“Isn’t everybody?” And we laughed as we agreed how ironical it was that we were space-explorers with no time to admire its expansive beauty.

“Sector D-27 has the mobile observatory currently,” she glanced back and smiled, “Care to stargaze? Bring your own wine!”

“I would love to. See you after sundown.”

“I will pick you up.” The bus hovered along diagonally now and took a stop at a pod awaiting instructions.

“Why are we stopping?”

“Well Joe, I hailed you a cab.”

She is an angel. I couldn’t stop looking at her. She opened the door and the hot wind hit me like kisses from a million dust-mites. But I was still smiling back… at her.

&&&

The evening was cool, with the landscape stretching as far as I could see – a calm sea of dirt, the dust-clouds descending now after the day’s excavation work was done. I wore a tie. She wore her uniform.

“So Kelly, why are there automated transport pods whereas a driver for that bus?”

“I was supposed to ferry around tourists on that bus. This dump has no prospects for a tourism industry. So they decided it was cheaper to keep the bus here along with me.” She slid the radio telescope’s digital monitor toward me and continued, “That bus ain’t too comfortable for the rich space-tourists you know.”

I peeked into the screen; she had found emissions of a moon of planet Casseeno-8, a tourism hub with luxury vessels with the brilliant, talented, qualified people employed full-time.

“What did they think, a desert safari concept here on Zeebu-5?”

“Yup! I have been here for 3 years and you are the only man I found who doesn’t stink like burning tyres.”

“Hahahahaha!” I laughed at that compliment. “That’s because I sweat. And I take 3 showers a day. I got the extra water option in my contract by forgoing all public holidays for the next 2 years.”

She looked puzzled but smiled, “I stay indoors. No manual labour.”

“How do you stay clean while stationed in Sector D-27? That’s the busiest mining operation on this planet.”

“I just stay in the bus all day,” she smiled as she noticed me admiring her bright buoyant hair again, “I wouldn’t have survived if they changed my job role.”

“Ah! That would never happen.” I beamed. “The amount of approvals and verifications and checks and formalities involved in that is more expensive to the mining company than leaving you here till the end of your term.”

She seemed puzzled again and sighed, “I wish they would consider me again for tourism industry.”

I wished against that silently. I felt filthy and frustrated and selfish and evil. I have only just met her. She already wants to leave. Not because of me, but I like her. I came here to be alone. Why did I ride that bus? Why do I blush and giggle when I am with her, as if I have hit puberty all over again? I passed her the wine.

&&&

All the robots and sub-humans and the space-explorers such as me were centrally employed by the Government. We were working for the mining company which paid our salary, but the Government maintained the resource utility to discourage misuse, abuse or wastage. I knew there was nothing Kelly or I could do for her job role – as long as our contract was active, neither the Government, nor the mining company would take the effort to re-evaluate our needs or skills.

Days and weeks passed. Kelly and I met almost every week, as often as thrice a week sometimes. She knew a lot about this planet, I guess from her tourism training. She even knew a few good songs for a bus party to sing along on the way to a good tour. It became routine for me to take the bus back to Sector D-27 every week from the port. None of the sub-humans would sing, or they couldn’t. But Kelly and I would rock as the bus hovered steadily, taking a different detour every week – by the edge of a scenic artificial crater, a winding uphill climb on a granite mountain, skimming over the glittering water recycling plant, through a forest of windmills sourcing energy, even chased a dust storm once – it was as if we were the only ones living on this planet and everyone else just faded away into the background.

By the end of my third month on Zeebu-5, I managed to kiss Kelly. A week later I lost all contact with Sector D-27.

I should have known that this oasis in hell wasn’t going to last too long. The reports from the mining stations became sporadic and soon turned to junk values streaming at ad hoc intervals. The visits from senior managers were announced to be fortnightly. But they never arrived. What came was a platoon of smart space-troopers. These were indeed humans but they were so organised and disciplined that you would deem those men behind the gas masks as nothing detectably human. Confined to my office, I was told to continue with my job – which was to report that gibberish was being reported to me by all mining stations, which was rubbished by my superior who refused to come down on ground-zero to witness this growing chaos himself. I tried all the standard procedures and solutions suggested by the mining company. They just demanded that I keep at it, repeat the exercises till I make more sense in my submitted reports. It was like convincing a doctor that his patient is dying while he played golf, demanding that you continue with the prescribed medication.

The platoon of troops finally declared evacuation, a week away from my fourth month’s paycheck.

“Mr. King, you are not required to serve here anymore as it is too dangerous to hammer the duress chips now,” the Lieutenant announced at my doorstep, “We are taking charge of the mining shipment and you are expected to be evacuated by 1800 hours today.”

“Thank you! I was hoping I didn’t have to hammer those crazy sub-humans, they are on a rampage. The robots ran out of fuel thankfully, but the sub-humans are really tearing this place apart.” I looked around the arid desert, an entire planet which had been mined extensively from end to end, “I mean what’s left of it.”

“Yes, the heat wave combined with radiation from the stray comet – we were hoping to recover some of them – but they have melted and the fried microprocessors are giving them the insanity.”

“Am I still safe in this office?”

“Yes, till 1800 hours,” he glanced at his watch, “we all have to leave by then.”

“Are the other human space-explorers onboard? Did you manage to save them from this chaotic sub-human rioting?”

“There are no other humans Mr. King,” the Lieutenant raised his visor, “you are the only man appointed here – the rest are automated robots or sub-humans.”

“What?”

“Yes,” he looked back at the driver on the radio, “I must see to the salvage operations now. A pod will pick you up at 1500 hours. I am here to ensure that no sensitive data of yours gets lost.”

“Everything is already transmitted.” I persisted, “But surely there are other people.”

“Mr. King, there is no need for another human here. This office of yours monitors your health. The pods transport you. The robots provide you the sustenance. ”

The thundering sky with its acidic rain couldn’t have drowned the sound of my heart breaking. I packed my bags and made a last ping to Sector D-27. All I wanted to do was get away and now I am alone and still can’t get away from the misery of being a human – the loneliness, the melancholy, the emotions, the cowardice of trying to escape my own nature. The only woman I could love was probably losing her processors, frying in the intense heat of gamma radiation. As if the cosmos was telling me I don’t belong here or there or anywhere on this vast universe. Then she showed up outside my office with her bus.

“We gotta get outta here Joe!” she yelled through the thunderstorm.

“I was trying to reach you. We gotta get outta here Kelly.”

“You look good,” she said as I stepped into the bus. There were only 3 rotting sub-humans in the bus and she was one of them.

“Because I am human”

“Wow! Would love to be in your shoes right now.”

“Why is that? I hate myself. The only time I was happy in the past 3 years was the 3 months with you.” I studied her, trying to make sense of her melting body, her once luscious hair was now dry, frizzled and lifeless, like a doormat made of straw.

“Because the humans go back to Earth while sub-humans get to go to a junkyard on another remote planet. And because my plastic shoes melted hours ago” she still smiled with her face contorted through liquefying plastinated tissue.

I studied her more keenly – it’s like a doormat made of straw, chewed by a cow and spat back on top of her pretty head. The head itself now looking like a Pablo Picasso painting morphing into a Salvador Dali sculpture.

“To the port, Kelly. And drive toward the last terminal”

“What will you do when you get back to planet Earth?”

“Find a good mechanic. I think I got a job for you there and maybe we could use this bus too.”

“You were always a dreamer, weren’t you Joe, a stargazer?” she smiled as steaming beads of liquid poured across her head.

I imagined she was crying, but she couldn’t. She was just differently programmed than the other sub-humans, so she could be chatty as a tourist-bus-driver. We reached the last exit terminal, bypassing the quarantine bay setup at front. The troopers didn’t want to take any chance with the salvaged goods and even put themselves through the medical checks every 4 hours. I checked in with my id to report my luggage. Kelly was cut up into 2 pieces and packed in a pair of my duffel bags.

“You have to check in those 2 sub-human passengers at quarantine bay,” the guard informed.

“Yeah sure, just don’t lose my luggage – critical data.”

“Okay, your office stuff is pre-approved.”

“And the bus, it is my recommendation to ship it to Earth as it has survived major damage compared to the other stuff here.”

“You are the boss of Zeebu-5 on these things Mr. King.”

“Thanks!” I turned around and signalled the surviving 2 sub-humans from the bus to walk toward the quarantine bay ahead.

“Glad you made it Mr. King,” the Lieutenant spoke even as he waved his right arm to his men to prepare for take-off.

“Yes, can’t wait to get home!”

&&&

First thing I did when I landed in New York back on planet Earth was to grab my luggage. Second was to send in my report – a 300 page file I put together to impress the bigwigs back home. Next – I encashed all my space-currency – the three months’ pay amounting to a loaded wallet. Thankfully, the mining company wanted to retain my services. More gratefully, they couldn’t change my job profile before the end of my term without losing a fat sum, so they offered foreclosure of my contract with severance pay. I asked for the tourist bus instead.

“Yeah! They checked the bus, useless to us, old technology, but robust – a good deal Mr. King.” The same guy behind the same cluttered desk, he leans back and smiles.

“Yes, it is. Where do I sign?”

“Yeah, just take this memo to the accountant and she will credit your account with the last 3 weeks’ pay and the bus.”

The bus purred like a kitten on Earth, a real charm to drive. I took it straight to California with my duffel bags. The tech savvy nerds I knew there drooled at finding my sub-human specimen in front of them. I quoted the fees. They would have done it for free – but we agreed on the repair costs. She was put together and re-plastinated and reanimated. Her processors and memory drive survived.

First thing she said was, “Joe, look at that clean desert!”

“Hey Kelly, how about running a tourist bus service across Mojave to Las Vegas with me?”

**** THE END ****

Copyright Ujjwal Dey 2011

Clipart Image: Ebenezer Pulp Art

Editor’s Note: With this last story of 2011, let me wish all readers, fans, Freedom Friends…and most of all our consistent, dedicated team of authors a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!!! May this festive season bring joy in the hearts of all of you and your loved ones. We are grateful to you all and wish the very best for you all. Look forward to our new Anthology Vol.03 in the coming weeks. – Ujjwal Dey for FFJ

Synopsis: Arty thinks he’s seen it all from behind the bar, but his star bouncer changes all that.

About the Author: Jon-Paul loves living in the hills of Vermont with his wife and infant daughter. He enjoys wandering the woods, running barefoot, going on adventures and making up stories. His work has appeared in Pulp Empire: Volume Five and Yesteryear Fiction.

In this engaging pulp fiction, we find filth, fights, love, longing and a deserving happy ending (’tis after all the festive season). So let’s end the year with a big bang!

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Quit
by Jon-Paul Stracco

Larry stood over the three bikers.

“Let’s go,” he said sternly.

The whole bar watched as the three leather clad, tattoo covered, muscle bound dudes crawled out the door, groaning and rubbing their jaws. I was glad to see them go. They had been throwing bottles against the wall, causing a general ruckus.

A man with a cowboy hat and a handlebar mustache jumped out of the crowd and grabbed Larry by the hand, shaking it ferociously.

“The names Smithfield,” he said. “I’ll pay you twenty thousand dollars to come to Dallas. I’ll train you to be a fighter.”

“No thank you,” Larry said politely, diverting his eyes. He took his perch upon his stool by the door.

The man stared grimly at Larry like he had hurt his child. “I never ask twice,” he said, with a scowl. “Idiot!”

He kicked open the door and was gone.

