I ran into an old soul at the bar.
It was just before the Greatest Show on Earth.
He said he doesn’t drink anymore,
said his addiction had lost its worth.

We each had a fresh carrot juice,
talked of old times and remembrances,
caught up on the latest news—
his addiction and its consequences.

We parted there to see the show
and went our separate ways.
And in my heart, I somehow know
he’ll keep those demons at bay.

Now, when the circus comes around,
I’ll be reminded of that troubled soul
and hope he’s somewhere on solid ground,
his addiction still on parole.

I stopped working about ten months ago. It wasn’t entirely by choice, but the change was welcome. Now I can move through my days with less concern for the clock than at any other time in my life. I used to be up by 5:30 in the morning and in bed by 9:30 at night. Now that I’m free, I find myself staying up late—quite late. My writing hours seem to have shifted to nighttime. And because I seldom have an early morning commitment, I sleep later too.

I am usually found at my desk during the later part of the night. Writing, and all it entails—which can often be more than putting words on a page. I must tell myself to go to bed. These days, that is usually around midnight.

Before going to bed, I prepare the coffee maker so that when I rise, all it takes is a simple flip of the switch. Then comes what I call The Between—that interval after getting out of bed but before the coffee is ready. Our days have evenings, but I haven’t found a name for this brief time before the day has properly begun. So I call it The Between.

Once I am settled into the pillow and sheets, I say the Lord’s Prayer, followed by prayers for family and friends. I conclude with a prayer of gratitude. Then I mentally retrace my day from “the beginning” to bed.

After flipping the switch on the coffee maker, I take care of the day’s administrative issues: monitoring my blood pressure, entering the data into a matrix for my doctors, reading the daily obituaries, checking my cameras for overnight activity, and looking over the world news headlines. That is about enough administration for the end of the beginning. The coffee has arrived.

My late mother would accuse me of just “fiddle-fartin’ and jackin’ around.” She loved to say that. As I lie in bed, though, I see those few minutes as a critical part of my day.

I move forward in my mind. I had breakfast, perhaps took a shower, and attended to a few light maintenance activities. Then lunch. Many days, lunch is followed by a siesta.

By this point in the exercise, I begin to question the chronology of my recollections. This morning seems like such a long time ago. If I start to become a little confused, I know sleep is near. I continue, though, into the events of the afternoon and then the evening—that time between the day and the coming of night.

I think of it as the evening out of the day.

My evenings are slow and usually involve an hour or so of television. Then it is back to the office and back to writing.

That final prayer of gratitude is a powerful habit to develop.

During the past ten days, three people I had known for some time died. One was in his mid-forties, another in his mid-sixties, and the third was eighty.

I am seventy-four. I have cancer. I have another life-threatening condition. My prayers of gratitude are very real. When I thank God for giving me another day, I mean it.

And gratitude has given me something in return: a different way of measuring the day.

I was given this day. I inhabited it. Some things got done. Some did not. And now it is complete.

There is a peculiar pleasure in realizing that an ordinary day—cooking, cleaning, helping a family member, writing late into the night—can be an extraordinary day, simply because I got to have it.

And here’s the deal. If morning comes and I’m still here, I get to flip the switch. I get to ponder the beginning.

I no longer plan my days. I take them as they unfold. I enjoy them as I watch them slip by.

It has become that simple for me…just flip the switch.

He was eighteen years old when he left California.

It was not an escape. Not exactly.

He just left.

There is a difference.

He had a job, friends, a family, and the familiar comfort of streets whose names he knew without reading the signs. He had a room, a car, a little money saved, and the confidence peculiar to boys who have not yet learned how much of the world does not care whether they survive it.

The trip had been planned at the suggestion of a college roommate.

That was the first illusion.

One by one, as spring turned toward summer, they dropped away. Jobs interfered. Parents objected. Girlfriends appeared. Money disappeared. The great European adventure became smaller each time one of them offered regret and said maybe next year.

He did not say maybe.

He had saved. He had dreamed. He had already gone too far inside himself to turn back and remain who he had been.

