Betsy
- 2 years ago
- 30
- 0
The contrast between the lush Hawaiian tropical paradise and the harsh dry Arizona desert is not only visually striking, but is a shock to all of the senses. The rich sounds of birds, the odor of plants growing wildly, and the feel of humidity in the air is so different from the silence, the dull smell of sand, and the desiccating dryness. It is a wonder that both places can exist on the same world.
Making the transition from Hawaii to Arizona was softened by the long flight between the two places. The sterile artificial environment of the interior of an airplane lessens how jarring the contrast can be. It gives the mind the chance to get used to the intermediate environment that effectively isolates the two places.
Betsy sat in the rear seat of the limousine that was taking her from the airport to William’s home. She stared out the window, watching the scenery roll past. It seemed to her that each and every plant stood out and was exposed to more intense scrutiny, by its isolation and rarity. She wondered if there was a metaphor for her life, here. Was she the lone cactus growing apart from everyone else in a desert environment, while others were plants living crowded together in a lush jungle? It was kind of a depressing thought.
The limousine turned onto the road that led to William’s home. There were still a few miles to go until it reached the gate that gave access to his property. She would have preferred to get out of the car and run the last bit of the journey, but that wasn’t a good idea. The security around the property was tighter than around most military installations. It was a shame that it was necessary.
The miles rolled past with her mood getting ever darker, and it hadn’t been all that good at the beginning.
Alice’s thoughts were running in a parallel direction with Betsy’s. Although it wasn’t her first experience with being in a desert area, the contrast with Hawaii was still a little overwhelming.
Alice said, “It sure is different than the island, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is,” Betsy said.
“Are you looking forward to seeing your brother?” Alice asked.
“I guess,” Betsy said sounding somewhat ambivalent about the prospect.
She loved her brother and his wife, but at the same time, she was becoming envious of their relationship with each other. They were the perfect couple, living their lives for the express purpose of making the other happy. Their love for each other was obvious in even the smallest things they did together.
William was, in many ways, more unique than Betsy. He saw the future. That was a frightening kind of difference from the rest of humanity. In a strange way, it made him the ruler of the world. He could take actions that would determine the future for everyone. It was a huge responsibility that he took quite seriously.
Most of those who knew of his gift, feared him. Many of those, feared him enough to want him dead. It forced him to live the life of a hermit, surrounded by people he could trust to keep him isolated from those who meant him ill. One could worry that it would make him a hard bitter person, but she knew of no one who cared for all of humanity more than he.
William was probably the only one in the world who truly stood a chance a winning in a martial arts contest with Betsy. It was impossible to overcome someone who could predict the outcome of a fight and take the one action that would assure him of winning. The act that favored winning over losing could be as subtle as drinking a glass of water, two hours before the fight even begins.
“You don’t sound all that excited,” Alice said.
Betsy said, “I guess I’m just a little envious of his relationship with Lucy.”
“They are quite close,” Alice said.
“I’ll never find anyone to love me like she loves him,” Betsy said.
“You never know,” Alice said.
Betsy said, “My whole family knows how to love. I just never thought about how difficult it is to find someone to love.”
“You’ll find someone,” Alice said.
Betsy spotted a warning sign against trespassing hanging on the fence and said, “This is the beginning of his property.”
“There’s a lot of land, here,” Alice said.
“His place is rather large. It’s around forty square miles,” Betsy said knowing that would impress Alice.
The fact was that Betsy wasn’t sure how large her brother’s place was now. William had taken to purchasing every piece of property that came up for sale anywhere near where he lived. Some land he gave to the tribe, to increase the size of the reservation. The rest he kept as a buffer from others.
Alice was suitably impressed.
Betsy leaned forward and said, “Driver. There will be an office building up ahead on the right. Pull into the parking lot there.”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
“Your brother lives in an office building?” Alice asked.
“No. That’s one of his security checkpoints. We’ll pick up an escort that will take us to his place,” Betsy answered.
“We need escort?”
“Yes. He takes security very seriously.”
