K. R. Hill's Blog, page 10

Falling Up, Suspense: Chapters 1 & 2

I'm going to be giving away copies of this novel in celebration of the publication of my second novel, The Mayan Secret.

I began to write Falling Up while living in a tent beside the Rhine river.  Each morning I would wake up and shower in the camp restroom sink, put on a second-hand clip on tie, and journey into downtown Cologne, to teach English in a private language school.

Here is the link if you'd like to buy a copy:  http://amzn.to/xSgDVm



CHAPTER 1
Jumping rope in the loft made strange hollow sounds.  As he jumped Jesse stared at the industrial window that spanned the wall, rain dancing on a hundred little panes.  When he raised his gaze to gargoyles on the building across the street, he thought of the men hunting him.  He heard a noise in the corridor outside and stopped jumping and listened.Were they in the corridor, backs pressed against the wall, about to burst through the door?  Run, his mind shouted.  Squatting down for a better look, he searched the crack beneath the door for a surveillance cable.  A drop of sweat fell from his nose and soaked into a plank of the wooden floor.  Very slowly he lay the jump rope on the floor and rushed to the window.  The hum of Cologne’s student quarter, of distant laughter and rumbling beer trucks, bicycles rattling over the cobblestone street, sounded normal. When the door burst open he ran a few steps before he saw who it was. "You alone?"  Bartholomew said with a Jamaican accent, rushing inside with a bundle of bamboo.  He stood like a prize fighter with wide shoulders and trim waist and a smile that made everyone like him, the perfect smile for a ladies’ man.  The colored beads in his dreadlocks clicked together as he turned right and left."Yeah, I’m alone.""Okay, now listen here.”  He dumped the bundle on the couch.  "Mahn, I have something to show you."Jesse crossed the empty hall of an apartment, stepping on thick dark lines where walls once stood.  "Did you look at that car I told you about?"Bartholomew turned from the question and opened the door, waving into the hallway.  "Come, come, come," he said, stepping back as a young woman led a group of African children into the room.Because of the woman’s olive skin and green eyes Jesse thought her Greek or Egyptian.  As he nodded hello he pulled Bartholomew toward the corner kitchen of white pressboard cabinets, his face burning as he leaned close.  "You bring strangers here?  Our records are here.  Are you stupid?""Listen, mahn—" Bartholomew knocked his hands away and stepped back.  "Those children were smuggled here for the sex trade.  They need help.  Besides, you been running around with those street kids all week.  I thought you had the great escape plan worked out.""The police won’t get any records if the plan goes well."  He wanted to strike Bartholomew, but instead whispered:  "You gave me your word you’d finish our car deal."  He lowered his head and walked toward the window, feeling disappointed and alone, wondering if the gargoyles on the building across the street were watching.The floor boards groaned as Jesse walked.  "Maybe it's time for me to leave.  I’m sick of Germany … cold feet, months without sunshine.  I could go to Mexico and soak up the sun like a lizard, build a palapa with a palm leaf roof, and stretch out in a hammock—just leave the rat race behind."  He stared across the room where the projector of his mind was playing a movie about Mexico.Bartholomew walked over.  "We can still sell the cars.  I just have to help these kids.  You understand, don’t ya?"Jesse placed his hands on the sill and looked down at the street below.  On the sidewalk he saw a Turkish kid with curly hair juggling apples.  Fear jolted him upright as if he had seen a car about to run him over.  "Bart, it’s the signal!  We got trouble.  The police are coming!"  He ran across the room."What trouble?"  Bartholomew leaned over and put his arms around the kids, then rushed to the door and peeked through the spy hole."It's Rashnew on the sidewalk.  There’s police on the street. They must think you’re dealing hash again.  From the rack beside the door Jesse lifted his jacket, fumbled with the buttons, then cursed and gave up when his fingers wouldn’t respond.  "Come on!"A faint knock sounded through the apartment.Jesse pressed his shoulder against the door and whispered, "Rashnew?""Yeah.  Open up."He opened the door a crack."There's a cop watching your building.  He's dressed like a bum, but it's a cop."  Rashnew shuffled his feet and looked right and left.  His fingers raced over the buttons of his wrinkled, plaid shirt.  Every few seconds the teenager jerked his hand up and flicked a strand of curly hair from his eyes."Are you sure he's a cop?""Jesse!"  A loud noise, like someone moving a sofa in another apartment, reverberated along the corridor and the adolescent jumped like a cat startled into full alert, poised to attack or flee. "He's a cop.  When I was six I could spot one in a crowd.  You have to believe me.""Okay.  Make the call and get your friends in place, just the way we practiced.  Here's fifty Euros.""Fifty?  You think we’ll risk jail for fifty lousy Euros?""All right. Here!  Remember the signal."  He shoved several notes into Rashnew’s shirt pocket, closed the door and turned the dead bolt with a shaking hand."Bart!  Someone's watching the building.  I have to get the records out of here."  He raced across the room to the desk and shoved a stack of papers inside, then pulled an ice pick from the wall.  The calendar it supported dropped to the floor."Oh no!  What about the children?  We got big trouble, brudder."  Bartholomew ran from the door to the window, gripped the sill and stared at the street below."Erase the bulletin board.  Burn the answering machine.  Follow the plan.  Go!"  Jesse swung the pack over a shoulder, pulled his collar tight around his neck and flipped the dead bolt."I’m trying to tell you something!"  Bartholomew fired a volley of punches into the air."Oh shit!  Bart, why are you wearing that jacket?"  Jesse turned from the door and closed it.  His mouth hung open and the pack fell to the floor."I be talkin’ big here.  I have children to protect.  And you’re asking about my jacket?""You have three jackets:  Your strutting ladies’ man tuxedo you cut the tails off with my scissors, your Texas blazer, and that one, your bad-ass dealing jacket."  Jesse marched across the room and snapped an open hand chop to Bartholomew’s throat that stopped just short.  His hand and face contorted and painful sounds emanated from his throat as he fought for self restraint, anger and sorrow screaming inside him for violence.  "How could you?" he whispered, lowering his gaze."I been trying to tell you."  Bartholomew shook his hands in the air."Listen," shouted the woman, unlocking the door.  "I have to take these children away from here.  Call me later."Jesse couldn’t think about her or the children.  Right now his life depended on getting the records away from the police and staying free.  "Why didn’t you tell me?  The police could crash through the door any second.""Brudder—""We had a deal!  We sell some cars.  Maybe we don’t pay tax, but it’s not dope.""This is hash, ganja mahn.  It makes you laugh and happy.  No one dies from the ganja, brudder.  Besides, it’s not yours.""Tell that to the police when they break down our door."  Jesse lowered his head, feeling sad and tired."Look, the money from the hash is for those children.  That’s the only thing that could make me sell again.""Serious?""They touched my heart, brudder."  Bartholomew patted his chest with a forceful blow.  "I know this is a good thing.""What about our business?  The money from the cars keeps me alive! People are hunting me.  If I don’t get out of Germany soon they’re going to crack my skull like a melon."  He moaned and rubbed his face as if waking up.  "Damn, how could you put me in this spot?  You know I don’t touch that stuff."He ripped open Bartholomew’s jacket.  Buttons fell to the floor and rolled about as he pulled a block of hashish from the inside pocket.  "Either I get this out of here or I go to prison.  Don’t ever put me in this position again, you understand?"He put the hash into the pack, shoved it against Bartholomew’s abdomen and ran to the door.  "Wait for the signal.  Tomorrow we’ll talk, if we’re not in jail."
Jesse descended the stairs in huge leaps and bumped several people as he burst out the front door.  The smell of lamb kebobs and falafels filled the air.  Bars and cafés lined the narrow, one-way streets. Turkish markets added color with pyramids of apples and persimmons on sidewalk tables.  The sidewalks were full of hungry students being called to the Mensa, the university cafeteria.  Twice a day it called its faithful home for a cheap, balanced meal.  And every student, every street person, knew the schedule.He walked on tiptoes, peering over the heads of people around him, searching for movement in shadowy doorways, among groups of loitering students, between parked cars, but saw nothing unusual.  Just as he exhaled a sigh of relief, he noticed a man standing in a doorway across the street."You see him?"  Rashnew bumped his arm.Jesse looked at the stranger once more, the dirty, torn overcoat, bits of leaves in his hair, and the hat held out to pedestrians.  "Look at his shoes.""You always go for the easy stuff first."  Rashnew laughed."Easy stuff?  Okay, Mister Street Smart, let me hear your deductions."The adolescent cleared his throat, stretched his arms out before him and wiggled his fingers like a circus magician."Oh, brother.""Listen to a master at work:  First of all, his hands and nails are clean.""How the heck can you see his nails?"  Jesse leaned forward and squinted."Second, not taking into account the black leather shoes that every cop in Germany wears, how many winos have a gold chain around their neck?"  Rashnew nodded and held out his hand.  "Five Euros!""Five Euros?  For what?""The lesson.""But you missed something."  Jesse held up a finger to make a point, and glanced across the street.  Instead of holding the hat before him, as he had a moment earlier, the man stood shouting into a cell phone."Shit.  Go Rashnew, go!"  He pushed the boy away and watched him run along the sidewalk.  Now he knew the threat was real.  He took a deep breath and closed his eyes, accepting his fear and letting it flow through him.  If the police found his business records it no longer meant a simple tax violation.  The hashish in the bag meant prison time.  That he could not risk.  He would sacrifice his own life before getting captured.  In his mind he saw the escape plan: get the records out of the apartment, carry them to the Nippes strassenbahn stop, and let the street kids do their magic.When he opened his eyes he counted, five, four, three, took out the ice pick, twisted the handle into the palm of his hand, which caused a searing pain to burn up his arm.  Anger rose inside him with the pain, making him anxious and alert.  And standing on the corner, surrounded by pedestrians, he saw no one.  He was alone, free, not part of any person’s life, and he loved it that way.  His hand burned as he lowered the weapon and waited for the traffic light to turn red.  When the signal changed and several cars stopped before him, he stepped into the street and placed the tip of the shaft against the lead car’s tire.  In the sidewall, he knew, there could be no patch, and by puncturing two tires, a spare would not solve the problem.  New tires would be needed, and that meant no movement along the street.  Leaning forward, he pushed the ice pick until a burst of air touched his hand, and then moved to the next tire, the next car.When the light changed the cars rolled forward and stopped.  Horns blared.  A fat, balding driver jumped from his black sedan, looked at his flat tires and shouted into a cell phone.  Jesse sprang forward, weaving among pedestrians as he ran.  With traffic clogging the narrow street, it would be about an hour before a police car could get close.He turned into one of the narrow driveway tunnels built for horse-drawn carriages, and sprinted to a brick wall behind his apartment building.  There he leaped and climbed a bit before his muscles locked up, an arm and a leg on either side of the wall, sirens screaming in the distance.  His heart pounded like a hammer on an oil drum, and he panted, wiped his face and looked at his shaking hand.  Staring at the swollen, red fingers and knuckles, he remembered his four-year-old son holding that hand, singing as they walked from the Danish summer house to buy bread on a warm morning.  He remembered the sky filled with singing birds.  As love for his son filled him, his muscles unlocked and his breathing returned to normal.  Jesse gulped in air, jumped to the wet concrete and ran across the parking lot.  When he reached the rear of his apartment building, he tapped on a drainpipe until a window opened."Here, don’t miss it."  Bartholomew dangled a red pack in the air.Jesse caught it and shoved it beneath his coat.  Over the screaming sirens he heard whistles and the shouts of police within the building.  Inside his jacket he now carried a prison term, and doing time meant no more running, no more freedom.  If arrested he would be locked in a cage, waiting to be butchered, unable to flee the men who had pursued him for so long."They're breaking down our door!" Bartholomew shouted.Jesse hopped from one leg to the other and lunged forward, his feet barely touching the gravel as he ran, and jumped the wall.  He remembered his son’s face, and felt rage tingle in every muscle.  All he had to do was reach the strassenbahn and ride to the Nippes station, where the team was waiting.  If he got that far the threat of prison would vanish."Get him!" someone screamed.He landed on the far side of the wall, legs hurling him forward, pushing for greater speed, arms swinging high, scrapping the fabric of his jacket.  At the end of the tunnel he stopped running and sauntered along with shoppers on the sidewalk, never looking back or wiping the sweat from his eyes.  After several minutes, he pulled the pack from beneath his jacket and swung it over a shoulder.  Everywhere he looked he saw students with back packs. Finding him would be a policeman’s nightmare.Something struck his shoulder as he crossed the streetcar platform.  He gasped, snapped his arm up for protection and spun around ready to scream and strike, to crush a windpipe or a man’s testicles, anything to escape."I'm sorry," a woman said.  "You're just kicking everyone today."  She tapped the foot of the child in her arms and cooed.He felt his panic escape like air from a balloon, and waited among shoppers and students as the streetcar creaked and glided forward.  People shuffled into the carriage ahead of him, stamped tickets at the machines and moved to seats.  He dropped into a hard plastic bench, but felt too nervous and confined to sit and jumped up as an old man moved to sit beside him.  Jesse said excuse me and moved past him, into the standing area of the car, pressed his back against the window.  The doors closed with a burst of escaping air, but that noise seemed weak compared to the screech of brakes which shot through the carriage.He bent down to get a better view of the intersection, and watched a green and white squad car skid to a halt in a cloud of burnt tires.  A civilian car tried to avoid it, spun out of control and hopped up the curb.  The police car doors burst open as four patrolmen jumped out.  Two ran toward Jesse and pounded on the streetcar door.  As the strassenbahn groaned and rolled forward, he blew them a kiss.Three stops down the line, in the long underground station of Nippes, he left the streetcar with most of the shoppers and searched the station, knowing the police would soon arrive.  When he couldn’t locate his helpers he panicked, jerked the pack from his shoulder, ran a few steps like a javelin thrower, and just before letting go, he saw a familiar face.A bum in a filthy trench coat, lying at the end of the underground station,six beer bottles beside him, climbed to his feet, pulled his shopping basket away from the wall and argued with himself as he lumbered toward the crowd.  Suddenly the bum snapped to attention and looked beyond the passengers, toward four policemen running onto the platform."Go!" shouted the bum, shoved two fingers into his mouth and whistled.  Before the whistle died, he pulled a blanket from his shopping basket, revealing two packs identical to Jesse's, and sent the cart speeding across the platform.  With a quick movement he knocked the hat and wig from his head and dropped the trench coat, becoming a fit teenager in a jogging suit.Jesse grabbed the cart, dumped his pack inside, and sent it speeding back.Two adolescents joined the runner, making a trio of identical jogging suits.  Each grabbed a bag, leaped onto the tracks and disappeared into the tunnels.Whistles and shouts filled the station as Jesse ran up the stairs."Halt!" shouted a policeman.  As Jesse passed the patrolman jumped over the center railing and hit him across the thigh with a night stick.He dropped like a bag of cement and struck a step with his forehead.  His vision turned black.  A jolt of electricity shot through his brain and tingled in every nerve.  Warm blood ran down his face.  He struggled to open his eyes, felt his arms twisted behind him, and cold handcuffs clamped on his wrists.  Someone patted him down.  His feet struck each step as policemen dragged him along.  When the movement stopped something warm and smooth pressed against his cheek, and Jesse managed to open one eye."The same damn shoes," he whispered.