So, he went alone.

It was his first time out of the country.

His first time on an airplane.

His first time, really, on his own.

The first flight was from Northern California to Los Angeles. United Airlines. A short flight, barely three hundred miles, though it did not feel short. The plane stopped three times along the way. A puddle jumper, they might have called it, though it was a jet and not some little prop plane skipping down the valley.

Each time it landed, the aircraft taxied close to a terminal and stopped.

At first, he noticed only the delay. Then the people gathered near the service area. Then the military guard.

Then he saw the caskets.

They came from the belly of the plane, one after another, covered with American flags.

Young men.

Maybe his age.

Coming home from Vietnam.

No one on the plane spoke much after that.

He looked out the window and watched the handlers move with practiced care. There was ceremony in it, but also routine, and the routine unsettled him more than the ceremony.

He was leaving home to become a vagabond.

They were coming home because they had no choice.

That was his first lesson, though he did not know it then.

At Los Angeles, he spent the night in a cheap motel near the airport. The room smelled of disinfectant, carpet dust, and old air-conditioning. He slept badly. In the morning, he boarded a one-way charter flight to Frankfurt, Germany.

One way.

That mattered.

He had no contacts, no reservations, and no real plan.

Well, there was a plan of sorts.

He would make his way south through Spain to Gibraltar. There he would buy a Bultaco motorcycle, ferry it to Morocco, ride down Africa, then somehow continue up through South and Central America and return home by land in a couple of years.

It was not a plan.

It was a boy’s map of immortality.

Still, he carried it with conviction.

The charter flight landed first in Frankfurt.

Europe.

Even the word felt larger in those days.

From there he drifted south by train through a continent he knew mostly from books, war movies, and maps folded across the hood of cars back in California. He crossed borders half-aware of their significance, carrying little more than a backpack, a sleeping bag, and the absolute confidence unique to the very young.

Spain came at night.

The train entered Portbou late in the evening.

The town was alive. Music echoed between the buildings. Voices drifted through narrow streets crowded with people celebrating some local fiesta he never understood. Spain, he would later learn, often seemed to celebrate itself.

The young American stepped from the train carrying his pack and sleeping bag into warm Mediterranean air scented faintly with tobacco, wine, and stone still holding the heat of the day.

He found a small hotel and went inside.

The woman at the desk listened patiently while he attempted his broken Spanish.

Then she shook her head.

“No.”

No rooms.

She said it plainly, without apology.

When he asked what he should do, she told him he could sleep on the beach.

So, he walked down toward the water.

The Mediterranean lay black beneath the night sky. The sand remained warm from the day’s sun. He unrolled his sleeping bag near the edge of the beach and had just begun settling in when two Guardia Civil emerged from the darkness.

Both were armed.

Sidearms at their hips. One carried a carbine. The other held a submachine gun that appeared older than the rest of his uniform.

The young American sat up slowly.

They asked what he was doing there.

He explained about the hotel. No rooms. The woman sending him to the beach.

The officers listened.

Then one shook his head.

“No.”

He could not stay there.

The young American asked where he should go.

“To the station.”

That was all.

So, he packed his things and walked back uphill through the crowded streets toward the train station.

The station sat mostly dark beneath a few weak yellow lights. There was a wooden bench beneath the platform canopy. He laid out his sleeping bag there and stretched out.

He felt alone.

But strangely unafraid.

Sometime later, two more Guardia Civil approached.

Or perhaps the same two. Years later he could no longer say for certain. In memory they merged together into Spain itself.

Again, there were sidearms.

Again, the carbine.

Again, the old submachine gun.

They asked what he was doing there.

The young American explained everything once more.

This time they asked for his passport.

They examined it carefully beneath the dim station lights.

“California?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“Stockton.”

Nothing.

“San Francisco.”

Still nothing.

Finally, he said, “Cerca el capital… Sacramento.”

One of the Guardia smiled.

His brother, he explained, lived there.

The atmosphere changed immediately.

Not dramatically.

Humanly.

They asked what the young American planned to do in Spain.

