Malone Davis loved to surf, but he had accepted a job on the morning side of the Sierra, slightly east of Reno, Nevada and had to leave his ocean side home in Santa Barbara, California. Soon though, he discovered wind-surfing.

His favorite place had been Lake Tahoe, but it proved crowded and with self-quarantine, social distancing and COVID-19 a big deal, he chose a small body of water. Washoe Lake was ideal.

It was man-made and filled with winter run-off. It was also shallow, so at six-foot tall, Malone could stand on it’s soft, silty bottom and still keep his head above water.

He even decided to try wind-surfing at night, under the full moon. It was an off-shoot of the sport that he’d only heard about, but hadn’t seen anyone else doing.

“I could write a little piece on it, and submit it to a magazine,” he told his friend, Jimmy, who seemed genuinely interested in joining him for the outing.

The next full moon came and Jimmy had to beg off as his girlfriend’s parents had come into town from South Dakota, unannounced.

“Man,” Jimmy said, “I can’t get away tonight.”

“That’s alright, I’m still gonna go.”

“You shouldn’t go out by yourself.”

“What could happen?”

“You never know,” Jimmy answered.

“Yeah, well I used to swim with Great Whites,” Malone said off-the-cuff, “Besides, I got an article to write.”

Out on the lake, a dying wind carried him gently back and forth across the water, but once the sun disappeared beyond Slide Mountain, the zephyr fell away leaving Malone standing on his board in dead calm water. More than a little frustrated with his failed effort, he dropped from the board and into the pulpy lake bottom.

As he walked through the alluvium deposit, his foot touched something large. At first Malone thought it might was a piece of wood or perhaps a rock, but then it painfully clamped down on his foot, above the ankle, then jerked hard, yanking him below the now-muddy surface.

Malone, who still clung to his board, resurfaced, sputtering, gagging and coughing, struggled to climb onto it. But it became impossible as more and more of the sinister forms affixed themselves to his still dangling legs.

And as he lost his grip on his board, and a mere second before he dipped one final time below the lake’s once-glassy surface, he saw what had him in a death grip, dozens of the rough-shelled desert oysters. The archaic brachiopods refused to release Malone Davis, their newly found meal.

Monday morning, state park rangers found his van and ticketed it, for failing to pay for the extra day use. It wasn’t until that afternoon, when he’d been reported missing, that they located his board on the southeast side of the lake and shreds of a wet suit, still in the water, but nothing else.

Peggy passed away on May 10, 2020. She was born in Crescent City, California on December 13, 1955 to John and Eleanor McMillan. She grew up on the McMillan ranch in Klamath, with sister Kathy and brother Brian.

One summer, when she was 15 or 16-years-old, Peggy was our babysitter. Her style was too keep us very busy and entertained by doing small backyard skits, building forts in the house, drawing, painting and coloring, playing board games, and especially taking us on hikes up behind our home and into the Redwoods she loved so much.

Shortly after leaving the Air Force in 1980, I went to work  at McKay’s Grocery Store in Crescent City, where Peggy was a register jockey and I swept and mopped floors. Customers and co-workers loved her because she was always happy — laughing and smiling.

Peggy also encouraged me to keep the lines of communication open when it came to my folks during their divorce. She said over and over that, “One day, it’ll become important.”

I should’ve listened to her advice.

Her passing hurts my heart, not only because it proves I’m getting closer to that inevitable day, but more so that the world has lost a wonderful person in Peggy.

It was a fair piece of asphalt between Cheyenne  to San Francisco and to ride the bus made it the perfect adventure for Jesse Costa. He’d traveled the many by-ways across the good ol’ U.S. of A., the same way he was traveling now.

Always in the same seat, the ones on the right, jus’ before the back tire’s wheel-well. It’s where Jesse felt the most calm, because it soothed his OCD and the tires hum and drone made it easier to fall asleep.

This didn’t mean that he might not move elsewhere on the bus as they slipped down the road into the sunset and deeper into the night. It jus’ meant that for now he was comfortable and might even get a few z’s before their next scheduled stop in Rock Springs.

The bus always stopped in Rock Springs. It’s where it took on more fuel and the passengers had a chance to have a real meal, and not simply the snacks provided at the smaller stops.

It’s also where the couple stumbled aboard the half-full bus. Jesse could tell that there was trouble amidst the pair.

She was plain, a petite blond, and could be pretty if given the chance. He was tall, rangy in stature, smelling of stale cigarettes, sweat and cheap booze, with shoulder length greasy hair.

Jesse put the thought aside as the bus moved back out onto Interstate 80. Before he realized it, the sun was gone and the dark was becoming more and more pronounced.

Dream-filled sleep crowded Jesse’s head again, but for how long he’d been asleep, he did know. What he did know was that he could hear a woman crying and it wasn’t from happiness.

