The Unqualified Expansion of Trieste

Well, there are at least two DOTs. To obtain a driver’s license, you need documents. The DOT website’s requirement for documentation I had well in hand. Now the other DOT on-site had other requirements. They handed me a pamphlet detailing what I was required to produce. I hadn’t thought of a birth certificate, as what else, proof of birth, (and if I didn‘t have one, would have, absurdly, a death certificate have done the trick?) was necessary to buy a car, take out a mortgage, enter college, or commit to a loan with a visit to the county seat as preamble. Really now, did you say the original?

No, I do not routinely carry on me a birth certificate. My ever-prepared wife knew of its location. Therefore, we had to return. We did so in an hour. Before that, we had spent an hour and a half waiting. Take a number, sit. If you sat in the waiting closet, you were with fifteen others. I couldn’t take it. My heart condition does not permit such closest-possible placing on a good day. This day, rain was on its way. The dense humidity made for breathing difficulties for me more than if I had been alone in the waiting slit. I stood in the doorway, one foot propping open the door a big crack and I inhaled cooler stirred air. The other waiters thanked me for my dutiful foot placement. Others sat a few feet left or right of the door to the office proper. These seats seemed to be for complications in the process. Anyone there took a long time at the counter in front of one of two women.  The one woman, in central position , never smiled, she assessed the need and did what was required. 

The other two DOT personnel also did as required. They did not indulge in despair, anger, or frustration. Another day, don’t tell me who, tell me what, over and over in a  submarine compartment. One donned a baseball cap, exited the building and re-entered around half an hour later, forgetting the cap was on , sitting behind a sign for next counter please. After a time ( around 45 minutes) all three were doing licenses. The third of the DOT sat around at the end of a curve in the counter, somewhat at the back. Very close behind him you took your test (on a computer screen) if need be. The now capless one got the variety of the day as a, I swear, a 12-year-old came with Mom to get a permit. She got smiles from the processor. 

The one in the back was doing a fast rate. Answer questions, present docs, look in viewer. Stand before a backdrop, smile if you got it. You pay, sign, goodbye. (Elsewhere if the photo doesn’t suit you, you get another try, and it is done in compensatory spacious accommodations while waiters actively converse. Here it was a solitary turn, oppressed by lack of space and don’t cross the waiters, in all such matters once done there was no way back.) He was going and going. Sometime when I was letting someone out or in and then re-establishing my position at the door, he left his chair. Maybe ten minutes, must be a toilet back there somewhere. The middle person also went back, a long time, same toilet?

All three from the DOT contributed to melancholic output in pinched quarters. No one waiting voiced a protest, some did mutter “Letter to the Editor”. Most were relieved to get the hell out of there. Theirs had been a melancholic wait. Like confined to Trieste during the last century. Of course, the DOT Three couldn’t leave. It may have been hopeless resignation or the end-is-near-anyway mentality that prevailed among them. I rather think they were participatory in the general milieu of kindness, aiding anticipation, politeness, and common courtesy of the region. I guess to be “common” as in what was once ordinary respect and laissez admittance to the group which was in play.

Nevertheless, neither they nor me nor the waiters should be in such a zone the DOH must have had requests to close down. Do so and no licenses? Mental and social and physical and medical issues are endemic to the waiting area. People escape into their phones. I got the door. The employees had no escape. And back at it the next workday. Back to 150 more. They gotta drive. They gotta have licenses. The SOBs and DOBs of the DOH do not gotta do anything. And of course they don’t.

This you know as you exit town. Could stop at Billy’s on your way out. Ice cream, yes, but check the little signs in the little windows. I had a chili dog.  Back in the car and it is  rare hereabouts - a Nissan Versa. Driven out of town under open skies, green fields, and a simply arranged earth all about. Drive on, don’t try to think along the lines of melancholy. Don’t approach mourning as you approach exceeding the speed limit. The DOH must have many more at the edge of sadness, anyway.