He reached into his papers and produced a name and address in Barcelona. A woman he had never met. His uncle had given him the information before he left California. The woman had once been a customer at his dry-cleaning shop years earlier.

The Guardia studied the paper longer than they had studied the passport.

That mattered somehow.

One of the officers asked if he had cigarettes.

He did.

Gauloises.

The young American handed one to each of them and together they stood beneath the station lights smoking quietly in the warm Spanish night.

Then one officer asked:

“Marijuana?”

“Nada,” the young American answered quickly. “Nunca.”

The officers nodded gravely.

Very bad in Spain, they said.

“Seis años y un día.”

Six years and one day.

The young American asked why the extra day.

One of the Guardia smiled slightly.

“That is the time it takes to put you in prison.”

No lawyers.

No judge.

Just prison.

The young American believed him completely.

They finished the cigarettes together.

Then the officers handed back the passport.

“Obey the laws of Spain,” one of them said.

The other nodded toward the sleeping bag.

“And if you ever need help, the Guardia Civil will be there.”

Then they disappeared back into the darkness.

The young American lay back down on the wooden bench and stared at the dim lights above the platform.

Beyond the station he could still hear music drifting upward from the fiesta somewhere down in the town.

He had expected Europe to feel foreign.

He had not expected it to feel ancient.

Or personal.

Or strangely protective.

Years later he would realize Spain had introduced itself honestly from the very beginning.

Then he closed his eyes and slept

.

We sit in the fading light
Faces illuminated by the candle’s glow
The mix of incense and emotions in flight
Drift through our souls and we know

Like rain on your face
The decade’s commotion
With pain and with haste
Washed away our devotion

Just as death’s inevitability
We knew this day would come
Having lived and loved unpredictably
We now part… each as one

Perhaps in another time
Perhaps in another place
In some other’s glance
You’ll see my face

… and know I loved yo

People occasionally ask me what I mean by the word Ponderment.

It’s a fair question.

The word doesn’t exist—at least not in the dictionary.

A Ponderment begins with something that causes me to pause.

A phrase. An observation. A contradiction. A question.

Something that quietly asks to be considered rather than quickly answered.

Over time I began collecting those moments and eventually gave them a name.

Ponderments.

The name is a quiet homage to one of my greatest literary influences, Elbert Hubbard.

In his magazine The Philistine, Hubbard published short essays he called Preachments.

His pieces almost always encouraged the reader to do something. They were written from conviction.

Mine begin somewhere else.

A Preachment begins with certainty.

A Ponderment begins with curiosity.

A Preachment points toward an answer.

A Ponderment lingers with a question.

My hope is never to tell you what to think.

Only to offer something worth thinking about.

Some observations remain little more than a sentence.

Others continue growing until they become one of my essays in The View from the Rim of the Cup, where the thoughts have had room to wander a bit farther.

And then there are the stories.

Many are rooted in memory.

Some are historical fiction.

Others are autobiographical in spirit, if not always in fact.

They all begin the same way...

...with a question that refused to leave.

If you’ve found your way here, welcome.

If something here causes you to pause, I’d enjoy hearing from you.

And remember, if you’re out tonight, and you’re on your bike… wear white… evenin’ all.

The Girl on the Skateboard

Many of you who know me really don’t “know me.” And that’s perfectly OK.

That said, I’d like to invite you to consider something I witnessed this evening and how it affected me.

Many of you don’t know that I had three grandmothers.

You don’t know that I have but one degree of separation from the Third Reich and the Final Solution.

You don’t know any more about me than I have told you... as it should be.

So, here’s the deal…

I’m standing at my kitchen sink this evening, looking out the window onto the street. Among the things you don’t know about me is that I live in a rather idyllic neighborhood. Not exclusive, nor “exclusive”—just idyllic. Not many people pass in front of my kitchen window, mainly because we are a little remote.

I’m standing there and I see a young girl, maybe 12 or 13 years old, pass in front of the house.

She’s on a skateboard.

Unsure. Unsteady. But working to master it.