Alice said, “I’d hate to live like that.”
“One day we might have to take similar security measures,” Betsy said with a sigh.
Alice might have reacted to that statement, but everyone in Betsy’s house was security conscious. She had seen the kinds of things that Gary was doing to secure Betsy’s house. Sam was spending a lot of time in the garage building remote controlled machine guns that could better protect the house from attackers. They had installed metal shutters that could drop down to prevent ingress through the large glass windows of the house.
“That’s a shame,” Alice said.
Betsy said, “That’s life.”
The limousine, creating a small cloud of reddish brown dust, pulled into the parking lot in front of a white modular office building. A man, wearing blue jeans, a blue work-shirt, boots, and cowboy hat, came out of the building to meet them. He went over to the driver’s window and knocked on it. The driver lowered the window about a quarter of the way down.
“Are your passengers here to visit the Carter Spread?”
“Yes.”
“I need to see your driver’s license, as well as some kind of id for everyone in the car,” the man said.
“What for?”
“It’s a security precaution.”
Betsy rolled down her window and said, “Call my brother, and let him know I’m here.”
“Sorry, Ms. Carter. I didn’t know you were coming, today,” the man said.
“Bullshit, Rock. There’s no way he would forget to tell you,” Betsy said smelling something fishy.
“I need the information on the driver and Alice,” Rock answered. Seeing the expression on Betsy’s face, he explained, “He’s an unknown, and we need to add her to the friends list.”
The driver said, “I don’t want to give you my driver’s license.”
Betsy frowned. She looked over at Alice, then at the driver, and finally at Rock. There was something wrong about the situation. The driver was acting reticent about handing over his id and Rock wasn’t being honest with her. In fact, he looked a little nervous as if expecting real trouble.
When the driver leaned forward as if to fiddle with something on the dashboard, she decided that she didn’t trust his actions. She reached forward, put a hand on the back of the his neck, and then squeezed just hard enough to cause a little pain.
“Don’t move,” she warned.
Feeling the slight pressure on his neck, the driver said, “Yes, Ma’am.”
“I’ve got him,” Betsy said to Rock.
Rock tried to open the door of the limousine. The door was locked. He looked over at Betsy, with his eyes flicking towards the door.
“Moving very slowly, I want you to unlock the doors. I can and will break your neck if you move too quickly,” she said.
“Yes, Ma’am,” he replied after she applied a little more pressure to his neck.
There were clicks as the electric door locks slid into the unlocked position. Rock opened the door of the limousine, and put handcuffs on the driver. Once Rock had the man under control, Betsy released her hold on the driver’s neck. Rock roughly pulled the man out of the car and then searched him for a weapon.
“What’s up?” Betsy asked opening her car door to better talk with Rock.
“William said that there was an unpleasant surprise in the trunk of the limousine,” Rock answered.
Alice looked concerned at the news there was a surprise in the trunk. She tried to imagine what it might be, and her thoughts took a rather explosive turn. She bailed out of the limousine and backed away.
“What now?” Betsy asked rubbing her hands excitedly.
“You and Alice will go into the building while I check out what is in the car,” Rock said.
A little disappointed at not being included in the search of the trunk, Betsy got out of the car. She looked down at the driver unsurprised to see that he was glaring at her and Rock. It was when he would glance away that she could see on his face that he knew he was in serious trouble and was looking for a way to get away.
“I think that digging around in the trunk might be very dangerous unless you know what is inside,” Betsy said.
“That’s why I get paid the big bucks around here,” Rock said.
She said, “Before you open the trunk, I’d like to get a little information out of him.”
Rock looked at Betsy, and thought about what she had done to the first of the Russians who had tried to kill her.
He said, “If I remember correctly, you did a ‘Humpty Dumpty’ on the last guy you questioned.”
“It wasn’t that bad. I’m mean, but he was still alive for them to put him back together. One of these days he might even walk again,” Betsy said.
She looked at the driver who wasn’t looking all that happy about being the subject of the conversation. He didn’t look like he was all that willing to talk, either. She decided that it was time for her to turn up the pressure on him.