July 2019 of The Atlantic

Jerks, stats, the Moon, baseball, and truth vs. fiction

1.     “Mailer on the Moon” is about Norman Mailer and Of a Fire on the Moon and the book is labelled as being essential to understand Apollo 11’s journey.  Highly doubtful. Also it is marked as being essential for understanding its legacy. Certainly not. Personally, it is reported, Mailer was in anticlimax. His effort was for the self. Lots of needed money was offered to write about Apollo 11. A gig. His ego less prominent but stamped on the account he wrote as a lesser advertisement for himself, not as others did for the provision of style but for a huge staging of personality, the dominant theme. Not events, history, but himself as more important than all else. Numbing importance and being bloated and tasteless – so the 60’s editors and readers expected and “enjoyed.” He was paid well for his act – Believe It or Not.

Odor is reputed to be a feature little desired by the WASPs of the NASA technocracy. But the most publicly known members of various missions filled crew cabins repeatedly with odorous offal.  Deodorant might have helped to prevent Of an Odor on the Moon. Norman linked odor and Time and Death. Undeniably NASA’s leaders intended to conquer the Moon, odor or not, and so reduce it by removing it from the unknown,  that had our possibilities assigned to it, so it would become less and smaller. The WASPS triumphant. But given the time and place, the who and the what could not be otherwise. Fiction lacked acceptance but Norman needed a fictional self he wrote of as everywhere and everytime such that there could not be an alternative. He was It. No margin, no protection from banality, and Truth took a holiday. The Moon had offered an unlimited adventure. This fire on the moon ruined that. The lunar events were taken by him for an effect on himself and his interaction with others.

Nevertheless, Norman was granted  status as a brilliant writer in tune with what was underneath a surface of the obvious achievement of the actions of Apollo 11’s supporters and participants but only by spewing that conception of himself over what was underneath. A hopeless attempt to cover up the encounter of reality, the one that was to come to be, with what might have been. If it, the landing on the Moon, was to happen, there was only one way it could happen and all those other ways, however entrancing, enthralling, exciting, enlightening, exhilarating, enchanting , ebullient, ecstatic, elated, electrifying, eximious, euphoric, enriching, eclectic, effluent, embellished, extramundane, enthusiastic, exalting, eudemonic, enhancing, elevating, empyreal, enabling, or emphatic they could be, they were gone.

Mailer had a sense of this as we all could. Therefore, he was not unique in his realization but rather in who he was, his personal elitist cult of me, myself, and I uber all made him a jerk. And there would be more and more like him. Why read what a jerk has written? He wanted to be read. They accommodated him.

2.     Or if not read, then to be watched as a baseball spectator who cannot know what makes one player better than another. Those better players are an elite, as was Mailer and some are jerks or so it is reported in “Building the Next Babe Ruth” wherein one can see what they do physically for the assigned physical tasks of baseball, but not how they mentally do it. Only they can realize how it is being accomplished while they catch, hit, slide, throw, and run. That’s baseball. And that’s not baseball. Baseball has long been statistically-ridden and managers have changed the course of a game based on “stats.” But, of late, stats aren’t characterizing what they will do but what they have done. So then a player’s worth, value is brought under analysis. Some do well after the numbers come out, and they become arrogant, or it intensifies whatever latent arrogance they had. So then they are jerks. Certainly arrogance is one distinguishing characteristic of a jerk, and Mailer qualifies. So why watch a jerk?

If you could statistically train a Mailer such as in a writers workshop, what with stats on sentence length, use of vocabulary, position of adjective and adverbs and frequency of their use, plus topics and meaning – and you get a Mailer? Could he always be a statistical outlier? His value, worth lies in his elitism and his cult of the One? Then can you produce more than one baseball star? Yes, you can, they are named in the article. They have differing names but having the same outcome of a superiority in performance of tasks that are part of baseball. This superiority is derived from stats. If more players could be statistically altered, their value, worth would increase less. If more were like Mailer, and could be produced to be like Mailer, his and their value, worth lessens.