CHAPTER 2

The cold falling mist pricked his scalp like tiny needles.  Falsen rushed along the alley to a back door.  There he stopped and took several deep breaths, sweeping his gaze over the surrounding apartment buildings, looking for movement at the windows, searching for witnesses.Could he do it?  Could he murder Tasha, the only person he cared about?  He removed a pair of surgical gloves from a coat pocket and listened to the rubbery noises as he pulled them on. Beneath his coat he checked the knife clipped to his belt and inhaled deeply, telling himself not to think about the things she whispered during passionate moments.  He had to focus.  The order had been given and in the drug trade no mistake went unpunished, especially in Amsterdam.  It was just another job.He twisted the doorknob with slow, minute turns.  When the latch clicked, he opened the door slightly, grabbed the warning bell before it jingled and entered the hallway, crouching and staring into the darkness, straining his ears for the slightest sound.Down the hallway he saw a muslin curtain.  Two chairs stood before it where Tasha’s clients secretly watched her perform.  From the other side of the curtain he heard a man's voice.  A woman answered and giggled.  As her voice aroused memories, Falsen paused and shook his head.  It was not Tasha’s normal voice, but that deeper one full of daring bravado she used during sexual episodes.  How could she use that voice with another man?A burning sensation spread across his cheeks.  He stood still, not knowing whether to stay or go, love and pain and fury mashing his thoughts together.Then he heard the growl, deep and vicious, the type that warned intruders of the dog’s size before they were torn apart.He gasped, seized the knife, grinding his teeth and panting.  The knife hand shook from side to side, vibrating with the fear pumping through his muscles.With lowered head, the Great Dane moved into view, ears back, fangs exposed, eyes flashing red in the light.  Its legs quivered as it turned its head, about to leap.  Suddenly the dog lifted up on its hind legs.Falsen jumped back and flinched, ready for the pain and blood, ready for those massive jaws to clamp down on his leg and shred the flesh.  But instead of attacking, the animal whined and he knew it was not fully grown.  The puppy in it was uncertain and wanted to play.The tension stretching every muscle in his body like a taunt rubber band instantly snapped.  He almost dropped to the floor, holding his body upright with a hand on his knee, shaking his head.  After a moment he wiped the sweat from his brow and held out his hand."Come on, big dog," he whispered.When the animal finally came close, he patted its head and rubbed its ears, whispering the entire time, the rough tongue sliding across his hand.He patted the animal and whispered as he crept toward the voices, the knife held up like the tail of scorpion, ready to strike.His eyes never moved from the curtain in the doorway ahead.  Two yards from it he heard feminine yelping noises and moved the tips of his shoes to within an inch of the fabric.  The white muslin rippled as he leaned close, gazing through it into the room beyond.  Tasha, wearing her professional outfit of thigh-high leather boots and black corset, straddled the man on the bed beneath her, while another enjoyed her movements from behind."No, Tash'."  He closed his eyes and raised his face toward the ceiling.  Pain and sorrow rose inside him, twisting like a dagger in his heart.  While staring at the ceiling, the web of cracks in the plaster, the dog nudged him and grabbed his pant leg.  With one shake of its head it shredded the fabric.  He raised a fist to smack the idiot, but feared the noise might alert the threesome.  In disbelief he looked at the wet, shredded cuff, and thought about slicing the animal’s throat, but couldn’t risk alerting his prey in the next room.He inched back from the curtain.  The rascal lowered its head to the floor, wanting to play, then ran over and grabbed his other pant leg.  That was too much.  Once Falsen got far enough from the curtain where a commotion might not be heard, he did a little dance, swinging fists in the air, releasing anger without a sound.The Great Dane turned its head sideways and wagged its tail.With a lot of pats and whispers the dog lay down.  He couldn’t risk waiting any longer.  The trio might finish any second.  Gripping the knife with a new anger he stepped toward the curtain, curled his fingers in the fabric, calculated the distance to his victims and the instant he should charge into the room.From there he reached out to his prey, stretching his senses, wanting to connect with them through taste, smell and sound.  With long steady breaths over and over, he closed his eyes and rocked his head until he smelled them, their cologne, sweat oozing from their skin, the stinking tobacco, and heard their moans and cries, the bed creaking, the sexual squishing noises.  He even felt their hearts beating, pounding with ecstasy.  Nothing else in the world existed. This was his reason for living, this sliver of life poised on the edge of death where his mind throbbed with these sensations, where he felt more alive than a million other moments combined.  This moment was an orgasm of consciousness.When the exact moment came to charge into the room the beast grabbed his pant leg again.  This time his anger overrode his common sense.  He jumped back and grabbed a carved chest from the table to crush the dog's skull.  But one of the little drawers fell to the floor.He froze, turned toward the curtain. The only sounds he heard were moans and giggles.  His intended victims had not heard."Stay away or I’ll put your testicles in the food dish," he whispered, turning to see what had spilled from the drawer.For a long time he stared at the object, and each time the woman in the next room giggled, memories of her flashed before his eyes.  He remembered Tasha laughing and rolling in the snow at Verbier, her skies sliding down the run.When the dog moaned and scratched his back, Falsen snapped the knife past its nose.  "I'll cut ‘em off."  But when the puppy whined he had a change of heart and patted its head until it lay down.Moments later he slipped his hand off the dog’s snout and picked up the little vile of white powder that had fallen from the drawer.  He was now confronting the fear that had plagued Tash’ for so many years, calling to her from the shadows like a secret, unforgettable lover, tempting her to return.  He exchanged her vile for one from his pocket, put it in the little drawer, and sat the chest on the table.  Now even a small dose would be fatal."I'll leave it up to you, Tash’," he said.  "The final choice is yours."  He crept around the room collecting his belongings.  Robe and slippers, photo album, and Star of David medallion he stuffed beneath his coat.  Now he could set his plan into motion.The bell jingled as he opened the back door.

Falling Up, Chapter 20

*I wanted to post some of Falling UP, an action novel set in Cologne, Germany.  I spent some months traveling through Africa before I wrote this.  Being in Germany with so many Ethiopian friends helped me come to terms with some terrible things I experienced in Africa.

When I copy/paste it usually gets messed up, so I'll try to clean it up and make it readable.

