OF ELEPHANTS AND MEN by Guy Pratt, a pink gin

OF ELEPHANTS AND MEN

The commuter train ran up to London from the South Coast early each weekday morning. Most of the passengers were the typical gentlemen in pin stripe trousers and bowler hats with uniform umbrellas and rolled copies of the Times or Telegraph which they opened and hid silently behind until they hastily folded them preparing to leave the train when it reached the city. The same ones seemed to occupy the same compartment each weekday morning.

There were two exceptions in the compartment every morning. One was a small man in overalls with a cloth cap and he always carried three copies of the Daily Mirror. The other was a large man dressed in a tweed suit and a pork pie hat. He had no newspaper and throughout the journey gazed silently out of the window or read the back pages of the open papers of his fellow commuters opposite him. In that typically English way, other than cursory nods on boarding, there never seemed to be any conversation between them all.

Whilst the others were all engaged in reading papers the little man in the cloth cap would stand up and pull his copies of the Daily Mirror apart and roll the pages up into balls which he would at regular intervals throw out of the window.  He would keep looking at his watch as though he was working to a set time and pattern in doing this. The rest of the compartment’s occupants were either too engrossed in reading their own papers, too reserved to ask what he was up to, or just chose to ignore him, apart from the one under the pork pie hat who was becoming increasing puzzled and agitated.

This went on for several months and pork pie hat was working himself into quite an anxiety state over it and finally could contain his curiosity no longer. He blurted out to cloth cap and overalls in a posh voice “Why ever are you doing that every day, rolling up balls of newspaper and throwing them out of the window at regular intervals?”

“Well guv,’” cloth cap responded, looking as though it was something very mundane and every day  ”if It’s done regularly, it keeps the elephants down.”

“But there are no elephants in the commuter belt” protested the questioner.

“Damned effective, isn’t it Guv’” cloth cap replied.

A few weeks of silence in the train ensued then pork pie hat and tweeds opened the conversation again. “I used to catch elephants in Greenland” he stated.

“They don’t have elephants in Greenland” said cloth cap and overalls.

“Not now” replied pork pie hat “I captured the lot.”

“How ever did you do that?”

“I’d go to a remote area of Greenland where they lived and set up a blackboard. Then I would chalk on it two plus two equals five. The elephants would come along and stand and puzzle over this. While they stood there, from a safe distance I would view them through the wrong end of my binoculars. They now appeared so tiny I could pick them up with tweezers and drop them into a jam jar.”

“Amazing! That’s amazing” exclaimed cloth cap.

One day at the London Zoo a new companion was introduced to one of the resident elephants. The new elephant asked the other one how she came to be in the Zoo. Nelly explained that her parents had been in a circus touring the South Coast and had escaped and hidden out in woodland close to the commuter line. Unfortunately, Nelly’s parents died and she was left an orphan and taken to the London Zoo.

Jumbo asked Nelly “What did your parents die of?”

Nelly explained that the authorities suspected foul play and an autopsy was performed on her parents. The autopsy found that they died of newsprint poisoning but no one was ever brought to justice.

“How very sad,” said Jumbo looking sorrowful.

“Where have you come from?” asked Nelly.

“I’ve come all the way from Greenland.” came the reply.

“Greenland!” echoed Nelly, ”I was never told me that we had relatives in Greenland. How on earth did you get here?”

Jumbo looked at her warily and replied “I don’t think you are going to believe this…”

About the author

Guy Pratt is a retired octogenarian second hand bookseller who enjoys gardening, long walks with his dog and travel. He gravitated into the book trade after earlier years in farming, the army Intelligence Corps and the civil service. 

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Them’s Goldfishby Kenneth M. Kapp coffee,

Them’s Goldfish

 

Burt and Harry were doing what they did best: sitting on the back terrace of the old-age home, swapping tales over the dregs of their morning coffee, and munching whatever was left on their plates after flicking the crumbs from the croissants onto the flagstones for the birds. The other residents gave them room, tired of being told whenever they came close that the two of them were just letting their choppers do the talking. “They get a good rest from the glass on the bathroom sink overnight, not having to get up a single time to pee!”

Maggie was one of the few residents to go up against the dynamic duo. Her quip that “It wasn’t funny even the first time!” got more laughs.