3.     With jerks as writers and jerks as baseball players, can we feel comfortable in that we are in neither category? If “George Orwell’s Unheeded Warning” is not accepted by us, it is implied we are all jerks. We have willingly, statistically speaking, since there are so many of us, become enslaved to versions of truth. We have sought to escape from boredom by accepting fictions instead of truths since the truth isn’t diverse and diverting enough. But twist it and turn it and you get many differences that are more entertaining. Mailer couldn’t do it straight, there had to be fiction for entertainment. You can’t play ball as if you had a calculator strapped to your head or so the fiction of it has been proclaimed. Baseball remains less entertaining without stats. Winston of 1984 is quoted – “Sanity is not statistical.” Oh but it is if our stat analysis of literature, stat analysis of baseball and the stats that are synonymous with social media can be accepted as extensions of the feverish desire for entertainment.

To be consistently entertained by arrogant jerks or other elitists requires that statistically fiction predominates over truth. Once fiction most often prevails, it is true.

Without Yips What Could We Do?

The eleventh episode of season seven for “Murdoch Mysteries” is “A Case of the Yips” and involves playing golf in 1903 Canada, near Toronto. A golf champion suddenly cannot drive the ball as he would like – his swing is off. He is said to have the yips. In this episode, Murdoch invented the Swing Arc Perfection Device. The golf champion tried it out, then at the golf course he finds he can’t send the ball as he would like and blames the sample swings he took using Murdoch’s device.


Dr. Julia Ogden (rarely called Mrs. Murdoch) is at the tee (a pile of dirt) and tries out golf by sending the ball well downrange and well placed. She does it more than once, and Murdoch and the champion are annoyed by her skill. She says there is nothing to it – empty your mind. The champion tries it and it works. Murdoch finds it doesn’t work for him and small wonder, since he is logical, deductive, and rational – or take your pick. His mind is ever at work.


This is a not bad episode though I had never heard of  the “yips” before. From the episode I gathered it was a muscular lapse corrected by mental activity or the lack of same. Perhaps its ill effects were confined to golf. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition, has as a definition – “a state of nervous tension affecting an athlete (as a golfer) in the performance of a crucial action < had a bad case of the _˜ on short putts >”. The dictionary entry relates it is of unknown origin from 1962.


Nice and neat. Then it gets messy since Internet sources say it is a loss of fine motor skills. Comes on suddenly, no cure. Usually it strikes those with years of experience. A correction in technique may help or they are lost to the sport. It, via Internet sources, has sudden movements when muscular control is most needed. The sources list those engaging in golf, snooker, cricket, bowling, and for baseball pitchers as having had the yips.


Wikipedia credits the term, “yips,” to Tommy Armour (1896-1968) who won some big tournaments in 1927, 1930, and 1931. He was a Scot and served in the Black Watch as a machine-gunner in WWI. He was in the Tank Corps when he was gassed – mustard – and the docs put metal plates in his head and left arm. He regained sight in his right eye. He did well as an amateur in France and then in the US. He went pro in 1924. He also won the Canadian Open three times. In 1927 he had the misfortune to win an Archaeopteryx, meaning he went 15 or more over par on one hole. He got a 23 on a par 5 hole. I don’t play golf, but I realize how much that must have hurt. Hard to be light-hearted about it. This regrettable feat came one week after the US Open win in 1927. He retired from full-time pro golf in 1935. He stopped participation in pro golf tournaments because of the yips. Had his plates anything to do with it? For a long time his coauthored book (1953) on playing the best golf all the time was the biggest seller about golf. In any event he is the one credited by Wikipedia with popularizing the term “yips”.


As for yips as it is now defined, it is a biochemical approach in regard to playing a sport with an aging brain. Neurological difficulties could lead to or be the yips. I have heard of golfers Ben Hogan and Sam Snead, and they are said to have been affected by the yips. In 2015 it was suggested that the yips had got to Tiger Woods. I have also heard of him. Also, in 2014, it was said Woods had the putting yips and the driver yips. Others cited were having great success, then their game , of cricket, came apart. So maybe “yips” gets mentioned in cricket. I have never seen nor heard a cricket match.


In baseball yips is demonstrated by suddenly not being able to place the ball accurately, such as in pitching (Steve Blass gave his name to Steve Blass Syndrome/Disease) though second basemen can develop it and Mackey Sasser, a catcher, could not throw back to the pitcher unless he tapped his glove first. I saw him unable to throw to the pitcher, and he had to start a relay to the third baseman first. A few called it “Sasseritis”. No one said anything about “yips”. There was mention of mental difficulties.