If you would like to purchase a copy, click this link: http://amzn.to/xSgDVm




He stood holding Dr. Morganstern’s door open, staring out at the rain pattering on the sidewalk and the brown coupe parked with two wheels on the curb.   Headlights lit up the street and he heard tires whining on slick cobblestones.“Come on.”  Bartholomew pushed him through the door and hurried out beside him.“Go straight home!” the doctor shouted.Jesse’s feet splashed in puddles as he rushed along the deserted sidewalk.  Thunder rumbled overhead.  The drizzle turned into a downpour and made the surrounding buildings look like dark canyon walls.  A few windows were lit, and around them he could see drops falling through the glow.  He longed for the warmth inside those apartments, the comfort, the home routine and the things a man does with a woman in cozy rooms, with hours to play.He turned, leaning forward, keeping his face out of the rain and watched the doctor’s door close in the distance.  He waited a few seconds before speaking.  “There’s more to that old goat than I thought.”“And you, mister ghost.  Why didn’t you tell me those things?”“I told you what was important.  That’s not who I am any more.  I built a new life.”When he reached the corner Jesse glanced to the left and hurried across the street to the park.  On his second step in the grass he felt something squish beneath his shoe and looked down.  “I hate this dog country!  Everyone lives in apartments ... ten dogs for every foot of grass.  Shit.”  He wiped his shoe across the lawn.“I’m going to Trenchtown for a beer,” Bartholomew shouted, laughing, standing on the corner.“A beer?  Are you crazy?”  He pulled his jacket over his head, making a tent over his head, drops striking it with heavy thuds, and trotted back across the street.  “After what he told you, you’re going to flash your face around town?”“You’re not sure about him either!”“If he could get my records he’s definitely in the game.  Not many people could get that information.  Before you go running around, you need to know if what he said about the guys in the warehouse is true.”Bartholomew rubbed his head.  “What he said scares me.  It makes me want to be with my family, but I can’t.”  His lips pressed together and he looked away. “Trenchtown’s the only place I feel at home in this country.  I need to feel that more than anything right now.”  He shrugged and turned his palms toward Jesse.  “I got word they’re doing something for me tonight.”“Damn.”  He let the jacket slide down his back into place and walked a few steps, feeling sympathy for his friend. “Okay, I’ll be your bodyguard.  You coming?”“You don’t have to go.”  Drops of water clung to Bartholomew’s face.“I want to be with family too.  You’re all I have in Germany.”He laughed as they walked.  “What about Zaid?  You’ve been spending a lot of time with her ... working things out, like tangles in the lines.”“You sound like a teenager.”“Don’t lose that temper of yours.”Jesse rushed past.  “When you finish that plan I’m leaving this city.  You and that crazy doctor with phony tails can have it!”Bartholomew ran and caught up with him.  For a few minutes they walked in silence.“Pony tails.”“What?” Jesse looked at him.“You said phony tails.  It’s pony tails.”  He laughed.Jesse stopped.  “I just got it.  I know why you get a different woman every week.  You drive them nuts in two days.  Go find another one and torture her so I don’t have to listen.”
This was not Germany.  Once Jesse stepped through the front door he was the minority, a white man surrounded by Africans, and that made him nervous and taught him about fear and beliefs, and helped him understand Bartholomew.  He tried to let it all go and forget about skin color and nationality and everything else that separated him from the people in Trenchtown.  As he always did, he stepped aside at the front door and looked about, trying to be there a hundred percent and feel it all for what it was, not for what it brought up inside him.Leroy, the handsome Jamaican owner, stood beside the beer taps strumming a drum stick across the ridges in a gourd, head and shoulders swaying with the rhythm of the background music, smiling at the blond woman before him.“No!”  Leroy jutted his head forward and his mouth fell open. “Call ma dead mama, he cut off his dreads!”“Hey, brudder.”  Bartholomew tapped a fist against Leroy’s, pulled him forward by the neck and patted his back. “Everything ‘right?”Jesse watched the two Jamaican’s do their greeting thing.  It wasn’t his culture so he just stood aside and watched it happen.“’Right?  How can it be ‘right?”  Leroy stepped back.  “Look what that crazy Lizzy did.”  He flung an arm toward the windows and frowned.“Lace curtains?” asked Bartholomew.  “Everything in Trenchtown was bought by women.  Maybe you tickle ‘em too good, Leroy.”“Did that policeman come in today?” Jesse asked, stepping up to the bar.“You mean Twinkle Toes?  Deutz?  No, he was in last night, dancin’ with every woman in the place.”“That big fat—”“You should see that mahn dance!”  Leroy looked down at the bar and tapped on it with a knuckle.  “What was it I had to tell you?  Oh yeah.”  He leaned close.  “Tannen and Filou— your ears on the street— are lookin’ for you, and they’re scared.”Bartholomew gestured with a nod at Solomon, the massive Eritrean body-builder, who stood pouring beer.  “Is Sol’s 12 gauge under the bar?”“You mean Betsy?  My girl’s always close by.”  His teeth shone a brilliant white as he smiled.“Keep her closer tonight,” Jesse said. “We might need her.” “Brudder, is that right?”  Leroy drew back and cocked his head sideways.Metal-framed windows spanned the width of Trenchtown, allowing car headlights to dance around the walls as Jesse swept his gaze over the room.  Two metal tables filled the area before the windows.  Laughing students clinked their glasses together as they sang and leaned this way and that in unison.  Beyond the tables, the wooden bar took up a third the width of the room, and where it ended the dance floor began.He followed Bartholomew to the dance floor and watched as he closed his eyes and swayed to the music as though entering a trance.  Since the episode on the rope, Jesse sensed an underlying fragility in his friend, and that made him stay close, trying to protect him.  As dancers came near, he looked them over and walked over to his usual stool, his back against the wall, the rear exit beside him if he needed it.  And there he felt a peace come over him, as though on vacation in some exotic land, the problems with the children and police far away, the company searching for him on another continent.“Quiet now, everyone!”  Leroy held up his arms.  “This is a special night, a party for a good mahn, and a good friend.”People shouted and clapped and cleared a path for an old Turkish woman.  By the time she reached the front of the crowd, her hoarse whispers were the only sounds Jesse could hear, and he hopped off the stool and stepped forward to watch.  She wore a scarf around her head, a print dress over trousers, and held out her withered hands as she approached.Rashnew pushed through the crowd and took hold of his grandmother’s elbow.  She patted Bartholomew’s cheek and with great effort, pronounced his name, one syllable at a time, then smiled, her eyes twinkling with youthful joy, and spoke in her native tongue.“My Grandmother says you helped me find a job and gave her money to visit her son in Turkey when he was ill.”  Tears rolled down Rashnew’s face, but he held his chin high, looking at the old woman the entire time.“It was an honor,” Bartholomew said, holding her hand.“She says you are her son.”Bartholomew leaned forward and kissed her forehead.  “I am a lucky man.”As Rashnew helped her off the dance floor, he turned back and shouted:  “My Grandmother is 86 years old!” “What the—” Jesse moved a woman aside and ran across the dance floor.  Two men were coming through the crowd like rugby players, knocking people aside.“I got to speak to—”Jesse stiff-armed the lead man, bringing him to an abrupt stop, looked at two vertical scars beside each eye, and guessed the man to be in his early twenties.  The Ethiopian looked backward over his shoulder as though a rapid bulldog was coming.  One of his dread locks swatted Jesse across the nose as he turned.“You try to pass me again we’re going to fight.  Is that what you want?”“No,” said Tannen, lowering his head.  “I’ve seen you fight.”“Tell him.”  His pudgy companion, with a round afro and shiny synthetic sweater, poked him in the ribs.Tannen turned and shouted in Amharic, flinging his arms about.“Okay, okay,” Jesse said.  “Settle down.  I know you sell information to Bartholomew, but tonight he’s being honored and I want him to have this time.  Have a beer and tell me what happened.”  He waved for two beers.“There’s no time. You have to get Bartholomew out of here.”  Tannen looked over his shoulder again.“What’s going on?” Jesse said, already sensing that something was about to go terribly wrong.  It was not simply fear he saw on Tannen’s face, but terror.“Today in the cafeteria, someone shoved a pistol in my friend’s crotch.  They wanted information about you and Bartholomew.”Jesse climbed up on a stool and looked across the barroom, over the top of the crowd to the door.  “What else?”Tannen nodded. “There’s a car load of men watching Trenchtown.”“Police?” he asked, fear ringing through him, a tingling, awful feeling, reverberating from butt to shoulders, as if he had struck a funny bone in his spine.“No, the car is too dirty.”He knew this was no idle bit of information.  Tannen was a man of the streets who survived by reading people and situations.“Five guys, brown skin, black hair, one old.  They could be coming right now.”“Shit.  Okay, here, you saved us.”  He took out two hundred Euros and handed it to Tannen.  He had to get out of the bar and glanced to the back door.  If he could reach it, he could take Bartholomew and run before the trouble started.  Was it Zakai from the warehouse?  Images of the dagger and the blood shot through his memory, and he shouted for Leroy and Bartholomew, hopping as he pushed through the crowd like a swimmer lifting his head and adjusting his course.In the distance he saw laughing people around Bartholomew and shouted again, shoving people aside as he realized that the terror he had seen in Tannen’s eyes was the same he witnessed at the warehouse.  Again and again he shouted and saw Bartholomew look up, friends patting his shoulder and shaking his hand.When some Ethiopian music started, men formed one line, and women another, facing each other, hands on hips, elbows out.  Each line leaned in toward the other, craning their necks in and out to the rhythm of the music.  But then Jesse pushed through the dancers and pulled Bartholomew aside.“Come on, we got to get out of here.  I think Zakai is coming.”“What?  No, this is my—“He pulled Bartholomew to the back door.  As he reached for the knob something thumped on the door  and the handle fell to the floor.  A gush of cold air touched his face as the door swung open.  “Run Bart!  Get out!”  Jesse pushed him away, backed up a few paces, and went into his fighting stance, knowing this would not be a fight, but a mortal test of skill and nerves.A Latin man with slick black hair and acne scars, stepped through the doorway and boldly stared into his eyes.He had seen that empty, cold stare before, and knew what it meant.  He would not move, nor let the man pass, even if it meant his own death.  He would not allow him into a room of innocent people, into a room of people he loved.  For that coldness meant this man had become familiar with killing, had traded something warm and good inside himself.  He had looked into the eyes of death, and death had sucked everything vibrant and alive from his soul.  The stranger was everything he abandoned when he left the company, everything he did not want to be.The Latin stepped closer and Jesse saw a slight contraction around his eyes, and knew that was the closest thing to a smile the man had left.  He also sensed the man held a gun, his instrument of death, an extension of himself, inches from Jesse’s chest.  He didn’t see it though, because every bit of his awareness was focused on the man’s eyes.  It was from there the attack would come, from there he would read the assassin’s move.His entire life was this moment.  All his karate training, the years of exercise, military hand-to-hand combat training, learning the moves, practicing, training, daily sparring, toughening of hands and mind, all boiled down to this second.  He focused his thoughts inward, breathed deeply, picturing his arm pushing the weapon aside.  His arm was already at the pistol, he just had to make it so.  If he could move the weapon a few inches before it discharged, the shot would go wide.  But that was not the greatest challenge.  No, his second strike would be vastly more important.  With that movement he had to kill the man, or someone in the bar would surely die.Time stopped.  The bar noise vanished.  He heard his own breathing.  His pulse, slow and steady, pounded in every cell of his body.  He felt a light growing within his chest, until it burst forth, like a blinding camera flash.  In that instant it felt like a pin jabbed in a fresh, open gash in his brain.  Jesse jerked his left arm upward, and felt the man’s forearm snap.He batted the pistol aside and shouted as he reared back and snapped his right hand forward, concentrating the force of his entire body into the blow like the cracking of a bullwhip, aiming not at the killer’s throat, but through it, four inches behind the neck.  He heard a pop when the weapon fired, and knew the pistol had a silencer attached.  The force of his blow lifted the man off his feet, crushed his windpipe and snapped his spinal cord below the jaw.  Before the killer hit the floor Jesse grabbed him and set him on a stool in the corner, took the pistol from his hand and turned.  At the front of the bar he noticed a shattered window where the bullet hit.  No one else had heard the shot.“Get out.  Get out.”  He shoved people across the dance floor and out the back door, and had emptied the back third of the bar when he heard the scream.Beside the front door he saw Zakai, a sleek little machine-gun held before him.  It was starting, he knew, and searched the crowd for other gunmen. Over by the beer taps, he watched a stranger reach across the bar and grab Leroy’s shoulder and jerk him forward."Hey, what the fuck!"  Leroy batted at the man's arm.A second man jumped across the bar, knocked the needle from the record player and pointed an uzi at Solomon. The gunman’s black hair brushed his shoulder as he leaned his head sideways, moving two false teeth up and down with his tongue."Four minutes!"  Zakai clicked a stopwatch.  Jesse’s heart pounded.  His breathing became deep and erratic as doubt entered his mind.  He didn’t want to plan, didn’t want to be responsible for these people, didn’t want to torture himself if something went wrong as it once had.  All he wanted was to run, to get away from people and keep moving from country to country, not touching anyone’s life, no one getting close enough to touch his.One, two, three, four gunmen, he counted, his head moving with quick little jerks.  And suddenly he pictured what the bar would look like if someone panicked.  He saw wounded people screaming, rolling in slippery glass and blood.  He closed his eyes and shook the image from his mind."Three minutes!" shouted the man stationed at the front door. “Do it!”“Who do you want?" Leroy asked.A gunman took hold of Leroy's Afro and shook it so hard that blood ran down the Jamaican’s face.  "You're a good nigger," he said, releasing him.  "Two men, one black, one white, Jesse and Bartholomew, full names and locations."Leroy glanced sideways toward Bartholomew, and came to attention as though for military inspection.  "Sir, fuck you, sir!" he shouted.The Latin straightened his tie, stepped back and glanced toward the door.Zakai nodded.Jesse checked the safety of the 9 mm with shaking, numb hands, and inched his way across the dance floor.  His hands shook so he could not fire the weapon.  He could hardly hold it with one hand.  When he got behind Bartholomew, he tapped the gun against his friend’s hand, but he would not take it.  Finally he gave up and stepped away with tiny foot movements, wrapped his other hand around the pistol, and tried to return to the place of peace, past the fear, the place he had reached at the back door.  He breathed deeply once more and tried to relax, letting his training take control.“Two minutes,” Zakai shouted.“You!”  The man in front of Leroy turned and grabbed the old Turkish woman.Rashnew screamed and jumped, but the gunman pistol-whipped him to the floor and removed a pair of cable cutters from his pocket.  “Jesse and Bartholomew, I want their full names and whereabouts.”  He placed the cutters on the woman’s finger and looked around the bar as she cried.That was when he heard the chanting.  It was low at first, and Jesse could barely hear it, but within seconds it increased in volume.“Shut up, Bart!”  Jesse shoved him.Bartholomew’s chants grew louder.  People around the bar turned and looked.“You,” one of the gunmen shouted, pushing through the crowd.When the man was a few feet away, Bartholomew lifted his beer glass and broke a piece off the rim, dropped it, and broke off another as he chanted.“One minute.”The instant the gunman pushed him, Bartholomew screamed and swung the glass, as if driving a stake into a vampire’s heart.  It struck the man in the neck and blood spurted across Bartholomew’s face.  The instant the blood touched him he screamed again like some wounded, demented animal, and raced toward the old woman.“No, Bart.” Jesse crouched and aimed, hardly able to feel his fingers.Bartholomew leaped, hissing and screaming, his arms swinging, tearing through the air.  He was inches from the man with the cable cutters when Jesse fired and the man’s head exploded.Solomon kicked the man behind the bar and crushed his face with a powerful right hand.  With the quick flowing moves of a gymnastic sequence, he dropped and stood up with the shotgun, but the time keeper had vanished."Damn!" he shouted.People screamed and dropped their glasses and dove to the floor for protection, only to be cut on broken glass.Bartholomew stared at the dead man and reached toward him.  His entire body shook as he covered his mouth and backed away."Bart, are you all right?"  Jesse touched his friend's arm, heard his teeth clicking together, felt him convulse and shake."Bartholomew!  Jesse!  Get out.  The police will be here any minute.  Run."  Leroy took the pistol from Jesse’s hand, wiped it with a cloth, hurried to Bartholomew’s  glass and wiped it too.  “Get out!”"Come on.  Walk with me," Jesse said, wrapping his arms around Bartholomew.  “This way.  Walk. That’s good. Keep walking.”

New Novel, The Mayan Secret

CHAPTER 1


I was doing my nightly cop thing in a tall skinny house in Amsterdam. If I wanted to sleep I had to check every access point before I went to bed. I started at the same door every time, pushed my shoulder against the warped old thing until I felt the bolt click into place, then walked to the next entry point, the bathroom window. Only another cop would understand.

As I was drifting into sleep someone sat beside me. Someone was in the room. The mattress compressed and triggered an alarm in my head.

Adrenalin hit my heart like a defibrillator jolt. I snapped awake but did not move.

Gun and badge were on the bedside table. If the intruder had my weapon I was already dead. I waited for a pillow pushed against my head to silence the shot.

As my mind raced someone took hold of my arm.

