EFD1: Starship Goodwords (EFD Anthology Series from Carrick Publishing)

  EFD1:

  Starship Goodwords

  ©Carrick Publishing

  Compiled and Edited by

  Donna & Alex Carrick

  Kindle Edition Published 2012

  Carrick Publishing

  Cover design by Sara Carrick

  ISBN 13: 978-1-927114-38-4

  Kindle Edition, License Notes:

  This e-book is intended for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be sold or given away to other people. If you did not purchase this e-book, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Amazon.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of these authors.

  By Genre:

  Foreword, Donna Carrick

  Crime Fiction, Catherine Astolfo, Family Recipe

  Crime Fiction, Donna Carrick, Corner Store

  Crime Fiction, Alexander Galant, Remember Me

  Crime Fiction, Joan, O’Callaghan, Stooping to Conquer

  Flash Fiction/Crime, M.H. Callway, Incompetence Kills

  Flash Fiction/Crime, Sylvia Maultash Warsh, Family Values

  Flash Fiction/Literary, Kathleen Bjoran, Giving Thanks

  Flash Fiction/Literary/Humor, Melodie Campbell, The Battle of Beavercoat

  Poetry, A.C. Cargill, Treasures in the Attic

  Poetry, Rosalind Croucher, Dance

  Poetry, Sheila Jeffries, Finding Calm

  Poetry, Michael C. Slater, Murmur

  Persuasive Article, Paulissa Kipp, Fostering Humanity Manifesto

  Literary Fiction, Melanie Robertson-King, Cole’s Notes

  Literary Fiction, Tracy L. Ward, Running Parallel

  Paranormal/Fantasy, Susan M. Botich, The Minstrel's Spell

  Paranormal/Horror, Dayna Leigh Cheser, The Legend of Corkscrew Swamp

  Paranormal/Horror, Troy Lambert, The Mighty Pen

  Paranormal/Science Fiction/Humour, Ira Nayman, The Predator's Prerogative

  Humor/Fiction, Alex Carrick, My Wife and I Argue over our Travel Plans (Hey, I'm not Cheap but…)

  Humor/Anecdote, John Thompson, "Oh, Okay, and the Good Soldier Schweik"

  By Author:

  Foreword, Donna Carrick

  Astolfo, Catherine – Family Recipe, Crime Fiction

  Bjoran, Kathleen – Giving Thanks, Flash Fiction/Literary

  Botich, Susan M. – The Minstrel’s Spell, Paranormal/Fantasy

  Callway, M.H. – Incompetence Kills, Flash Fiction/Crime

  Campbell, Melodie – The Battle of Beavercoat, Flash Fiction/Literary/Humor

  Cargill, A.C. – Treasures in the Attic, Poetry

  Carrick, Donna – Corner Store, Crime Fiction

  Carrick, Alex -- My Wife and I Argue over our Travel Plans (Hey, I'm not Cheap but…), Humor/Fiction

  Cheser, Dayna Leigh -- The Legend of Corkscrew Swamp, Paranormal/Horror

  Croucher, Rosalind – Dance, Poetry

  Galant, Alexander – Remember Me, Crime Fiction

  Jeffries, Sheila – Finding Calm, Poetry

  Kipp, Paulissa -- Fostering Humanity Manifesto, Persuasive Article

  Lambert, Troy – The Mighty Pen, Paranormal/Horror

  Maultash Warsh, Sylvia – Family Values, Flash Fiction/Crime

  Nayman, Ira -- The Predator's Prerogative, Paranormal/Science Fiction/Humour

  O’Callaghan, Joan – Stooping to Conquer, Crime Fiction

  Robertson-King, Melanie – Cole’s Notes, Literary Fiction

  Slater, Michael C. – Murmur, Poetry

  Thompson, John -- "Oh, Okay, and the Good Soldier Schweik", Humor/Anecdote

  Ward, Tracy L. – Running Parallel, Literary Fiction

  Foreword

  In May of 2012, Alex Carrick had an idea: Why not create a FaceBook Page where authors of all genres would be welcome to post G-Rated excerpts from any work, and where readers would be invited to explore and discover new treasures?

  We called our page the Excerpt Flight Deck for Readers and Authors.

  Little did we know the exceptional talent our group would attract!

