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Every school day, I rode the bus to Del Norte High School. And nearly everyday for two-years, I watched as Susie Robison got on the bus at the entrance of Mill Creek State Park.

That was the extent of my interaction with Susie. From where I sat, she was painfully shy, with her head slightly cocked to one side in her cute way as if avoiding eye-contact.

I was too afraid to speak to her, not because of shyness, but because I could never think of anything to say.

The one thing I will always remember of Susie is the fact that I rarely ever saw her without a smile. It was always nice to see, especially on days when things weren’t so bright.

She graduated from Del Norte High in 1980. Three years later she married her husband, Allan Morris.

Susie went home to be with our Lord, February 6, 2011 at the age of 49.

 

 

 

 

 

It was a fairly warm springtime afternoon day. That’s why I propped the front door open as I relaxed on the futon couch while watching my infant son, Kyle sleeping on the blanket in the middle of the apartment floor.

I smiled realizing how lucky I was to have such a precious baby boy.

Before long though I felt myself getting sleepy and knew this was not a good thing so I got up and walked the few steps into the kitchen and prepared a pot of coffee. I returned to the futon and watched as Kyle started to wake up from his nap.

Within minutes the coffee was finished brewing and although I didn’t want to get up and go back into the kitchen I said to my son, “I’ll be right back.”

I disappeared into the kitchen and poured a cup of java and returned to the front room.

An instant wave of panic rush through me as I saw Kyle was no longer on the blanket next to the futon. Setting my coffee down, I stepped outside on the landing. I hadn’t heard any one come up or down the steps and I didn’t see anyone now.

Terrified, I raced down the flight of steps and onto the common sidewalk that connected the apartment complex. I saw absolutely nobody around and I puzzled over what I should do next.

Fighting off the sense of panic that tried to overtake me, I jogged towards the parking lot figuring if anyone were carrying a baby that would be the most likely direction they would head. Again, I saw no one.

Now I felt the urge to panic. I took off in a mad dash around the entire building, racing past the laundry room and offices, then up a short set of steps and back around towards the apartment that I had been living in for the past seven years, seeing not one person in the process.

I was on the verge of tears as I concluded the worse had happened; my son Kyle had been kidnapped.

Resigned to the fact that I must now place a call to the police, it was all an awful prospect that I was dreading. But as I trudged up the stairs to the apartment, I heard a sound that brought a sense of relief to my heart.

It was that of a baby crying. I recognized it as Kyle’s cry.

I raced up the remaining steps. Once up stairs and in the apartment the crying stopped.

 I stood still, listening.

Nothing.

Then there was a faint whimper as Kyle started to cry again. I bent down to discover Kyle under the futon couch and against the wall.

I gently pulled him out and cradled him in his arms, where upon Kyle cooed, never realizing how scared I had been.

Later that evening when Kyle’s mother came to pick him up I explained what happened. She laughed and apologized because she had forgotten to tell me that our son had learned how to roll over — but only one direction.

Here was this voluptuous woman with both a commanding and yet feminine mystic to her and I wasn’t sure what to make of her. I was working a loss-prevention for an antiques store at the Reno Hilton and her, a Security Officer for the hotel/casino.

Bold as day, she marched up to me and introduced herself as Tura Jurman. What I didn’t know at that moment was that she had gained cult status for her role in the 1965 movie ‘Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!’

Hell, I hadn’t even heard of the movie — but the world damned well knew who Tura Santana was.

In ‘Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!’ Tura played Varla, the leader of a trio of thrill-seeking go-go dancers who kills a man with her bare hands. The trio then set out to rob a wealthy older man who lives on a desert ranch with his two sons.

Tura’s acting debut was a cameo as Suzette Wong, a Parisian prostitute in the film ‘Irma la Douce,’ starring Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine. Her other credits include the television shows ‘Burke’s Law’ and ‘The Man from U.N.C.L.E.’

Born Tura Luna Pascual Yamaguchi in Hokkaidō, Japan, she moved with her parents to the U.S. before World War II, during which her family was interned at Manzanar Internment camp in Lone Pine, California. She was married John Satana, from which she took her stage name and even dated Elvis Presley for a time.

She was married for 19 years to retired Los Angeles police officer Endel Jurman. They eventually moved to Reno, and she was widowed in 2000.

Tura passed away from heart failure at the age of 72. She’s survived by her two daughters — Kalani Silverman and Jade Fall.

Though it has been years since I’ve seen her, I will miss her.

For the last month or so I’ve been trying to remove much of the clutter in my life.

One of my uncluttering tactics involves moving much of what I’ve written over the last 41-years from paper to digital material. This involves not only a lot of typing of stories word-for-word, it also involves much editing.