I shouted and jumped out of bed, grabbed my automatic and flipped the light switch, but I was alone.

It was the third time in a week something sat on my bed and grabbed me. I moaned and laughed and wiped sweat from my face. Strange sounds escaped my mouth as I slid down the wall. Cops don’t go crazy. I had to hold it together. There were attorneys to deal with and divorce papers to sign.

For years marriage held together my life in Amsterdam. Friends, career, apartment and language were stuffed inside it like groceries in a paper bag. Divorce hit that bag like a stream of water. What had once seemed strong fell apart in my hands and left me juggling the contents so nothing would shatter at my feet.

I remember the day everything changed. Michelle was across from me in the kitchen, chopping vegetables at the counter for a midnight snack, her blonde hair falling over a shoulder.

She had been out and looked so sexy and sweet standing there in black pumps and flower print blouse that hung loose around her neck, shaking with the rhythm of the chopping. As I admired her and stepped close, kissed her shoulder, pressed my hand on hers, I smelled perfume and cigarette smoke from the club.

The instant I touched her she started crying and dropped the knife.

“I’m sorry, Cody, but there’s someone else. I met a couple and they took me out. I’ve tried not to see them, but I can’t stop.”

It wasn’t so much the words that hurt as the look in her eyes, those green eyes that filled my nights and my heart, once so full of admiration and hope and our love, now showed fear and a wanting to be somewhere else.

Her simple admission cracked the foundation of our home, broke the concept of us. It was as though I had been slapped but it hurt more, a pain in my gut that sucked strength out of me because I knew what it meant. Michelle was part of me, her laughter and kisses lotion on the dry skin of my soul. She was the reason I came to Amsterdam, learned Dutch and joined the force. She was my Holland.

Without her as my anchor in the Netherlands I could feel the tide of culture and language pushing me toward the beach of my home, my country, the USA.

I don’t know how long I sat below the light switch. Traffic in the street below turned silent. Laughing crowds had long since left the bars when I climbed into bed.

I was sleeping on the horrible pull-out sofa, steel bars poking me when I moved, dreaming of Michelle cozy in our apartment, when I found myself staring at a man. I thought I was dreaming and rose on an elbow. He was in his sixties, dressed as a Wild West gambler with vest, Western bow tie, silver walking stick, a strange blue glow around him. I stared for a few moments before realizing I was awake.

Fear shot through me and I jumped out of bed and ran for the switch once more. With light the phantom vanished, but his chair remained. Something had moved it from its place against the wall.

Something real, with physical form, had moved it.

I could have imagined seeing a ghost. Maybe I imagined something touching me night after night, but there was no denying something moved the chair. That freaked me out. The rest of the night I sat in the corner, firearm in my sweaty hand. I was safe with my back against the wall. If anything touched me I would instantly see it.

This was scaring the hell out of me. I was losing sleep. It wasn’t something I could shoot or slap handcuffs on. Once or twice might have shaken me up, but could have been explained as a dream. I had to find a way to stop it.

I was lucky I still had my career and ran from the house each morning. But sketchy sleep was making me irritable and I often snapped at Michael, my partner, during the second half of our shift. That was when I started worrying about going home, wandering when the thing would touch me again.

I needed somewhere to go where I felt safe and welcome. I couldn’t go to the people I loved in Michelle’s family. They had chosen sides. To them I was now a foreign intruder. I was isolated and alone, a man with a giant accent that made even the flower girl on the corner look twice and hesitate to answer, never having heard Dutch spoken by an American.

One night I refused to go home. I couldn’t take something touching me again. I had to end this touching.
I wanted the walk home to last as long as possible so I took the park rout as wisps of fog floated along the narrow streets, past little houses pressed together, windows glowing with light filtered through curtains. From one of the windows jumped a cat. I turned to watch it run and saw a man following me.

He was short with brown skin and black oily hair combed straight back.

I was so absorbed in the thing touching me at night I wasn’t watching my surroundings. I was being street stupid. He might be some guy rushing home. That would be the best scenario. Or he might want to rob me. That I could deal with. But if he was connected to a case and seeking revenge, there might be several men working together. If that were the case I was in trouble. I had to get among people and find out.

I reached beneath my coat for my weapon and realized it was in my police locker. I crossed the street and stepped out of sight behind a van. That gave me a few seconds head start. The instant I stepped out of view I sprinted up the street and around the corner.

Touching Spirits, Chapter 1

    

    




                                           CHAPTER 1    
      I was doing my nightly cop thing in one of those tall skinny houses in Amsterdam.   If I wanted to sleep I had to check every access point before I went to bed.  I started at the same door every time, pushed my shoulder against the warped old thing until I felt the bolt click into place, then walked to the next entry point, the bathroom window.  Only another cop would understand.     As I was drifting into sleep someone sat beside me.  Someone was in the room.  The mattress compressed and triggered an alarm in my head.  Adrenalin hit my heart like a defibrillator jolt.  I snapped awake but did not move.         Gun and badge were on the bedside table.  If the intruder had my weapon I was already dead.  I waited for a pillow pushed against my head to silence the shot.          As my mind raced someone took hold of my arm.      I shouted and jumped out of bed, grabbed my automatic and flipped the light switch, but I was alone.   It was the third time in a week something sat on my bed and grabbed me.  I moaned and laughed and wiped sweat from my face.  Strange sounds escaped my mouth as I slid down the wall.  Cops don’t go crazy.  I had to hold it together.  There were attorneys to deal with and divorce papers to sign.       For years marriage held together my life in Amsterdam.  Friends, career, apartment and language were stuffed inside it like groceries in a paper bag.  Divorce hit that bag like a stream of water.  What had once seemed strong fell apart in my hands and left me juggling the contents so nothing would shatter at my feet.       I remember the day everything changed.  Michelle was across from me in the kitchen, chopping vegetables at the counter for a midnight snack, her reddish blonde hair falling over a shoulder.   She had been out and looked so sexy and sweet standing there in her black pumps and flowered print blouse that hung loose around her neck, shaking with the rhythm of the chopping.  As I admired her and stepped close and kissed her shoulder and pressed my hand on hers, I smelled perfume and cigarette smoke from the club.        The instant I touched her she started crying and dropped the knife.       “I’m so sorry, Cody, but there’s someone else.  I met a couple and they took me out.  I’ve tried not to see them, but I can’t stop.”       It wasn’t so much the words that hurt, but the look in her eyes, those green eyes that filled my nights and my heart, once so full of admiration and hope and our love, now showed fear and a wanting to be somewhere else.  Her simple admission broke the foundation of our home, broke the concept of us.  It was as though I had been slapped, but it hurt more, a pain in my gut that sucked strength out of me because I knew what it meant.  Michelle was part of me, her laughter and kisses lotion on the dry skin of my soul.  She was the reason I came to Amsterdam, learned Dutch and joined the force.  She was my Holland. Without her as my anchor in the Netherlands I could already feel the tide of culture and language pushing me toward the beach of my home, my country, the USA.      I don’t know how long I sat below the light switch.  Traffic in the street below turned silent.  Laughing crowds had long since left the bars when I climbed into bed.       I was sleeping on the horrible little sofa bed, steel bars poking me when I moved, dreaming of Michelle, cozy in our apartment, when I found myself staring at a man.  I thought I was dreaming and rose on an elbow.  He was in his sixties, dressed as a Wild West gambler with vest, Western bow tie, silver walking stick, a strange blue glow around him.  I stared for a few moments before realizing I was awake.       Fear shot through me and I jumped out of bed and ran for the light once more.  With light the phantom vanished, but his chair remained.  Something had moved it from its place against the wall. Something real, with physical form, had moved it.      I could have imagined seeing a ghost.  Maybe I imagined something touching me night after night, but there was no denying something moved the chair.  That freaked me out.  The rest of the night I sat in the corner, firearm in my sweaty hand.  I was safe with my back against the wall.  If anything touched me I would instantly see it.       This was scaring the hell out of me.  I was losing sleep.  It wasn’t something I could shoot or slap handcuffs on.  Once or twice might have shaken me up, but could have been explained as a dream.  I had to find a way to stop it.     I was lucky I still had my career and ran from the house each morning.  But sketchy sleep was making me irritable and I often snapped at Michael, my partner, during the second half of our shift when I started worrying about going home, and if the touching would return that night.        I needed somewhere to go where I felt safe and welcome.  I couldn’t go to the people I loved in Michelle’s family.  They had chosen sides.  I was now a foreign intruder, isolated and alone, a man with a giant accent that made even the flower girl on the corner look twice and hesitate to answer, never having heard Dutch spoken by an American.       One night I refused to go home.  I couldn’t take something touching me again.  I had to make it stop.      I wanted the walk home to last as long as possible, so I took the park rout, watching wisps of fog float along the narrow streets, past little houses pressed together, windows glowing with light filtered through curtains.  From one of the windows jumped a cat.  I turned to watch it run and saw a man following me.        He was short with brown skin and black oily hair combed straight back.       I was so absorbed in the thing touching me at night I wasn’t watching my surroundings.  I was being street stupid.  He might be some guy rushing home.  That would be the best scenario.  Or he might want to rob me.  That I could deal with.  But if he was connected to a case and seeking revenge, there might be more than one guy.  If that were the case I was in trouble.  I had to get among people and find out.       I reached beneath my coat for my weapon, and realized it was in my police locker.  I crossed the street and stepped out of sight behind a van. That gave me a few seconds head start.  The instant I stepped out of view I sprinted up the street and around the corner.       I made it to the park and squatted in the bushes, panting, waiting to see if I was being paranoid or really in danger.  Within seconds the guy ran into the park and rushed to the restrooms, came out and turned a circle, searching the park, and ran to a side street.       Was he related to a case?  Had some con with a grudge recently been released from prison?  For three hours I marched around the city, stopping several times in doorways and peeking out café widows to make sure I had lost the stalker.       After following one canal and then another, I found myself where I felt best:  At the old three story bookstore that became my second home while studying for police exams.       I laughed when I saw the building, skylights making the roof glow, little gargoyles hiding beneath the eves.  Already I was loosening scarf and taking off my gloves as I approached.  