Others have been affected in basketball, tennis, and football (placekickers). In my decades of listening to coverage of baseball and football and to a much lesser extent for tennis, basketball, and anything else sportive, I have never heard “yips” in the present or from the past.


Outside sports, can novelists or journalists get the yips? In both cases is this writer’s block? So it is the same across many genres, only with a different name? Do philosophers get the yips and can it go on for years as for athletes? Thus we read “yiptic” chapters and wonder how the author became so obtuse or suddenly has such clarity (maybe it is for the good in some instances?). Let’s not forget chess champions who at times make inexplicable moves in tournament after tournament.


Too many pursuits and if each to its own yips? Would that serve us well? Rather not, one needs to clarify what is doing a sport badly and what is having the yips. One examination of yips occurring in bowlers found it was like a severe form of choking (assuming the “choke” is not the common sports term when one can do “it” but lapses into not being able to do it when the game or career is on the line. Usually this implies no physical impairment but “a lack of concentration “or, more specifically, a lack of conviction that it can be done, it is a response to “everyone” expecting success. So much is “riding on it” and a mental pressure on the performer is relieved by not doing it. Some players "psych themselves out".


Certainly there is a psychology for baseball and some baseball players are well aware of the yips but it isn’t talked about –such is an unwritten rule – and they put it in the mental domain. A domain it is that includes “head cases” such as a pitcher with super speed to the plate and delivered with marvelous control. But he could not get the ball over to first base (a la Jon Lester). Some do it in practice without what is going on all the time in a real game. Get them away from being judged, but some docs think knowing the cause of yips would do no good. You know what causes your yips, then what? Knowing about it is not lending a cure. You must deal with anxiety.


If it is not yips, it is “a slump” or “choking” or “a lull” and so on. Often it involves, as noted, doing OK in practice, but not actual play. Now this is expanding on and on. Not all this expansion in explanation is by specific physical components of the body, rather it is a multiple mental element, very diverse. There may be a trauma that is physical or mental. Nevertheless, they find a mental component in relation to the physical trauma. The body “remembers” and a similar experience triggers an involuntary reenactment.


The aforementioned Sasser threw fine in the bull pen and to second base but he had to pump his arm three to four times before his release to the pitcher. Fans and writers belittled him. Fans would chant “One, Two, Three” as he pumped before release. The night before a game he would go into a panic. Amidst all this he was involved in a collision at home plate. After that, his hitting, which had been OK even during his throwing difficulties, went bad.


Some say the difficulty (not called yips) is a culmination of years of trauma and relaxation, concentration, imagery, positive thinking and thought stopping do not help. Sasser had a long history of injuries from high school, college, and on to the pros. Also, he had profound non-sport upsets. All contributed to his throwing “yips”. So now this is a third definition of yips -  not the physical, not the mental but the physical trauma to mental to physical. 


Sasser had a rheumatoid father who had to flip the baseball underhand to Sasser. The father medicated himself with alcohol. At seven years old, he saw his five year old brother race past him and his sister into a crosswalk and get slammed by a car that threw his brother one hundred feet. The brother lived but was never the same physically or mentally and Sasser blamed himself for not preventing it. Also his father’s friend and business partner was murdered, and the killer had been waiting for Sasser to leave the store and then the shooter entered. His father was lost in life thereafter. At ten years of age Sasser fell from a tree and required stitches. At twelve he had a cyst surgically removed from a knee and at seventeen tore ligaments in that knee. In high school, at quarterback, he took many hits, and it was the same in semi-pro football. In 1984 he hurt his knee again by sliding into base. In 1985 he was run over at the plate and got hit in the head and was dazed and out of it. In 1987 in the cold of Calgary he got a foul tip under this protection he wore as catcher but he stayed in the game and found he could not pull his right arm back and away from his body to cock before throwing. So he tucked his arm close to his side and flipped the ball from his fingers. Then he could not readily return the ball to the pitcher. A coach berated him in public and said Sasser would be fined when he hesitated. In 1990, when he had his best year statistically, there was another hard collision at the plate. Sometimes, in baseball, what happened to Sasser is baseball. What is happening in baseball cannot be predicated on antecedents. To force it to be so leads to problems. One woman, who hates baseball, knows of him because she likes his name. Others appreciate him because he contributed to victories on the diamond. Such activity still goes on since he has coached college ball for many years.