She reached down, felt his elbow, and then said, “This guy must drink his milk. He has great bones – good and solid. I think they’ll make a great snapping sound when I break them.”
“The last guy was Spetsnaz. This one won’t be nearly as difficult to damage,” Rock said.
“I really thought Spetsnaz were a lot tougher than that. Besides, I don’t see it as damaging them. I see it more like forcing them into retirement,” Betsy said looking at the driver who was staring at her in horror.
“Your mother has told me about that,” Rock said with a smile.
“Did you know that there are basically two ways to break bones?” Betsy asked in a conversational voice.
“There are hundreds of ways to break bones,” Rock argued wondering where she was going with this.
“No. There are basically two ways to do it. You can hit the bone hard and fast to break it, or you can increase the pressure on the bone until it just snaps. The first way, you get a sharp pain. However, if you do it the second way, you build up the pain slowly and then when the bone finally snaps the pain is excruciating,” Betsy said.
Wide-eyed, Alice asked, “How do you know that?”
“I experimented on that Spetsnaz guy,” Betsy said playing a little with the mind of the driver.
“My Lord,” Alice said looking horrified.
Alice wasn’t the only one horrified by the idea. The driver whimpered. However, Rock knew exactly what Betsy was doing.
Rock asked, “What will I find if I open the trunk?”
“An extra suitcase,” the driver answered.
“What’s in the suitcase?” Rock asked.
The driver glanced over at Betsy. The young woman had a slightly feral expression on her face reminiscent of a predator about to pounce upon its prey. She licked her lips. It looked as if she was about lose all sense of civility.
“A GPS triggered bomb. It was set to go off when luggage was brought inside the house,” the driver answered.
“Any booby traps?”
“No.”
Betsy faked a frown and asked, “Does this mean I don’t get to break him?”
“We’ve got a lot of questions to get answered yet,” Rock said with a smile. “I’m sure that he’ll be less co-operative over time.”
“That’s good,” Betsy said.
“I’d really like to see the difference that the two ways of breaking a bone produces during interrogation,” Rock said.
“Are you sure, it’s not booby trapped?” Betsy asked.
“I’m positive,” the driver answered defiantly.
Betsy said, “I don’t believe you. I think that when Rock opens up the suitcase that it will explode.”
“I’m positive,” the driver answered.
Betsy jabbed him with a finger at a nerve bundle in his left arm that was associated with the sensation of touch. Surprised, he screamed out in pain. The sensation was a lot like having struck his funny bone. Even once the immediate sharp pain passed, his whole hand continued to feel like it was burning.
“I think it’s booby trapped,” Betsy said.
“Make it stop hurting,” the driver said.
“No. You’ll tell us the truth or more of your body will be feeling the same way. You’ve got ten seconds to tell me about it,” Betsy said.
“It hurts.”
“It will hurt more. When it stops hurting, I start breaking bones.”
The driver rubbed the hand that was burning. Betsy jabbed another point on his arm. Once again the pain was horrendous. His entire forearm and hand was now tingling and burning.
He protested, “That wasn’t ten seconds.”
“You’re living on ‘Betsy time’, now,” Rock said apologetically.
“It’ll explode if you open it,” he said.
“How about if we move it?” Betsy asked.
“It’s safe to move,” the driver said angrily.
“I don’t believe you,” Betsy said.
“It’s in the back of the car where it can shift around. You don’t want it exploding before you deliver it. The idea was that you’d get there, carry the luggage into the house, and then it would explode once you were inside the house. Even if you never reached the place programmed into it, it would explode when you opened it. It won’t explode just by carrying it.”
Betsy said, “Damn. His answer actually makes sense.”
“It does,” Rock agreed.
“Now stop it from hurting,” the driver said.
Betsy said, “We’ve got a lot more questions to ask of you, my friend. So far, I’ve only damaged sensory nerves. I’ve still got motor control nerves. When I hit one of those you’ll experience paralysis, weakness, and uncontrollable twitching of the associated body parts. Do you want to know the really cool thing?”