For a while I walked around checking out old study spots:  The huge leather chair by the elevator, the alcove beneath the stairs.       Loud angry words pulled my attention toward the sounds of a struggle, and I thought a woman might be in trouble.  Customers sitting on the floor and standing in the aisles looked about.  I marched across the store to the fighting couple.       With a wave of my badge they froze.  The woman had bright red hair that touched the spiked collar of a leather jacket.  She smiled when she saw the badge and jerked her arm away from the man holding her.  A book flew out of her arms, hit the carpet and slid to a stop against my boot.       As I picked it up the book grabbed my attention.  I wanted to read it, but hell, I was a cop.  Could I read something called Ancient Spells and Energy?  It was fringe material, I used to call such publications, for the marginally sane 5% of society.  But where was I supposed to find answers?  Who should I ask about being visited by a man with a blue glow, or invisible things touching me at night?  My friends would think I was crazy.  It wasn’t like I could pop online and search for a plumber.  And if the police department heard about it they’d yank my badge and gun and put me on sick leave, or throw me to the psychologists who, of course, would treat it as an illness.     I had to get help.  The first sentence read:  “Though out history humans have been visited by creatures of other realms.”  That was all it took to suspend my disbelief.  Every page shouted to be read.  I felt like a kid who tries tennis or skateboarding and is hooked.         Weeks passed and one book led to the next as though forming an intellectual path designed just for me.  When I finished one book I knew anther was waiting, and fingered through editions on the shelves of my old bookstore, until another title captured my attention like a friend shouting my name.  From each I took bits I could use, prayers and meditations, and put them to work in my life.  The only thing that stopped the touching was a recipe in one of the books:  Several times a day I surrounded myself with the White Light, closed my eyes and imagined a bubble of light surrounding me.       How strange it felt to be on patrol, the one American on the Amsterdam police force, and sit down in a toilet stall in the Red Light District, hookers and tourists and hash café’s outside, and imagine a bubble of love protecting me.  I was a grown man after all, not some boy at Sunday school.  Life on the force had changed me, toughened me.  It meant rubbing against people with hatred pounding through their veins like a virus, and I was the serum injected to stop them.  Yet here I was, hiding in a graffiti-covered stall, shiny black shoes touching urine on the tile floor, 9 mm strapped to my side with cuffs, radio dangling over my shoulder, outfitted for urban warfare, asking for love to surround me?      I felt stupid imagining the bubble and would have dropped it in a heartbeat if it wasn’t keeping away the touching.  Soon I was sleeping through the night and feeling stronger.  I began visualizing the bubble more often.  Within a couple of weeks I started getting flashes of intuition.  While buying morning bread I got a glimpse of the baker having hot sex with another man.  That made me recoil.  It was too much information.  When I spoke to the girl at my local news stand, who was all laughter and smiles, I saw her signing legal documents and knew she had come into money.       And then the glimpses got serious.  I shook hands with a bar owner during patrol and saw his basement filled with marijuana plants.  After some investigation of his electricity usage we got permission to search his property, and it turned into a nice arrest.       That was a huge encouragement and I found myself speaking to the white light daily.  I didn’t want to label it God or Shiva or Buddha, because with those names came a steamer truck of beliefs and dogma.  I didn’t want to be sucked into any one way of thinking.  I had a private thing going with the light and wanted to keep it that way.       Then came the day that tore my life in two and shook the Amsterdam Police Department.Michael and I were chasing a gipsy boy in rags down an alley in the Red Light District, past working girls flaunting their stuff behind windows, one dressed as a school girl, one as a nurse.  I remember the thuds of our boots on damp asphalt.  My breath pumped out before me in clouds.  As we entered a tunnel our footfalls took on a hollow sound.       I got a flash of insight and saw a bullet hit Michael’s chest and knock him off his feet.  I saw his beautiful wife crying, their baby growing up without a father.       There was no thought process before I acted.  I had no time to fall back on training and examine evidence or consult a senior officer.  I knew in my gut it was going to happen any second. I had to stop it and reached for him as we ran.  I stretched a hand toward him but could only run fast enough to touch him with my fingertips.   The shot was coming.       Spittle escaped my mouth as I shouted, pulling all my force from within and stretching, reaching as I ran with one last burst of speed.   If I didn’t grab him now he’d be dead.       I got a hand on Michael’s shoulder and pulled him back.       For a split second I laughed as we ran into a little square, into the sunlight once more, then saw the gunman kneeling, aiming along the rifle barrel.       As the muzzle flashed I spoke two words: “God love.”
     They say two AK-47 rounds ripped through my chest.  But that’s not what I remember.  I saw the muzzle flash, and in that instant the world stopped.  I rose above the scene and looked down on my body in police uniform, frozen in mid stride, Michael diving through the air, the action on his automatic slowly moving forward and back as it ejected shells onto the cobblestones.  And I saw the rifle bullets glow, flying in slow motion as they entered the bubble around my body.       As I floated above the scene, no longer was I the Yankee on the Amsterdam force.  I don’t even know if I was a man.  But I could see everything, Michael pounding my bloody chest, people running and shouting and ambulance workers carrying cop and gunman. 
     I awoke surrounded by machines.  Medical personnel rushed about shouting Dutch.  A nurse hung a bag of fluid on a stand beside me and sorted tubes.  Someone shouted numbers and I knew it must be my blood pressure and pulse rate.       “Bring fresh blood,” shouted a man.  “It’s on his chart.”“See, right there, the bullets punctured that lung.” A chubby man leaned forward and tapped an x-ray on the computer screen.  “We have to open him up.”     When a nurse stopped wiping my chest and let her hand stay motionless over my heart, I looked into her eyes.  They were young and blue and I knew she was a beautiful woman under the mask.  Her beauty aroused such emotion I wondered if sensing or feeling beauty was a sense of its own like taste or sight.  It aroused a longing, a need for love inside me, and pulled my thoughts up from darkness and into the light of the operating room.     “Doctor, where are the wounds?” she called.     “Open your eyes!” The man at the x-rays pushed through the group.  “Is this your first day, nurse?“     I didn’t know what they were looking at so I raised my head and tried to see.      “He’s awake!  Is this the right patient? “      Three people read my chart and checked the band on my wrist.       “Is this a joke?” The chubby doctor threw open the door, marched out of the operating room and jerked down his mask.       “Call administration,” I heard him say to a woman behind the counter, his voice muffled by the windows around me.      For a couple of hours male and female nurses pushed me around the hospital.  Twice they took me for x-rays and compared the results with those made when I arrived.  I tried speaking with them, but they looked at me with wide eyes and whispered to staff along the way, as though keeping from me a terrible secret.       Finally Michael arrived, still wearing the bloody uniform.  The smudges on his cheeks told me he had been crying.  He stepped inside the room and stood beside the door with his back to the wall.   I was sitting on the edge of the bed looking for my clothes while holding the hospital robe closed behind my back.       “What are you doing here, Mike?” I stood up and opened a cabinet.      “You … they told me you were dead.  I saw you die.”  His face twisted up.“I don’t know--“     “You saved my life, Cody.  I saw you take two rounds.  How can you be walking?”  He reached toward me as if he wanted to say more.      “I don’t know what happened, but I’m not going to be sad about it.” I rubbed my chest.       “Cody, we eat and drink together.  I saw you marry Michelle.  But that was two rounds from an AK.”  He lowered his head.  “How can you be alive?”     “Hey, it’s me.”       Michael walked into the corridor and hugged his wife, lifted his infant daughter from her arms and the family moved out of the doorway.      I felt so far from home.  The Dutch language felt like a tight hood squeezing my head, my thoughts.  Its guttural sounds irritated me.  This life with canals and bicycles in the snow wasn’t me.  I did it for Michelle, for our plans and our love, for the sparkle in her eyes when we dimmed the lights.  Without her it was a lie I could not continue.  She had been the love that oiled the gears of my life and made them mesh and turn without friction.       I longed for home.  I needed to jump into California as if it were a hot spring and immerse myself in the things that warmed me: buttered popcorn, French fries with ketchup instead of mayonnaise, tacos warm in my hand, no one trying to eat them with knife and fork, eggs scrambled with tortilla chips and tomatillo salsa, the silhouette of palm trees against a sunset, jogging along the beach in December, wearing shorts.  More than water and food and the passionate touch of a woman, I needed to hear someone say, ‘hey, dude,‘s up?’      Some staff member must have tweeted the story of the cop who wouldn’t die.  By the time I was ready to leave a crowd of reporters tried to climb into my taxi with cameras and lights flashing, every one shouting the foreign language that was no longer part of me.       I needed to go home and plug my soul into that battery charger called family.  That was where I felt 100%.        During my panic I remembered my grandmother saying how a family member from each generation went crazy.  I wondered if that were the key to the strange things happening to me.  Did she know what was going on?  If I was going to find out I had to speak to her, the ‘Library of Alexandria’ of my family.  If there was a story, some explanation or curse or something, she would know.       When I walked into the station to make arrangements for a leave of absence, every cop who recognized me jumped out of the way as though I carried the plague.       “Dead man walking,” they shouted.My Captain couldn’t finish the paperwork quick enough.  His hands were shaking and he kept staring at my chest, as if searching for blood.       Wrapping up my police business meant days of interviews and questions.  I had to meet with my union representative and the department shrink, a fat, jolly man, with hair too black for his age.  We met several times to discuss the shooting and my feelings.  When I mentioned returning to the U.S., Charley said we’d have to continue our sessions via Skype, because if I expected to get disability checks, his signature was mandatory.      Michelle’s attorney dropped a vase of roses when I walked into her office and signed away our bank accounts, the cars, and the loft.  For a few moments I amused myself by considering whether to demand possession of the sex toys I had bought.  I thought how amusing it might be to see this tough young woman, short hair combed like a man’s, arguing in court over a slew of vibrators and leather whips, the spices of our sex life, but I let them go as well.  By releasing it all I was cutting the emotional strings that bound me to Michelle.  I was free.     Within a couple of weeks my belongings were in storage and I was on my way to the USA.  After the bustle of the airport, the excitement and rush of finding the gate and getting a seat, came long hours of listening to the engine hum.  Between continents at thirty thousand feet, it was easy to think over life and see it clearly.       The aircraft bounced and shivered through turbulents.  Two overhead bins burst open and a woman shrieked.  I sipped tequila from a plastic glass and admitted the touching began long before Amsterdam.