  Before long, we were seeing excerpts from a variety of genres, including literary, crime, poetry and blog articles.

  Then I had an idea:

  Let’s invite group members to join us in a series of cross-genre anthologies, designed to offer readers a high quality sampling from a talented mix of authors.

  Again, we were astounded by the results.

  In this first in our series, EFD1: Starship Goodwords, we bring you the best of these contributions, including: Crime Fiction, Flash Fiction, Poetry, Persuasion, Literary Fiction, Paranormal and Humor.

  We hope you will thrill to new authors like Catherine Astolfo, Alexander Galant, Joan O’Callaghan, M.H. Callway, Sylvia Maultash Warsh, Kathleen Bjoran, Melodie Campbell, A.C. Cargill, Rosalind Croucher, Sheila Jeffries, Michael C. Slater, Paulissa Kipp, Melanie Robertson-King, Tracy L. Ward, Susan M. Botich, Dayna Leigh Cheser, Troy Lambert, Ira Nayman, Alex Carrick, John Thompson and yours truly, Donna Carrick.

  We present these fellow authors with the greatest of pride, and trust you will come to treasure their work as we have.

  Yours in the spirit of excellence!

  Donna Carrick, 2012

  FAMILY RECIPE

  Catherine Astolfo

  Years after Pom-Pom disappeared, the trunk arrived at my door.

  That afternoon I had Skyped the girls—young women, really—who, I can tell, I’m not stupid, are a little frustrated that their mother is still hovering. Their faces satellited in and out of the screen, frozen in cyberspace from time to time, but even through the cosmos I could feel the impatience. After two thoroughly dissatisfying conversations from different parts of the world, I went out and stood on the front porch, shivering, sneaking my last—once again—cigarette. I didn’t want any of my coats to give me away by soaking in the smell, so I was freezing to death as I inhaled the final (I swore it was) blessed smoke.

  Just as I sucked out the last possible drop of nicotine, a delivery truck slid its way into the fortunately empty driveway and skidded to a halt. At first the cargo resembled a small coffin and I was not sure it was for me. But my formal title was clearly marked on top and once I’d proven my identity to the pimpled delivery boy, he left it in my front hall.

  I tried twice to break open the thin wooden bars and façade in which the trunk had been delivered. Deciding to use something more efficient than my hands, I stopped by the bar, filled my glass with vodka and orange juice (the juice because it was still early), and proceeded to the garage. There I found a crowbar, an item I hadn’t known existed in the house of a politician whose hands, to my knowledge, had never even held a hammer. Back at the carton, I hacked away at the veneer until I uncovered a deep brown chest.

  Exquisite engravings graced every face of the rectangular box. Beautiful figures in long sinuous gowns, male and female, danced through carved gardens from panel to panel. Their faces were slightly oriental, long hair flowing over shoulders or twisted into buns. Flowers, vines and stems intertwined over the lid and corners. An upturned brass handle, sealed with a rusty combination lock, grinned invitingly. The little trunk stood proudly on four brass claws.

  Astonished by the craftsmanship of the trunk, but curious about the contents, I returned to the garage. I once more hunched over with a tool in one hand and a newly refreshed drink in the other. The pliers would not normally be strong enough to crack a lock, but this one was old and rusty and snapped after only a few minutes of muscled determination. A cloud of dust sprang into the air as I lifted the lid, forcing me
to gulp quite a lot of my screwdriver in defense.

  I got down on my knees and peered into the depths of the chest. It appeared to be mostly empty. A shoebox, a bunch of letters bound together with a withered elastic band, and an old photo album were its only contents. I went for the photos first. New drink in hand, I carried it to my reading chair, switched on the light, and opened it to the first page. And there, in the small black and white images, was my grandfather.

  Pom-Pom was a tall, stately man when he was young. His hooked nose made him look rather patrician. I knew from experience that he had sandy flyaway hair and startling blue eyes, but of course these were not apparent in the colourless photos. There were dozens of the little squares, mostly of my father as a baby. It was probably that thing you do with your first child – take pictures of as many poses as you can because you find them so fascinating – and then fail to do with your second. Little did Mary know, of course, that my father would be her only child. Whenever he appeared in the pictures, which was not often (I figured he was likely the photographer), Pom-Pom never smiled. Yet I remember his infectious toothless grin as he opened the door to his suite whenever we visited. Perhaps happiness only came later in life; perhaps he was simply suspicious of human imagery.