In any case, this morning turned out to be for walks down memory lane. A cardinal landed on the far end of the patio, having spotted the crumbs. Burt was first out of the chute. “I told you those birds have super sight.” Harry ignored the remark and tried to encourage the bird with his tweet, tweet, t w e e t, which didn’t play well through his choppers or 82-year-old lips.

Burt pounced, “Give it up Harry, your lips are past their prime.”

“Never. They’re the same ones I was born with.”

“Well, must be the teeth then.”

“No different than yours.”

There was a rumor circulating in the residence than once the two friends had gotten their dentures mixed up after laying them out on a dining room table for comparison.

Harry tried to deflect. “Too bad you weren’t around when I was a kid. You should have heard me whistle like a blue bird. Plenty of them back east then. They were more melodic than these red cardinals.”

And that started the trip down memory lane.

Harry’s family grew up in Hoboken. “They called me Hoboken Harry soon as I turned eight!”

Burt’s family was from the lower East Side. He would spend the next two weeks trying to come up with his own handle, but he was stuck as East Side Ed even though his name was Burt. Meanwhile as best defense is a strong offense, he had launched the following story:

“OK, Harry, let me tell you a story that my father told me about when he was eight growing up on the Lower East Side. Summers were hot then too. Maybe not as hot as they are now but then if you were poor the best you could do was open all the windows and pray for a breeze, trying to ignore all the smells coming in from the streets and alleys. ‘Whoo-ee, gardy-loo.’”

Burt moved on quickly, realizing his French wasn’t what it used to be, which never was much anyhow. “Yeh, on hot days he and his brothers and cousins – by the dozens – would go down to the East River and jump in to cool off. Dad would joke, ‘So our mother wouldn’t have to wash your underwear.’ We took turns, always making sure a couple of the family members stayed up to guard the pile of clothes and shoes.”

He paused for effect. “I bet that was at least one hundred years ago. They’d run down the pier, hold their nose, and jump in. On one such run some big kid from uptown stopped him and pointed out the shit floating in the water, guess there were even fewer sanitation regulations then, and asked, ‘Hey kid, what do you call that stuff floating there?’ My pop answered, ‘Them’s goldfish,’ held his nose, ran down the pier, and executed a perfect bombardier into the river.”

Burt figured his story won the prize that morning, so he pushed back from the table, looked around for anything he may have brought and left, and nodded to Harry. “Loser must bus the dishes. And don’t forget, ‘them’s goldfish’ and you heard it from me first, right here!”

About the suthor

 

Kenneth M. Kapp lives with his wife in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, writing late at night in his man-cave. He enjoys chamber music and mysteries. Please visit www.kmkbooks.com. 

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Nightstand by David Uri, Manhattan

Suggested Drink: Manhattan (consume before bedtime to erase the day)

Recipe: Use Amaro instead of sweet vermouth. 2:1 ration of Rye to Amaro. Never bourbon. Nothing expensive. Swirl or stir. Pour over ice and let it sit for 30 seconds while you stare longingly and caress the glass. I don't think it calls for a garnish but there are those who put cherries on everything. You know them. They don't know you.

Shortly before 06:00 am today, Mason’s days of killing time came to an end.

These had been long days stretching through each infinite moment. Boring days. Forgettable weeks consumed by vacant hours. Joyless television. Meaningless walks. Vacuous conversations. Wasted time for the singular purpose of wasting it.

Mason held it firmly. Time. Squeezing it tightly. Choking it slowly until the moment that it left him.

The bedside clock, with its stiff red numbers, displayed 05:59 am, as Mason reached over to his nightstand and prevented the alarm from going off. He stared as the 06:00 displayed and became aware of the sound of his own breathing. The simple cadence of his inhales and exhales continued as Mason laid on his side intently watching these numbers drift into the afternoon. The other needs of his own body ceased to exist as his eyes solely focused on the LED’s pushing each minute to the next.

The room’s twilight yielded to darkness as Mason watched the clock display 06:00 pm. With each breath, he knew that his days of abusing time were now at an end. Time had left him. And he could no longer manipulate it, cajole it, or kill it. Time couldn’t stand him anymore.