The Mayan Secret, Chapter 1

    

      I hope you enjoy the read. Kevin.



                                           CHAPTER 1
  I was doing my nightly cop thing in one of those tall skinny houses in Amsterdam.   If I wanted to sleep I had to check every access point before I went to bed.  I started at the same door every time, pushed my shoulder against the warped old thing until I felt the bolt click into place, then walked to the next entry point, the bathroom window.  Only another cop would understand.As I was drifting into sleep someone sat beside me.  Someone was in the room.  The mattress compressed and triggered an alarm in my head.  Adrenalin hit my heart like a defibrillator jolt.  I snapped awake but did not move.  Gun and badge were on the bedside table.  If the intruder had my weapon I was already dead.  I waited for a pillow pushed against my head to silence the shot.    As my mind raced someone took hold of my arm. I shouted and jumped out of bed, grabbed my automatic and flipped the light switch, but I was alone.    It was the third time in a week something sat on my bed and grabbed me.  I moaned and laughed and wiped sweat from my face.  Strange sounds escaped my mouth as I slid down the wall.  Cops don’t go crazy.  I had to hold it together.  There were attorneys to deal with and divorce papers to sign.  For years marriage held together my life in Amsterdam.  Friends, career, apartment and language were stuffed inside it like groceries in a paper bag.  Divorce hit that bag like a stream of water.  What had once seemed strong fell apart in my hands and left me juggling the contents so nothing would shatter at my feet.  I remember the day everything changed.  Michelle was across from me in the kitchen, chopping vegetables at the counter for a midnight snack, her reddish blonde hair falling over a shoulder.   She had been out and looked so sexy and sweet standing there in her black pumps and flowered print blouse that hung loose around her neck, shaking with the rhythm of the chopping.  As I admired her and stepped close and kissed her shoulder and pressed my hand on hers, I smelled perfume and cigarette smoke from the club.  The instant I touched her she started crying and dropped the knife.  “I’m so sorry, Cody, but there’s someone else.  I met a couple and they took me out.  I’ve tried not to see them, but I can’t stop.”  It wasn’t so much the words that hurt, but the look in her eyes, those green eyes that filled my nights and my heart, once so full of admiration and hope and our love, now showed fear and a wanting to be somewhere else.  Her simple admission broke the foundation of our home, broke the concept of us.  It was as though I had been slapped, but it hurt more, a pain in my gut that sucked strength out of me because I knew what it meant.  Michelle was part of me, her laughter and kisses lotion on the dry skin of my soul.  She was the reason I came to Amsterdam, learned Dutch and joined the force.  She was my Holland. Without her as my anchor in the Netherlands I could already feel the tide of culture and language pushing me toward the beach of my home, my country, the USA.   I don’t know how long I sat below the light switch.  Traffic in the street below turned silent.  Laughing crowds had long since left the bars when I climbed into bed.  I was sleeping on the horrible little sofa bed, steel bars poking me when I moved, dreaming of Michelle, cozy in our apartment, when I found myself staring at a man.  I thought I was dreaming and rose on an elbow.  He was in his sixties, dressed as a Wild West gambler with vest, Western bow tie, silver walking stick, a strange blue glow around him.  I stared for a few moments before realizing I was awake.  Fear shot through me and I jumped out of bed and ran for the light once more.  With light the phantom vanished, but his chair remained.  Something had moved it from its place against the wall.  Something real, with physical form, had moved it. I could have imagined seeing a ghost.  Maybe I imagined something touching me night after night, but there was no denying something moved the chair.  That freaked me out.  The rest of the night I sat in the corner, firearm in my sweaty hand.  I was safe with my back against the wall.  If anything touched me I would instantly see it.  This was scaring the hell out of me.  I was losing sleep.  It wasn’t something I could shoot or slap handcuffs on.  Once or twice might have shaken me up, but could have been explained as a dream.  I had to find a way to stop it.I was lucky I still had my career and ran from the house each morning.  But sketchy sleep was making me irritable and I often snapped at Michael, my partner, during the second half of our shift when I started worrying about going home, and if the touching would return that night.   I needed somewhere to go where I felt safe and welcome.  I couldn’t go to the people I loved in Michelle’s family.  They had chosen sides.  I was now a foreign intruder, isolated and alone, a man with a giant accent that made even the flower girl on the corner look twice and hesitate to answer, never having heard Dutch spoken by an American.  One night I refused to go home.  I couldn’t take something touching me again.  I had to make it stop. I wanted the walk home to last as long as possible, so I took the park rout, watching wisps of fog float along the narrow streets, past little houses pressed together, windows glowing with light filtered through curtains.  From one of the windows jumped a cat.  I turned to watch it run and saw a man following me.   He was short with brown skin and black oily hair combed straight back.  I was so absorbed in the thing touching me at night I wasn’t watching my surroundings.  I was being street stupid.  He might be some guy rushing home.  That would be the best scenario.  Or he might want to rob me.  That I could deal with.  But if he was connected to a case and seeking revenge, there might be more than one guy.  If that were the case I was in trouble.  I had to get among people and find out.  I reached beneath my coat for my weapon, and realized it was in my police locker.  I crossed the street and stepped out of sight behind a van. That gave me a few seconds head start.  The instant I stepped out of view I sprinted up the street and around the corner.  I made it to the park and squatted in the bushes, panting, waiting to see if I was being paranoid or really in danger.  Within seconds the guy ran into the park and rushed to the restrooms, came out and turned a circle, searching the park, and ran to a side street.  Was he related to a case?  Had some con with a grudge recently been released from prison?  For three hours I marched around the city, stopping several times in doorways and peeking out café widows to make sure I had lost the stalker.  After following one canal and then another, I found myself where I felt best:  At the old three story bookstore that became my second home while studying for police exams.  I laughed when I saw the building, skylights making the roof glow, little gargoyles hiding beneath the eves.  Already I was loosening scarf and taking off my gloves as I approached.  For a while I walked around checking out old study spots:  The huge leather chair by the elevator, the alcove beneath the stairs.  Loud angry words pulled my attention toward the sounds of a struggle, and I thought a woman might be in trouble.  Customers sitting on the floor and standing in the aisles looked about.  I marched across the store to the fighting couple.  With a wave of my badge they froze.  The woman had bright red hair that touched the spiked collar of a leather jacket.  She smiled when she saw the badge and jerked her arm away from the man holding her.  A book flew out of her arms, hit the carpet and slid to a stop against my boot.  As I picked it up the book grabbed my attention.  I wanted to read it, but hell, I was a cop.  Could I read something called Ancient Spells and Energy?  It was fringe material, I used to call such publications, for the marginally sane 5% of society.  But where was I supposed to find answers?  Who should I ask about being visited by a man with a blue glow, or invisible things touching me at night?  My friends would think I was crazy.  It wasn’t like I could pop online and search for a plumber.  And if the police department heard about it they’d yank my badge and gun and put me on sick leave, or throw me to the psychologists who, of course, would treat it as an illness.I had to get help.  The first sentence read:  “Though out history humans have been visited by creatures of other realms.”  That was all it took to suspend my disbelief.  Every page shouted to be read.  I felt like a kid who tries tennis or skateboarding and is hooked.    Weeks passed and one book led to the next as though forming an intellectual path designed just for me.  When I finished one book I knew anther was waiting, and fingered through editions on the shelves of my old bookstore, until another title captured my attention like a friend shouting my name.  From each I took bits I could use, prayers and meditations, and put them to work in my life.  The only thing that stopped the touching was a recipe in one of the books:  Several times a day I surrounded myself with the White Light, closed my eyes and imagined a bubble of light surrounding me.  How strange it felt to be on patrol, the one American on the Amsterdam police force, and sit down in a toilet stall in the Red Light District, hookers and tourists and hash café’s outside, and imagine a bubble of love protecting me.  I was a grown man after all, not some boy at Sunday school.  Life on the force had changed me, toughened me.  It meant rubbing against people with hatred pounding through their veins like a virus, and I was the serum injected to stop them.  Yet here I was, hiding in a graffiti-covered stall, shiny black shoes touching urine on the tile floor, 9 mm strapped to my side with cuffs, radio dangling over my shoulder, outfitted for urban warfare, asking for love to surround me? I felt stupid imagining the bubble and would have dropped it in a heartbeat if it wasn’t keeping away the touching.  Soon I was sleeping through the night and feeling stronger.  I began visualizing the bubble more often.  Within a couple of weeks I started getting flashes of intuition.  While buying morning bread I got a glimpse of the baker having hot sex with another man.  That made me recoil.  It was too much information.  When I spoke to the girl at my local news stand, who was all laughter and smiles, I saw her signing legal documents and knew she had come into money.  And then the glimpses got serious.  I shook hands with a bar owner during patrol and saw his basement filled with marijuana plants.  After some investigation of his electricity usage we got permission to search his property, and it turned into a nice arrest.  That was a huge encouragement and I found myself speaking to the white light daily.  I didn’t want to label it God or Shiva or Buddha, because with those names came a steamer truck of beliefs and dogma.  I didn’t want to be sucked into any one way of thinking.  I had a private thing going with the light and wanted to keep it that way.  Then came the day that tore my life in two and shook the Amsterdam Police Department.Michael and I were chasing a gipsy boy in rags down an alley in the Red Light District, past working girls flaunting their stuff behind windows, one dressed as a school girl, one as a nurse.  I remember the thuds of our boots on damp asphalt.  My breath pumped out before me in clouds.  As we entered a tunnel our footfalls took on a hollow sound.  I got a flash of insight and saw a bullet hit Michael’s chest and knock him off his feet.  I saw his beautiful wife crying, their baby growing up without a father.  There was no thought process before I acted.  I had no time to fall back on training and examine evidence or consult a senior officer.  I knew in my gut it was going to happen any second. I had to stop it and reached for him as we ran.  I stretched a hand toward him but could only run fast enough to touch him with my fingertips.   The shot was coming.  Spittle escaped my mouth as I shouted, pulling all my force from within and stretching, reaching as I ran with one last burst of speed.   If I didn’t grab him now he’d be dead.  I got a hand on Michael’s shoulder and pulled him back.  For a split second I laughed as we ran into a little square, into the sunlight once more, then saw the gunman kneeling, aiming along the rifle barrel.  As the muzzle flashed I spoke two words: “God love.”
They say two AK-47 rounds ripped through my chest.  But that’s not what I remember.  I saw the muzzle flash, and in that instant the world stopped.  I rose above the scene and looked down on my body in police uniform, frozen in mid stride, Michael diving through the air, the action on his automatic slowly moving forward and back as it ejected shells onto the cobblestones.  And I saw the rifle bullets glow, flying in slow motion as they entered the bubble around my body.  As I floated above the scene, no longer was I the Yankee on the Amsterdam force.  I don’t even know if I was a man.  But I could see everything, Michael pounding my bloody chest, people running and shouting and ambulance workers carrying cop and gunman. 
I awoke surrounded by machines.  Medical personnel rushed about shouting Dutch.  A nurse hung a bag of fluid on a stand beside me and sorted tubes.  Someone shouted numbers and I knew it must be my blood pressure and pulse rate.  “Bring fresh blood,” shouted a man.  “It’s on his chart.”“See, right there, the bullets punctured that lung.” A chubby man leaned forward and tapped an x-ray on the computer screen.  “We have to open him up.”When a nurse stopped wiping my chest and let her hand stay motionless over my heart, I looked into her eyes.  They were young and blue and I knew she was a beautiful woman under the mask.  Her beauty aroused such emotion I wondered if sensing or feeling beauty was a sense of its own like taste or sight.  It aroused a longing, a need for love inside me, and pulled my thoughts up from darkness and into the light of the operating room.“Doctor, where are the wounds?” she called.“Open your eyes!”  The man at the x-rays pushed through the group.  “Is this your first day, nurse? “I didn’t know what they were looking at so I raised my head and tried to see. “He’s awake!  Is this the right patient? “ Three people read my chart and checked the band on my wrist.  “Is this a joke?” The chubby doctor threw open the door, marched out of the operating room and jerked down his mask.  “Call administration,” I heard him say to a woman behind the counter, his voice muffled by the windows around me. For a couple of hours male and female nurses pushed me around the hospital.  Twice they took me for x-rays and compared the results with those made when I arrived.  I tried speaking with them, but they looked at me with wide eyes and whispered to staff along the way, as though keeping from me a terrible secret.  Finally Michael arrived, still wearing the bloody uniform.  The smudges on his cheeks told me he had been crying.  He stepped inside the room and stood beside the door with his back to the wall.   I was sitting on the edge of the bed looking for my clothes while holding the hospital robe closed behind my back.  “What are you doing here, Mike?” I stood up and opened a cabinet. “You … they told me you were dead.  I saw you die.”  His face twisted up.“I don’t know--““You saved my life, Cody.  I saw you take two rounds.  How can you be walking?”  He reached toward me as if he wanted to say more. “I don’t know what happened, but I’m not going to be sad about it.” I rubbed my chest.  “Cody, we eat and drink together.  I saw you marry Michelle.  But that was two rounds from an AK.”  He lowered his head.  “How can you be alive?”“Hey, it’s me.”  Michael walked into the corridor and hugged his wife, lifted his infant daughter from her arms and the family moved out of the doorway. I felt so far from home.  The Dutch language felt like a tight hood squeezing my head, my thoughts.  Its guttural sounds irritated me.  This life with canals and bicycles in the snow wasn’t me.  I did it for Michelle, for our plans and our love, for the sparkle in her eyes when we dimmed the lights.  Without her it was a lie I could not continue.  She had been the love that oiled the gears of my life and made them mesh and turn without friction.  I longed for home.  I needed to jump into California as if it were a hot spring and immerse myself in the things that warmed me: buttered popcorn, French fries with ketchup instead of mayonnaise, tacos warm in my hand, no one trying to eat them with knife and fork, eggs scrambled with tortilla chips and tomatillo salsa, the silhouette of palm trees against a sunset, jogging along the beach in December, wearing shorts.  More than water and food and the passionate touch of a woman, I needed to hear someone say, ‘hey, dude,‘s up?’ Some staff member must have tweeted the story of the cop who wouldn’t die.  By the time I was ready to leave a crowd of reporters tried to climb into my taxi with cameras and lights flashing, every one shouting the foreign language that was no longer part of me.  I needed to go home and plug my soul into that battery charger called family.  That was where I felt 100%.   During my panic I remembered my grandmother saying how a family member from each generation went crazy.  I wondered if that were the key to the strange things happening to me.  Did she know what was going on?  If I was going to find out I had to speak to her, the ‘Library of Alexandria’ of my family.  If there was a story, some explanation or curse or something, she would know.  When I walked into the station to make arrangements for a leave of absence, every cop who recognized me jumped out of the way as though I carried the plague.  “Dead man walking,” they shouted.My Captain couldn’t finish the paperwork quick enough.  His hands were shaking and he kept staring at my chest, as if searching for blood.  Wrapping up my police business meant days of interviews and questions.  I had to meet with my union representative and the department shrink, a fat, jolly man, with hair too black for his age.  We met several times to discuss the shooting and my feelings.  When I mentioned returning to the U.S., Charley said we’d have to continue our sessions via Skype, because if I expected to get disability checks, his signature was mandatory. Michelle’s attorney dropped a vase of roses when I walked into her office and signed away our bank accounts, the cars, and the loft.  For a few moments I amused myself by considering whether to demand possession of the sex toys I had bought.  I thought how amusing it might be to see this tough young woman, short hair combed like a man’s, arguing in court over a slew of vibrators and leather whips, the spices of our sex life, but I let them go as well.  By releasing it all I was cutting the emotional strings that bound me to Michelle.  I was free.Within a couple of weeks my belongings were in storage and I was on my way to the USA.  After the bustle of the airport, the excitement and rush of finding the gate and getting a seat, came long hours of listening to the engine hum.  Between continents at thirty thousand feet, it was easy to think over life and see it clearly.  The aircraft bounced and shivered through turbulents.  Two overhead bins burst open and a woman shrieked.  I sipped tequila from a plastic glass and admitted the touching began long before Amsterdam.

A new book, Chapter 1

    

     With posting this chapter it is my hope that readers will leave a note, what they liked or didn't like. Please tell me how I can improve the blog, make it a better experience. I hope you enjoy the read. Kevin.