As much as I liked having Larry, as much as I needed him, the man was right, as were the others who had come before him. They had made offers of ten, twenty, thirty thousand to Larry just to get on a plane. Compared to the peanuts I was throwing him, I had to ask, was Larry an idiot?

He wasn’t family or friend, and the bar was a dump; crooked stools, lopsided pool tables, and a skipping jukebox. Everything was scratched, chipped, cracked or torn. The place stunk, reeked of sour beer, cigarette smoke and puke. The town wasn’t any better with its broken windows, walls missing bricks, graffiti, bleary eyed factory workers, and the wailing of sirens.

The people were thirsty though, and eager to exchange fistfuls of crumpled bills for cheap beer. Where they got the money I never knew, but it didn’t matter. Life was cruel, but somehow I got Larry.

Six foot three and built like a rhinoceros, Larry took champagne bottles to the forehead, fists to the chin, boots to the ribs, chairs to the back, brass knuckles to the sternum, chair legs to the knees, pool cues to the wrists, baseball bats to the neck and tire irons to the stomach. He would bleed of course, but never bend, certainly never break. He was as good as bouncers come, the equal of three strong, well trained men. Without him, the bar would have been overrun every night, money and alcohol stolen, men beaten to death in the corner.

Five years can seem like ten or even twenty when every night something bad can happen. You dig your trenches and hope for the best. My plan was simple; work for six years, and save one hundred thousand dollars. Might not seem like much, but it was enough to buy a trailer out in the mountains with a little land and live simply with a tiny pension I got from my time in the army. With one year to go I had seventy thousand. This was the big year, the money maker. Everything was paid for, there was no debt. My only expenses were the rent, which was practically nothing, the electric, the alcohol and Larry.

Sometimes I wondered if it was all thanks to Larry. Because of him I didn’t have to hire three men, didn’t have to waste time hiring and firing. But life can screw you so bad, that when you finally catch a break you don’t go analyzing it too much. You figure, I deserve this one. I told myself, “Just hold on for one more year.”

Usually I met Larry outside the bar around one o’clock, hulking in the doorway, his facial expression unreadable. We would shake hands, and exchange a short greeting. He was almost never late, so on the Tuesday at the beginning of September, the day after he beat up the bikers, when he was missing I noticed how hollow the entryway felt, but figured he was due to be late once in his life.

The day started funny. The wind was gusting hard enough to crack open the door; occasionally, blowing in little bits of paper. A car repeatedly honked at an old lady trying to push a shopping cart with a jammed wheel across the street. My first customer, some college kid in a soccer jersey, way out of his territory, blushed after he spilled beer all over his pants. Finally, a good thirty minutes after opening, Larry strode in and plunked down at the bar next to the kid.

“I’ve got to talk to you,” he said, looking directly into my eyes.

This surprised me right off because the truth was that Larry and I hadn’t done much talking in the whole five years that we had worked together. I didn’t know where he came from, where he lived, if he was married or had kids, who his parents were, what his hobbies were, nothing. Frankly, it didn’t matter.

He had hopped out of a sputtering blue pickup five years ago, strolled in the front door while I was sanding down a section of the bar, and filled the whole room like some kind of human mountain. I had hired him on the spot.

There were handshakes in the morning and at closing, grumblings about the weather or the sports teams, but that was it. We both knew the odds were against us. What else was there to say?

“What is it Larry?” I said.

“I’m quitting.”

I choked on some air, and coughed.

“You’ve always been real good to me,” he said. “I appreciate that. I’ll work tonight, and then I’m gone. Since it’s such short notice, I’ll work for free.”

As the air rushed back into my lungs, the level of anger that swelled in my chest surprised me. I ground my teeth to keep from exploding into a mania of curses and insults.

“Sorry boss,” he said. “I wouldn’t do this if it wasn’t important.”

The bad news brought no respite from the horde, and the place filled up like usual. All I could think about was how screwed I was, how Larry hadn’t even given me a weeks notice, how I would have to shut down, try to replace him, with who? How long would I have to shut down? A week? A month? How much would it cost me? Something like this could set me back a year. I couldn’t take another two years of this, it wasn’t in the plan. A year in this dump was like a decade! And without Larry? Would it even be worth it?

A man with a tattoo of a snake running up his neck reached out over the bar and grabbed my wrist.

“Can I get a beer or what?”

I recoiled, as though jolted by an electric shock, and reached under the bar for my club when I caught a glimpse of Larry sitting on his stool.

He was smiling this soft, warm smile. Someone was next to him, brown hair, a white tee shirt and jeans. It was Tammy Wilder, one of the more beautiful women to grace our place. She leaned into him and their lips touched delicately. Larry’s giant hand brushed her hair. They kissed for a few seconds, then eased apart, their eyes locked on each other like there was no one else in the room.

My knees gave out and I fell backwards, caught myself on a shelf and almost tore the whole whiskey section down. God damn, I thought. That’s love.

Where had I seen love before? In a movie? We had our share of late night lust, but love? Come on. But there it was, like staring into the sun itself, real love. The club clattered onto the cement floor.

I tried to reel myself in, be reasonable, but it was too late. Maybe my nerves were already shot because of Larry’s news, but something was fluttering in my chest, something warm and alive and it wouldn’t go away.

Larry said a few words to Tammy as she went out the door. He furrowed his brow, not like he was mad, but serious, like it was more than just “see you later honey”. That’s when it hit me.

Tammy was Darrel’s girl. My heart began to thump seriously then. Of all the people in our screwed up world to mess with, Darrel was the worst. He was big like Larry, broad shoulders, huge arms, and a psychopath; a handsome, charismatic devil. Tammy had fallen for him, then wished she hadn’t. He could be found running around town all day with any number of different women, but Tammy had to sit around and do nothing, because everybody knew Tammy belonged to him. I’d seen him flip a guy over a table for just looking at her.

The other thing about Darrel was that he had friends. Lots of them. I didn’t want to know what would happen if I ever crossed Darrel, wake in the morning and the building would be ashes most likely, or I would be ashes. The good news was that he spent wads of dough, sometimes five hundred a night, as did his friends. For this reason Larry and I had different rules for Darrel. Larry never threw a punch into the guy, never used any muscle, no matter how crazy he was acting. He would just stand by him and kind of lead him out the door. It was always a strain on us, but what could I do?

Everything flashed before me, Larry and Tammy’s secret love building slowly through the years, a glance there, a word here, a few more there, maybe a chance encounter outside the bar, then more conversation while Darrel was busy playing pool or bragging about some made up nonsense, and then secret meetings outside of the bar, maybe picnics, or trips down to the beach and then Darrel finds out and they know they have to get away.

It all made sense. Larry’s loyalty to the bar wasn’t because he was an idiot, it was because of Tammy! Sweat broke all over my forehead. He could have split, left town, made an escape, and yet there he was finishing his shift, for my sake.

That’s a good man, I thought.

“You alright?” some guy at the bar asked. “You’re going white as a ghost.”

I climbed up on the bar, and scanned the room. There was no sign of Darrel, but over at the pay phone was Jimmy, one of Darrel’s buddies, squinting his eyes at Larry. I knew that any moment Darrel was going to come through those doors and shoot Larry in the chest, or put a knife in his neck.

“What are you doing man? Are you losing it? Can I get a beer?”

People were yelling at me, and I was just looking at Larry’s calm, happy face. Then behind him, through the window I saw Darrel’s blue Trans Am screech into a space.

My heart nearly exploded. I leapt down and did the only thing I could think of, hit the switch for the fire alarm under the bar. A bell started to ring loudly.

“Everybody out!” I yelled.

People jumped up and made for the door. Larry, looked over at me, his face serious again as he held the door open.

As everyone rushed out, Darrel tried to get in, dodging and twisting, only to get knocked backwards, his face red as a tomato.

I ran over to Larry. “Go out the back door.”

Larry’s eyebrows went up, but he didn’t move.

“Darrel’s out there,” I said.

Larry turned his head a little, but still didn’t budge.

The last of the people were in the foyer, it was a matter of seconds before Darrel could burst through.

“He’s pissed,” I yelled.

Larry glared at me, his eyes piercing like the points of switchblades, and he saw that I knew about Tammy. When the last person was past, he took a step towards the back door.

“Go,” I said. “Hurry!”

But before he could even take another step, two skinny guys in hooded sweatshirts ran behind the bar. One started stuffing liquor into his pants, the other fiddled with the cash register.

“I’ll handle it,” I said. “Just go!”

But Larry would not just go. He vaulted the bar far too easily for a man his size, grabbed the kid on the register by the back of his sweatshirt and hurled him through the air. The kid landed on his stomach, bounced up like he was made of rubber and skipped out the door holding his stomach.

The other kid swung out with a wild haymaker, landing it flush on Larry’s jaw. Crack! I held my breath, until I saw the kid hunch over, cradling his fist. Larry picked him up by the collar of his sweatshirt with one arm, pulled three of the liquor bottles from his pants with the other, and placed them back on the shelf. Then he heaved the kid over the bar. He landed on his side with a thud and a groan, and managed to shuffle out the door right past Darrel.

I don’t know how long Darrel had been standing there, his arms by his sides, his eyes blazing with drunken rage.

“Tammy’s mine,” he said to Larry, brushing past me.

“Wrong,” Larry said, his face cold and flat. “She don’t belong to nobody.”

I took a step backwards, and tripped over something. A full forty ounce bottle of malt liquor, clinked against the concrete floor, but did not break. I started to crouch down, but Jimmy emerged out of the shadows by the pay phone like a phantom vampire. I froze.

Jimmy ignored me, and went behind the bar. He stopped about ten feet from Larry. The alarm bell continued to ring, obnoxious, deafening.

Darrel pulled a stub nose revolver from his waistline and pointed it at Larry’s head. Larry didn’t flinch, didn’t even blink.

It wasn’t a bluff. This wasn’t a bluffing kind of bar, and for all of Darrel’s bullshit he was no bluffer.

A panic came over me, a sheer terror for I knew I was watching the death of the last good man I would ever meet, maybe the last real love story in the world. My whole body started to shake. Darrel wasn’t just some angry boyfriend with a gun, he was the right arm of this down and out town itself. He was bad luck come again.

No, I thought. No, no, no.

The bottle felt smooth and heavy. I didn’t aim, just chucked it.

It spun end over end, cloaked by the blaring siren and exploded against the wall, just above Larry’s head. Glass shards and frothy beer shot into Darrel’s face. Larry, a blur, grabbed Darrel’s wrist and the gun came loose. Darrel jerked away, but Larry’s grip was too strong. Darrel, his eyes wild, changed direction, stepping towards Larry, throwing a mean left hook. It whooshed over Larry’s head.

He never saw Larry’s uppercut catch him flush under the chin, clacking his teeth together, snapping his head back. He dropped hard. Jimmy lunged for the gun, but Larry backhanded and he bounced off the wall and fell across the bar unconscious.

I watched in disbelief as Larry, the expression on his face calm as ever, dragged Jimmy by his arm from behind the bar, then picked up Darrel and hauled them both by their wrists outside and left them at the base of the steps like it was just another fight, just another mess to clean up.

When he came back in he stood at the threshold and let out a huge sigh, then his chest began heaving with sobs.

I’d seen enough. I sprinted over, slammed the doors shut, drew the bolts, and with trembling hands scribbled the words “for good” and then “forever” with a black marker under the word “closed” as I turned the sign.