  Dad never talked about his parents. His mother had died very young, he’d said. He only remembered Veronica, Mary’s second cousin, who had raised him without benefit of a man. By the time Dad was old enough to commit memories for conscious retrieval, Pom-Pom was long gone. When Pom-Pom came back into our lives, my father was not interested in a relationship. He and my mother had moved to Toronto and not once did he return for a visit to Ottawa while his father was there. He made me promise that I would have nothing to do with the old man and I swore I would not. However I was far too intrigued to stay away and so began a series of clandestine visits to the YMCA on Argyle with my two little girls in tow. Each time, Pom-Pom would greet us with that sideways smile, eyes dancing, and offer a small surprise for my daughters—a candy or a chocolate—and regale us with stories about his lifetime of adventures. He’d been all over Canada, from the east to the west, he said, and even to the far north. He described his travels in detail, told funny tales about the people he’d met, or had us in stitches (okay, mostly I was the one laughing while the girls wiggled and fretted impatiently) over some of his antics. My daughters, possibly because they didn’t see them much, never mentioned these outings to their father or maternal grandfather. Or perhaps they knew, from my nervous and secretive aura, that Pom-Pom was a taboo topic.

  Still chuckling at the memories of Pom-Pom’s stories, I had just refilled my drink (no orange juice needed; it was getting on in the day) when the telephone rang. Without looking at the call display, I knew who it was. James’s secretary usually called around this time. He won’t be home for dinner, they’re tackling a sensitive issue, they’ll just grab something later, might be very late, he says don’t wait up, they’ll be holed up at the Brookstreet in some king sized bed…Okay, so the last part Hillary never said, but I could always sense the apology in her voice. Hillary had to know that James and his personal assistant were having an affair. I know I did.

  The only reason he hadn’t left me for Elizabeth was his career. James Asquith-Smith was the quintessential squeaky-clean, honest, upright politician whose platform was always full of righteous indignation at the collapse of societal morals. Therefore, despite the fact that he was probably in love with Elizabeth, and no longer had sex with his wife, James would stick around as long as I did. If I left him, he could play the card of being bereft and wronged. So far, however, we were at a standoff. Our daughters were in their first and second years of university respectively, so I had no real reason to stay. I was simply too angry and too selfish to go. James was the one who’d betrayed me. Why should I be the one to move out? Sometimes I seethed with my hatred of him; sometimes I grieved for what I had lost. I did nothing around the house. I hired people. I sat and watched films. I shopped. I went to spas. I figured I could hang on longer than he could.

  In fact, I found out about James and Elizabeth on one of my many shopping trips. I was in one of those fancy new stores in the Rideau Centre, the kind that have co-ed change rooms. I happened to be standing nearby, fingering a silky blouse I wanted, when Elizabeth Fleming came out of the change room. I was about to wave and say hello when I noticed her face: a strange reddish flush of the cheeks, a slight cat-got-the-mouse smile, radiant eyes. Instinctively I ducked behind the dress racks. Two minutes later, out walked The Honourable James Asquith-Smith, flushed cheeks, victory grin, luminous eyes. Now I knew at last what writers meant when they said your heart squeezed, your stomach flipped, the blood pounded in your head. I felt nauseous because I knew exactly what they had been doing in those change rooms. It was one of the naughty things that James used to like to do with me.

  Yes, I had known, really, in that secret part of myself that doesn’t like to admit the obvious. The late nights, the missed dinners, the special care he took when he dressed for work, that new cologne. But I’d hoped, I guess, that James might be having a quick fling with someone who didn’t really count and therefore wouldn’t last. Elizabeth Fleming, however, was dangerous: beautiful, confident, brilliant, witty. I’d actually liked her. It was three years now and counting. Longer than it had taken the Romans to scale Masada, but I was certain that I could hold out longer than the little Jewish community had.

  Once I’d murmured my thanks-for-letting-me-know to Hillary, I settled in for a long look at Pom-Pom’s old artifacts, actually thrilled that I would have the entire afternoon and night to plow through this adventure alone. The fact that my husband was out screwing someone else, well, I decided to let that go for now. Besides, I had my own screwdriver right here, I joked with myself, and myself found me quite amusing.