There was something wonderfully innocent about her, just moving through the street, trying to find the rhythm of that skateboard.

And she reminded me of my third grandmother, Anneliese.

I’m 74 years old now... born in ‘52.

I had a wonderful person in my life whom I came to think of as my third grandmother. She was born in 1901 in Silesia, in what is now Poland.

Her complete story is one for another time, but you need to know that she survived the Nazis and Auschwitz. Her husband and one of her two sons did not survive the Holocaust.

She eventually ended up in California and worked for the remainder of her life as a “housekeeper” at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Stockton.

She had come from a life of privilege in Berlin. Before the purges. Before the roundups. Before the camps. Before the horror.

Yet through all the turns her life had taken, she somehow carried herself with grace and dignity.

Even her name seemed to speak to that.

Anna: full of grace.

Liese: God is my oath.

She looked after me as an infant and cared for me when my parents were occupied. Later, when I became a young adult, she encouraged me to travel.

She told me many stories about her life and her travels in Europe before, during and after the war.

She didn’t talk much about her internment or the loss of her husband and son. Occasionally she did.

And I listened.

And I paid attention.

One of my favorite stories—and one that intrigued me as a very young boy and still does today—was about her life as a young girl in Silesia.

She told me about her summer adventures.

This was before the wa

r. Before the division. Before the hatred. Before the murders.

The age of innocence.

She and her girlfriends would set out early on a warm summer morning. I’m imagining they were perhaps 12 or 13 years old—the same age as the girl wobbling along on the skateboard outside my kitchen window.

Annelie, as we called her, told me that she and her friends would lock arms at the elbows, sometimes five or six abreast, and march through the countryside singing songs and laughing.

They would eat wild fruit and gather mushrooms along the way.

As late afternoon approached, they would find a farmhouse. They’d introduce themselves to the farmer and his wife and offer up their collection of wild mushrooms.

In return, they would be fed and given shelter for the night in the barn.

Then, morning would come and the girls would continue on their way.

A picture of complete innocence.

Whenever Annelie told me this story, something about her changed. She would become almost entranced, as though she had somehow stepped backward through time and was once again that young girl walking through the countryside with her friends.

Before everything changed.

My dear Anneliese’s story has lived inside me for my entire life.

There are other stories she told me. Stories about the camps and about the people she lost.

Those are for another day.

But this story—the story of those young girls walking arm in arm through the countryside—will resonate with me until my final breath.

Which brings me back to my kitchen window.

And the girl on the skateboard.

I watched her wobble down the street, concentrating on the pavement beneath her, trying to find her balance.

And I wondered:

Am I witnessing another of those halcyon days of innocence?

Can we reconcile the differences that so divide us?

Can we resist the ancient temptation to turn disagreement into hatred?

Can we leave this young girl a world in which she has the opportunity simply to grow up, discover who she is, and live a life full of meaning?

She couldn’t possibly know what I was thinking.

Why would she?

She was 12 or 13 years old.

There was a skateboard beneath her feet, an empty street ahead of her, and she was trying to find her balance.

Just as another young girl once walked through the countryside with her friends, singing and laughing, with no idea what history had waiting for her.

I stood at the window and watched until the girl disappeared from sight.

And I prayed that history would be kinder to her.

To expand on my first introductory post from The View from the Rim of the Cup, these small writings are intended as explorations of the way of looking at things. Rodney Crowell wrote about the swimmin’ hole on the Old Bandera where, “you can see clear down to the bottom, and deeper, dependin’ on where you stand, how you look, and what you want to see.” You and I can stand shoulder to shoulder, lookin’ at the same thing, and come away with different impressions. Let’s start with one I recently discovered. I was writing a... we’ll call it a travel log for now… about the Costa Brava in Spain. I was describing the late sun on the Mediterranean Sea, and I wrote “late afternoon sun”. In reading what I had written, I realized I was talking about something that had occurred to me a bit later in the day. So, I changed it to “the evening light”. I looked at the word and for the first time I saw it in a completely different way. “Evening”. The evening of the day... We use the word here as a noun. But it is also a common verb. Then I went down the etymological rabbit hole and saw it there as a noun. But I looked like a verb back on my page. Then it hit me. The time between the daylight and the darkness is the “evening of the day”. Since then, I look at that time of day in a completely different way than I had before. Mother Nature is evening the forces that drive everything. So, to end, I’ll quote another song... “And remember, if you’re out tonight, and you’re on your bike, wear white... evening all.”