You’d be surprised how much seventy thousand can buy up here. “Your own slice of heaven,” is what I call it. Oak covered mountains, crystal clear cool streams, all the brook trout you can catch, all the buck you can shoot.

Believe it or not, I opened up a small pub in town. It’s only open Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. It’s laid back, mostly farmers and old folks on social security and pensions. We haven’t had a fight yet, hardly an argument, but just in case I know that I can count on my business partner and neighbor, Larry. He sits by the door on a stool and flatters the old women by checking their ID’s.

He and Tammy got married last fall, just after we high tailed it out of that horror show city with our savings, the morning after I closed down the bar. They live just a mile down the road in a small trailer like mine. They’ve got a three month old baby girl named Susan, call her Suzy, who everyone says looks just like Tammy.

I stopped worrying about Darrel a long time ago. Guys like Darrel can’t leave their turf, especially not to come up here. I doubt Darrel has ever even seen a full grown tree in person.

Larry and I still don’t talk all that much, but we sure do smile more. I can tell he’s thankful for me getting him here and I feel the same way about him. What else is there to say?

**** THE END ****

Copyright Jon-Paul Stracco 2011

Clipart Image: Ebenezer Pulp Art

Editor’s Note: Wishing all readers, fans, Freedom Friends…and most of all our consistent, dedicated team of authors a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!!! May this festive season bring joy in the hearts of all of you and your loved ones. We are grateful to you all and wish the very best for you all. – Ujjwal Dey for FFJ

Synopsis: A parody of the traditional Christmas Holiday Family Newsletter

About the Author: Diane Arrelle, the pen name of South Jersey writer Dina Leacock, has been writing for 20 years and has sold more than 200 short stories and 2 books. Last year was the first time she ever sent out a real Holiday Newsletter and her husband made her rewrite it 3 times before he decided it wasn’t humiliating and fictitious any more. When not writing, she is the director of a municipal senior citizen center. She is married with one son in college in England and another son, husband and cat at home on the edge of the Pine Barrens in Southern New Jersey (home of the Jersey Devil).

In this revealing letter, a woman narrates her ordeal and spreads her holiday cheer.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Merry Christmas to all!!!

That Holiday Newsletter
by Diane Arrelle

Hi, All Important Family Members and Dear, Dear Friends:

Well, it’s that time once again when I know, if you are at all like me, you look so forward to these long personal Christmas letters. I’m sure that you eagerly make time to read every word during the mad holiday rush. Although this year has been very, very eventful and incredibly full for my entire family, I wouldn’t want to disappoint anyone and not get our annual letter out. So have cheer, I managed to sit down and get this one done in time, once again.

January:
The new year began with great things looming for our upcoming year. I began working full time at the mall. I am making 20 cents above minimum wage at a coffee kiosk and the future looks bright. Stu (my husband for all you who have forgotten I got married two decades ago), is still looking for a job, but the prospects are looking up on that front as well. As you all remember from last year, Stu was let go and has been diligently seeking employment for the last nine months. The boys and I have been very supportive in this search and we realize that a man of Stu’s intelligence cannot settle for just any sort of job, but must find a position.

But have no fear for us, with my new job and all the overtime I get, once again our house is safe and we have food on the table all the time. Both boys, Andy and Manny went to school every day, not missing once due to sickness, even though I normally would have kept Manny home with that gunky, green eye infection and all. I don’t have any sick days yet at work, so even with a fever of 102, I figured that he’s still better off in school learning and socializing with all his classmates than home alone watching TV.

February:
Worked all month. Andy spent an evening at the emergency room for an ear infection and needed drops twice a day for two weeks! It was touch and go the entire time on whether he’d remember those drops, but we were so proud of him because he only forgot to use them twice. He’s such a mature and responsible young man now and we are looking forward to him graduating this year. Last year’s confusion over all those days the school had wrongly marked him absent is behind us and we are sure that Andy didn’t mind the extra year of education.

For Valentine’s Day, Stu took me to Atlantic City on a casino bus where we enjoyed an almost free buffet. Stu won a hundred dollars on the five dollars that we got free which was great since I somehow misplaced my paycheck earlier in the week. I was impressed at how long Stu was able to make that $5 last before he hit the $100 since I lost my five in about a minute and he was able to keep playing and playing. It seemed like he was putting more money in the machine, but since he only had the $5 it had to be an illusion. I mean where else could he have gotten money to gamble.

March:
Had my birthday, and yes, I still celebrate them. We all went out for a special birthday dinner at McDonalds and I even got a sparkler in my yogurt dessert. Stu, as always, remembered everything to make my day special. At the end of the month we got the best news of all, Stu finally found a great job and now all our worries are over! I’ve contacted our lawyer, Larry, and stopped the bankruptcy proceedings just in the nick of time. We are sure that this job will be the one to carry Stu to retirement and there is real growth potential. I’m so happy for him, what, with all those other dead end jobs he had to suffer through year after year. It is so tough to be appreciated in this world and at last, this year, Stu will finally get his due.

April:
The boys had a wonderful spring break, they stayed home all week and cleaned their rooms. I am definitely blessed with such wonderful boys so I paid them $100.00 each for being so industrious. Sometimes when I look at them, I see them both growing up to be just like their father.

Manny worked the whole month on his science fair project, growing leafy plants and drying out the leaves. He kept me busy buying plastic snack bags but I’m sure he will get an A on whatever his project was.

May:
We had a close one this month, Stu got a splinter in his finger and it wouldn’t come out. I squeezed it and tried to pry it out with a needle but it was lodged deep. Poor Stu. Oh how he suffered, couldn’t help with any of the house or yard work for two weeks.

I was so scared he’d have to go to the doctor, but then it got infected and oozed out all by itself. What a lucky event for us and I was so proud of Stu, he was so very brave throughout the entire ordeal although he used up all his paid sick days for the rest of the year.

Once he was better, he took on the job of fixing my car, Louis. Stu told me that after ten years, a car should have a complete tune up and why should we spend all that money on it when he is perfectly capable of doing it himself. Am I lucky to have married such a versatile man or what?

June:
Louis, my car, and I were in an accident. I was all right thanks to my seatbelt although strangely enough the airbag failed to deploy. I still don’t know what happened; all of a sudden I was off the road and into the trees. Lucky for me I had decided to take the long way to work instead of the cliff road.

Louis had to be out of commission for 6 weeks and the insurance company tried to total him, but Stu stepped in and said that this was my car, and damn it, I deserve to keep him if I want. It was touch and go and we were afraid we might lose him, but Stu managed to get the parts we needed and Louis pulled through and is almost as good as new. He pulls to the right and the brakes slip about 50 percent of the time, but Stu insists that it isn’t really dangerous at all and that I shouldn’t worry. I’m so lucky to have married a man as caring as Stu. He always makes me feel safe.

School ended and, sadly, Andy somehow forgot about his graduation ceremony and we all missed it. But he said not to worry because the principal would send him his diploma during the summer. Both boys are happy to be home. They are busy catching up on their sleep and I find I have to wake them when I get home to make dinner. Kids…gosh they never change.

July:
We spent two afternoons at the community pool this month and we used our brand new charcoal bar-b-que grill repeatedly. I couldn’t believe that Stu had actually gone to the store and got it for our anniversary! Is my man thoughtful or what? Thanks to that grill, we ate hotdogs and burgers almost every night. I just love a grilled hunk of red meat with a side of corn smothered in butter and a baked potato topped with sour cream and melted cheddar cheese with real bacon bits. Although such healthy well-balanced meals are good for us, it’s a good thing we got to swim those two times and get some exercise! What a special month that was, and what a special 20th anniversary!

August:
I proclaimed August clean the house month and every weekend we all worked together as one big happy family cleaning and dusting and vacuuming every room. I’m sure we’ve created wonderful memories of family togetherness that will last a lifetime.

Manny was so industrious that he kept his spring science project going and now has 14 of those leafy plants in the backyard. He is such a good farmer.

Andy went out several times this summer to collect money door to door for the scouts. It came as surprise to me because I didn’t even know he joined the scouts and I thought he’d be a little old for that, being nineteen and all, but my sons are always a constant source of pride for me. Children are always full of pleasant surprises and the scouts must be so happy to get all the cash he raised.

September:
Well, back to school month again and Andy told us he signed up for classes at the community college. I was so glad that he took those two classes, that we told him he needn’t find a job. Gosh, both boys are in school once again. Who would have believed that Andy would want to continue his education. College must be very different than high school because it seems to me that his two classes are constantly meeting on different days and at different times. I found that he sometimes even had go to school on Saturday night. The poor boy must have been exhausted driving to school all the time.

Manny has taken up collecting music games for his new game system and tons of blu ray movies for his new flat screen high def television. When I asked him where he got the money for this new hobby, he said he found an after-school job. And I had thought he had been home after school everyday doing his homework. What a great kid, getting a job as well as doing his homework.

Stu started working overtime once the autumn hit. He stayed late almost very night trying to get an important project finished on deadline. It was so good to see him happy with his job. He came home after midnight every evening and although he was too tired to even kiss me good-night he was very happy.

October:
Stu went off on a business trip and made a special, new friend from work. They are spending lots of time together, but Stu said it was a busy time at work with the new project and he had to put in even more night and weekend work. I was glad his new co-worker Sheila was there working at his side so he didn’t feel lonely at the office. In fact, as soon as their schedule slows down, I’m going to fix Sheila up with my cousin Tony.

I discovered that Andy had a special little girlfriend, because he was constantly on the phone all night with her. Sometimes I overheard their conversations and I got such a kick out of hearing him moan, “Oh Baby,” over and over. How cute!

November:
Great news. I earned a free turkey at the supermarket so we had Thanksgiving at home for the fist time in years. It was a shame Stu had to work all weekend but I saved him leftover turkey and he said it was great. We had a mystery here at home, our phone bill was $978.00 and filled with 900 number phone calls. I know I made a few to the psychic network just to be sure that Stu wasn’t doing anything he’d regret with Sheila, but I certainly didn’t make those calls to Hot Babes in Bikinis. We are working with the phone company to have them remove those calls since they couldn’t have possibly been made from here.

December:
Well, it has been an entire years of thrills and excitement and here we are, almost at the holidays again. But what an eventful month December has been.

Sadly, Manny was arrested in school for selling pot. I have no idea where he got the stuff, but when he gets out, I’m sure he will have learned his lesson. After all he has always been a good and smart boy.

The phone company continued to bill us for those Hot Babes in Bikinis calls. Hopefully, our lawyer Larry, when he gets back from vacation, will be able to clear that up because although I may have turned a slightly blind eye to the boys antics, they are still and always will be my sons.

Stu has had it rough as well. He lost his job and it appears Sheila, who has mysteriously vanished, was embezzling huge sums of money from the company. Stu said she has framed him.

Worst of all, it appeared that someone took Louis for a joyride and his brakes completely failed and he went over a cliff. Unfortunately, he burst into flames and when the wreck was recovered, there was a headless woman’s body burnt to a crisp inside the trunk. Stu has been arrested for the embezzled money and the mysterious body in the trunk.

On the plus side of all this, I am hoping that he can bond more with Manny now that they have criminal records in common.

As for me, as you’ve probably read in the papers or saw on the news, I’m probably dead, my murdered body discovered in that accident.

And even, if by some chance, that slut Sheila was the body in the trunk instead of me, and I’m really still alive somewhere on a tropical island with Stu’s missing company funds that I accidentally found in the garage, and I’m there with Larry our lawyer, well, then I’ll be really, really busy taking notes for the next 11 months so I can keep everyone abreast of our special little family.