Looking around, he studied the faces of the passengers, which were drawn tight, nervous and in some cases pale. He also detected the musky odor of fear.

Then he heard it. That sharp snap of a face being struck.

He turned in his seat. Greasy-hair was berating the blond, calling her names and when she dripped a tear, he struck her.

“Whatcha lookin’ at?” Greasy-hair growled at Jesse as he watched the man’s behavior.

“Nothing,” Jesse replied.

“Then mind yer own business.”

“Don’t mind if I do.”

Jesse stood and in three steps reached Greasy-hair’s seat. Without a word, he reach down and grabbed the abuser by the throat and squeezed.

The violent and sudden closure of his windpipe left the man unable to speak or breathe. In a low growl, he said, “Hit her again or make any other sound and I’ll toss your ass off this bus and I won’t be using the door. Got it?”

The man, wide-eyed, shook his head rapidly.

“Now go sit in the front of the bus and stay the hell away from her for the rest of your trip.”

He released Greasy-hair, who flopped back in his seat, then quickly got up, coughing and pale, and slipped past Jesse, towards the front of the bus. He dropped hard in the second seat from the front, behind the driver.

Jesse looked at the driver in his rear-view passenger mirror and the driver smiled. As for Jesse, he simply went back to his seat and slipped into sleep.

In his dreams he returned to his wilder days, running with his pack, when Jesse Costa was their silver-haired Alpha and not jus’ another lone wolf traveling the roadways of America.

From now on, Quaker Oats shall be known as Shaquille O’atmeal.

“Geezus, I can’t believe that I signed up for this shit,” he whispered into the stock of his gun as he glanced at the shoulder patch bearing the letter’s’WW’ in black thread on his upper right sleeve shoulder.

“I’ve done some stupid fucking things before in my life,” recalling how he accepted a dare to jump from a jagged cliff side into the ocean, “But this…”

The though faded as he held his corporate-issued gun, black plastic and heavier than he thought it would be, against his chest. His uniform was insufferably itchy and far too hot for the jungle they were helicoptering towards.

The green canopy zipped by at a quick pace, and even faster when they drew closer over top of it. Staring at it as they slipped made him feel sick to his stomach.

Across from him was a man, heavy in gut and wearing the same uniform withe same patch. The only difference were the small dark dashes on his left arm, denoting the number of kills he’d attained on each weekend he’d gone out.

“Done this before?” Frank shouted over the din of the engine.

“Tenth time,” the man hollered back smiling, holding both hands up, palms open, finger extended.

“I’ll stick close to him. Who knows, looking at him, maybe this is really more game that anyone realizes.”

Corporate battles were nothing knew. They’d become popular in the early 21^st century, after the excitement and adrenaline rush of first-person video gaming had worn off.

Before reality reset itself, Frank thought, “Maybe it’s the same shit, but without the stupid goggles.”

Frank couldn’t for the life of himself understand why, other than ‘peer-pressure,’ he’d allowed himself to be talked into this act of stupidity. What made it so bad was the fact that there was a real chance that rather then getting his ‘cherry-popped in armed conflict,’ he be returning in a plastic bag, blown to and back, dead.

“Is a god-damned promotion worth getting killed over?”

Next to the Beer-belly sat his coworker, James, an asshole if ever there was one. A true kiss-ass and brown-noser, who though five-years younger had used his particular skill-set to worm his way up to the same company level as Frank.

Suddenly the chopper dipped and rushed between two large copses of trees, the tropical variety. Frank nearly lost what little he’d eaten earlier that day as the craft pulled up hard into a maintained hover.

The choppers gunner made a quick hand motion and Beer-belly launched himself into the shin-high elephant grass that was pressed down in the wash of the rotor blade. The Kiss-ass followed suit and Frank, though unwilling, joined them.

Soon the grass was standing up right, higher than the three figures who now used it for cover. They listened as the chopper moved farther away and then listen more for any other sound that might be nearby.

Within minutes, the trio was trudging towards the nearest stand of trees.

“Spread out,” Beer-belly directed.

The Kiss-ass moved to the right of Beer-belly and remained slightly ahead of Frank. This was fine with Frank as he didn’t like the idea of being the first shot if any shooting were to be had.

That night, the clear skies with their bright twinkle of stars, clouded over and it began to rain. Before Frank could get his poncho out of his pack, he was soaked and smelled as bad as a wet-dog that had rolled in a maggoted roadkill.

Meanwhile, Beer-belly and the Kiss-ass seemed to be comfortable and unaffected by either the rain, the wetness or their increasing stench. In the distance they could hear occasional gun fire and an even less-occasional thundering boom of a canon or perhaps the explosion of a mortar.

As soon as the rain slowed, they were on their feet and moving towards the battle. By this time, Frank was chilled to the bone.

“I’m so cold,” he said, “And I don’t care who knows it.”

“Shut yer jawing,” Beer-belly warned.