From time to time, I’ll be sharing thoughts that are a little more than mere Ponderences—observations about the ordinary things we see, experience, and sometimes overlook in daily life.

I’d like these Views to start conversations. Not politics... no, no. There’s plenty of that elsewhere.

I’m more interested in exploring the human experience: the things we notice, the things we remember, and perhaps the things we see differently from opposite sides of the same cup.

So, keep an eye out for my Views from the Rim of the Cup.

And, as always, the coffee is brewing

.

When I was a boy, I stayed for a time with my grandfather. My cousin Ronnie was there too. He was six years older than me and carried himself with the quiet authority of someone who already knew things.

One afternoon, while my grandfather slept in his bedroom, Ronnie told me to follow him and to be quiet.

We went down the basement stairs. The air was cool and smelled of earth and old wood. Ronnie reached up and pulled the chain on a single bare bulb. The light came on above us, leaving the corners in shadow.

There were boxes along the wall. And a trunk.

Ronnie went to it without hesitation.

“Come look at this,” he said.

He opened the lid and reached inside. He took out a bundle of papers tied with a faded ribbon. The ribbon had once been red.

He untied it carefully.

He handed me one of the pages, but I did not know what it was. The paper was thin and yellowed, the writing in pencil.

Ronnie took it back and began to read aloud. His voice quieter now.

I did not understand the words. Only that they were important.

We heard the steps on the stairs behind us.

“What are you boys doing down here.”

We turned. My grandfather stood in the light, one hand resting on the rail. His bald head unprotected without the fedora.

He looked at the open trunk. Then at the paper in Ronnie’s hand.

He came the rest of the way down.

For a moment, no one spoke.

Then he reached out and took the paper gently, as if it might break.

He looked at it only briefly.

“That was a long time ago,” he said.

He gathered the pages and tied the ribbon again. His fingers steady. Practiced. On his forearm, just below the elbow, was a pale scar I had never seen.

He placed them back in the trunk and closed the lid.

He turned off the light, and we followed him upstairs.

Years later, after he was gone, I found the trunk again.

The ribbon was still there. The papers within it.

I sat on the basement steps and read them slowly. The pencil had faded, but the words remained.

One of the pages read:

1 July 1917

Rain stopped. Trench wet.

Last cigarettes with T.

Said old man told him if you don’t accept a gift, it remains with the giver.

Finally understands now.

Whistle blowing.

Enemy moving.

I sat there for a long time with the paper in my hands.

He had come home from that place.

He had married. Worked. Slept in the quiet afternoons.

He had carried only what belonged to him.

Above me, the bare bulb hummed softly, just as it had that day he came down the stairs

.

I arrived in Paris on the train from Spain late in the afternoon on Thursday. Had to find the station for the train to Calais. I had a ticket on TWA out of London the next morning. Got the train, made it to Calais late and the last “boat” across the Channel. It was an unpleasant crossing, to say the least. I spent much of that night out on deck in the freezing cold. I awoke a dawn to the White Cliffs of Dover. Made it through customs and got the first train to London. Victoria Station, not enough time to wait for a bus. I hired a cab to take me all the way out to Heathrow. Caught my fright with less than an hour to spare. 747 direct from London to SFO. We landed that evening as the sun was setting over the Golden Gate Bridge. Two iconic international landmarks. It was August 13, 1971. It was a Friday.

It was the second week in June, and the fourth day of his summer job.

The foreman had set the boy up with a 36” push broom, a full-size galvanized trashcan chained to a steel mover’s dollie and a large black dustpan.