Happy Holidays and the best to everyone.
Jill

**** THE END ****

Copyright Diane Arrelle 2011

Clipart Image: Google Images

Synopsis: An alternate history of the great United States of America with Communist comrade Lenin in a unique role – flashback to a new past, move forward to a different future.

About the Author: Sam Kepfield is a writer who is forced to earn a living as a criminal defense attorney in Hutchinson, Kansas. He has a bachelor’s degree from Kansas State University (B.A. 1986), a law degree and an M.A. in History from the University of Nebraska (’89, ‘94), as well as doctoral work at the University of Oklahoma. He has been an avid reader of science fiction since childhood, and several years ago decided he’d try his hand at it. So far, his stories have appeared in Revolutions SF, Jupiter SF, Science Fiction Trails, The Future Fire, Cemetery Moon, and Atomjack, among others.

In this epic historical adventure, the Confederate glory is revisited.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *


Vanguard
by Sam S. Kepfield

“To Southern Independence!” A hundred glasses were raised in a toast, tinkling as the crystal filled with the blood-colored California wine echoed through the dining hall, and the voices echoed Col. Jesse Donaldson’s sentiments. The voices were male and female, the dulcet tones of the Virginia Tidewater to the broad nasality of Arizona and the accented English of Oaxaca, even a few Gallic notes in the chord. The small wooden Commanding Officer’s quarters could barely contain the crowd.

“Fifty years, and five hundred more!” came the enthusiastic, tipsy voice of Melinda Harper, wife of Richard Harper, the Confederate ambassador to Novya Rossiya. She, like all the wives gathered, was decked out in a satin gown, gloves and bejeweled in a manner that would befit Richmond society more than a frontier outpost. She took a healthy swig of the local wine, an ’05 vintage that was one of the best in memory.

“Hear, hear,” added Col. Henri Ducrot, the French military attache’ in California. “His Majesty Napoleon V extends his congratulations and greetings on this occasion for celebration.” As well he might, Donaldson thought, smiling and returning the toast. Without the Lafayette Brigade – a Confederate cavalry unit on loan to the French Army – wreaking havoc in the Prussian rear at Sedan, Ducrot would be goose-stepping and eating bratwurst, married to some plump Teutonic woman straight out of Wagner, rather than the bewitching svelte olive-skinned Gallic creature at his side.

Scenes of Confederate glory done in oils looked down upon the crowd. Longstreet and Hill’s final charge at Sharpsburg that had rolled up and shattered the Army of the Potomac. The signing of the Treaty of Annapolis, fifty years ago this day, that had ended the Second Revolution; Lee, Longstreet, Benjamin and Seddon for the South, Seward, Meade, Scott and President Hamlin (Lincoln having resigned in disgrace after the cease-fire) for the Northern States. An apocryphal rendition of Lee’s Emancipation Declaration being read to grateful, even worshipful, slaves, certainly the least accurate of the paintings on the wall, left by Donaldson’s predecessor.

The well-wishing ensued throughout the crowded parlor, and then spilled out into the rear porch that gave a breathtaking view of the Pacific Ocean, carrying Donaldson along. As commanding officer of Fort Stuart, California, Donaldson had plenty of perks, but this was perhaps the most satisfying.

Donaldson had been born in Sequoyah forty-seven years ago, when it was still Indian Territory, suffered through dusty hot summers and never saw more water than the occasional muddy creek. His first posting out of the C.S. Military Academy had been to Fort Marion on the Golden Isles of Georgia, and there he had fallen in love with the sea. More than once he wondered if he hadn’t joined the wrong branch of the service.

In the quarter-century since, he’d been posted to Fort Bowie in Galveston Bay, and to Fort Tyler in Veracruz. But California – there was something here, in the salt air, that drew him. The gentle basso heartbeat thump of the waves crashing onto the beach several hundred feet below lulled him to sleep every night. He already planned to retire here when he put in his thirty years and mustered out.

Donaldson stood at the rail, took a cigar from a silver holder in his tunic, and lit it, took a deep draw on it.

“Marvelous,” said a cultured voice at his elbow, carrying the overtones of Eton and Oxford. “Cuban, isn’t it?”

“It is,” Donaldson said.

“Thought so. I can always tell. Marvelous tobacco, that. Do you have more?”

“I just got a shipment in last month,” Donaldson said. The battleship C.S.S. Mallory had sailed from Havana through the Canal and resupplied in San Francisco. Her skipper had been an ensign when Donaldson had been posted to Fort Marion, and the interservice rivalry had been trumped by the gripes about superiors common to all newly-commissioned officers. He’d kept in touch with Capt. Harley Stebbins since, and they arranged mutual trades. The price for a crate of Cuban cigars had been three crates of California wine.

Donaldson handed a cigar from the case to Stephen Hyde-Sandys, His Majesty’s Deputy Consul to America, in Los Angeles. Sandys was tall, thin, horse-faced with a pronounced overbite, with wavy but thinning sandy hair. He wore a morning coat, since the celebration merited dress grays for the post’s officer. Sandys took a match from a small silver holder, struck it, and lit the cigar.

“Superb,” he whispered, shutting his eyes. “Better than Turkish. Better, dare I say it, than your Virginia tobacco,” he said with a twinkle in his eye.

“Sir,” Donaldson summoned mock outrage, “wars have begun over lesser insults.” Donaldson took another puff of the cigar. “But, between you and me and the flagpole yonder, I might agree with you – to a point.” The Virginians got a bit full of themselves sometimes.

They stood enjoying their cigars, gazing into the western horizon that had turned from orange to azure and was approaching velvet. A poof sounded over the gay conversation, and a second later the sky erupted in blue and red light.

“Enjoy the fireworks,” Donaldson said. “Got ‘em all the way from China.”

“My,” Sandys said, admiring the sky as a second shell burst in green and gold. “I wonder what our Russian friends will think.” He nodded his head north, towards Fort Ross. “Knowing them, they’ll think they’re under attack.”

“Hardly,” Donaldson said. “They had a big shindig a few days ago, celebrating the three hundredth anniversary of the Romanov dynasty. And they’re a ways off. All is quiet on the Western front, Mr. Sandys.”

“Mmmm,” Sandys replied. The cigar glowed red as he inhaled again. “For how long, I wonder?”

“As long as I can keep it that way.”

“Might not be long, from what’s come across the cables.”

“Oh?” Donaldson pricked his ears up.

Another inhale and a bluish puff of aromatic smoke, and Sandys began speaking in a low voice. “The Russians are moving troops into the border regions with the Ottomans, along with the Austrians and Hungarians.”

“It’s a territorial grab,” Donaldson said dismissively. “Same thing they did back in ‘78.”

“More than that. The Ottoman Empire is not well –“

“Hasn’t been for decades. That’s hardly news.”

“One more push might be all it takes for a collapse. And when that happens, the Russians get dominance in the region, plus a warm-water port or several, putting their Navy on an equal footing with ours.”

“So what’s that got to do with us out here in Indian Country? Seems too far away to matter.” He could guess, but he was drawing Sandys out.

“Colonel, you’ve studied your history. Think strategically. European conflicts have a way of spilling over into your corner of the world. And vice versa, I might add. Wolfe’s victory over Montcalm ended the Seven Year’s War, and paying for that war led to your first Revolution.” Donaldson shrugged and conceded the point. “And of course British and French recognition of the Confederacy after the disaster at Sharpsburg – what the North calls Antietam – in the fall of 1862 successfully concluded your rebellion, although it took six months for the Union to face reality and negotiate the treaty.”

“So you’re worried that the Russians could move on California?”

“Yes, and not without assistance. The United States have never reconciled themselves to the Rebellion. We believe they may be plotting some sort of concerted action.” Which was logical, when he thought about it. Nicholas II, Tsar of all Russia, was one of the few European allies of note that the United States possessed, having lost the French Empire by default in ’62.

“From where? Deseret? They’d have to get through the Mormons first.” The sundering of the Union and the need to protect a new boundary had lowered resistance to the Saints’ more notorious practices, and Brigham Young’s mini-empire had come into the Union, along with six other western states, in 1876, partly lifting spirits in an otherwise gloomy Centennial. But Deseret was still a nation within a nation, the joining to the Union more a matter of necessity, an insurance policy against Russian or British adventurism for the Union and for the Mormons.

“I wouldn’t rule it out. Washington has been looking for an outlet to the Pacific for over a century. Lewis and Clark found the way, but the gold strikes at Fort Ross in 1839 kept the Russians in California and the Oregon Territory, just as they were thinking of giving it up and your people were thinking of moving west. After your army took New Mexico in ‘48, the North lost California in the Rebellion. Manifest Destiny has never gone away. It’s just been bottled up for a half century.” Sandys lifted the snifter of brandy from the railing. “It looks peaceful now. But I fear that will change.”

“I hope not,” Donaldson murmured. “I’ve grown too fond of this country. I’d hate to see a war here.” But, as commander of the northernmost outpost of the Confederate States of America, forty miles south of Fort Ross, fifty from Novya Muscovy, even in the Year of Our Lord 1913, it was his job to be ready for just that.

&&&

“This makes a fine defensive position,” Laurent said, putting the binoculars to his eyes. “I can almost hear them whispering their plans to one another.” Fort Ross stood twenty miles north, home to the largest Russian military force south of Sitka, Alaska, five regiments of infantry, two cavalry, and assorted artillery.

Laurent was a tall dapper man with a thin mustache who hailed from New Orleans. The relaxed attitude that permeated the city seeped into its resident’s genes. His polyglot upbringing meant Laurent lacked the vicious racism that characterized the poor piedmont whites. He was also free of the condescending paternalism of the rich Tidewater set, treating the troops as more or less equals. “Black or white, they still bleed red, non?” he’d told Donaldson one evening over a bourbon three months ago after his unit had arrived on horseback at their new posting. The 8th would be accompanying him on his reconnoiter today.

The huge fort had initially begun as a small mission north of San Francisco Bay, at Bodega Bay (renamed Rumyantzev) in 1812. The Russians relocated it south of the Bay in the early 1840s as a guard against American and British encroachment upon one of the most highly sought ports on the Pacific Coast of North America.

The border between the two nations was a frontier in the European sense, noted by concrete markers set on roads or trails, with guards posted only on major thoroughfares. It was wholly unlike the fortifications that demarcated Virginia from Maryland, or the breastworks and constant armed patrols that separated Kansas from Sequoyah.

“Too far forward,” Donaldson said. “We’d be a bump in the road, leaving the rest of the coast open.”

“Possibly suitable for a harassing force,” said the senior sergeant who had joined them. Julius Tanner’s bloodlines hadn’t been corrupted by any Virginia planter tomcatting around the slave quarters in the dead of night; his skin was almost blue-black in the sun. “Maybe a squad or two with a Maxim gun, a few claymore mines, a mortar. Take a few out, then run. They drain off more men to search and secure the hill.”

“Workable, if your horses are faster than theirs, and if you don’t get encircled.”

“Our horses are plenty fast, Colonel,” Tanner said, his teeth a white contrast to the black skin. “Wild mustangs that we broke ourselves. They know the land, can live off it. And that ravine down there is a natural path. They have to come through here. No other workable routes for mass movement within twenty miles.”

“Long as you’re willing to take the chance, Sergeant.”