Over the years I have written stories in first-person, third person or even with a fictional character. That’s why there are so many mistakes — especially in the pronoun department.

So as I post these stories to my weblog, and as you read them, you’ll find a sizable number of mistakes. I will eventually find them and correct them, it’ll jus’ take some time.

Meanwhile, all mistakes aside, I plan to continue having fun posting stories to my blog and I hope you’ll have as much fun reading what’s written.

It had seemed unbearably hot in the truck as I drove Highway 299 from the coast to the center of northern California. It was made worse by the fact that the old Chevy had no air conditioning and every few miles there was a halt in traffic for road construction.

What was normally a four and a half hour road trip grew into nearly seven long hours, so I could hardly wait to get over the hill, past Whiskeytown and into Redding. That’s where I would stop to fuel up the truck and get a cool, refreshing soda pop.

As I pulled into the market and got out, I felt a sense of relief that at least half of his trip was finished. I opened the gas tank and pushed the fuel nozzle in and started filling the Chevy. I decided to head inside to use the restroom and to get that drink I had been thinking of for the last seventy miles.

After coming out of the bathroom, I walked over to the large glass doors holding every cold ice drink I could think of. I searched for my favorite and found it.

As I pulled it from the rack, I heard the door buzzer go off. This caused me to look upward at the convex mirror above my head.

To my surprise I saw a man waving what appeared to be a sawed off shot-gun at the cowering store clerk. I stood still hoping the clerk would jus’ hand over the cash in the register and the bandit would leave.

Instead the clerk appeared to be too petrified of the shot-gun and could not move. The bandit waved the weapon around more and more and shouted instructions but without any results. I quickly realized the situation was getting out of hand and I needed to act to keep the clerk from getting killed.

I looked at the soda pop I was holding, and then promptly started shaking it vigorously.

As I quickly moved towards the front of the small store I continued to shake it. I knew I had to judge my position and the bandits position jus’ right or I might end up getting shot defending the woman who was now pleading for her life.

Walking silently along the contour of the store, I came to the aisle the bandit was standing jus’ to the left of and turned. As I stepped out and towards the check out counter I was still shaking the can of soda as hard as I could.

“Where are the cupcakes?” I asked, “Oh, I see them.”

When I spoke, the startled bandit jumped swinging the shot-gun from the clerk towards me. When the robber did this, I stepped slightly to my right and raised the soda pop can, opening it into the face of the very surprised bandit.

As the soda pop finished spraying, I grabbed the arm of the bad guy and his shot-gun. Next I lowered my right shoulder into the bandit’s chest, jerking the man off-balance. The body check sent the bandit crashing into a nearby end-cap of potato chips.

It was over with seconds. The bandit was lying on the ground and the clerk was on the telephone calling the police and I had the sawed-off shot-gun in hand.

Within minutes the city police, the county sheriff’s department and the highway patrol arrived, taking control of the situation. It was the first and only time any of the officers had ever known of a suspect being apprehended by the carbonated blast of a soda pop can.

It took me nearly three hours to get the old claw tub up on the front porch of the cabin by myself. I decided to take a break.

I sat down, dangling my legs off the front edge of the porch, thinking back on the last year.

It was rainy the day I found the old rundown shack on the edge of Lake Earl. It looked like an old-line shake at one time, but most recently, it was home to an assorted number of birds.

It sat in the middle of a clearing on a slight rise in the land. Around it grew aging redwood trees and slender youthful looking alders. It could not be seen from the paved roadway to the east, and I wondered how long it had sat invisible from the duck blinds set up along Lake Earl to the west.

“Hello to the cabin…” I shouted.

No one answered, so I approached it. I was hoping to find some old hermit living there with a brewing cup of coffee close by.

“Hello to the cabin…” I yelled out one more time.

By now I was standing on the first step to the front porch. Again no one answered my call.

I stepped on the first plank and it growled.

That flushed the first of the birds, which exploded like a shotgun shell out the pane-less windows in all directions. I instinctively jerked my 20-gauge shotgun closer to my body.

“Pigeon and quail,” I thought.

The wind picked up as I opened the door to the cabin and stepped inside. I was happy to have found this little place to stay out of the weather.

Duck hunting for me was double misery. I rarely bagged a bird and I usually got soaked for my trouble.

The room was bare save a two-by-two table built into the wall and a flimsy wooden chair. It also had a pot-bellied stove no bigger than a bale of hay.

On the wall above the table was a calendar. Nineteen-sixty-something was the year. The thumb tack that held it was rusted and left a golden halo on the aged browned page between the six and whatever number had been there.