In the day that preceded this day, Mason discovered that his friend, more of a work acquaintance, had dropped dead in the middle of his life. The guy had just left the cardiologist after a great checkup and stopped for his favorite blue Slurpee at the 7-Eleven on his way home. An hour later, the convenience store manager found his cold dead body on the floor of the bathroom. A heart attack, they said. Only fifty, they said. What a shame, they said.

Mason turned fifty yesterday.

When he came home that evening, his wife told him of a young woman who was hit by two bicyclists while walking in the park today. They were apparently blinded by the glare of the sun and crashed into her simultaneously. It wouldn’t have been so bad except that the woman had some undiagnosed bleeding disorder. After her head hit the pavement, she died of a brain bleed within a few minutes.

Mason liked walking in the park.

On the same day, which was yesterday, Mason’s mother told him that his father had died today. He had always expected his father to die, but not yesterday. And not from a cancer that Mason was never told about. A cancer that his two brothers knew about for over a year.

Mason was a father.

Mason decided that he must apologize to time. How could he have mistreated it so badly? Now each moment must be sliced open and dissected in search of meaning. Nanoseconds would measure his life. Microseconds would define his days.

05:59 am. It was evening. It was morning. Day one. Mason drifted back to sleep.

David Uri is a writer and surgeon who focuses on the connection between memories and death. While David has been published extensively in medical journals, his upcoming novel is a fictional retelling of his own near-death coma. Good times.

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Gold By Jim Bates, iced tea

Wearing a pink tank top and tights, Lindsey Copeland danced out of her corner into the center of the ring. Her opponent, a kid named Frankie she knew from her seventh-grade art class, approached her confidently. She could see him smirking and she knew exactly what he was thinking. You’re going down, little girl. Or something like that. He was a bully in school and thought he was tough stuff. Too bad for him.

Lindsay was fighting in the first round of the first fight of her life. Without stopping she danced right up to him and belted him square in the forehead. Even though he was wearing a boxing helmet, his head snapped back and tears came into his eyes. He blinked them away but it didn’t help. She grinned to herself. Just like Uncle Sid taught me. Take ‘em by surprise.

In a matter of seconds, she hit him twice more, a left in the stomach and then a right cross to the jaw. For a skinny, wisp of a thing, Lindsey had muscle, and her punches were like being hit by cement blocks. They were also unexpected, and Frankie stood stunned before reeling into his corner.

The ref put her hand on Lindsey’s shoulder to stop her from stalking him, “Hold it a minute, sister.” Lindsey looked at her. Her name was Skeeter, a well-respected former boxer, retired now for nearly ten years. Skeeter winked. “Nice couple of shots there.” She raised Lindsey’s arm. “The winner! Technical knockout.” The crowd of about fifty or so cheered and applauded. Then Skeeter guided the young boxer to her corner and said to her uncle. “Well done, Sidney. You’ve got a good little fighter there. See you in the next round.”

Uncle Sid helped Lindsey out of her gloves and gave her a high-five. He grinned. “Excellent work. Next time remember to keep your right up a little more. But that first left jab to the forehead was awesome.”
            Lindsey spit her mouthguard into her hand and said, “Thanks, Uncle Sid.” Then she took a long drink from her water bottle. Her heart was pounding, adrenaline running through her like a freight train. Man, that was fun!

Uncle Sid wrapped a towel around her shoulders and prepared to lead her out of the ring. She glanced at Freddie’s corner, hoping he was okay. He was. He had his gloves off and gave her the thumbs-up sign. Good. She liked to box; she just didn’t want to hurt anyone. Not too bad at least.

She was fighting in the U12 class, twelve years old and under. It was a round-robin tournament, and she was the only girl fighting. She was sure all the guys thought she’d be a pushover. Ha! Too bad for them. Talk to Freddie. He still looked a little crossed-eyed.

            At five feet two inches, Lindsey was tall for her age. And skinny. “You’re like a broomstick,” her Aunt Claire had told her when she’d first come to live with them a year ago. “I’ve got to put some meat on those bones.”

            So began meals of pancakes and eggs in the morning, roasted chicken and mashed potatoes at noon, and roast beef and gravy and garden-fresh string beans at night. Or some variation thereof. Lindsey ate it all, happily, because she was always hungry. But she never gained an ounce.