CHAPTER 1
  I was alone in a tall skinny house in Amsterdam, doing my nightly cop thing.  If I wanted to sleep I had to check every access point before I went to bed.  I started at the same door every time, pushed my shoulder against the warped old thing until I felt the bolt click into place, then walked to the next entry point, the bathroom window.  Only another cop would understand.As I was drifting into sleep someone sat beside me.  Someone was in the room.  The mattress compressed and triggered an alarm in my head.  Adrenalin hit my heart like a defibrillator jolt.  I snapped awake but did not move.  Gun and badge were on the bedside table.  If the intruder had my weapon I was already dead.  I waited for a pillow pushed against my head to silence the shot.    As my mind raced someone took hold of my arm. I shouted and jumped out of bed, grabbed my automatic and flipped the light switch, but I was alone.    It was the third time in a week something sat on my bed and grabbed me.  I moaned and laughed and wiped sweat from my face.  Strange sounds escaped my mouth as I slid down the wall.  Cops don’t go crazy.  I had to hold it together.  There were attorneys to deal with and divorce papers to sign.  For years marriage held together my life in Amsterdam.  Friends, career, apartment and language were stuffed inside it like groceries in a paper bag.  Divorce hit that bag like a stream of water.  What had once seemed strong fell apart in my hands and left me juggling the contents so nothing would shatter at my feet.  I remember the day everything changed.  Michelle was across from me in the kitchen, chopping vegetables at the counter for a midnight snack, her reddish blonde hair falling over a shoulder.   She had been out and looked so sexy and sweet standing there in her black pumps and flowered print blouse that hung loose around her neck, shaking with the rhythm of the chopping.  As I admired her and stepped close and kissed her shoulder and pressed my hand on hers, I smelled perfume and cigarette smoke from the club.  The instant I touched her she started crying and dropped the knife.  “I’m so sorry, Cody, but there’s someone else.  I met a couple and they took me out.  I’ve tried not to see them, but I can’t stop.”  It wasn’t so much the words that hurt, but the look in her eyes, those green eyes that filled my nights and my heart, once so full of admiration and hope and our love, now showed fear and a wanting to be somewhere else.  Her simple admission broke the foundation of our home, broke the concept of us.  It was as though I had been slapped, but it hurt more, a pain in my gut that sucked strength out of me because I knew what it meant.  Michelle was part of me, her laughter and kisses lotion on the dry skin of my soul.  She was the reason I came to Amsterdam, learned Dutch and joined the force.  She was my Holland. Without her as my anchor in the Netherlands I could already feel the tide of culture and language pushing me toward the beach of my home, my country, the USA.   I don’t know how long I sat below the light switch.  Traffic in the street below turned silent.  Laughing crowds had long since left the bars when I climbed into bed.  I was sleeping on the horrible little sofa bed, steel bars poking me when I moved, dreaming of Michelle, cozy in our apartment, when I found myself staring at a man.  I thought I was dreaming and rose on an elbow.  He was in his sixties, dressed as a Wild West gambler with vest, Western bow tie, silver walking stick, a strange blue glow around him.  I stared for a few moments before realizing I was awake.  Fear shot through me and I jumped out of bed and ran for the light once more.  With light the phantom vanished, but his chair remained.  Something had moved it from its place against the wall.  Something real, with physical form, had moved it. I could have imagined seeing a ghost.  Maybe I imagined something touching me night after night, but there was no denying something moved the chair.  That freaked me out.  The rest of the night I sat in the corner, firearm in my sweaty hand.  I was safe with my back against the wall.  If anything touched me I would instantly see it.  This was scaring the hell out of me.  I was losing sleep.  It wasn’t something I could shoot or slap handcuffs on.  Once or twice might have shaken me up, but could have been explained as a dream.  I had to find a way to stop it.I was lucky I still had my career and ran from the house each morning.  But sketchy sleep was making me irritable and I often snapped at Michael, my partner, during the second half of our shift when I started worrying about going home, and if the touching would return that night.   I needed somewhere to go where I felt safe and welcome.  I couldn’t go to the people I loved in Michelle’s family.  They had chosen sides.  I was now a foreign intruder, isolated and alone, a man with a giant accent that made even the flower girl on the corner look twice and hesitate to answer, never having heard Dutch spoken by an American.  One night I refused to go home.  I couldn’t take something touching me again.  I had to make it stop. I wanted the walk home to last as long as possible, so I took the park rout, watching wisps of fog float along the narrow streets, past little houses pressed together, windows glowing with light filtered through curtains.  From one of the windows jumped a cat.  I turned to watch it run and saw a man following me.   He was short with brown skin and black oily hair combed straight back.  I was so absorbed in the thing touching me at night I wasn’t watching my surroundings.  I was being street stupid.  He might be some guy rushing home.  That would be the best scenario.  Or he might want to rob me.  That I could deal with.  But if he was connected to a case and seeking revenge, there might be more than one guy.  If that were the case I was in trouble.  I had to get among people and find out.  I reached beneath my coat for my weapon, and realized it was in my police locker.  I crossed the street and stepped out of sight behind a van. That gave me a few seconds head start.  The instant I stepped out of view I sprinted up the street and around the corner.  I made it to the park and squatted in the bushes, panting, waiting to see if I was being paranoid or really in danger.  Within seconds the guy ran into the park and rushed to the restrooms, came out and turned a circle, searching the park, and ran to a side street.  Was he related to a case?  Had some con with a grudge recently been released from prison?  For three hours I marched around the city, stopping several times in doorways and peeking out café widows to make sure I had lost the stalker.  After following one canal and then another, I found myself where I felt best:  At the old three story bookstore that became my second home while studying for police exams.  I laughed when I saw the building, skylights making the roof glow, little gargoyles hiding beneath the eves.  Already I was loosening scarf and taking off my gloves as I approached.  For a while I walked around checking out old study spots:  The huge leather chair by the elevator, the alcove beneath the stairs.  Loud angry words pulled my attention toward the sounds of a struggle, and I thought a woman might be in trouble.  Customers sitting on the floor and standing in the aisles looked about.  I marched across the store to the fighting couple.  With a wave of my badge they froze.  The woman had bright red hair that touched the spiked collar of a leather jacket.  She smiled when she saw the badge and jerked her arm away from the man holding her.  A book flew out of her arms, hit the carpet and slid to a stop against my boot.  As I picked it up the book grabbed my attention.  I wanted to read it, but hell, I was a cop.  Could I read something called Ancient Spells and Energy?  It was fringe material, I used to call such publications, for the marginally sane 5% of society.  But where was I supposed to find answers?  Who should I ask about being visited by a man with a blue glow, or invisible things touching me at night?  My friends would think I was crazy.  It wasn’t like I could pop online and search for a plumber.  And if the police department heard about it they’d yank my badge and gun and put me on sick leave, or throw me to the psychologists who, of course, would treat it as an illness.I had to get help.  The first sentence read:  “Though out history humans have been visited by creatures of other realms.”  That was all it took to suspend my disbelief.  Every page shouted to be read.  I felt like a kid who tries tennis or skateboarding and is hooked.    Weeks passed and one book led to the next as though forming an intellectual path designed just for me.  When I finished one book I knew anther was waiting, and fingered through editions on the shelves of my old bookstore, until another title captured my attention like a friend shouting my name.  From each I took bits I could use, prayers and meditations, and put them to work in my life.  The only thing that stopped the touching was a recipe in one of the books:  Several times a day I surrounded myself with the White Light, closed my eyes and imagined a bubble of light surrounding me.  How strange it felt to be on patrol, the one American on the Amsterdam police force, and sit down in a toilet stall in the Red Light District, hookers and tourists and hash café’s outside, and imagine a bubble of love protecting me.  I was a grown man after all, not some boy at Sunday school.  Life on the force had changed me, toughened me.  It meant rubbing against people with hatred pounding through their veins like a virus, and I was the serum injected to stop them.  Yet here I was, hiding in a graffiti-covered stall, shiny black shoes touching urine on the tile floor, 9 mm strapped to my side with cuffs, radio dangling over my shoulder, outfitted for urban warfare, asking for love to surround me? I felt stupid imagining the bubble and would have dropped it in a heartbeat if it wasn’t keeping away the touching.  Soon I was sleeping through the night and feeling stronger.  I began visualizing the bubble more often.  Within a couple of weeks I started getting flashes of intuition.  While buying morning bread I got a glimpse of the baker having hot sex with another man.  That made me recoil.  It was too much information.  When I spoke to the girl at my local news stand, who was all laughter and smiles, I saw her signing legal documents and knew she had come into money.  And then the glimpses got serious.  I shook hands with a bar owner during patrol and saw his basement filled with marijuana plants.  After some investigation of his electricity usage we got permission to search his property, and it turned into a nice arrest.  That was a huge encouragement and I found myself speaking to the white light daily.  I didn’t want to label it God or Shiva or Buddha, because with those names came a steamer truck of beliefs and dogma.  I didn’t want to be sucked into any one way of thinking.  I had a private thing going with the light and wanted to keep it that way.  Then came the day that tore my life in two and shook the Amsterdam Police Department.Michael and I were chasing a gipsy boy in rags down an alley in the Red Light District, past working girls flaunting their stuff behind windows, one dressed as a school girl, one as a nurse.  I remember the thuds of our boots on damp asphalt.  My breath pumped out before me in clouds.  As we entered a tunnel our footfalls took on a hollow sound.  I got a flash of insight and saw a bullet hit Michael’s chest and knock him off his feet.  I saw his beautiful wife crying, their baby growing up without a father.  There was no thought process before I acted.  I had no time to fall back on training and examine evidence or consult a senior officer.  I knew in my gut it was going to happen any second. I had to stop it and reached for him as we ran.  I stretched a hand toward him but could only run fast enough to touch him with my fingertips.   The shot was coming.  Spittle escaped my mouth as I shouted, pulling all my force from within and stretching, reaching as I ran with one last burst of speed.   If I didn’t grab him now he’d be dead.  I got a hand on Michael’s shoulder and pulled him back.  For a split second I laughed as we ran into a little square, into the sunlight once more, then saw the gunman kneeling, aiming along the rifle barrel.  As the muzzle flashed I spoke two words: “God love.”
They say two AK-47 rounds ripped through my chest.  But that’s not what I remember.  I saw the muzzle flash, and in that instant the world stopped.  I rose above the scene and looked down on my body in police uniform, frozen in mid stride, Michael diving through the air, the action on his automatic slowly moving forward and back as it ejected shells onto the cobblestones.  And I saw the rifle bullets glow, flying in slow motion as they entered the bubble around my body.  As I floated above the scene, no longer was I the Yankee on the Amsterdam force.  I don’t even know if I was a man.  But I could see everything, Michael pounding my bloody chest, people running and shouting and ambulance workers carrying cop and gunman. 
I awoke surrounded by machines.  Medical personnel rushed about shouting Dutch.  A nurse hung a bag of fluid on a stand beside me and sorted tubes.  Someone shouted numbers and I knew it must be my blood pressure and pulse rate.  “Bring fresh blood,” shouted a man.  “It’s on his chart.”“See, right there, the bullets punctured that lung.” A chubby man leaned forward and tapped an x-ray on the computer screen.  “We have to open him up.”When a nurse stopped wiping my chest and let her hand stay motionless over my heart, I looked into her eyes.  They were young and blue and I knew she was a beautiful woman under the mask.  Her beauty aroused such emotion I wondered if sensing or feeling beauty was a sense of its own like taste or sight.  It aroused a longing, a need for love inside me, and pulled my thoughts up from darkness and into the light of the operating room.“Doctor, where are the wounds?” she called.“Open your eyes!”  The man at the x-rays pushed through the group.  “Is this your first day, nurse? “I didn’t know what they were looking at so I raised my head and tried to see. “He’s awake!  Is this the right patient? “ Three people read my chart and checked the band on my wrist.  “Is this a joke?” The chubby doctor threw open the door, marched out of the operating room and jerked down his mask.  “Call administration,” I heard him say to a woman behind the counter, his voice muffled by the windows around me. For a couple of hours male and female nurses pushed me around the hospital.  Twice they took me for x-rays and compared the results with those made when I arrived.  I tried speaking with them, but they looked at me with wide eyes and whispered to staff along the way, as though keeping from me a terrible secret.  Finally Michael arrived, still wearing the bloody uniform.  The smudges on his cheeks told me he had been crying.  He stepped inside the room and stood beside the door with his back to the wall.   I was sitting on the edge of the bed looking for my clothes while holding the hospital robe closed behind my back.  “What are you doing here, Mike?” I stood up and opened a cabinet. “You … they told me you were dead.  I saw you die.”  His face twisted up.“I don’t know--““You saved my life, Cody.  I saw you take two rounds.  How can you be walking?”  He reached toward me as if he wanted to say more. “I don’t know what happened, but I’m not going to be sad about it.” I rubbed my chest.  “Cody, we eat and drink together.  I saw you marry Michelle.  But that was two rounds from an AK.”  He lowered his head.  “How can you be alive?”“Hey, it’s me.”  Michael walked into the corridor and hugged his wife, lifted his infant daughter from her arms and the family moved out of the doorway. I felt so far from home.  The Dutch language felt like a tight hood squeezing my head, my thoughts.  Its guttural sounds irritated me.  This life with canals and bicycles in the snow wasn’t me.  I did it for Michelle, for our plans and our love, for the sparkle in her eyes when we dimmed the lights.  Without her it was a lie I could not continue.  She had been the love that oiled the gears of my life and made them mesh and turn without friction.  I longed for home.  I needed to jump into California as if it were a hot spring and immerse myself in the things that warmed me: buttered popcorn, French fries with ketchup instead of mayonnaise, tacos warm in my hand, no one trying to eat them with knife and fork, eggs scrambled with tortilla chips and tomatillo salsa, the silhouette of palm trees against a sunset, jogging along the beach in December, wearing shorts.  More than water and food and the passionate touch of a woman, I needed to hear someone say, ‘hey, dude,‘s up?’ Some staff member must have tweeted the story of the cop who wouldn’t die.  By the time I was ready to leave a crowd of reporters tried to climb into my taxi with cameras and lights flashing, every one shouting the foreign language that was no longer part of me.  I needed to go home and plug my soul into that battery charger called family.  That was where I felt 100%.   During my panic I remembered my grandmother saying how a family member from each generation went crazy.  I wondered if that were the key to the strange things happening to me.  Did she know what was going on?  If I was going to find out I had to speak to her, the ‘Library of Alexandria’ of my family.  If there was a story, some explanation or curse or something, she would know.  When I walked into the station to make arrangements for a leave of absence, every cop who recognized me jumped out of the way as though I carried the plague.  “Dead man walking,” they shouted.My Captain couldn’t finish the paperwork quick enough.  His hands were shaking and he kept staring at my chest, as if searching for blood.  Wrapping up my police business meant days of interviews and questions.  I had to meet with my union representative and the department shrink, a fat, jolly man, with hair too black for his age.  We met several times to discuss the shooting and my feelings.  When I mentioned returning to the U.S., Charley said we’d have to continue our sessions via Skype, because if I expected to get disability checks, his signature was mandatory. Michelle’s attorney dropped a vase of roses when I walked into her office and signed away our bank accounts, the cars, and the loft.  For a few moments I amused myself by considering whether to demand possession of the sex toys I had bought.  I thought how amusing it might be to see this tough young woman, short hair combed like a man’s, arguing in court over a slew of vibrators and leather whips, the spices of our sex life, but I let them go as well.  By releasing it all I was cutting the emotional strings that bound me to Michelle.  I was free.Within a couple of weeks my belongings were in storage and I was on my way to the USA.  After the bustle of the airport, the excitement and rush of finding the gate and getting a seat, came long hours of listening to the engine hum.  Between continents at thirty thousand feet, it was easy to think over life and see it clearly.  The aircraft bounced and shivered through turbulents.  Two overhead bins burst open and a woman shrieked.  I sipped tequila from a plastic glass and admitted the touching began long before Amsterdam.