Further down the wall was a window. It had no glass in it.

I could feel the cold blowing through it.

The window next to the door was also without glass, yet there did not seem to be any glass inside the cabin. Except for these things there was nothing that stood out about this hidden little line shack.

Yet I wondered, “Had it been someone’s home, some prospector lured by the whisper of color, or had it been some sort of stop over for an outdoors man?”

I walked to the back of the cabin and discovered a second room.

In the darkness it was invisible. The floorboards creaked as I passed over them and the darkness grew as I touched the narrow doorway of the sectioned off room.

There were no windows in this room and no way to see what lay beyond the door. I peeked inside brief enough.

FWAP!

Out of the darkness of the second room came an explosion. A heavy thumping sound beat past my head as I tripped backwards to get away from the blur that rushed at me.

I dropped my shotgun as the shadow jumped to life and came straight at me. I caught a floor plank with the heel of my left boot and tumbled backward.

I sprawled on the ground flat on his back.

The shotgun discharged like a loud clap of thunder. The shot sent the gun rocketing towards the front of the cabin and scattering lead pellets into the dark room.

I kept rolling, moving away from the shadow, pulling out my long knife as I tumbled head over heel coming to my feet.

By this time I had covered twenty of the thirty-foot floor of the cabin. I stood there with knife in hand facing the shadow of the doorway. My shot-gun behind me; I stepped back and to my left, never taking my eyes off the opening of the door.

My heart pounded in my chest as I gasped for a breath of air. My muscles were tight and ready to defend if I were attacked again.

But nothing happened. So I bent down and picked up my gun. Once I had it in hand, I sheathed my knife.

“Who, who,” came a voice above him.

I jumped sideways to the right and flattened myself against the wall of the cabin.

As I did, I looked up. What I saw brought a foolish kind of smile to my face.

It was jus’ a barn owl. I laughed out loud at my own fright.

The bird looked down at him and repeated, “Who.”

Then it flew out the open front door. I slid down the wall and squatted on his haunches. For the first time I noticed my knees were shaking as were my hands.

*******

I chuckled, “That was only a few months ago and look at this place now.”

Then I stood up and proceeded to lumber the tub into the cabin.

Later that same evening, I stood looking at my new tub. I couldn’t believe anyone would want to throw it away.

Of course, he couldn’t believe I had risked swamping my rowboat on Lake Earl jus’ to get it to the cabin. If anyone saw me, I didn’t know it. I didn’t want anyone to poke fun at me. If they did, it was best that I did not know.

I was proud of my new tub anyway.

Now I could take a bath like a king. Now I didn’t have to use an old discarded feed tub anymore.

“Yeah,” I thought, “I still got to heat the water on the stove, but look how much I can stretch out in it.”

Turning, I and went back to the stove where I had two pails of water heating.

I had the cabin looking neat.

The table that was built into the wall had a lantern on it. The window next to it had glass in each pane.

A blanket hung on the wall served as a curtain. On the opposite side of the cabin I had fashioned a bed.

It was built into the wall, same as the table. The newer two by fours and plywood shined against the grayness of the older wood.

A green and brown shag carpet that had been tossed in the garbage now covered the floor. It was tacked down on the edges to prevent it from rolling up as it had a natural tendency to do.

The county dump was jus’ across from the cabin. It was only a quarter-mile from the lake’s edge.

Several times a week I would go there and rummage around. I could still hear Dad say, “Another man’s garbage is another man’s treasure.”

I would walk the three miles from the feedlots where I worked, to the county dump. If I found something I’d follow the shoreline around, get my rowboat and paddle back across to the dump. Once there, I would load my find into the boat and take it home.

The hard part was taking the things I found down to the water’s edge. And the hardest was the tub.

At first, I didn’t believe I would be able to get it home. It took me two tries just to get it to the lake from the dump as it was heavy!

The third night I got it into the boat, but not without problems. My first attempt tipped the boat on its side filling it up with water.

The second try caused the boat to scamper away from the shore. I was just about to give up when a small wind drove the boat back to shore.

My third and final attempt was successful. I dragged the boat up on the sandy shoreline. Then I lifted the tub with a loud grunt, struggling not to drop it, setting it down in the boat.

I pushed the boat out into the water with the intention of climbing on board.

However, that was met with defeat. The tiny rowboat was nearly overwhelmed by the massive bulk of a tub.

Its hefty weight showed as just the four-inch border of the boat remained above water. But it remained afloat.

I couldn’t row it across, the shortest line between two points. I would have to walk. So I grabbed the tow rope on the bow of the boat and proceeded to walk along the shore of the lake.