For a causative account of yips from the physical side, there are BBC Sport and the Mayo Clinic. The BBC calls yips as usually associated with golf and is a freezing or involuntary movement of the hands when attempting shots. The condition was originally thought to be psychological, but now it may have a physical basis. The Mayo clinic thinks it involuntary wrist spasms most commonly in golf putting. Once it was thought to be always linked with anxiety. Trying harder led to choking, to performance anxiety equaling failure. It is also said the yips suddenly start to interfere with a task once done mindlessly for decades. It could be of the psychological, of the neurological, or fallout from injuries and trauma. In all cases, anxiety for it can keep it alive.


Too many yips for me, rather it is too much pressure, not enough grace. Loading on thought after thought whereas getting on with it is to be preferred or the possibility exists for psychological self-interference. Without this psychological component, it isn’t yips. Pure yips, the preferred form, does not involve physicality. I had a case of the yips when I was ten years old. I remember the room and the lighting. I was reading something, probably a book. Then I could no longer read. There I was at ten trying to account for what had happened to me. I did recognize that at around five years old I was looking at a printed page and knew that I would be able to read it after suitable schooling. I was seeing marks on the page and did not know they would become letters and these letters would be words. The words spoken could also be written. But there I was at ten and I lost the ability, not the knowledge, of reading.  What to do? Knowing it was the yips as I have so defined it decades later, would hardly have done me any good then. I did not panic. I had no authentic reaction since no other like reaction could be known for what had never before occurred. It was what had happened, that was that, I would live as I had been at five years old. Minutes ticked. Something less than an hour went by.  I stayed where I was with the book unseen nearby. I picked up the book again, I took a look, and I could read. 


I have been successful at it ever since. Though from time to time, writing a word a great deal or, in reading excessively, a word comes to appear strange. Is that how it is pronounced? Is that how it is spelled? Seems strange to me. I then need conformation that it is indeed a word I have known for many years but I needed assurance in order to keep it as part of my knowledge. Such an occurrence has beset me at all ages, times, and places. The recognition returns. There was no pain of trauma or anxiety or muscular disorder. I was questioning, as myself, why I had I accepted what I was told to be true. Push it enough and I would be illiterate. I would be out of the “sport” as it had eventuated for some. If you doubt reality enough, taking it suddenly to a  different plane entirely, you have got not the not-reality but nothing. Overindulgence in drugs, sex, religion, politics, food and drink, and “the good life”  will lose from you what you received, and you go into an area of no return. Knowing reality isn’t effortless, try too hard, as perhaps in a case of the yips, and you may lose it for good. Being relentless with yourself is stupid.

Sherlock in Cheyenne: The Adventure of the Four Houses

No.

I had said that before but, naturally, Mr. Holmes wanted to be sure.

No, I’ve never seen this person before. I realize it is on our page in the newspaper, but it must have some significance for you, not me. I can’t make out the person very well at all. Looks like a photo of a drawing.

Very alert you are my dear boy. Clearcut photographs of Houlihan are few. I can only relate her appearance on our page to the reports of sightings of her in our area. She had been away quite some time. She returns with a colleague, a Mr. Bielseley. She has a justifiable reputation of being a firestarter. She rarely lends herself to an effort to put flames all through a structure. Many times past she has only mentioned the possibility of fire and, after a “contribution” to her general fund, shall we say, no fire eventuated. Mr. Bielseley apparently is new to the game. He may act as the go-between and negotiates deals on her behalf. She has never communicated directly with any “customers.” He may initially pocket the “fee,” take a commission, and Houlihan has the remainder.

I see beside her photo on our page is a shot of the Four Houses.