The Kiss-ass simply smiled a toothy-grin at Frank.

“Christ, how I’d love to wipe that shit-eating grin from his face.”

It didn’t take long for them to join in the fire-fight, though sporadic at best. They had approached from the west, on hands and knees.

“Maybe we can make a link up here with another unit,” Beer-belly stated.

It was where Frank saw his first dead body. It was riddled with holes, each flowering with a dark blood-red stain.

The man’s uniform was different from his. Gray, not Blue and his gun, though also plastic was a dark green hue.

Frank felt the bile rise from his gut and pass over his esophagus in a hot wave. He weaved three more times, but on the third nothing came up.

“Come on you F-N-G,” Beer-belly coaxed harshly, “Get up here and get to fighting. Like our buddy over there.”

“What’s an F-N-G?” Frank asked, as he crawled forward.

“Fucking new guy,” the Kiss-ass answered.

“Of course you’d know that and don’t call me a fucking new guy.”

Beer-gut and the Kiss-ass looked at each other, laughing.

Their laughter fell-away quickly as Beer-belly pointed at the Kiss-ass , who was hunkered down behind a log, taking careful aim and squeezing off one round at a time. Unsurprisingly to Frank, it looked like the Kiss-ass had been doing this for all of his life.

“Of course, he’d be a natural, the mother fucker.”

Frank remembered how the Kiss-ass had swept in that one late afternoon and asked Janey out to dinner, knowing Frank was interested in the young woman. He settled on chubby and drab Mary Anne in accounting.

Without warning the gunfire became more directed. Frank found himself curled in a ball behind a clump of thick weeds, too afraid to move, too frightened to raise his gun, too scared to even shoot back.

Then it was all over. The shooting had ceased and he watched as Beer-belly crawled forward and into the brush, followed closely by the Kiss-ass.

As for Frank, he stood up and looked around. He was alone and wishing he’d stayed home, in bed, wanting to forget that a possible promotion hung in the balance when it came to these war games.

The brush to his right lit up, bullets blazing around him, but none touching him. An instinct to survive kicked in and he returned fire on the place from which he’d seen the violent flashed of light.

Again, a quietness filled the battle field.

From his front came the figures of Beer-belly and the Kiss-ass. They were hurrying to learn what the disturbance was about and to see if they might get in on whatever action might be had.

“Got yer cherry-popped finally,” Beer-belly called out.

Any possibility of celebrating was cut short as a lone figure, in a gray uniform, stumbled out of the elephant grass to Frank’s right. The soldier was on top of Frank before he could react.

The Kiss-ass blew the man in half with a rapid burst of gunfire.

“You dumb ass Cherry, you must have a death wish,” Beer-belly said.

Frank looked down at the body halves. He looked up and saw a green gun laying near where the man had exited the grass.

“Huh…he lost his gun,” Frank said as he walked over, picked it and giving it a once over.

He saw the manufacturing stamp on the guns barrel. It was the same stamp as the one on his gun barrel.

Frank felt suddenly sick again. This time he didn’t heave, but he did feel his neck, face and ears turn to fire as he fought to suppress the desire to pass out.

“Your fuckin’ partner there saved your worthless ass, Cherry,” Beer-belly continued, “You ought to be…”

He looked at James, that tormenting brown-nose, ass-kissing, woman-stealing prick, and with the enemy’s gun angled at him, pulled the trigger. The blast ripped the Kiss-ass’ head off his shoulders and a mass of blood squeezed itself out of his pencil-thin neck in several dark-red gushes.

“Son-of-a-bitch, you little idiot, you killed our own man,” Beer-belly squealed.

Frank found the same pleasure in killing him as he did in wasting the Kiss-ass. In fact it might have cause even more enjoyment as Frank developed a real thick boner as he watched the fat asshole do the dead-man’s dance before crumpling to the still moist earth.

“Killin’ ain’t so bad after all,” Frank smiled as he retrieved his gun from where he’d left it laying, “Maybe by tomorrow, I’ll have enough points that by next weekend they’ll let me go Rambo on some of those gray cock-sucker’s fucking-asses.”

If you wear a face mask and glasses at the same time, you are entitled to condensation.

They laid on the plaid blanket in each others arms, watching the distant stars above and enjoying the warm summer evening. The only sound to be heard in the darkening night, was that of the Whipper-Will’s call.

“I can’t believe how perfect we are together,” she said, stroking the side of his bearded face.

“Me neither. I’d be happy to lay here with you forever,” he said.

“Me too, but these bodies won’t bury themselves,” she coo’d, motioning at the pair of long-handled shovels that rested beside their now-empty picnic basket.

“Yeah, we can return to this afterwards,” he smiled.

If Betty White changes her last name, I’m done…

Juneteenth? I thought it was ‘Black Friday.’

After watching how some people wear their masks, I now understand why contraception fails.