It had been a hard day. First I had worked all day work, and then I struggled with the tub until late evening.

The sun had long since dropped below the horizon and I knew I should be asleep by now. But I also knew I had worked too hard to get the tub home to my little cabin and I was not going to go to bed without using it first.

The water was ready. It was a rolling boil. I lifted the first five-gallon bucket and poured it into the tub, the steam clouding my glasses. I hurried back to the second bucket and jus’ as quickly dumped its heated contents into the waiting tub.

I peeled off my work jeans and shirt and climbed in after the water.

“It wasn’t much water,” I thought.

I would have to find a better way of heating water, and more of it, but for now it was enough.

*******

The weather had turned wicked on the lake that fall. It was El Nino. The wind howled across the lake from the Pacific. It thrashed at the trees that stood in defense of the cabin. It brought with it a cold beating rain.

I dreaded walking to work and back again.

My long thermals, flannel shirt and rain slicker were hardly enough to keep me from getting chilled to the bone. Many times the wind would rip the hat from my head and I’d have to spend half an hour chasing it down or retrieving it from the branches of some tree.

There wasn’t much to do in the feedlots either. They were mostly mud now.

The ranchers in the area had stocked away for the winter months so fewer bales of hay needed to be moved or oats sacked. Even the fishermen and loggers had pulled out. The sea was too choppy, and lands too muddy.

This time of year was always the same it seemed to me; everything slowed down or came to a stop. It was worse this year though, with the weather acting up as it was.

The cabin was in great shape; however, it was chinked against the onslaught of the winter wind that buffeted the North coast. The old pot-bellied stove was proving itself to be trustworthy time and again as it warmed the place up. That was good to, as I was certain my feet were going to fall off a number of times from the cold.

I couldn’t understand why I was so cold. It was not nearly as cold as it had been a year ago at Warren AFB in Cheyenne.

It was so cold that I got frostbite during a military funeral. That day I cried like a baby in front of all the other Airmen as the medics held me down, forcing my feet into a pail of warm water.

Many of the Airmen thought I was going to lose all of my toes. I amazed them by getting up and walking around two days later and back marching with them within a week.

*******

That was the one thing that made the trudging around in the rain and wind worth it to me. I would always be able to return to my cabin and the pot-bellied stove with the banked coals. Within minutes it would be so hot that my Wrangler’s would feel like they were on fire.

Buddy came out to me as I stood ankle-deep in the mud. I was trying to muck out one of the holding pens.

“Let’s knock off early,” Buddy said.

He slapped me on the back. I pushed back my yellow slicker, reaching inside it and pulling out my pocket watch; t was quarter to five, Friday night.

I smiled at Buddy and replied, “Okay.”

That would give me the extra few minutes I needed to get over to Archie’s and pick up the parts I needed for the lawn mower I had found. It didn’t run, but that did not matter to me. I would get it to work, and then he’d make it into a generator, which meant electricity.

I was excited about the possibility of having electrical power in my cabin and the chance to have extra light or maybe a way to heat up water for my tub. I might even have a radio playing in my cabin at night for company.

As things were, I turned the radio on sparingly. Batteries could not be found in the dump and they cost money.

A generator was the answer, and it came in the form of a broken, thrown out lawn mower engine. With a little care and some elbow grease, I was certain that I could get it to work.

Right now though, I needed to get over to Archie’s. He could fix anything and he said he’d help me if he needed it and I was willing to trade it off by painting the inside of Archie’s shop.

“Did you get the valve?” I asked as I stood next to Archie.

Archie had his body part way under a car. The metal casters scratched on the smooth cement as Archie rolled from under the car.

He sat up and said, “Yup, over under the counter,” then he added, “Here, hold this wrench for me.”

I leaned over into the hood of the car and grabbed on to the wrench as Archie rolled back under it. Quickly Archie gave it a twist and then rolled back out and sat up.

“Thanks,” Archie said through his greasy red mustache.

“Thank you,” I responded as I picked up the valve and headed back out into the rain.

*******

The howling wind could torment the tallest of the surrounding redwood trees. It would twist them one direction then, the other. It caused them to groan as the wind swirled and tumbled through them.

The local Indians claimed that the moaning and groaning were the trees spirit. The giant trees protected the Tolowa people from evil. It was the evil that called out to the wind as the wind tried to pry the spirits from the trees.

Occasionally the wind would gather up a spirit when a tree snapped apart. That is why the wind kept returning, it knew it had a chance because the spirit of the tree would sometimes grow old and weak like an old man and need to rest.

A number of times in the last few months, I had come to realize there was something to the Tolowa tales. Sometimes late at night the wind would blow just hard enough to cause a tree to moan.