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It was approaching lunchtime when Betsy stepped into Sally’s darkened laboratory. The only sources of light were the fish tanks, and the base of the microscope. It was enough light to see by once the eyes became adjusted to the low level, but that always took a moment upon entering. The soft burble of the aquariums running provided a background noise that one noticed initially upon arriving in the room, but which faded from awareness after a few minutes. The effect of the darkness and soft...
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Betsy watched a tree remove the wing from her side of the jet, thinking that this had to be the trip from hell. The jet made another spine wrenching jog when another tree removed the wing from the other side of the aircraft. There was a jolt, then the jet came to an abrupt stop, and then the world went black. Unable to guess how long she had been unconscious, Betsy woke with a start. She glanced around the little commuter jet that was supposed to have taken her and ten other passengers from...
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The cell phone rang. Thinking it was important, Betsy answered without checking the caller id. “Hello?” William said, “Hello, Betsy.” “What’s up?” “Just called to tell you to say: ‘yes.’” “Yes?” Betsy asked. “Yes.” Betsy said, “Okay. I say: ‘yes.’” “You haven’t been asked the question yet,” William said. “What question?” “You’ll know the question when you hear it,” William said. “I hate it when you do this to me,” Betsy said in frustration. William laughed. “By the way, you’ve...
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Betsy turned on her cell phone, and set it down on the instrument panel. The light, although not very bright, managed to displace the overwhelming and depressing darkness inside the cabin. She looked over at Ben and saw that he was looking a little pale. “Is that better?” Betsy asked. “It’s much better,” Ben said. “Good. I got Sharon’s cell phone next to the two guys who are trapped in the back,” Betsy said. “How are they?” “They keep drifting in and out of consciousness. They aren’t...
Chuck stepped out of the jet and looked around hoping to spot Betsy. A blur was heading towards him. He braced himself for the impact. She threw herself at him, landing with her arms around his neck and her legs wrapped around his waist. He staggered back a step or two. She was kissing him passionately with tears running down her cheek. In a husky voice, Chuck said, “I missed you.” “I missed you.” Chuck said, “We need to stop by my house.” “Don’t worry, I straightened it up. I cleaned out...
Betsy walked down to the beach intending to have a nice relaxing swim. It was the weekend and the house was a little crowded. She was still bothered by Chuck’s abduction, but at least something good came of it. He was now living at her house, where he could be adequately protected. There were other benefits of having him around so much, too. At the moment, though, she just wanted a little time of her own. She desired a chance to just get her thoughts in order. It seemed to her that things...
Betsy stood in front of a full body mirror, looking at her reflection. She was wearing a black robe. This was the first time she had put one on. Rather than having the full length sleeves of Druid robes, the robe she wore was sleeveless. This allowed the golden torq, her symbol of service to the Two-Sided One on her arm, to be visible. She turned a little to catch her profile in the mirror. Then she turned the other way examining her appearance once again. She decided she liked the way the...
The evening’s entertainment came to a typical end. The curtains closed, the lights came up, the applause died, and the audience rose to make their way out of the theater. It was noisy and chaotic with individual groups of people caught up in their own conversations and actions. Engaged in their own little dramas, no one noticed the pair of young women who hadn’t moved. Betsy sat there with tears running down her cheeks. “It was a comedy,” Sally said. They had just watched a university...
It was three o’clock in the morning when the jet Betsy was on arrived at the Honolulu airport. It touched down on the runway, and taxied over to the hangar. Betsy looked out the window. There was one person on duty, along with the limousine driver waiting for them to exit the jet. The man on duty was wearing the overalls that identified him as a mechanic. The limousine driver was wearing the typical black outfit of commercial limo drivers everywhere. While gathering her stuff, Betsy asked...