            Uncle Sid smiled six months later when his wife complained about their niece’s lack of weight gain. “Don’t worry about it, Claire.” He turned to Lindsey. “Show her what you’ve got.” Lindsey proudly flexed her arm, showing off her newly developed muscle. “See,” he winked at his niece and gave Claire a one-armed hug. “It’s all muscle.”

            “Humph!” Then she grinned good-naturedly. “Well, I guess that’s okay, then.” She really did want her niece to succeed, because, after all, her life hadn’t been a bed of roses up until then.

            Claire’s mother, Brittany, was a sales rep for a medium-sized publishing house. She was a free-spirited woman who traveled the country meeting with clients and was only home maybe twenty percent of the time. She’d had Lindsey when she was thirty-five, telling her younger sister when she told her she was pregnant, “I think I’ll give it a try. You know this mother thing.”

            Claire was aghast. “Brit, you can’t approach being a mother like that.” She’d raised three sons and knew what it took. Plus, all the time she’d been raising the three boys she’d had a full-time job doing bookkeeping for Willard’s Construction, the company her husband, Lindsey’s Uncle Sid, worked for.

            “Sure, I can, little Sis,” Claire had said, uncorking a bottle of wine. “Watch me.” She’d poured two classes. “Here’s to us.”

Claire had dealt with the demon alcohol off and on for years until she’d quit on the day after her thirtieth birthday. That had been twenty years ago. She picked up the glass and poured it down the drain. “No thank you.”

They were in the kitchen on the twelfth floor of Brittany’s townhouse in downtown Minneapolis. Brit paid dearly for the million-dollar view of the Mississippi River and Saint Anthony Falls and the Stone Arch Bridge. Which was a shame, Claire thought, because her sister was hardly ever there. To say she had a wandering spirit was putting it mildly, just like a shoestring relative of theirs, Axel Clappert, who, rumor had it, had headed west to California during the 1849 gold rush, never to be heard from again.

Claire poured a glass of water. “I wish you’d reconsider.”

Brittany guzzled her White Zinfandel and poured another. “I already have, Sis. The light is green for go.”

Claire had had all she could take. “Well, fine. It’s not you that I’m concerned about,” she said, walking to the door. “It’s your unborn child.”

Brittany laughed. “My child?” She drank from her glass and walked toward her sister, swaying slightly. “You mean my daughter, don’t you?”

Claire’s eyes went wide. “Daughter?”

“Yeah, sis. I’ve been checked. It’s a she. I’m calling her Lindsey.”

In spite of her anger toward her oldest sister’s irresponsible behavior, Claire had to smile. After raising her three boys, it’d be nice to have a daughter in the family.

It was good she felt that way, because she became a surrogate mother right off the bat, driving downtown nearly every day from her and Sid’s home in Orchard Lake, twenty miles west of Minneapolis.

Pretty soon, it was clear that Brittany was more than willing to turn over bringing up Lindsay to Claire. Sleepovers at her aunt and uncle’s became long weekends which became a week, then two. Then a month. Then an entire summer.

Finally, Sid said to Claire, “Why don’t we just have her live with us full-time? She could go to school out here. She’s already got a bunch of friends.” He smiled at his wife and gave her a hug. “She could be the daughter you never had.”

Claire laughed and kissed him on the cheek. “She already is.”

Sid grinned. “My point.”

At first reluctant, Brittany finally relented. “Go ahead,” she finally said after relentless pressuring by Claire. It was the summer Lindsay was just starting fourth grade. “It’s for the best.”

Years later, Claire would always remember how happy both sisters seemed. For entirely different reasons. Brittany wasn’t cut out to be a mother. Claire was. And she loved her niece. Even to the point of indulging her desire to become a boxer.

“I just don’t get it,” Claire told her when she’d first broached the subject. “Why boxing?”

“Why not?” Lindsey pointed at her uncle who had just come home from work. “Uncle Sid did.” Which was true. Sid had boxed right up through high school and into college when he’d hung up the gloves for good, saying to everyone he was sick of getting beaten to a pulp. Plus, he was starting to get headaches and boxing wasn’t helping them any. Plus, he’d met Claire.

“I don’t mind you boxing,” she’d told him. “I just mind seeing you get your ass kicked.”