The noise would give my heart a start because it would sound like a person screaming or shrieking. Some nights the wind would blow gently and the trees would sound like a child crying.

It was strange how my imagination would play tricks on me. I knew the Indian tales were just myths, but still late at night the frightful scream or soft crying would awaken me with a jolt.

*******

I put my head down as I turned in to the wind and rain.

It was only an hour-and-a-half walk home and I was looking forward to it. I wanted to sit in front of the stove and get warm and I wanted to see if the valve would make the engine start.

The wind let up about twenty minutes later and the rain stopped as well. I quickened his pace.

The sky to the west looked lighter. It was not the usual foreboding gray.

The horizon had an orange glow. It was as if the sun had gotten itself caught up on the jagged pentacle of Point Saint George reef and was slowly leaking its color into the line that separated the sky from the water.

Jus’ to the north was a plume of smoke.

“Someone’s started a fire in their chimney, no doubt,” I thought, “It is a good night for a warm fire.”

Again I thought about being in front of the pot-bellied stove. A glow of warm enveloped me as I trudged along the roadway.

In the distance I heard the gentle clanking of a cowbell. I couldn’t see the cow, but the bell was close by.

I wondered, “How many bells have I sold?” adding, “Could that be one of them?”

I chuckled at my thoughts. I knew that I could think of the most peculiar things at the oddest times.

However, my mind went blank as I crossed the cow path for the on hundredth time. What I saw, I couldn’t fully comprehend.

The cow path was well-marked and I used it as a landmark while walking home in the dark. I knew jus’ below the rise where the path crossed was the sheltered wooded area that hid my cabin.

I stood there for a long time.

My hands hung at my side, my mouth partly open, and my eyes unblinking. I was stunned at the sight before me.

My cabin lay in sputtered ruins — burning.

The wind had toppled a giant redwood over and it landed in the middle of the cabin. The pot-bellied stove had fallen over and the embers, banked to keep them from going out, had sparked to life and had set the back half of the cabin ablaze.

It was burned to glowing ashes. All that remained was the long piece of redwood tree that cut a swath of splintered destruction across the ruins of the cabin and the front porch and step themselves.

I walked slowly towards the remnants of the cabin. I was in shock. I climbed up the stairs to the front porch, sat down, dangling my legs off the edge, I thought back over the last year.

Then it began to rain again.

Pritchard Johnson died at the age of ninety-three. He was born before the turn of the century and made a living working as a cowboy and farmer.

He used to say, “I can still make out good horse-flesh even with my old worn out eyes.”

Some folks thought it was just an old man bragging on the days of his youth. But Pritchard Johnson never bragged on himself or anyone else.

This is one thing I knew.

Having set some fence posts for him a while back, I knew if he came out to take a look and didn’t say anything, I was doing the job to Mr. Johnson’s satisfaction. If it were not done the way Mr. Johnson wanted it, he would have been certain to let me know.

Pritchard Johnson didn’t yell or even cuss and he had a way of speaking that made every man stop whatever he was doing and listen. It was a voice that carried itself down a canyon and back again, but had the faintness of cow grass waving in a morning breeze.

I called it, “A whisper that echoed.”

Besides his voice and broad shoulders that carried strong arms and even stronger hands, were the boots Pritchard Johnson wore.  They were nearly sixty years old.

“Never throw out a good pair of cowboy boots, son,” he’d say to me from time to time.

I was in town when I heard the news, chatting with a waitress named Carolyn at Glen’s Bakery and it was Pops McCory who sprang it on me.

“You’re pulling my leg aren’t you?” I asked.

“Nope, saw the coroner myself jus’ this morning” Pop replied as he noisily sipped at his cup of coffee, “They found him yesterday,” Pops commented, “He was laid out in his field kind of like he was resting.”

Carolyn hurried down to the other end of the counter to collect money from a customer. I sat there stirring my cup of coffee and staring into its blackness.

I remember thinking, “I can’t believe it.”

“Yep, know exactly what you mean,” Pops replied, “Never going to be a man like him again.”

About an hour later, I was climbing out of my truck at the Johnson home in Smith River. Before I could step up on the porch, Mrs. Johnson was there with the door wide open.

I could tell she was sad as her eyes were red from crying; yet she had a smile on her face.

“I’m so glad you’re here, Tommy,” she started, “Got so much to do now with Pritch gone.”

She breathed a heavy sad sigh. Then she looked up and smiled again.

“Almost forgot, I have something for you,” she said.

“Jus’ like Mrs. Johnson — always thinking of others before herself,” I thought.