Ling woke up, immediately aware that every part of her body hurt. She started going through the mental inventory of body parts. Ribs? It hurt to breathe, so she had a couple of cracked ribs. She gingerly moved her arms, legs, fingers, and toes. She was relieved to discover that there weren’t any casts. There weren’t any broken bones. She tried to locate a muscle that wasn’t screaming out in pain and failed, miserably. She knew it was going to hurt to get up and try to move around. She...
Sweating profusely, Betsy wrestled the fifty-five gallon steel drum down the ramp from the ‘Bloated Shark’ to the dock. The wooden ramp creaked under the strain of the load. Forty-five gallons of salt water weighed over three hundred and eighty pounds. It was a little too bulky and heavy for even Betsy to carry. The Bloated Shark was the name she had given the tugboat she had purchased for a research platform. When she had found it, it was just an old tug that had seen better days. It had...
“Hello,” the man said when Betsy stepped into the instrument room on the tug. He was big as a mountain, with tattoos that ran the full length of his arms. His legs were the size of tree trunks. His hair was cut short, and he had a scar on his chin that gave him the appearance that he ate small babies for breakfast. He was holding a screwdriver in his hand, which was pointed in her general direction. “Who are you?” “I’m Paul.” “Well, Paul, what are you doing on my boat?” “I work for Dr....
Betsy stood atop the building looking down at the people below. Several people were looking up at her, thinking that she was going to jump. She smiled, backed up a few steps, and then ran forward and off of the roof. She spread her arms and legs wide while gravity made its presence known. The people below screamed thinking they were about to see her splatter on the sidewalk. She was only on a four story building, so it wouldn’t have been that great of a splatter, but people aren’t rational...
Betsy waded ashore. She had a large fish, which she held by its tail, slung over her shoulder nearly to her waist. It was flopping around, but she ignored its motions. Once away from the water, she dropped the fish on the sand and removed the rebreather from her back. Then she knelt down, and with her knife, filleted the fish. It didn’t take long for her to remove several nice fillets from the fish. She took a minute to wash the fish filets off in the ocean as well as return the innards to...
Once the family left, Betsy and the staff settled into the process of learning to live together. There were quirks to learn and preferences to discover. The house, with its wide open spacious rooms, was designed to give great views of the exotic landscape. It did not promote privacy, particularly with six people living in the house. Betsy was willing to drop her clothes without a moment’s notice, and head out to the beach. She was just as likely to wear clothes around the house as not. About...
In the process of selling the idea of their filtration system, Jake and John Widmeir had made two interesting discoveries. The first was that Betsy Carter had almost limitless energy. They had been told that, but seeing was believing. She could keep going long after everyone else collapsed from exhaustion. There had been one funny little incident in which a cocksure kid had thought he could keep up with her, in the workout room of the hotel. She had walked out bubbly and full of energy,...
Carl had no real idea where he was. Upon learning that he was single and lived alone; Betsy’s father, Ed, had insisted on taking him to the Carter home, where Carl would get around the clock care. It was an offer that Carl found nearly impossible to turn down. It wasn’t that Carl was concerned about the care he would receive in the hospital; but what would happen after he was discharged, was an issue. There was no one at his apartment to take care of him, and he wasn’t about to ask one of his...
Head buried in her closet, Betsy was tossing clothes out left and right. Charlie and Alice were standing at the door watching her. They were a little amused by her behavior. Alice said, “I do believe that Betsy is in a tizzy.” “Tizzy? Yes, she does look like a person in a tizzy,” Charlie said. “It could be a dither,” Alice said. “No. It’s definitely a tizzy, not a dither,” Charlie said. “I wonder why she’s in a tizzy?” Betsy growled and then muttered, “I’ll show them a tizzy.” “I have...
Charlie was seated at the desk in her office inside the house, watching Betsy fidget in her chair. They had returned from the capital the previous day. It was necessary to get caught up on all of the work that had accumulated over the past few days. Fortunately, it hadn’t taken nearly as long as she expected to get caught up on the business aspects of Betsy’s life. The staff had taken care of nearly everything in their absence. She looked down at Betsy’s calendar for a moment, flipped...