“I’d insist on it, sir,” Tanner said firmly. He was a damned good soldier, and would make a superior officer, if only the C.S. Army would permit it. And therein lay the rub. Limited emancipation had come in ’73, transforming slavery into a form of serfdom. Filibustering in 1894-95 added Cuba, Puerto Rico and smaller Caribbean islands. Confederate assistance in assisting Maximilian I, the French puppet emperor of Mexico, had added the northern part of Mexico even after Maximilian had been driven from the throne.

The nation devoted to white supremacy thus quickly found itself a polyglot multiracial empire forced by reality and sheer numbers to make certain concessions that were never too closely examined nor debated. To permit blacks in the ranks was a concession to the reality that the Confederacy had swallowed up an enormous swath of territory running from the Atlantic to the Pacific in the War of Secession, and that the birthrate among Southern womanhood was far from sufficient to provide a police force. Colored troops were better suited to the tropics, seemed to fare better as new masters, and so the old inhibitions against darker skins had begun to slowly melt away among certain of the upper classes. The lower classes, most threatened economically, were another matter, and they tended to congregate in the American Party which had sprung up in the 1870s to end the Democratic party’s monopoly. But letting them into the brotherhood of officers was in the future.

They rode along the border, through a couple of small dusty towns that afternoon. Donaldson and Laurent took notes on the villages, relics of the Spanish occupation that had ended in 1848, not much more than a cluster of adobe hovels erected around a whitewashed adobe church, and not a word of English to be heard. Donaldson’s Spanish was passable, from his time in Veracruz, but Laurent spoke it fluently, along with French and Italian, as well he might, given his birth in New Orleans. They sized up the towns as defensive positions – not promising – and as supply depots – again not promising. The natives, Indian and mestizo alike were all too poor to do more than subsist day to day. That state of affairs suited the Confederate government in Los Angeles just fine, as a safeguard against uprisings.

He’d planned on the scouting expedition taking several days, and they made camp at the top of a hill near another village in the afternoon, as the sun was dipping toward the Pacific.

“We’ll bivouac here,” he told Tanner. “Post a guard. Captain Laurent and I are riding into town.” The campsite was out of the line of sight of the village.

“Yessir,” Tanner said, and turned to his task without saluting, a standard field maneuver. The man everyone salutes becomes the first target for a sniper.

“Reconnoitering?” Laurent asked as Donaldson opened up a saddlebag and pulled out a set of rough linen clothing, began stripping off his butternut field uniform.

“Of a sort,” Donaldson said. “Surveying the human terrain. Gathering intelligence.”

“No problem. You can sure enough pass for a Mex,” Laurent said. His Cherokee mother had given Donaldson the thick dark shock of hair and the dark complexion and chiseled features of an indio.

“You’re close enough, too,” Donaldson said, pulling a second set of clothing from the saddlebag, and threw it to Laurent. “And your Spanish is better’n mine.”

“A matter of necessity, Colonel. Without it, I deprive myself of the company of the senoritas in the French Quarter.”

Donaldson shook his head. Laurent was a womanizer, oozing Gallic charm, sliding from one beauty to another with ease. Donaldson had been a one-woman man, and ever since Miriam’s death seven years ago, a no-woman man. “Change over, and we’ll ride in.” After donning the linen clothes, they removed all of the government-issue gear from the horses, leaving only the saddles, and slung their rifles over their shoulders.

The village was like any other Mexican-turned-American settlement, adobe huts around a church, dogs and children playing in the dusty streets, and a few signs of life now that the siesta was over. A line of adobe and timber buildings formed the nearest thing to Main Street to be found. Donaldson and Laurent tied their mounts to a post in front of a blacksmith shop. He could feel the heat from the door, and hear the hammering of steel on steel.

Next door stood a cantina, with a rough-hewn timber awning and swinging doors. Clusters of large red peppers hanging from the rafters gave off a pungent odor that almost forced a sneeze. “In here,” Donaldson said. Watering holes were, by definition, the best sources of gossip and information to be found anywhere, populated by shadowy characters who dealt in secrets that he needed, their tongues loosened by liquor or sudden monetary losses at games of chance.

This establishment offered no such opportunity. The interior was plain, more adobe with a crude wooden bar at one end, unpainted shelving holding a variety of clear bottles with a variety of poisons, all lit by smoky kerosene lamps and obscured by a haze of smoke, some tobacco and a biting odor of cannabis. It was also empty of customers.

The bartender was a heavyset man with a thick mustache, dressed in a white tunic and dark trousers. “You order?” he asked.

“Whiskey, straight,” Donaldson said in Spanish. “Two.” He laid down a Confederate silver dollar. The bartender produced a bottle and two glasses that were, to his surprise, clean, and a silver half dollar. Donaldson poured two fingers for himself and Laurent and downed it. The whiskey was surprisingly smooth, not some locally made rotgut.

A donde va?” the bartender asked.

“San Diego,” Donaldson said.

“Passing through?”

“To Novya Muscovy,” he said. “Business,” he said in a lowered voice, implying the “business” wasn’t exactly above-board. “Where is the best place to cross the border, without too much trouble?” Meaning away from the eyes of Confederate and Russian sentries.

“You’ll want to avoid the gringo fort,” the bartender said, “though most of them couldn’t find their own asses with both hands.” Donaldson repressed a smile at that, saw Laurent briefly bristle out of the corner of his eye. “There’s a narrow road ten miles east of here, that’s not too heavily traveled. The border guards are lazy –“

“Which ones?”

“Both the anglos and the oso,” he said, using the Spanish term for bear for the Russians. “They can be bribed easily. Or they’re too lazy to send out patrols to look for illegals.”

“Really?” Donaldson asked, a smile on his face.

Si. And when you get there, tell them to stop sending those fucking Communistas. They’re a pain in the ass.”

“Communists?” An exotic, European ideology that had gained some purchase in the North, with its industrialization creating huge gaps in wealth and envy among the urban lower classes, but it had withered and died south of the border.

“Idiots.” He reached under the bar, pulled out a stack of newspapers and pamphlets. “I can’t even read half of these, they’re in Russian. And most of the people here can’t even read Spanish.”

“Why do you keep them?” Donaldson asked, staring at the indecipherable front page of a paper done in Cyrillic.

“My customers use them to wipe their asses in the outhouse,” the bartender snorted. Donaldson flipped through a few, while he finished his whiskey. He pulled out a few pamphlets in Spanish, a couple more in Russian, one almost a book.

“Where did they come from?”

“Some loco oso comes riding through here two Saturdays ago. Stands on the steps of la iglesia here, shouting about fighting our oppressors, starts handing these out all across town, leaves some here.”

“What did he look like?”

“Short, bald, funny little beard,” the bartender said. “Dressed like he was heading for a funeral. Very strange.”

“Mind if I take a few of these?” he asked. “It’s going to be a long journey north. Hate to use poison ivy.”

“Be my guest,” the bartender said with a wave of a ham-sized hand.

They finished their whiskey, and left the cantina as velvet night was falling. “Interesting,” Laurent said. “Now what?”

“We take these back to be translated,” Donaldson said, getting a hard look in his eyes. “And I do a surprise inspection on the border guards.”

Five days later, the border guards had been given proper re-motivation, taken off duty and assigned to a forced march/reconnaissance of some fifty miles in three days. Half of them had fallen out, and were promptly replaced. The other half had been given light duty by the camp doctor for severe blisters, sprains, shin splints, and other ailments that told Donaldson they’d gotten little too used to the easy duty.

On a Tuesday morning, then, Donaldson did morning formation and inspection after sunrise and morning reveille. He then motioned Laurent to follow him, and they walked to a door hidden away in an alcove in the northwest corner of the fort. 37th SIGNAL read a small wooden placard nailed to the door. Donaldson knocked, then entered.

A tall, horse-faced man with spectacles looked up over a stack of files and dispatches at his visitors. He stood and saluted, and Donaldson waved it away. “At ease, Harman. Where’s the rest of your crew?”

“Laying new cables north of here, at the forward positions you marked for me. If we’re attacked, it’ll give us plenty of advance warning.”

“Outstanding,” Donaldson said. “How long will it take?”

“Ought to be done day after tomorrow, sir,” Harman said, in his soft Virginia accent, sitting down. “You didn’t come here for that, though.”

“I didn’t. You translated what we brought back?”

“Almost all of it, except for a couple of the broadsheets. Spent every night here deciphering this stuff. And it ain’t easy, that’s for sure. Reading Chekov or Tolstoy in the original Russian is one thing, but this Ulyanov character has them beat. The prose is almost incomprehensible in places.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Laurent said. “It doesn’t translate well into Spanish, from what I read on the way back in the saddle. Who is this fellow, anyhow?”

Harman shuffled some files, searching for something. His brow furrowed, and then lightened. “Ah. Here it is, right from Richmond yesterday. Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, Russian citizen, goes by the name ‘Lenin.’”

“Never heard of him,” Donaldson said.

“Not surprising. He’s largely unknown outside certain radical circles. Here’s what the Okhrana has on him. Born 1870, Simbirsk, Russia. Older brother hanged for assassination attempt on Tsar Alexander III in 1887. Expelled from Kazan University same year for causing a riot. Law degree from St. Petersburg University in 1892. Under constant surveillance first as the brother of a terrorist, then as a terrorist himself. Practiced law, but exiled to Siberia in 1897 for trying to finish his brother’s work with the current Tsar.”

“An anarchist?” Donaldson spat out the word. Anarchists had been around for years, but not until the assassination of President Gordon in Houston in 1891 had they been considered a threat.

“No,” Harman shook his head. “A Communist.” He held up a pamphlet, the red paper cover dog-eared, the writing in Spanish. “This is their Bible, so to speak. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto. Written in 1848. Another one,” another pamphlet with a green cover, “Essential principles of Das Kapital, 3000 pages boiled down to fifty by our friend Ulyanov. Pretty dense stuff. I took economics at Ole Miss, and hell, I can’t understand half of it myself. Simply put, it gets down to the struggle between the exploited classes – laborers – and the exploiters – businessmen. It ends with the proletariat overthrowing the established order.”

“I’ve read some of this,” Laurent said. Donaldson looked at him, eyebrows raised. “Studied at Tulane, sir. Had some political science classes there, professor made us read it. Ol’ Woody Wilson had some pretty queer ideas on good government. I never believed a word of it. My question is,” he turned to Harman, “how does this fellow Ulyanov think he’s gonna start a revolution out here with a bunch illiterate peasants?”

“That’s not the real danger, and you know it,” Donaldson said, and left it there. All three men knew what he meant. Emancipation had been forced upon the Confederacy in 1873, one of President Lee’s last acts in office, and one that only the architect of military victory and independence could make the nation accept.

Forty years later, the slaves were free but most still lived on the plantations as heavily indebted tenant farmers or hired workers. Southern leaders could point with pride to the condition of the freed slaves versus the squalid conditions that most wage laborers endured in the sprawling cities of the North. But the resentment was there, the economic deprivation and the denial of political participation was a pile of dry kindling waiting for a spark. “Is the Tsar sponsoring him?”

Harman spread his hands wide. “Damned if I know. All I can say is what we get through the channels from Fort Ross and Novya Muscovy is that the officials there are getting a bit concerned about him and his friends.”

“If that’s so, how did he get over here?”