“When you fill it up, give me a holler, and I get it dumped for you,” said the foreman, knowing the boy was too small to lift the can full of sawdust and dirt.

It had been 100 degrees for 7 straight days and at 9 AM, it was already in the mid 80s.

“There’s the drinkin’ fountain in the middle shed if you get thirsty, but don’t drink too much or you could get sick.” the foreman cautioned.

The boy didn’t want to be at work, even if it was just 8 until noon each weekday.

His task was sweeping the asphalt between the sheds at the sawmill. One end to the other and back again.

Every day, 8 until noon. Then, he would ride home with his grandpa, the owner of the sawmill, for lunch with grandma and then off to play with his friends.

Friends were the most important thing, he thought.

Although his friends didn’t have to work.

Jeff’s dad was a dentist, and his father gave him a dollar a week in allowance.

Tom’s parents were both teachers and they were off for the summer.

Tom did chores around the house for his mom and dad in the mornings and he would be free to play after lunch.

The boy had to work to save enough money for Y-Camp in August.

His friends were already signed up and going, but the boy needed to reach his goal of $12.00 saved by the middle of July, if his parents were to let him join his friends, that is.

And, at 15 cents an hour, that would be about as much as he could earn.

It was hot and getting hotter and the dirt and dust kicked up by his broom stuck to his sweaty skin, got in his eyes and between his teeth.

But he was a good boy and knew that hard work was just something you had to do.

It was Thursday, and the blisters on his hands that rose on Monday had popped and now they were bleeding.

He knew better than to complain to the foreman, a mean sort of fellow who had been a Battle Tank Commander in North Africa during the War.

But the pain was becoming worse, and he had resorted to wrapping newspaper around his hands, although that plan was beginning to fail.

The newspaper became saturated with his sweat and rapidly disintegrated, leaving a slurry of black ink-soaked paper and blood on his hands.

The boy put the broom down and walked to the water fountain.

Taking long gulps of cold water and putting his face in it until he was finally quenched.

Looking down at his hands, he walked across the narrow alley between sheds and through the side door of the main office. Just inside, he looked to the right into his grandpa’s office. The old man was sitting there, pipe in mouth and pencil in hand, working on papers.

“Grandpa?” the boy said.

“Grandpa?” once again.

The old man looked up and over at the boy.

“What?” he said.

“Grandpa, my hands are bleeding.”

“How’s that?” the old man replied.

“Blisters, my blisters popped and now they’re bleeding. What should I do?” the boy asked, not wanting to sound weak.

“Well,” the old man replied. “I don’t pay you enough to buy some gloves, so you best get back on to your work.”

“Ok, grandpa.” the boy said as he turned to go back out to the alley and continue his sweeping.

His hands hurt so bad he teared up.

He sure loved that old man.

I’m very new to this community and still learning how it all works. Here is chapter One of my novella, Paul. I hope you enjoy it. Please comment.

Paul An American Story

Chapter One: Homecoming

The train lurched to a halt.

The side door on the boxcar slide open, slowly, quietly, at least as quiet as Paul could make it.

Open only about two feet, he slipped out and jumped onto the ballast, the crushed stone that supports the railway tracks. The tracks, what the Hobos call the Permanent Way.

He hesitated a moment, listening. He could hear the slow, methodical footsteps, crunching on the ballast, approaching him in the darkness.

He knew it was a Bull, and he was pretty sure he knew which Bull it was.

Four stops back, he saw a new Bull board the train, so he climbed down from his penthouse suite and slipped into the Empty, what the Hobos call a boxcar with no freight in it.

He stood still for a moment longer, then jumped into the ditch below the ballast, rolled and landed upright. He could hear the crunch of boots on the ballast coming from behind him.

His bindlestiff, which contained everything Paul owned, was still in the Empty, but no time to go back for it now.

He needed to bolt, and bolt fast.

He came up the bank from the railroad ditch and took to a gallop.

The lights of Centralia were not far off to his south.

Suddenly, a bright flash of light hit in his brain, then there was nothing.

“Paul?”

“Paul Thompson?”

“Paul?” the deputy repeated.