She got up and left the room. Mrs. Johnson came back in less than a minute carrying a large box. She set in on the floor in front of me.

“Open it,” she said.

I lifted the lid and looked inside.

It was Pritchard Johnson’s old cowboy boots. They were beaten up and dusty, but the soles and heels were brand new.

“Hope they fit,” she said.

“I hope they do too,” I replied as a hot tear traced its way down my cheek.

Mom had been busy in the kitchen all morning long. She was like that when it came to Thanksgiving dinner.

Dad lounged in front of the new color television set with Deputy Walt Woodstock as Marcy, Deirdre and Adam ran around outside playing. I sat on the swing set, watched Dad and Walt through the large sliding glass window as they discussed the football game.

Deputy Woodstock had come into our lives by way of the fact that Dad had been a police officer himself and knew the Deputy was separated from his family. It was over 2,000 miles of loneliness Dad saw in the deputies face and so he offered him a warm meal every night and a family to be around.

“Suppertime!” Mom called out the front door.

Abruptly the noise stopped and the sound of padded feet could be heard rushing up the walk way and into the house. I followed suit, right behind Dad and the Deputy.

We all sat down at the table. Grace was offered and the platters of food passed around.

Soon everyone was stuffed with turkey and potatoes with gravy. Each person had eaten more than their portion of stuffing and cranberry sauce and yams.

“That was delicious, ma’am,” the Walt said to Mom.

She responded, “Why thank you,” Then she added, “Does anyone want dessert?”

It was as if nobody had eaten anything all day the way all six people at the table jumped at the idea of pumpkin pie and the other sweets soon to be offered. The excitement was interrupted though by the deputy’s radio.

It suddenly made a hideous tone alerting him that he was needed by the department. He stood up, trying to politely excuse himself from the table.

“Would you like to take a plate with you?” Mom offered.

“Naw,” he said as he picked up his hat, “But I’ll take a couple of those cupcakes.”

He grabbed two and unwrapping one, shoving the entire cake into his mouth. He opened the door and headed towards his cruiser.

We four kids gathered around to watch him leave, hoping to hear the siren and see the lights of the cruiser.

Without warning though he stumbled and fell to his knees. He was there for only a second or two then got up.

But it was long enough for Adam to shout, “Walt’s fallen down!”

Dad raced out to help him up and to make sure he was okay. I was already there.

Walt looked at us and said, “I got to remember not to stuff my face like that.”

He smiled and got in his car and took off.

Dad and I returned to the house to find Mom standing in the middle of the kitchen. She was as white as a sheet.

“What’s wrong?” Dad asked.

She held up one of the cupcakes and produced from it a quarter.

“I put one in each cupcake,” she answered.

The 12-man squad spread out along the eastern edge of their pick-up point. They remained low in the foliage, in order to stay out of sight of enemy patrols operating in the area. The squad knew they were more than a day early for their rendezvous with the C-130 Hercules that was scheduled to take them out of the jungle.

Doc pulled his poncho out of his butt-pack and rolled it out so that he could lie down. He stacked the rest of his gear under his head and shoulders, folding his hands behind his neck and closing his eyes.

He knew it would be hot soon and along with the heat heavy humidity. That’s the nickname they had given the rain that fell frequently in the tropical forest. Doc wanted to be ready. Other members of the squad did like wise.

The team was led by a youthful looking first lieutenant, known as the Skipper. He was a graduate of Annapolis and had led three other long-range patrols before this one. His large shoulders belied the gracefulness in which he carried himself as he moved from position to position checking on each teams’ line of fire.

He posted pickets behind their line. These consisted of claymore mines and two fire-teams. Their job was to secure a line of defense in case the enemy happened to find the squads position.

The Claymores were strung out and wired to act as booby-traps if triggered or to be manually fire if needed. Either way the mines would be an early warning system if the teams were approached.

All teams would be rotated every two-hours in order keep the men fresh and alert. It’s the way that it had always been for the last 10 days, so everyone knew what they were doing.

Through the remainder of the day and throughout the night nothing happened. The rain came and went as normal. The Skipper made his routine radio contact and then checked on his men and their fields of fire.

He had two senior NCOs in the field with him as well. He gave them very little direction as they already knew their orders. He allowed them to move within the squad, which had been divided into two teams; each sergeant heading a team and the Skipper becoming their “fire control.”

Doc was the only Hospital Corpsman within the squad. He was positioned near the rear and had little to do as he wasn’t allowed to carry a weapon or pistol. His job was simply to keep wounded men alive so they could get to a field hospital.

The sun poked up over the eastern jungle ridge just after 6 a.m. The morning had passed without any enemy contact, but the squad refused to allow themselves to relax.