The modern person, who has lived a significant percentage of their life in a digital economy, can not imagine what life would be like without checks, credit cards, debit cards, and online banking. Mortgages, rent, utilities, and insurance are paid with check or by electronic transfer. Large purchases and consumer goods are paid with credit cards, or checks. Plastic is not reserved only for big items. People will whip out a credit or debit card to pay for a five dollar lunch, or a cup of...
With Sally away on her honeymoon, Betsy was at loose ends. After Chuck’s kidnapping, she just didn’t want to take off for the ocean for a week at a time. At this point, it wasn’t necessary. She had all of the biological data necessary for her dissertation. All that was missing was sufficient tracking data to support her arguments and time would take care of that. She didn’t need to tag any more sharks since she had already tagged far more of them than was necessary for her dissertation. For...
Ling said, “You look like hell.” “I’ve been around your daughter for a couple of days,” Gary replied pointedly. He tried to count the days, but they all ran into a blur of move and move and move. He had never been so tired in his life. Trying to keep up with Betsy was a constant effort. She was always in motion and that required him to always be in motion. The normal human being wasn’t built for that level of activity. “You should get some rest,” Kelly said. Gary pointed at Ling and said,...
In what has to be one of the greatest plays on words of all time, Mark Twain wrote: ‘Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt.’ “This can’t possibly be happening. It’s impossible. I just won’t accept it.” Everyone has observed denial at work. Everyone has experienced denial for him or her self. Denial is a universal experience. One can deny it, but that denial rather proves the point. Denial is an unavoidable consequence of how the human mind works. The human mind makes gross generalizations...
In the short time she had worked for Betsy, life for Charlie had been interesting. Still unable to get around with any kind of ease, Charlie was more than happy to sit behind the desk and take care of the hundreds of little things, that had been ignored by Betsy. She’d been stunned to discover that Betsy hadn’t even bothered to open a local bank account. She had been shocked one day, to discover a past due statement buried with the stack of mail that had accumulated over a couple of weeks....
Betsy was pacing around outside the construction site. The site engineer (Stan Kubrick) and one of the foremen (Jim Franklin) were there with her, wondering why she had literally dragged them away from their homes. Chuck was standing under a palm, enjoying the shade, while George was nervously licking his lips. A man wandered by and stared at the group for a second. Finally, he approached and said, “Hey, Jim!” “Hello, Kirk.” “What are you doing here?” Kirk asked. He had been working on...
Betsy stood in front of the little stand that was selling meat. The stand had once been a little souvenir hut that had sold glitzy trinkets to tourists. It had a fake grass roof, giving it a kind of hokey appearance that tourists expected of a tropical island. She wondered where it had come from, but wasn’t interested enough to ask. A bird flew overhead and landed upon a branch of a nearby bush. She turned to look at it. It was a red crested cardinal. Like many of the more common birds on...
Betsy skipped down the hallway pausing to read the sign on each door. The other students in the hallway would move over to the other side to avoid getting hit by the jump rope. She stopped in front of one of the doors and read the name off the nameplate aloud, “Sally Tilton.” She stepped back nearly hitting a student with her jump rope and read the sign on the door aloud, “Keep out.” She stopped swinging the rope around, but kept up the jumping motion while knocking on the door. She called...
Betsy paced the floor, criss-crossing the living room in her house. Fortunately, the house was built with a wide open spacial style that allowed her a lot of room to move. If the room had been a bit smaller, she would have been bouncing off the walls ... literally, not figuratively. Not for the first time since returning to the house that morning, she asked, “Where is he?” “I don’t know,” Charlie answered without having to ask who he was. “Why isn’t Gary here?” “He had to go to the...
With the destruction of the economy, a number of things had changed in the world. One, which almost no one would even think about, was the disappearance of certain specialty shops, of which bridal stores were a good example. There just wasn’t a place to buy what had become a traditional wedding gown. What few dresses had remained on the shelves of stores at the time of the collapse had long since disappeared. Young couples getting married now tended to wear nice dresses and suits. The new...