“Paul?” the deputy repeated.

Not all of a sudden, but in short, pulsating intervals of dim light, like through a piece of glass smeared with Vaseline, Paul began to focus on his immediate surroundings. Through the pounding pain in his head from the Bull’s blow, he realized he was in a jail cell.

The deputy was standing in the open doorway to his cell. “What in tarnation happened to you, Paul Thompson?” he said. “And where the heck have you been for the last five years? We heard you was in Ohio, and then nothing more.”

Paul sat up on the wooden cot. He rubbed his neck on the right side below his skull. Looking up at the deputy, he said, “Should I know you?”

“Know me? I’m your brother Jacob!” said the deputy. “You’re home! Nemaha! Centralia! We had all but figured you were dead.”

“Jacob? I don’t remember nothing, what happened? Why am I in jail?” Paul asked.

“You got clobbered pretty good. There’s a new Bull on the MoPac and he has cut himself quite a reputation. Killed a Bo in Kay See. Judge let him off. Self-defense. Yes sir, he is a devil. Got you with his axe handle.” answered Jacob.

“I tell you; I don’t remember nothing,” repeated Paul.

“Well, we had the Doc up to look at you when you first came in. He says you took a pretty bad blow, surprised you’re still breathing. That Bull probably knocked the sense clean out of you.” Jacob exclaimed.

“The Bull wanted you charged. Says the MoPac has a new zero tolerance for Boes. I say that bonk on your head is all the zero tolerance you need, besides, the train left hours ago. I’m just keeping you here for your own health and safety. Lots of Boes get tossed out, down along the banks of the Black Vermillion and left for dead, which is how we usually find them.”

“I tell you, I don’t know nothing,” said Paul, as he abruptly vomited.

“Oh Lord, Paul! Let me get you a wet towel. You’re in a bad way,” Jacob said as he stepped from the cell to a wash basin and dipped a ripped piece of cloth into the water.

“Here,” he said handing the wet cloth to Paul.

Paul just looked at Jacob with a blank stare. Then he vomited again.

Jacob gently, quietly shut the cell door and took off out of the jail to find the Doc.

He ran down the main street towards the Doc’s house. It was just becoming light and the sun was just about to break the horizon. He knocked at Doc’s door and waited. After a short time, he knocked again, then again.

“Alright, alright! I’m coming!” he could hear the Doc say from inside.

The year was 1934, and in small town rural Kansas you could hear the neighbors talk through the walls next door. The Depression had made it impossible for most folks to build more than simple shelter.

“Doc! You gotta come now! Paul is in a bad way!” Jacob said through the door, just as it opened.

Doc appeared in a long nightshirt and pants holding an oil lamp. “What is all this commotion, Jacob? What are you telling me?”

“Paul! He doesn’t know who I am! Says he can’t remember nothing,” replied Jacob.

“Let me get my boots and a coat,” said Doc. And the two of them walked swiftly back to the jailhouse.

By now the sun was bright on the horizon and the small town was coming to life. They could hear the roosters crowing, and several dogs began to bark.

Jacob ran several paces ahead and, reaching the jailhouse, threw open the door and skidded to a stop. Standing just inside the doorway, he turned, putting his hands on the jambs and slumped over. Looking up to face Doc he said, “He’s gone. He’s gone, Doc. He tricked me! Paul tricked me!”

Just then, a middle-aged woman wearing a full nightgown and sleeping bonnet came rapidly around the corner, “Jacob! Jacob!” she shouted. “Oh, and Doc! Come quick, there’s a fella laying out back of the house! It doesn’t look good, Doc!”

Jacob, with Doc in tow, followed the woman back around the corner and up the side ally. There was Paul. Face down in the dirt. Motionless.

The woman gasped.

Doc knelt over Paul and checked for a pulse. Looking up at Jacob he said, “He’s gone Jacob, I’m sorry.”

Jacob, tears running down his cheeks, wiped his face with his shirt sleeve, and said, “Paul’s finally caught the West Bound.”

Hobo parlance for death.

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