“Three hours,” came the word from the Skipper. It was passed along from man-to-man and position-to-position. Voices were kept low; nothing more than a whisper could be heard.

It felt like a long three hours as the sun started to build in the sky. It was getting hot again. Steam was rising from the leaves, the surrounding grasses and the clothing of the men as they lay in the jungle waiting for the aircraft to fly in and pick them up.

“Doc,” a Lance Corporal whispered, “why aren’t they picking us up in a couple of slicks?”

It was a question that had crossed the Corpsman’s mind as well and he didn’t have a real answer.

“Military wisdom,” Doc quipped.

The minutes dragged on and boredom filled the two teams. Someone had found a can of SPAM and they were tossing the yellow and blue can back and forth between the teams.

The game of catch had lasted only a minute or less when one of the sergeants whispered as powerfully as possible, “Knock it off, Ladies!”

The tin disappeared amid a few snickers.

Those snickers stopped at the droning sound from overhead. Men suddenly looked skyward, trying to catch a glimpse of the aircraft between the leaves of the upper canopy.

The sound grew louder as the Skipper continued to talk low into the radio handset. It wasn’t long before the giant Hercules was making its final approach.

Just as it touched down on the long dirt tract in the clearing, small arms fire could be heard from the east. It was apparent that the squad was not alone and that the enemy was shooting at the aircraft.

A pair of Marines moved their weapons’ sights to there right and trained them on the area in which the shots appeared to be coming. They held their fire until they had a visual on at least the muzzle flash of one of the enemies’ guns.

One quick burst from each rifleman had silenced two enemy shooters. However the shooters now fixed their gun sights on the two-man team. It suddenly became an all out fire-fight.

The C-130 made a hard left turn and rolled to a stop at the short end of the runway. The back ramp popped open and the Loadmaster waved, signaling that he wanted the squad to load immediately.

The Skipper sent the first two men across the open field. It was less than 200 yards, but dangerous to anyone being fired on. When they were half way across the clearing, he ordered a second pair to cross and so on.

Doc knew that he would be one of the last to leave the security of the jungles edge. If anyone were wounded, it would be up to him to retrieve them. He was ready when he was given the high-sign to dash for the aircraft.

A side door had opened up on the Hercules and an airman stood in its frame firing into the surrounding jungle. His weapon jammed after he inserted a second clip and he ducked back into the plane.

None of the squad was hit bad enough to slow them or stop them from completing the crossing. The Skipper, his radioman and Doc sprinted for the aft of the craft. All three made it as the Air Force Loadmaster started closing the ramp.

Doc moved to the door that was open on the side of the plane and leaned out to pull it closed. The C-130 had turned and its engines were revving up, preparing to take off, when Doc saw the curl of smoke.

He knew it was a rocket-propelled grenade. It zipped upward and high over the aircraft, which had started to move down the dirt runway.

Doc saw a second burst, followed by the tell-tale curl of smoke. He leaned out the door and looked at towards the tail section.

It was too late. He saw the near-blinding flash as it struck the tail of the craft, turning it into jagged metal and flaming debris.

The explosion hit with such force that it knocked the Hospital Corpsman out of the door. Instinctively, he rolled over on his back, flying through the air, and landed with a thud on the hard-packed earth.

The landing had knocked the wind out of Doc and he saw stars as he looked straight up into the perfectly blue sky. It felt like minutes, but it was only seconds before he regained his ability to breathe and to realize that there were bullets kicking up particles of dirt as the enemy targeted him.

Without hesitation, Doc rolled over and onto his feet, taking off at a hard run after the plane. He watched as the Loadmaster pulled his weapon from his shoulder holster and dropped it out of the wounded aircraft craft. It bounced several times before stopping.

Doc picked up the pistol, while still on the run. He turned hard to his left, finding a ditch along the field. He dived into it and gasped, trying to fill his burning lungs with air.

He watched as the aircraft pitched to its left and slammed into the ditch that he was standing in. Men tumbled out of the aircraft with their weapons blazing. But Doc wasn’t paying much attention to them as he was the aircraft fuel pour out of the ruptured wing.

Doc fired wildly into the jungle that had suddenly seemed to come alive with enemy soldiers. He raced towards the aircraft and told each man to get out of the ditch because of the gas. Men climbed out of the ditch and disappeared into the jungle.

A few seconds later the fuel had turned to flames and the aircraft was quickly being consumed by the fire. This gave the squad and the Air Force personnel enough cover to set up a firing zone well away from the downed Hercules.