“Like I said, he was exiled to Siberia in 1897, but didn’t stay put. Kept winding up at all these Socialist conferences, London, Zurich, making speeches and accomplishing damned little. He got in on their little failed revolt back in ’05, and the Tsar kicked his ass out of the world but good that time, sent him over here. Originally to Sitka, but he got in trouble by trying to rouse the rabble in the gold fields there. So he got sent down to Khlebnikov, just north of Novya Muscovy. They got Okhrana officers there keeping tabs on him. He began publishing a newspaper,” Harman held up a ragged copy of a paper. “Iskra, or ‘The Spark.’ And penning these political and economic shinplasters. But he slipped away a few months ago.”

“Any pictures?” Donaldson asked.

“One. It’s old, but it’s all we could get.” Harman held out a fuzzy photograph, showing a balding man with a vandyke beard. Donaldson and Laurent looked at one another.

“Sounds like he’s been riding the range out here,” Laurent said, “trying to start a revolution.”

“We could let him keep it up,” Donaldson said. “Doesn’t seem to be making much impact.” He told Harman of the bartender’s assessment.

“Too dangerous,” Harman replied. “Richmond wants this man stopped.” Donaldson had sent off a report on the matter the day after his return, and the reply had arrived by wire late last night, from the Secretary of War himself. With trouble brewing in Europe and the danger of a Russian grab for California, all fifth columns were to be eradicated in advance of hostilities.

“How you plan on doing that?” Laurent asked.

“Don’t rightly know yet. But you’re going to come with me.”

&&&

The next day, Donaldson left his XO, Major Braxton Connelly, in charge of the fort. He and Laurent, dressed in homespun clothing, saddled up and rode out just after sunrise, heading north. Their saddlebags held rations of salt pork and flour for a week – in non-military tins and sacks. They carried civilian-design Richmond .30-06 rifles with Colt revolvers. They kept to the less-traveled trails inaccessible to motorcars, heading north.

“You got a plan for finding this fella?” Laurent asked around noon, as they broke for a lunch of canned salt pork and pinto beans; Laurent splashed his liberally with Tabasco sauce. The horses were watering in a small stream.

“Nope,” Donaldson said. “We ride until we find him. Follow a trail of badly written flyers, I reckon.”

“Maybe he’s out stirring up the Indians,” Laurent said. “They might attack travelers out in the open.”

“I’m not worried,” Donaldson said with mock severity. “Your skin might be dark back in New Orleans, but around here you’re just another paleface.” That got a laugh out of Laurent. “Way things are going, I reckon Ulyanov is riding these same trails, figuring if a war comes St. Petersburg is too far away to deal with him here.”

“So why are we heading to Fort Ross?”

“I think his main game isn’t grabbing more territory, I think it’s setting up his own little socialist paradise here. The stuff with the locals is just a diversion, Maybe the Tsar thinks Ulyanov’s trying to stir up some unrest on Confederate soil the Okhrana will leave him alone. If he succeeds, they get some more turf. He fails, they can disown him.”

“So how’s your Russian?” Laurent asked.

“Passable. Enough to get us around.” The academy required two foreign languages, preferably ones spoken on the Continent.

“Enough to keep us out of a jail?”

“Colonel Colt speaks all languages,” Donaldson said. They finished and mounted up again.

They were a few miles from the border when a rifle shot split the air. Dirt puffed in front of Donaldson’s horse, and he fought to bring it under control, finally succeeding. Laurent had his rifle at the ready, dismounting and seeking cover behind a rock, pointing to a low rocky ridge to the east. Donaldson slid off his mount, took the rifle from its scabbard and joined Laurent.

“See the shooter?”

“Just part of ‘im, sir.”

“Mex?”

“Or Indian. Hard to tell at this distance. We could be surrounded.”

“What this ‘we,’ paleface?” Donaldson said, showing a rare broad smile and a mischievous twinkle in his eyes. Laurent took it in stride.

They waited for several minutes. “They may have moved on,” Laurent said. He took off his hat, put it on a stick and raised it slightly above the level of the rock, visible to the sniper. No shots followed the first.

“They’ve moved on,” Donaldson said. “Standard tactic.”

“Or they’re very, very patient,” Laurent countered.

“We’ll see,” Donaldson said, and crept around the rock, and tossed a small stone which landed fifty feet away. No shots, so Donaldson rose to his feet and ran to his mount. Again, silence. Laurent followed, and they headed off at a gallop to the ridge. The horses handled the grade with little difficulty, and they crested the ridge, halted. There were no other humans to be seen.

“Over there,” Laurent said, pointing to the north. “Grass there is crushed, maybe two men.” He dismounted, walked over to the area where the grass lay flat, got to his knees, searched around for a moment. His face brightened, and he held up a brass cartridge.

“It’s not our Russian friends,” he said. “The lettering is in English. A 30.06 caliber round.” He raised his eyebrow.

“Standard caliber for U.S. government-issue Springfields,” Donaldson finished. “A Northern patrol doing reconnaissance?”

“Wouldn’t firing on us give them away?” Laurent asked. “They may be grasping, greedy self-righteous moralizers, but stupid they are not. Such would be considered an act of war.”

“Right now there’s people spoiling for a war. Maybe whoever it is wants to start one.”

“Then perhaps they should send better marksmen, eh?” Laurent asked with a laugh.

“Or someone wants us to think it’s Northern soldiers.”

“Who? The Saints? Or maybe the Russians?”

“The Saints have a good deal, getting protection from Washington. As for the Russians, why would they invite an attack on themselves, have to fight a two-front war?”

“Who can tell with politicians and diplomats?”

Donaldson thought for a moment. “Someone is playing a different game here, for their own ends. And we won’t find out who it is standing here and jawboning. Saddle up.”

As they rode, Donaldson tried to puzzle out the political maze that was the border between Russian America and the Confederate States of America. He quickly concluded he much preferred the simple life of a soldier.

The Confederate States of America, upon the conclusion of the War for Secession in March 1863, had acquired all territory south of the 37th Parallel, from Indian Territory to the Pacific. The CSA had claimed areas south of the 35th Parallel in 1861, but after the victory at Glorieta Pass, New Mexico, in March 1862 and the smashing of McClellan’s Army of the Potomac at Sharpsburg that September, the peace negotiators pushed and got the whole of New Mexico and Arizona territories; a separate treaty with Russia in 1869 formally set the boundary. The Confederacy thus acquired California, an underdeveloped coastal area that had escaped the rapid development of Russian America to the north. California was an agricultural area, and the lush Central Valley had taken well to the cultivation of fruits and vegetables by plantation owners who had migrated westward, seeking new lands to replace the worn-out soil of Alabama and Mississippi.

The Confederacy had relied upon the Five Civilized Tribes in Indian Territory (later renamed Sequoyah upon its admission as a state in 1885), and as such had a slightly more enlightened Indian Policy than the old Union. The climate in the Southwest prevented large-scale agricultural settlement, as in the more hospitable lands to the east and north, and so the tribes in Arizona and New Mexico were largely left to their own devices.

Exchanging one foreign power, the Union, for another, the Confederacy, hadn’t ameliorated the ill will that the Southwestern tribes felt after three hundred years of domination. And the idea of some agent provocateur stirring up domestic rebellion in the West while the two American nations were distracted with larger problems was not, the more he thought about it, in the least farfetched. It was, the more he thought about it, the most likely scenario.

They crossed the border early the next day on the narrow dusty path that barely merited the designation as a road. Up ahead, Donaldson spied a cloud of dust. He pulled his rifle from the scabbard, his Colt from the holster at his hip; Laurent did the same, and they slowed their mounts.

Over the hill came half a dozen riders. They were Indians, and clearly armed with rifles.

“Any idea what tribe they belong to?” Laurent asked.

“Nope,” Donaldson said. “And if they don’t speak Cherokee, we’re clean out of luck.” They halted their horses as the Indians drew near and halted their mounts twenty yards away. The riders were dressed in a mix of native and anglo garb, beaded shirts over denim trousers and boots. The rifles they held were new, the blued steel gleaming in the sun.

“Good morning,” Donaldson said quietly but pleasantly.

One of the riders advanced warily, rifle held in one hand, the butt resting on his saddle. He was a large man, broad-shouldered, long graying dark hair tied back behind his head that spoke of Indian heritage. But his skin was lighter, and he sported a mustache, the result of the not infrequent intermarriage between Russian men exiled from home by edict or opportunity, and native women.

The Russians were not unlike the French in Canada, who had mixed with the natives and in some cases become members of tribes who had fully accepted the children of such unions. By contrast, the English colonists discouraged such unions, considered them badges of shame and shunned the children – this much Donaldson knew from personal experience. His Cherokee half had given him no end of trouble, and he’d had to prove himself with his fists more often than he wanted.

It all came down to what the colonists wanted. The Russians and French were interested in trade. The Spanish and then the English were interested in land. When you didn’t have the predisposition to displace natives by any means possible – war or disease – then relations tended to be more harmonious. God only knew what California would look like had the Spanish remained here. Or, he thought grimly, had the Union and its grubby industrial hordes taken hold of it.

Their laissez-faire attitude had allowed the Russians to triumph over the British for control of the Pacific coast in the 1840s and 1850s. While The Great Game played out in central Asia, the two powers grappling over Turkey and the Balkans, the Russians had allied with enough tribes to push John Bull and the Canadian border back to the Rocky Mountains.

“What business do you have here?” he asked severely.

“None here,” Donaldson replied. “Further north. Novya Muscovy.”

“What business?”

“I own a plantation near Los Angeles,” Donaldson said smoothly. “We have a vineyard there. I’m looking for opportunities to export. Novya Muscovy is the largest settlement in these parts.” At fifty thousand people, it was smaller than Los Angeles’ two hundred thousand, but it was the gateway to parts north.

“Hmm,” the Indian snorted. “Los osos won’t have anything to do with it. They have vodka.”

“I brought some samples,” Donaldson said. He’d packed a couple bottles of a wine ordered from a plantation down near LA and steamed the labels off. “You’re welcome to try some –“

“No.” The man sounded offended. The Russians hadn’t sought to ply the local tribes with alcohol the way the Americans had for three hundred years in an effort to break them and take their land. Novya Rossiya was more sparsely settled, and the settlers there were largely involuntary and content with small plots. “Why aren’t you traveling by boat?”

“This is cheaper.”

“Why aren’t you taking the main road?”

“This is more convenient.”

“Ah. I see.” The man nodded. “My name is Nikolai Charkov. You’re comin’ with us.” Six rifles were leveled in his direction, leaving the two officers with no choice in the matter.

Charkov’s small village hugged the coast, a small semicircular inlet dubbed Half Moon Bay. An old Spanish mission sat at the center of the village, a relic of the former occupiers who had been pressured first by the Russian-American companies and then dethroned by the Treaties of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848 and Los Angeles in 1869. Tilled fields surrounded the several dozen wooden lodges, and from the beach several docks with fishing boats moored to them stretched into the waters.

Charkov led them to the mission, where they tied their horses to a wooden railing. “In here,” Charkov said, motioning them to the door with his rifle. “We got orders to bring in suspicious characters and trespassers.”

“We’re traders, I told you.”

“Mmm,” Charkov said. “And on Russian territory, to boot. You look too good for traders riding up from Los Angeles. Only seen Army officers ride the way you do. Posture like you got a board in the back of your shirt, scouting the land, looking for things traders don’t know or care about.” He smiled. “That, and your hair’s too short. Now get in.”