The desert stretches from horizon to horizon, existing in both time and space. One man gazes upon it and sees paradise. Another man gazes upon the same scene and only sees desolation. One desert, two men, and three entirely different worlds. It is not a mystery why people argue and bicker over nearly everything. If two people can’t agree on something as vast and as timeless as a desert, why should it be a surprise if they can’t agree on much of anything? The variations in preferences of even...
Charlie was wheeled out of the hospital in a wheelchair. As with a lot of patients, she had argued that it wasn’t necessary, except that it was. Her prosthetic was packed away in her luggage, which Betsy was carrying. Either the infection had been a little more aggressive than she had thought, or she had really been a lot more tired than she had felt. She was so weak that she was afraid that she might not be able to use the crutches she’d been given. Once they were outside, Betsy handed the...
Tight-lipped, Ed stared at the man. Talking with him was a constant assault on his truth sense. The longer he talked, the worse the lies got. It was as if one lie emboldened the next. Ed said, “She was drugged.” “The test results were lost,” the man said with a smirk. Ed’s truth sense stabbed him in the brain upon hearing the lie. He said, “Quit lying.” “I’m not lying. They were lost.” “She was drugged, and you know it!” Ed shouted. The man replied, “She chewed his arm off and beat him...
Chuck wandered over to the security center and office building construction site, searching for Gary. The building was still a long ways from finished, but he could imagine what it would look like when it would be completed. The foundation was in place, the framing was complete, and some of the exterior walls had been added. Chuck found Gary inspecting the building. Gary was checking to make sure that nothing that didn’t belong had been added to the walls. There were folks who would be...
Chuck was seated in the backyard passing the time by watching a couple of birds working together in building a nest. Watching them build a structure for the results of their mating reminded him that he was going to be married soon. He was looking forward to the event without the kind of nervousness that plagued many grooms. There was only one downside – he wished his parents were still alive to see him get married. He wished his parents could have met Betsy. He was sure they would have loved...
Sally walked into the room thinking that she had made a horrible mistake. There were a lot of people, none of whom she recognized, moving around. She grabbed Gary’s arm to prevent being separated from him. Betsy had disappeared somewhere into the heart of the party. It was a typical frat party – a lot of testosterone driven young men, scantily dressed young women, too much booze, not enough light; and loud music, which made talking impossible. The air had the lingering hint of a sickly sweet...
The sound of waves crashing along the beach provided a background noise that Betsy found particularly relaxing. She was sitting tailor fashion on the beach, looking out across the ocean at the distant horizon. This was about as calm as Betsy could appear to act. It truly was an appearance of calm rather than true calm. She was digging two holes. She was excavating one hole with each hand, and using the sand in the other hand to fill it in again. The strength required to shove her hands into...
By the morning after the altercation with Kyle, the swelling in Carl’s face had reduced to the point where he could see again. His nose was still tender, but most of the pain was gone. It was hard to believe that Kyle had been able to hurt him so badly, with just two punches. He’d been beaten up a few times in high school, but that had been nothing compared to the previous day. He had awakened that morning to find Betsy, wearing a knee-length skirt and white blouse, seated in a chair reading...
Ling, pulling Cal behind her by his ear, followed Millie and Melvin out of the plane. Betsy was inside with Kelly and the rescuers planning how to free the two men trapped in the chairs. Jimmy was over by the fire piling branches on it after getting it restarted. Ed was with him giving him pointers on the care and management of a good campfire. Ling threw Cal to the ground. Looking at Millie, she asked, “What’s the story with him?” “He’s an asshole,” Millie answered. “I figured that much...
“I agree. I will see what I can do to convince a certain young man to become a caretaker.” Harry stood behind the young man watching him. Unable to keep silent any longer, Harry said, “You’re talking to a mongoose.” “I know,” the young man answered. “They don’t talk back,” Harry said making reference to the weird one sided conversation he’d been listening to. “You don’t know that. In fact, she’s quite talkative,” the young man said while rising from his kneeling position to face...