  Six years ago, my Dad had been killed in a car accident in Toronto, just two years after Mom died from cancer. So, as an only child, I was pretty much by myself, especially now that the girls were grown up. No one else would be interested in this history, but I’d always found family trees fascinating. Maybe that’s because I didn’t have much of a one. I was excited by the prospect of finding long-lost relatives. Perhaps I had several aunts and uncles who had passed away and left me hordes of cousins. Maybe one of them was a rich successful lawyer, or even better a private detective, who could get access to the VIP suite at the Brookstreet Hotel.

  Unfortunately, the photographs were merely pictures of Pom-Pom and my father and Mary, one after another in very pedestrian poses. Pom-Pom was always slightly out of focus in these pictures, unsmiling, and formally dressed. Perhaps my grandfather had left to tour the country in his grief over his wife’s death and had never remarried. In fact, there wasn’t one single clue about other possible broods or my lawyer/private eye cousin. And in the few years that I’d known him while he lived at the YMCA, he’d never answered any of my questions. He’d just give me that quizzical, eyebrows-raised, sparkling eyed look and go on with stories about places called St. Louis de Ha! Ha!, Hairy Hill and Pecker’s Point.

  Bored looking at the same pictures over and over, I reached for the letters. The elastic band snapped in my fingers. I could tell right away that the missives had been written in Pom-Pom’s shaky hand, which meant they’d been penned when he was older. They were all addressed to my father and they were all stamped ‘Return to Sender’, with a post office box as the address. I started to hum the old Elvis song as I refilled my glass. No need to make dinner, so I also grabbed a handful of chocolate-covered almonds and some nuts. I figured I wasn’t invading anyone’s privacy since Dad is gone, so I opened up the earliest piece of correspondence. There were only two lines, followed by “Love, Pom-Pom”. Hmm. It must have been a nickname given to him by Dad, perhaps a twist on Papa. The same two sentences were repeated on every one of the thirty letters: “I should never have told you. Please forgive me.” What had he told my dad and why did Pom-Pom need forgiveness? When I studied the
dates, I could see that the timing matched the years that I’d been visiting Pom-Pom at the Y.

  Slightly frustrated now, I reached for the shoebox. Once again, dusty remains forced me to drink a little more than normal in one gulp. There was exactly one piece of thin, yellowing paper inside, rolled up like a papyrus scroll. On the sheet, again in that shaky hand, were nine words: Florry, I figure you’ll know what to do with this.

  Only my dad and Pom-Pom had ever called me Florry. Everyone else stuck with Florence, or resorted to Flo, so the name was reserved for that paternal side. But Florry had absolutely no idea what to do with “this”. In fact, I wondered what Pom-Pom even meant by “this”. A few photos, letters that repeated the same obscure message, and a cryptic note. How on earth could I know what to do?

  I sat in the circle of lamplight, sipped my vodka, chewed on chocolate and nuts, and tried to think. Outside, the sun was beginning to set over the Ottawa River, spilling orange over the carvings on the trunk. Dust motes floated in the rays, causing the figures to appear to dance. I glanced out the window and followed a flock of geese as they wrote across the dusky sky, practicing their V’s. Then I studied the chest again.

  It sat very stately on those claw feet, its lid thick and heavy, its body a rectangular box. I peered inside once more. A platform of pine or oak had held the small pickings that I’d just been through, but as I gazed at the shelf, I realized that this was exactly what it was: a shelf. Between the bottom and the top, there appeared to be a great deal more space. There must be a false bottom. Once again, I was down on my hands and knees in front of the trunk. I searched the panel of wood with my hand, trying to find a wedge that I could use to pry it up. In one of the corners, I felt a small opening, but I was unable to squeeze my finger inside. This time, I used James’s gold-plated letter opener (inscribed with his name and “Congratulations on Your Win!”) as a tool, and up popped the thin shelving. I saw a large scrapbook, about 12 by 12, bursting with yellowing papers and thick items that made it bulge dangerously, and a small plastic recipe box. Very carefully, I lifted the bundle up and out of the trunk, slammed the lid with my hip, and lowered the prizes onto the flat surface. Sitting on the floor, nuts and vodka to calm the excited fluttering of my heart, I began to explore the treasures. I started with the scrapbook first, because I wasn’t, at this particular time in my life, feeling very domestic.