The mission was dark and cool inside, and Charkov showed them to a small office in the back. He knocked, and received a muffled reply. He opened the door, poked his head in, said something in Russian. The voice replied in Russian, and Charkov swung the door open. Donaldson and Laurent entered the small office, lit by a kerosene lamp. Antique bookshelves stuffed with leather-bound volumes covered one wall. On the far wall hung a red flag with a yellow design. It took Donaldson a moment to identify it as a hammer imposed over a sickle, two tools he was intimate with from his boyhood in Sequoyah.

“Vladimir Lenin, I presume,” he said in what he hoped was correct Russian to the short man seated behind the desk.

The man stood up. “You are correct. And by your accents, and direction, I assume you are both Confederate army officers sent to spy on us.” He wore, incongruously, a three-piece suit with a red silk tie knotted perfectly, a gold watch chain dangling from his vest and a white silk handkerchief in his coat pocket.

Donaldson decided there was no point in continuing; he was disappointed that their ruse had been so quickly discovered. “We’re officers. But we’re doing a simple reconnaissance, and wandered over the border.” As he said it, Donaldson knew it sounded weak.

Lenin barked out a short expletive that showed what he thought of Donaldson’s explanation. “Then you are the enemy, or soon will be,” Lenin said. “No doubt you were infiltrating behind Russian lines, to sabotage communications and transportation lines. Where are the rest of your forces?”

“None. Just us,” Donaldson answered.

“Hah. Then they are in the saddle and heading this way even now,” Lenin said, his eyes narrowing and glinting.

“Hardly. Nice little operation you have here,” Donaldson said. “Planning on setting up your own country, do you?”

“I am the vanguard of a socialist revolution that will sweep away the imperialist capitalist forces in this land, and replace it with a true worker’s state.”

“Alone?”

“There are others who have gone forth to the masses to spread the word of the coming revolution,” Lenin said confidently. “We coordinate our efforts.”

“Looks kinda lonely to me,” Laurent said in English, looking about the office.

Lenin’s eyes flashed, a vein on his temple throbbed. “Charkov!” he bellowed, and their captor appeared at the door. “Take these two to the jail and secure them at once.” Apparently he’d picked up enough English in his years here to understand Laurent.

Charkov motioned again with his rifle, and the two officers filed from Lenin’s office. Charkov led them across the large courtyard of the village, across the dusty square to a low adobe building with bars in the windows. The rest of Charkov’s party were inside.

“Touchy fellow,” Donaldson said. “I think he is planning to set up his own little kingdom here.”

“And they must be old Baldy’s own police force,” Laurent muttered, nodding his head towards Charkov and his comrades.

“Quiet,” Charkov warned. The two officers went inside the jail. The interior was dark, and as soon as their eyes adjusted they saw a crude setup, rough unvarnished wooden tables and chairs, and three cells at the back of the building. One cell held three locals who were sleeping off a drunk, from their prone boneless posture; the other held a man in a blue army uniform that Donaldson recognized as Russian. They were shoved into the middle cell, and the door clanked shut behind them.

Donaldson waited until Charkov left and only one of his crew remained, sporting a new Springfield rifle, bandoleros and a Colt at his hip. The guard put his feet on the rude desk, leaned back in the chair, and crossed his arms over his chest.

“How secure do these bars look?” Laurent asked.

“Don’t let it fool you,” Donaldson said. “There’s adobe buildings been around longer than you or me.” Donaldson kicked at the wall with no effect. “We had a pickax, that might do it.”

“I got a pocketknife in my boot,” Laurent said.

“Wait til he goes to sleep,” Donaldson replied, nodding at the guard.

“Excuse me,” said a voice in heavily accented English. It was the uniformed prisoner in the next cell. “You are American?”

“Of a sort,” Laurent said. “The Confederate variety.”

“Ah,” the prisoner said. He was younger, perhaps thirty, with dark hair and a large mustache. He was standing against the bars, and was slightly taller than Donaldson’s six-one, with a muscular build. “I am Captain Nikolai Yevgenevich Pomarov, with his Majesty the Tsar’s Army.”

“You were out scouting enemy positions, too?” Laurent asked.

Pomarov didn’t take the bait, though he did raise an eyebrow at Laurent. “I was traveling through this village, on my way to inspect border and coastal fortifications, when those Cossacks seized me and threw me in jail. When this report is transmitted to St. Petersburg –“

“It won’t be,” Donaldson said.

Pomarov deflated slightly. “I think Lenin is planning some kind of Revolution of his own.”

“That’s what we figured, too,” Donaldson said, choosing his words carefully. Fellow prisoner or not, Pomarov was still on the other side. And Donaldson was fairly sure that Pomarov hadn’t been out scouting fortifications, but was attached to the Okhrana and had been looking for Lenin. “Makes sense he wouldn’t want the Tsar to know what’s brewing out here.”

“That’s old Nick’s problem,” Laurent said dismissively, referring to the Tsar. “Any trouble here helps us.”

“You think Lenin is going to be stopped by an imaginary line?” Pomarov said. “The man’s talking about world revolution. He’ll start here, but California will be next.”

“He’s right,” Donaldson said; the wire from Richmond had reached the same conclusions. Tsarist forces might be able to crush Lenin’s uprising. But the truth was that even in this supposedly enlightened time, of limited emancipation, that the Confederacy remained vigilant against possible insurrections. Gabriel Prosser and Nat Turner and the Stono River rebels back in the 1700s had etched a fear of the servile classes in the hearts of the plantation-born and bred who still ruled the South.

“So what do we do?” Laurent asked.

“For now, as long as he’s awake,” Donaldson said, indicating the guard, “nothing. Wait until night. Then we find a way out.”

“And that would be?”

“We have plenty of time to figure that out. Until then, we amuse ourselves the best we can.”

“Usually I read,” Pomarov said. “But Lenin took my Pushkin volumes away. Called it ‘reactionary and bourgeois romantic crap.’”

“Some people have no taste,” Laurent said sympathetically, and then reached into one of the pockets in his shirt, produced a deck of cards. “Y’all play poker over in Russia?”

“I have heard of it,” Pomarov said guardedly. An experienced card-player like Donaldson immediately sensed that Pomarov knew far more than he was letting on. “Perhaps you could teach me.”

“Yeah, go easy on him,” said Donaldson. “They don’t pay their officers as well as we do.”

“I will endeavor to show restraint, mon colonel,” Laurent said.

Several hours later, Pomarov was in possession of a nice pile of Confederate paper money. Staid portraits of Jeff Davis and Lee and Longstreet mixed with tsars and empresses.

“I’m startin’ to think maybe you’ve played this game before,” Laurent said despairingly.

“Once or twice,” Pomarov deadpanned. He began folding the money to tuck it into his tunic.

“You gotta give me a chance to win it back,” Laurent said, pleading with Pomarov.

“You’re in deep enough,” Donaldson warned him off. “Face it, Jean, you’ve been had. Now give me that knife of yours.” Laurent frowned, dug into his boot and withdrew a small bone-handled knife. He handed it to Donaldson, who began chipping away at the adobe while the guard dozed.

Fifteen minutes in, he had a small dent in the windowsill near the bars. If he kept at it, Donaldson figured, they might have one bar out by midnight.

“Slow going,” Laurent observed.

“It might help –“ Donaldson’s voice was cut off by a distant crump and a whistling noise. “Take cover! Incoming!” he shouted, and the men dove against the walls. A moment later an explosion rocked the building, dust and pieces of adobe rained down on them. Another crump and whistling noise, and the cell next to them disappeared in a roar of fire and shards of clay and timber splinters.

“That’s naval artillery,” Laurent shouted, but Donaldson could barely hear him. Laurent shoved against the fractured wall, causing a four-foot wide chunk to fall outward, and he climbed over the debris, through the adjacent cell, and back into the jail through the twisted and broken steel bars. The guard had been knocked unconscious or dead by the blast; Laurent took the keys and opened Pomarov’s cell.

Donaldson followed, took the guard’s rifle and ammunition, tossed the pistol to Laurent. Pomarov grabbed the keys from Laurent and unlocked the gun cabinet in the corner. He retrieved a rifle and cartridge case, as well as a pistol. “These are mine,” he shouted as another shell exploded outside, nearly knocking him to his feet. “Help yourself.” Laurent ducked in and took a Springfield from the cabinet, along with two boxes of shells. The three men ran out of the jail into utter chaos.

A crater marked the spot where the village well had stood in the square. Villagers were scurrying for cover, heading out of the town to the surrounding countryside. Charkov and his gang spilled out of the mission, weapons drawn. Pomarov skidded to a halt, took aim with his Mosin-Nagant, and hit three of men, Donaldson was quick on the draw, took out one with his Springfield, and Laurent dropped another. The last man threw down his weapon and fled around the side of the mission.

“Leave him,” Donaldson said. “We’ve got a more important quarry.” Guns drawn, they charged the mission and reached the doors as another shell hit an adobe house and turned it into a cloud of splinters and dust.

Lenin nearly bowled them over rushing out of his office, clutching a sidearm. He didn’t see the three men until it was too late. He abruptly stopped, began to raise the pistol, but thought better of it.

“Drop it nice and easy,” Donaldson said. Lenin tossed the revolver to the ground. “Good. You’re coming with us.”

“A prisoner? I expected to be shot.”

“I don’t shoot prisoners. Besides,” Donaldson said with a wry smile, “You may be useful yet.”

“I’m hardly scared. I’ve been in jails before, and always escaped,” Lenin said defiantly.

“Don’t make this more difficult than it has to be,” Laurent said menacingly.

“Wait,” Pomarov said. “Where’s my Pushkin?”

“That garbage? In the trash can in my office,” Lenin scoffed.

Pomarov looked as though he’d been shot, but darted into the office, and emerged a few seconds later with the two leather-bound volumes in one hand. “They cost me twenty rubles in St. Petersburg,” he admonished Lenin.

“A waste of money,” Lenin said.

“Move,” Donaldson ordered, and they guided him out of the mission. “Livery stable – where is it?”

“Down this street, at the end,” Lenin said. “If it hasn’t been hit yet.”

“Then we’d better hurry,” Donaldson said. They ran down the street, Laurent behind Lenin with his rifle trained on his back. The stables had not been hit, but the shelling had spooked the horses and driven off the proprietor and hands. The three officers found their mounts unharmed, saddled them up, and found a relatively calm horse for Lenin to ride. They rode out into the square. From the vantage point on horseback, Donaldson could finally look out into the bay. What he saw made him haul his mount to a halt.

“It’s the Mallory,” Donaldson said, pointing to a gray vessel several miles out on the sparkling smooth ocean. The Confederate battleship was surrounded by a host of smaller ships. He could spy several landing craft approaching the white beach below.

“If they’re shelling here. . .” Laurent began.

“Then we are at war,” Pomarov said dejectedly. “And I’m a prisoner.”

“No,” Donaldson said, shaking his head. “I’ll guarantee your safe conduct back to your unit.”

“You can do that?”

“A Confederate officer and gentleman always keeps his promises. But only if you allow Captain Laurent a rematch at the card table.”

“Done,” Pomarov said, relieved.

Donaldson turned to Lenin. “Give me your handkerchief,” he said. Lenin glared at him, but complied.

They rode to the beach, and arrived just as the landing craft beached themselves and Marines began wading ashore. When they saw Pomarov, the Marines leveled their Lee-Enfields at them. Donaldson waved the handkerchief at the Marines, and identified himself. “Ask Captain Stebbins. He knows me.”