Yes, apparently They have an interest in them. The obvious indication is that Houlihan and the Four Houses and fire are as one thought.

I have been by the Four Houses a few times. Not distinguished in any way. But they look alike, except for trim and different colors. Big, wide, actually squat, houses of two stories. Each has a full basement. The North House, as it is called, faces North, and there is an alley on its south side. Across the alley, further south, is a half-hearted courtyard. The remaining three of the four houses share that courtyard. The West House faces West into an adjacent lot containing a ranch style house. South House faces a major diagonal of Cheyenne running from downtown and out past Pioneer School. East House is on a major N-S street that ends at the Frontier Days venue. W and E are for rent. N and S are for sale. None are occupied, no furnishings. At least there is a reduced chance of injury should any or all come to a fiery end. (In my imagination I find all ablaze simultaneously. Such big houses on fire but with no wind, so straight up goes the flames and heat and castoff debris.)

Mr. Holmes -  Fire may happen, though even that seems a smallish proposition for Them. Perhaps it is a distraction, though Houlihan’s abilities could be put to broader use through surrogates. Nevertheless, the actual doing of a fire has always been hers alone and no one has ever been burnt.

Me – What a way to evaluate one of Their projects, only is it likely to be favored by Them if people will be hurt.

Ah yes, true enough.

Naturally you are going to the area of the Four Houses rather soon.

I shall repair soon enough.

(I, meanwhile, would be opening yet heavier, bigger, more costly textbooks to acquire knowledge I need not have except for my being here. I was then, before my return, a slightly above average student. I now remain so.)

Mr. Holmes returned from his foray to the Four Houses with nothing amiss to report. He was hailed more than once by the people across the street. They called him “Sherlock.” Next time, surely there will be a next time, he will be in disguise.
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The next issue of the newspaper had a photo on our page of a beheaded Mr. Holmes! He was lying in the street that South House borders on. It was twilight. Rather a shock to be sitting in your armchair, by yourself, as was Mr. Holmes, when you come across a photo of yourself, headless. So someone took the trouble to clothe a dummy approximately as Mr. Holmes and knock off the head. This being the era it is, the “body” was photographed from the shoes looking along toward the head where there was an indication of something missing beyond the neck. No gore, no blood. The caption for the photo – Is this the end of Sherlock?

I made no comment on the photo, nor did Mr. Holmes. Next issue, our page, had an account of Mr. Holmes seen in the area “lurking” about the Four Houses. This was reported by “people across the street.” Nothing more than that. No connection being made to how he recovered his head and has soldiered on.

Our page was getting a workout in that every day brought more “news.” Except, for it seemed at first glance, the next issue. But Mr. Holmes was running his fingers along the outside edge of the page and then its gutter. “Perforation.” He frowned. Then he brought out his magnifying glass and carefully surveyed where his fingers had been.

Ah, my boy, we have a coverup here.

What?

He went over to the card table and placed the paper flat on it and opened to our page.

Please hold this magnifier for my sight at the edges as I move along with the knife and so saying he brought out from his coat a very small jackknife. He then began to cut along the perforated line at the outer edge of the paper. I moved the magnifier as he moved the knife. Then the operation was repeated on the gutter. Underneath was a gigantic black headline: THE ALIENS HAVE LANDED. So black was the ink that it smelled faintly. I was cautious enough not to touch it for fear it would smear.

Mr. Holmes – What idiotic poppycock!

Me- I, I…

The “aliens” are occupying the Four Houses, said Mr. Holmes, as he read the caption. “They wish us no harm and will be leaving soon.”

Mr. Holmes – Whatever are They up to?

Me – I, I…

It seems They are focusing on the Four Houses as a locus for something yet to come. I now must give more fodder for “the people across the street” as I visit the area. Care to accompany me?

I, I…have parsing to do on some fifty sentences.

Ah well, the student’s life.

Yeah, well watch out for ray guns and worse-than-death Empire games.

Certainly. I’m off, and as myself. My disguise kit is getting vacant.