Doc moved from Marine to Marine checking for the wounded. There were some minor bumps and bruises, but nothing more than a scrape or small cut. Most of the Marines waved off the Corpsman’s help, urging him to go find someone who was really hurt.

It was another two hours before the team and five-member flight crew could be extracted from the area. Prior to pick-up, the Skipper called in a danger-close air strike into the jungle less than 500 yards from the firing zone. It effectively wiped out what trace opposition had been waiting for the rescue helicopters to arrive.

For days after their extraction, team members talked among themselves about the fire-fight that cost the Air Force one of its C-130 and questioned why the powers that be didn’t use helicopters instead.

Meanwhile, Doc nursed a sore back and took some ribbing about being “born in a barn,” since he failed to shut the door to the aircraft. He thought about the door and concluded that had the door been closed, men might have died in the ensuing fire.

“Good things do happen during bad situations,” Doc mumbled to himself as he prepared to open sick-bay for the morning onslaught of sick G.I.’s and the civilian population.

The sun was setting in the Oklahoma sky as we drove towards Tulsa from the smaller town of Muskogee. It had been the first time Kyle had ever been to the town in which his Grandpa Tom had grown up and later died. Now he and I were returning to our hotel room after a full days visit.

“Those are armadillo alongside the road,” Kyle said.

He was talking about the mangled bodies of the hard-shelled animals, now road kill which lay along the highway as we sped by. I knew if an armadillo ran out in front of our car it could cause considerable damage.

I thought, “Cripes, I hope we don’t hit one of those things.”

Just then Kyle yelled, “Look out!”

Jerking the car hard to the right, I attempted to avoid a rock in the path of  our tires. But it was too late, I struck it and it ricocheted off the bottom of the car twice.

Kyle spun around in his seat to look out the back window, “You just ran over a turtle!”

He looked at me, expecting me to stop. The look worked as I stopped and slowly backed the car up to where the object lay in the middle of our travel lane.

I got out and walked over to it only to find out Kyle was right — it was a turtle.

The creature was dead though as all four of its legs hung limp from its shell, as did its head. To make matters worse, the turtles tongue dangled loosely from it slack jaw.

I was met by Kyle as I returned to the car.

“Ah, the poor little guy,” Kyle said, as he held out his hands to hold it, “I can’t believe we killed it.”

He was obviously saddened by the whole affair as he slumped down by the side of the car while I opened the trunk of the car and searched for a plastic bag.

“Yuck, it jus’ crapped on me!” Kyle shouted.

I laughed at him as I took the dead turtle and put it in the empty grocery bag.

And as Kyle was cleaning the turtle dung off his hiking shorts, the deceased reptile was placed in the empty ice chest inside the car’s trunk. We then continued down the road.

The following day, Kyle and I planned to bury the turtle on one of the many little side roads in the area. 

It was Kyle who decided to pop open the trunk and look at the remains of the turtle again. When he did, he was surprised to find the plastic white bag moving around in circles.

He hollered, “Dad, it’s alive!”

“Well I’ll be,” was all I could say.

I was surprise to see the plastic bag as it bumped into the sides and corners of the ice chest.

Gently I reached down and picked it up. The little beast was strong as ever and struggling to get out of the bag.

I held on to the bag as Kyle reached in and pulled the turtle out.

He set the softball-sized reptile on the asphalt near the car and watched it. At first the animal didn’t seem to want to go anywhere, but then it started walking in righthand circles.

I looked at my son and said, “We can’t very well let him go like this.”

Kyle smiled, “Then can I keep him as a pet?”

“Only, if he doesn’t get better before we get home,” was my answer.

We spent the next hour getting the needed supplies such as an aquarium, bedding and worms for our journey back to Nevada. We wanted to make the trip home for  Kyle’s new pet as comfortable as possible.

It took the box turtle two days to stop walking in circles, by that time we were in Cheyenne. That’s where Kyle decided to name his pet turtle ‘Keeble,’ after a cartoon character he liked.

Still, I knew there was something not quite right with the thing. For instance, it refused to retract its head or legs when either Kyle or I came near it.

That seemed unusual. Every turtle I had ever come across had reacted to the presence of a human by retreating into its shell.

‘Keeble’ also had no problem being hand fed, though watching him eat a worm was nasty business. Finally, there was the fact that the turtle followed Kyle everywhere as if Kyle were its family.

That night Kyle asked to talk to his step-mom. He decided to tell her about ‘Keeble.’

Instantly I could tell that the conversation was not going too well when Kyle said, “Hey, it could be worse.” The thirteen year old paused for a second, “We could have run over an armadillo and be bringing that home instead.”

I had to step outside the hotel room so my wife wouldn’t hear me laughing.