“No need.” The voice belonged to the commander of the Marine detachment, a tall man who had the same dark coloring as Donaldson. “I was ashore when Stebbins traded a crate of Cubans to this man for three cases of wine. Damned fine stuff, by the way. Major Carlos Taylor,” he saluted Donaldson. “I’m in command of this landing force. I can figure out our Russian friend here, but who is that?” he pointed at Lenin.

Donaldson quickly explained the situation, and Taylor listened as the Marines formed up in squads. Taylor turned to a Captain, and gave quick orders to approach the village in two columns and take it. His second-in-command saluted, and led the Marines off.

“There won’t be much resistance,” Donaldson said. “The naval bombardment took care of that. So I take it we’re at war?”

“We are,” Taylor nodded. “Perhaps Captain Stebbins can explain that.” He ordered one of the landing craft to take the four men back to the Mallory.

They were escorted to the bridge of the battleship by an ensign in khakis. Stebbins, hunched over a large map in the center of the bridge, looked up and greeted Donaldson warmly.

“Harley, it’s good to see you again. Although I’m not happy about the circumstances. It’s war, then?”

Stebbins, a stout man with a gingery beard shot through with gray, nodded. “The Russians began a march on the Turks five days ago. The mutual defense treaties triggered a mobilization by the British and French. And we’re obligated to mobilize as well. We were in the neighborhood, so Richmond ordered us to seize a port here to support a defense of the border, possibly an attack on Novya Muscovy. But you seem to have gotten the jump on all of us.”

“Unintentionally, I assure you,” Donaldson said. He briefed Stebbins on their mission, capture and escape while Lenin stood glowering in the corner.

Stebbins stroked his beard when Donaldson finished. “Since you promised our brother Pomarov here safe transit back to his unit, I won’t rescind that order.”

“Thank you, Captain,” Pomarov said gratefully. “Your actions will be noted.”

“We’ll wire to Fort Ross, have you taken there under a flag of truce. Godspeed, Captain.” Stebbins turned to Lenin. “Take him to the brig and put him under guard.” Two Marines escorted Lenin off the bridge down into the steel bowels of the ship to a string of curses in Russian. “I’ll wire Richmond, let them know we’ve captured a spy. They’ll probably want him taken back to LA and interrogated, if not shot.”

“Not so fast,” Donaldson said, with a far-away look. “I have an idea.”

&&&

Before he was escorted back to Fort Ross, Pomarov and Laurent had a rematch at the card table. Pomarov graciously allowed Laurent to win back most of his losses.

The next day, the Marines from the Mallory had secured a beachhead and supply ships began unloading supplies and temporary docks. Several cavalry detachments from Fort Stewart, including Laurent’s, arrived the next morning to provide security for the perimeter. Donaldson and Laurent went ashore to confer with their subordinates, and by the afternoon the situation was well in hand. The Confederate Army was prepared to meet any advance by the Russian Army from Fort Ross.

At evening on the second day, they returned to the ship. The brig was below decks and aft, close to the engine room. Two Marines were posted outside the metal hatch. Donaldson and Laurent entered and found Lenin seated on the small bunk, an empty metal tray on the floor. He was furiously scribbling away on a sheaf of paper with a pencil nub. A stack of lined sheets sat neatly in the corner.

“So, the time has come to make me, as you say, walk the plank?”

“We’re not planning on making a martyr out of you, no matter how much you want it,” Donaldson said, leaning his frame against the wall – bulkhead, he corrected himself, now that he was on board a naval vessel. “Actually, we were planning on releasing you.”

Lenin looked surprised, but the look of relief was replaced immediately by one of suspicion. “There are conditions, no doubt.”

“We’re not going to let you run loose in Novya Rossiya again,” Donaldson agreed. “But that’s doing you a favor.”

“Not let me continue my work?”

“Be honest,” Donaldson said. “How much progress were you making with the indios and Mexicans?” Lenin remained silent. “The problem I see, from reading your works, is that you depend upon a large proletariat, meaning a large working class. Translation – you need a lot of beat-down factory workers taking poverty wages back to a run-down tenement house with a dozen squalling brats in it living on bread and water, if they’re lucky. Working in lousy conditions, losing arms and legs. It just isn’t here.”

“There were the workers in Novya Muscovy,” Lenin said.

“Mainly dockworkers and some light industry like fishing and canning. You got what’s left of the miners, but most of that played out back by the end of the war. Didn’t work any better up in Sitka, did it?”

“Tell him what they were using his pamphlets for,” Laurent suggested with a lazy grin, and Donaldson hushed him.

“Closest thing to what you need is further south, in the Central Valley areas south of here. Lot of Mexicans and freedmen working on the plantations, harvesting cotton and vegetables. But they’re a pretty conservative lot, like most peasants.”

“So what do you propose to offer?” Lenin asked defiantly.

“You want an urban proletariat, we’re happy to give you one. There’s a war going on in Europe right now, the British and French Empires against the Russian Empire along with the German and Balkan states. Naturally, we’re getting dragged into it, so that pits the Confederacy against the Union again. You want an urban proletariat, you got it. I propose to put you on a train here in California, with a ticket clear to Chicago. Lots of oppressed laborers there with all the class consciousness you could hope for, and a fair amount of them speak Russian so you won’t have as much trouble being understood.”

“It’s a start,” Lenin admitted hesitantly.

“I’ll sweeten the pot,” Donaldson said. “Ten thousand dollars in gold, to finance your little revolution.”

“Fifty.”

“Twenty-five thousand,” Donaldson said.

“Thirty.”

“Done.” Donaldson had been authorized to go as high as forty by the War Department, but only if he had to.

“When do I leave?”

“How long is it going to take you to pack?”

It took an hour to collect the few personal items and clothing from his quarters at the mission. Three days later, Donaldson and Laurent put Lenin, with a half dozen armed guards, on a military transport car hastily added to a freight express headed east on the Transcontinental line from Los Angeles to Nashville. From there the train would then head north to Chicago.

“I get a bad feeling about this,” Laurent said gloomily as they watched the train depart in a storm of black smoke and cinders. “We may have thrown away thirty thousand in gold to a con man. Or there might be something to all of his revolution talk. I read it myself, and if I was a dumb bohunk making five bucks a month, it’d sound pretty good.”

“I agree. I’m planning on that.”

“This is just supposed to cause trouble in the rear for the Yanks, but what if he actually succeeds?”

Donaldson gave a dismissive wave of the hand and laughed. “Relax,” he told Laurent. “Lenin is dedicated, but far too obtuse for most American’s tastes. Nobody here would ever fall for Communism. What’s the worst that could happen?”

**** THE END ****

Copyright Sam S. Kepfield 2011

Clipart Image: Google Images

I was privileged to meet legendary historical adventure author Wilbur Smith on his book tour in India. He visited Landmark Bookstore at Infiniti Mall, Mumbai on 03-Dec-2011. He is 78 years young and has fans from multiple generations. A rich career and life that everyone should take inspiration from. He arrived to a standing welcome from the crowd gathered to meet and listen to him just past 7pm. Many eager faces were awaiting him, young and old, a true mix of age-groups which his fiction has conquered.

Wilbur Smith mentioned that he was supposed to read from his latest novel “Those In Peril”, but he would rather just talk with the gathered audience. Everyone listened with rapt attention as Wilbur Smith recounted many anecdotes from past book signings he had attended in various countries. He also mentioned that he has been to India quite a few times before as well but that this was the first time he was here for promoting his novels.

His website: http://www.wilbursmithbooks.com/

So Mr. Smith recalled his very first book signing and how no one showed up to buy and get his novel signed. Another author on the floor was without any fans but busy signing books so Mr. Smith walked over to him and asked for whom the books are being signed. “Sign them, once signed the bookstore cannot return it to the publisher and we get our royalty” was the answer he got. He also narrated how once a lady in an Australian bookstore mentioned that she had travelled far from the Northern territories to get a book signed by him as a birthday gift to her husband. To Mr. Smith’s surprise the book was a Jeffrey Archer novel and he mentioned that he was not Mr. Archer. The lady demanded that he sign the book – so taking this in stride, Mr. Smith wrote on the book: “In the absence of Lord Archer, signed by Wilbur Smith”. LOL. Once Wilbur Smith was visiting England and found that no one was buying his books. This was his initial years as an author. While at the airport to take a flight back home to Africa, he saw a lady reading his novel. He was delighted and intrigued and tried to see if the lady had any emotional expression while reading his book. He also went around behind her pretending to go to the washroom so that he could see which page she was on. Finally he couldn’t resist and interrupted her – “Madam, that is my book you are reading.” The lady looked surprised and answered handing over the novel to him, “Sorry, I just found it lying around and started to read it.” LOL!

Many other funny anecdotes were narrated and the crowd lapped it up with laughter and applause. He also recounted the incidents of die hard fans. One lady sent him a letter saying that her husband loved Smith’s novels and wished to be buried with them; there was an accompanying photograph showing her husband in a coffin with all of Wilbur Smith’s novels arranged with the dead body in the coffin. That Smith mentioned was a great compliment. Another such fan was a man who appeared in a hotel lobby requesting the staff to please allow him to meet Wilbur Smith. As luck would have it, Mr. Smith was passing by and introduced himself. The man had an amputated leg and mentioned that he fell off from the top of a train onto the tracks when he was travelling with friends. He said that he had given up all hope in life and the only thing he could do was read Wilbur Smith’s novels and one character in one of Smith’s novels had an amputated leg – and that fictional character went on despite his disabilities to achieve great success. So the young amputee thanked Wilbur Smith saying that his fiction gave him new hope to live and succeed in life. These he said were moments that he cherished about his fans.

He mentioned that though he is on a book tour in India, he is desperately trying to arrange to visit Jim Corbett National Park and glimpse the famous tiger conservation there.

Soon it was time to take questions from the audience and every one of the persons who asked him anything started by thanking him for taking them to the rich land of Africa through the descriptive words of his novels. I asked him a question too. I said: “Your website has a biography of you which mentions how your mother encouraged you while reading fiction as a child and that you had an encouraging teacher in school who liked Smith’s writings and said it is admirable to be a bookworm – so what advice would you give to a struggling author?” He said that this was a very serious question which he cannot take lightly. He recalled how an editor friend of his thought writing a novel was easy and that he could write it in a 6 month break from work. “After one month, he was back in office” said Smith. LOL. Smith added, “It takes much effort and discipline and like all good things you have to continue with determination against odds to be a writer or succeed in any other profession as well.”

He also answered a question regarding future of Africa, when a person from the audience asked that after Asia, is Africa the big boom economic centre. Mr. Smith said that Asia was very different and far more developed. That Africa is still in infancy in terms of growth and stabilization. He mentioned that India will grow further because he observed that Indians are intelligent and hard-working and hence like other countries in Asia, is growing fast. He also said that the leaders in India had done well to keep Indian states together after the British rule ended, otherwise the olden times when Maharajas fought each other and lived without unity would have kept India just as Africa is today – divided and lacking direction. He also said that Lincoln had done a great job when he allowed war to keep the 50 states of America together and that is the reason why USA is a great global leader it is today.

So a great evening wrapped up with the hostess announcing that Mr. Wilbur Smith would sign books. A very well organised event by Landmark Bookstore, culminating with an organised linup by fans to get their books signed. Very entertaining and enlightening evening indeed.

Catch Wilbur Smith on tour in India in various cities at Landmark Bookstores near you. I got 7 of his novels signed by him in person. :-)

Below are some photos from my mobile phone camera.

Best Wishes,
Ujjwal Dey (Editor)

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