I did have sentence diagramming to get done. The darn sentences were ones we would never read, much less write. If done at the blackboard during class, I tried to position myself at the far right so the spillover as I edged down and to the right ran up against the end of the board. I couldn’t very well write on the wall, now could I? I gave generous space to my left so that my pal there had to trail down to the right into the abyss as modifiers modified modifiers unto almost infinity.

Mr. Holmes, on his return, said “the people across the street” included Houlihan and Bielseley.

Houlihan?

Yes, she may be reconnoitering and about to issue a threat for fire.

Aliens? Four Houses? Fire? I think They have gone weird.

Certainly if there is rationality herein, it escapes me.

Could it have been someone else? Not Houlihan?

She stood at the curb. She is under five feet and has steel frames, small lenses. Her hair, going gray, is always in very tight ringlets all about her head. Never a dress, always clad as if a workman. Called jeans? Plaid shirt, long sleeves. Brown. The jeans or whatever are brown also. Thin mouth. Never any animation of the face. Yellow bright eyes of a predator. It was Houlihan.

Bielseley?

Average height and build. Also in brown. He wears a soft hat, folded down in front to partially cover his face. Broad face, pallid. Grey eyes. Gloves at all times which are leather and brown of course. Large boots, as if he can never find the right size and fit. Oh yes, he and she were there.

They saw you?

Of course.
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So came the next issue of the newspaper and on our page was a photo of Mr. Holmes “lurking” in the Four Houses area. (Someone in costume as Mr. Holmes. Though the real Holmes was there.) The “people across the street” (pats) smelled something flammable in the air. (Mr. Holmes did not.) Also mentioned was a dismissal of someone having floated the possibility that aliens had come to occupy the Four Houses. Not being of the pats (so it was implied) it was branded as what-will-they-think -of-next stupidity.

Next, in this cavalcade of Four Houses goings-on, Mr. Holmes was seen to have emerged from the bushes on one side of South House’s veranda and then charged across that very wide veranda and dove into the bushes on the other side. Light of various colors were flashing upstairs in South House. Also this “Mr. Holmes,” as seen by some of the pats, had a beard. A Zeegler?

The “our page” output was at a constant flow of Four Houses and Mr. Holmes locked in a common conception. If you had one, you had the other. By then, all sightings of Mr. Holmes were of imposters. Although Mr. Holmes was there, in disguise. He mingled freely with the pats. As the days rolled on, he saw Houlihan, not Bielseley, only once more on the night a fire began upstairs in the East House. Response was swift and only burn marks on the wall and floor resulted. Mr. Holmes and the authorities knew of this concentration on the Four Houses. So it was not if, but when. And what it all could portend for Them vs us, we didn’t know. Nevertheless, fire was coming. It got to the West House one night. The pats crowd saw “Sherlock” there before and during the fire that was of more than a burn but less than structural damage.

Then the unexpected happened. They jailed Mr. Holmes! For “observation” and his “protection.” Houlihan was also in jail. So they could be trying to stop a burn-down but they couldn’t continue such indefinitely. I visited Mr. Holmes in jail. He seemed OK. As probably was Houlihan. He counseled patience. A few days went by. On another visit, Mr. Holmes said he had secured an attorney for Houlihan and that the attorney, upon Houlihan’s release, was to present her with enough money so she could retire to Mexico. She was released.

One night later, the North House was on fire. No doubt about it this time. A great ball of fire, like a smaller Sun, was in the house. Something more than the house itself was burning. The heat was monumental for blocks. Houlihan had disappeared. Of course. And then I met with Mr. Holmes a third time.

Mr. Holmes – I have a revolver in the laboratory in your basement.

OK.

Arm yourself and frequent Woolworths in the town center.

To what purpose?