She had a point. Truth be told, Sid had more enthusiasm for the sport than skill. But at least he was smart, smart enough to listen to Claire anyway. He quit soon after.

But he still liked the idea of fighting, especially the one-on-one aspect of it. He watched fights on YoTube and when Lindsey joined him in watching he didn’t think anything of it. Claire didn’t mind. Too, much. Except for occasionally shaking her head and muttering, “I don’t see the point.”

But there was something in Lindsey that attracted her to the idea of proving herself in the ring. She watched a lot of women boxers and had Uncle Sid teach her the rudiments. So, when her high school announced over the summer that it was going to field a boxing team, Lindsey begged and pleaded to be allowed to join. Uncle Sid was overjoyed, Claire less so. But she reluctantly went along saying, “As long as she doesn’t get hurt.” She poked a finger in Sid’s chest. “Train her well.” To Lindsey she said, “I only want you to have fun. When it’s not fun anymore, tell me, and that’ll be that.”

“Okay,” Aunt Claire, Lindsey had said. She was thrilled.

Over summer she’d trained with Sid and by the time fall came around, it was apparent she was a natural. She was fast on her feet and skillful with her punches. She caught the eye of her coach, Soren Blackstone, a history teacher and former boxer himself. He took her aside that first month and said, “There’s a tournament in Minneapolis in November. Talk to your folks. I think you should be in it.”

She’d talked to Sid and Claire and uncle and they’d agreed to let her box. She was ecstatic.

And she’d won her first round.

The second round was against a kid named Bucky. He was tall and thin like she was. He was also as skillful as Lindsey and hit her hard four times to every one of hers. Fortunately for Lindsey, one of her punches bloodied Bucky’s nose and the fight was stopped. They bumped gloves when it was over. “Sorry about that,” Lindsey said, pointing to the towel Bucky was holding up to his nose. It was turning red.

In spite of the blood, Bucky grinned. “That’s okay. It was fun.”

Lindsey went back to her corner and drank from her water bottle thinking that Bucky seemed like a good guy.

Sid gave her a high five. “Way to go Tiger. You’re in the finals.”

 The next day, Lindsey found Alex Young. He was a short, muscular kid who hit Lindsey without mercy. She took every hit and gave him more back, punching with four or five left and right jabs to every full-blown swing. She also kept moving. In fact, she wore him out. By the end of the third and final round, after boxing for nearly six minutes, Alex was exhausted. Lindsey could see it in his eyes. He even had trouble holding his arms up. Finally, the moment she’d been waiting for happened. He dropped his guard. Lindsey hit him with a hard one-two punch to the head that sent him stumbling backward. He fell into the ropes and pitched forward, falling to the mat, too tired to get to his feet. She’d won.

Lindsey was awarded a gold medal on blue ribbon for first place.

That night at home she sat down with Sid and Claire. They were celebrating with pizza and ice cream. When she was finished, she said,

“You guys, I’ve been thinking.”

“About what?” Claire asked.

“About the next tournament?” Sid asked grinning. “You’re quite the fighter, you know.”

Lindsey smiled. “I know. I love boxing.”

Claire could tell something was up. She reached over and rubbed her niece’s shoulder. “What up, honey?”

“Well, I have to say that I like boxing. I just don’t like hurting those guys.”

“It’s part of the sport, though,” Sid said.

“I know. It just doesn’t seem right.”

Claire looked at Sid. “We promised to let her decide.”

“I know.” Sid looked at Lindsey and smiled. “Do whatever you want, sweetheart. Your aunt and I will support you.”

Lindsey smiled, relieved. “Good. Here’s what I’d.” And she told them and when she was done, her aunt and uncle couldn’t have been happier.

Lindsey continued to box. She also became an assistant coach and helped Soren Blackburn train hundreds of boxers. She went to college and got a degree in physical education and teaches at Orchard Lake High School.

And she has a gold medal she keeps hanging on the wall in her bedroom to remind her of that one tournament. The tournament when she not only won but met her future boyfriend and then husband and father to her two girls, both pretty good boxers themselves. 

about the author

Jim lives in a small town in Minnesota. He loves to write! His stories and poems have appeared in over 500 online and print publications. To learn more and to see all of his work, check out his blog at: www.theviewfromlonglake.wordpress.com.