Bring in Bielseley.
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I went to Woolworths. It was a Thursday. I knew the guy behind the counter was wondering what I was doing not in school. In those days, it was school or a certain elsewhere. I much preferred school. My Mom, I said, would be in shortly. I was to see a doc about a sore back. So I said. He shrugged. I ordered a banana spilt which Bielseley was reputed to favor. Honestly I had no problem with a revolver and encountering Bielseley. I wasn’t certain I would see Bielseley. Mr. Holmes thought he would come in to contact others, some of the pats could be about. With Mr. Holmes in jail, who was to carry on? I was here for a purpose allied to what Mr. Holmes was doing here in Cheyenne. I had shot lots of Zeeglers. So bring on Bielseley. But why should he show? Besides, a banana spilt I hadn’t had in ages. Woolworths put it in a glass schooner like for ocean going if it had not been glass and, anyway I could never finish it. But there it sat, on the long counter that curved off to the left far down the store. Mirrors on the wall lined the entire counter opposite the seats. A lunch counter really but it was mid-afternoon. Just me and the guy behind the counter who busied himself at the far end and a guy sitting at a table to my right, reading the paper.

And Bielseley. He had come in the side door, as I had done that puts you immediately at the lunch counter. The front door led to the merchandise area where noise could be heard as women (all women by the way) were perhaps appraising and ready to purchase goods. It was Woolworths – the Five and Dime.  Bielseley was beside me on my right. Hi, kid, how’s Sherlock?

No need to express surprise. So he knew me. Don’t know how. He sat down two chairs from me at the counter. Hey barkeep, he turned and said to the counter guy. A spoon. I pulled the revolver from a jacket pocket as he was turned. I held it under the counter pointing mostly at his kneecaps. Yes sir, I could and would fire it. Bielseley got his spoon, the counter guy moved back to where he had come from. Bielseley leaned in toward the spilt. He noticed the revolver. He dug into the end of the spilt that was toward him. He took a big portion. He downed it extravagantly, like a much appreciated luxury, his mouth moving every which way. Then he slowly stood up. The guy at my right reading the newspaper dropped it on the table. He had  a gun leveled at Bielseley. A cop.

That had been easy. Bielseley in jail. And Mr. Holmes had got out. Why I asked. Gratitude he said. From whom? Houlihan. North House.

We were home, in the basement. Mr. Holmes had delayed his exit from jail, but I wanted home and school and Mom and siblings and friends and books and TV and …. Not jail.

I do thank you for apprehending Bielseley.

Nothing to it.

Oh, by the way, Bielseley is out.

What? How?

A bribe. He bribed a guard.

And so what was all this about putting you in the cooler?

Our opposition wanted to associate me with what was occurring at the Four Houses.

Enough repetition and it would become fact – you as an arsonist.

Correct.

Oh, wait a minute. This may have been the best plan They have ever come up with. You out of circulation, and They could do whatever they wanted.

Except for you, of course.

Yeah, right, I flunk out while opposing them at every turn. Really, the setup was to establish the bizarre linked to you and then move it down to more commonplace arson.

Yes, in some ways this was truly the better plan. A guilt by association from false witnesses and my reputation used to put me where They wanted me – at the scene They selected with Houlihan as a “smoke screen.” How clever, me behind bars and They had far more freedom in which to operate.

But it didn’t come off eventually as they had wanted.

They did not choose wisely. Houlihan had too much gray.

How’s that?

Retirement, shall we say, loomed large for her. I soon enough suspected as much, so she was offered freedom and funds and she honored the implicit agreement.

The North House. But what of Bielseley?

As I said, I know he is gone.

But he had just got there! So he had money for a bribe that he should have paid to Houlihan.

Why?

Well, wasn’t he the paymaster, the go-between for Them and Houlihan?

Have we ever known Them to employ go-betweens? I could never with certainty conclude he was such.

But, but who was Bielseley?

Mr. Holmes was watching me intently, hopefully, with a now-drop-the-other-shoe expectation.

Indeed, said he. Must you guess? Recall that in Woolworths he knew who you were and They have always been hands on for whatever was going on except, of course, for the Zeeglers. Recall the grey eyes.

You mean he was not a substitute, a shave of the beard, not a Zeegler? Not an arsonist and not truly in league with Houlihan? One who hires and pays but he wasn’t.

Yes and no, then…

That means now I don’t know if I could have pulled the trigger in Woolsworths.

Tut, tut, Wilson was there, but only to make it official.

Yes, a backup or a takeover.

Never you mind, you are a crack shot.

So, so…  and I then said exasperatingly, finally, at long last – he was one of Them!

Yes.

The end