CARIBBEAN HOUSE

     CARIBBEAN TIME:  I spent an amazing time in an abandoned house on the Caribbean, on the Yucatan peninsula, Mexico.  It was a fabulous experience among the Maya, and I daily spear fished on the Palancar reef, shooting lobster and snapper, while typing out my first novel on a little manual typewriter.  I have drawn heavily on that time for my new novel, which, of itself, is a personal journey to find love.

     At night I listened to the Caribbean surging onto the sand.  A breeze usually arrived in the early morning, when the heat of the day had finally surrendered, and a slight coolness filled the old house.  The breeze danced with the mosquito net around my hammock and made everything look hazy, as though  I was floating in a cloud.         
     Each morning I awoke singing, a dream song spilling into the day.  When I climbed from the hammock there was no rush to find warm clothes.  I stood there in my underwear, smiling at the tropical light filling my house with a warm candle like glow, listening to tropical birds, papaya leaves scraping the mosquito netting over the kitchen window, trade winds warm on my chest, feeling free and alive and content, a man with so little, living in an abandoned  house; but rich with love and life.     At my drift wood table, barnacles stuck to a leg, I took a piece of bread, lifted the coca-cola bottle filled with raw jungle honey, a piece of corncob stuffed into the opening, and tapped it on the table.  The ants surrounding the cob ran down the bottle and I pulled the stopper and poured honey.      After breakfast I opened the front door so Slinky, my feral cat friend, could visit and search for food.  She didn’t enter like a house cat with a meow.  She was all business, sneaking in low to the ground, cunning, hunting.  And while she hunted lizards, I sat at my manual typewriter and traveled in my mind to Germany, my experiences there having sifted through the filters of time.  How strange it was to sit in cut offs, spraying mosquitoes at my ankles with Bug and Tar Remover, while writing about a highly organized society on the other side of the world.     Every time I walked into town, I could not be certain I would end up there, so full of possibility was each day. Maybe a friend would drive by with the jeep loaded for a cenotetrip, or crazy Mike would need help building a fish-smoker in the jungle, or a lost tourist gringa would pull up needing directions, and I’d be pulled into the Caribbean flow of life again.  A simple trip to the store might end with Mike, being eaten by mosquitoes in the jungle while shoveling concrete, or jumping through the ceiling of a hidden, egg-shaped cenote, bursting to the surface of water untouched for a hundred years, feeling so alive that energy and joy poured from me with the water as I climbed into the sun.     When I finished writing each day, and the house was too hot to stay in, I brushed sand from my feet, tapped my sandals on the floor to make sure no scorpion was hiding in there, and slipped them on.  With a few pesos stuffed into my salty cut-offs, I carried my 20 liter plastic container to the tap on the street, filled it and struggled up the path, feet sinking in the warm sand.  Back in the house I set it in the sun for a warm afternoon shower.     It was not until I returned to California did I understand how much my time beside the Caribbean had changed me.  One day I was speaking to a Mexican man about his country.  As he told stories of his village, an odd look came over his face, as though he were watching a beloved child drive away for the summer. 
     “You know,” he said, staring into memory.  “The days are longer in Mexico.”     “Yes, and more full of life."

The Christmas Tree

This was inspired by my time on a kibbutz in Israel.  It was there I met my wife.  I was young and found myself running a bar in a shack that once served as the pottery work shop.
Smashwords @ http://bit.ly/10EhjoT   Amazon Kindle @ http://amzn.to/UILFDE
KIBBUTZ TREECopyright 2012 kevin r. hill
" can't use the tap water to make drinks!  Didn't you hear?  They found a dead bird in the water tank.  Cholera, Philip!" said Robbie, leaning through the curtained doorway so the crowd at the bar wouldn't hear, his voice all high-pitched like some pome school teacher's."And what the hell am I supposed to do with these bottles of booze?" I asked, turning the spigot, glancing past Robbie toward the crowded dance floor. "Dear me!" he giggled.  "Look, the pipe is full from the tank to here. That's probably forty or fifty gallons before there's any danger.  I'll just mix a few drinks so every one can have a nice time, and I can make some money.  No one ever knows, right Robbie?""My lips are sealed," he said, drawing a thin hand across his lips, as though closing a zipper."Good, now bring these screw drivers to the Dutch couple at the bar."Robbie flapped his hand at me.  "Would you stop that fag shit," I said, stepping through the curtain.  "What would you like," I asked two Finnish girls at the bar."Two Gold Stars, please; in brown bottles.""Brown bottles," I repeated, nodding.  Our beer, Gold Star, came in brown and green bottles.  Suddenly the volunteers decided the beer in brown bottles tasted better, and I couldn't give away the green ones.  That had baffled me for a day.  Now I just wait until everyone is sailing along, and shout, 'all I have left are green bottles.'  For a split second a decision races through my customers’ minds: stop drinking or go green. The threat of sobriety changes everyone's opinion.  "Is thes water from the tap?" asked a Dutch man, tapping his glass, waiting for Robbie to answer.  Robbie's mouth dropped open and his face flushed red.  His brow crinkled and his scalp shifted back an inch as he turned right and left.  I knew he would burst into tears if he had to lie, so I intervened.  "Don't worry, I made the drinks a couple of days ago.""Oh, wery good.""Get two browns for the Finns there," I told Robbie, pulling him away from the bar.  "And keep that curtain closed!  If someone sees us using tap water we'll get lynched."Music pounded as I looked across the bar room.  Most of the volunteers were doing the bump to the Police.  Tal, the Israeli beauty who works in Citrus, was dancing in a corner with the new German kid.  She always went after new guys before they learned better.  The Danish girls were dancing in a circle, holding hands and laughing.  Two of them smiled at me, but Maibrit, the one I hadn't visited for a week, turned away.  Old Charles, one of last surviving English hippies, was over beside the loud speaker as usual, dancing slow and probing his deaf ear with a finger, leaning close to the blaring music, his long hair swaying from side to side.  Akkad, an Arab I had invited from a neighboring village in hopes of making a hash deal, had already propositioned nearly every woman in the bar, and I was getting annoyed.  I watched him watching a Danish woman.  Three times he reached for her bare shoulder, and each time she pushed his hand away.  Then crack! She slapped him.   Akkad jumped back and squared his shoulders like an angry baseball player ejected from a game.  He looked at the dancers around him and walked toward the bar.  Something caught my eye on the opposite side of the dance floor and I turned to see Moshe, the Volunteer organizer, coming toward me, shoving people aside. "Oh no, here comes World War Three," I said, leaning across the bar in front of Vince and Paul, two Aussies. "Moshe and that Arab are coming over here.  Look, tell Moshe I haven't been here."  I grabbed the money box and pulled the curtain aside. "You ain't gunna squeeze out o’ this one, mate," said Vince."Hey, you guys owe me.""Owe you?  Not since we helped you swap toilets with the ceramic shop--at two in the morning--we don't.  If it weren't for us, your customers would still be queuing up at the bush out back."  They laughed and left the bar.Moshe and Akkad rested their hands on the bar and leaned forward to speak.  Before a word escaped from either man, they glanced at each other and drew back, as though from a snarling dog"Philip! Do you have permission for him to be here?" asked Moshe.  "Yes, of course you do.  You never miss a trick! You promised to keep the music turned down tonight!"  He pounded a fist on the bar and pounded me with a look.  "Half the kibbutz can't sleep!"  He rushed across the sagging floor, tore the speaker from the wall and ripped out the wire while glaring at my customers, daring them to take the speaker.  "Hey!" shouted one of English lads, as Moshe left the bar. “Do we work in their bleeding fields all day so they can ruin our piss-up?""That's all right," I shouted, jumping over the bar.  "Let's sing a song for Moshe, come on!"  I hurried to the door and looked out at Moshe who was crossing a field with the speaker in his arms.  "I ain't gunna work on Maggie’s farm no more," I sang.  "Come on, every body."  Volunteers joined in, singing the same line over and over until we had a chorus roaring into the night.  "Yeah, free beer for every body," I shouted, pumping a fist in the air. I was nearly trampled to death before I managed to escape over the bar.  When I had thinned out the thirsty masses by handing out half the contents of the refrigerator, I turned to Akkad who stood pawing a German woman.  She pushed him away and shouted, but that wasn't enough.  He just wiped his mouth, looked the woman over, and reached for her again."Hey Akkad!" I shouted.  "Come on,  I'll buy you a drink." He staggered to the bar and stood looking at me with a drunken, proud smile. "Now the men will drink together," I said, shaking his hand."The men."  He smiled and nodded.I stepped behind the curtain and filled a glass three quarters full of what the Israelis call vodka, adding just enough juice to color it.  In my glass I poured a splash of liquor and filled it with orange juice. "Here you go," I said, stepping through the curtain.  "All of it."  I tilted my glass back and drank it without stopping, so he would get the idea.  Akkad's eyes widened as he drank."Ah!" I exclaimed, slapping my glass on the bar and moving toward customers, secretly watching Akkad as I carried beers and counted change.  He sat his empty glass down and grabbed the bar with both hands.  His head wobbled and his eyes rolled back in their sockets as a peaceful smile came to his mouth.  Gradually, as if his legs were melting, Akkad sank to the floor. "Robbie!  Help me carry him outside," I called, pointing over the bar."Oh dear.  Philip, I suspect foul play, you brute," he said with his angry mother's voice, lowering his head toward me.I jumped over the bar, but Robbie walked out the back door, past the bathroom, and came hurrying across the dance floor.  "You take his feet," I said.  "We'll lay him on the back patio until he sobers up.  Don't worry," I told customers as I staggered with Akkad's weight, "he's just drunk, that's all.""Yeah," shouted one of the Aussies, "that's what the greenies'll do to you." We sat Akkad on the patio and walked to the front of the bar.  I hopped up on the porch and was about to enter when the bathroom door opened.  The same moonlight which touches the olive trees and makes them shimmer at night as though draped with silk, this light touched Maibrit's blonde hair as she stepped out of the bathroom, struggling with her zipper, hair trailing across her face as she looked at me. Her presence engulfed me like the fragrance from a newly opened bottle of perfume.  I thought of my other lovers and my seesaw conscience spoke of sin and satisfaction, as though I had a demon on one shoulder and an angel on the other, each whispering what I should do.  Well, the demon won that one.  I rushed forward and kissed her, squeezing her against me, licking her teeth and lips, my hand sliding across her belly, touching her panties.  Once I was so close there was no turning back, so I pushed her into the bathroom and closed the door.  When I went back to work Robbie was rushing about behind the bar, handing out beers and stuffing shekels into the money case. “Philip says he made the drinks two days ago," he kept telling customers.""How's it going?""Oh, Philip, is your midnight rendezvous finished so soon, you nasty pervert?""Some people do have sex lives, Robbie.""It's disgusting if you ask me," he said, looking at me as he passed. "Disgusting ... like your after shave." "I washed.""Sure you did.  I'll bet you wiped it all over yourself like head hunters do with victim's blood.  Philip, the great hunter!"  Robbie went through the curtain in a huff, saying, "Number two is looking for you ... at the end of the bar."A relaxed, calm feeling swept over me when I saw her leaning on the bar, looking at me with that sly little smile, shaking her head as though trying to look stern for a naughty but amusing child.Her name was Katy, but everyone called her Corner.  Once, during a rainy afternoon's lovemaking session, her kerosene heater turned on high, cardboard pulled off a broken window pane, letting fumes seep outside, rain tapping on the tin roof with rapid flurries, she told me how her mother used to call her a tomboy.  'You're as hard to keep clean as the corner behind the stove,' her mother had shouted when she came home from romping in a muddy creek. Corner's brothers and sisters overheard, and the nickname was born.She moved with such feminine grace that it was difficult to imagine her a tomboy.  Although her Eurasian features contrasted with a harsh Australian accent, her mannerisms and movements were purely feminine.  During my first months on the kibbutz I wondered what made her sad, for the dark shading around her eyes gave her a mournful look, as though she had recently been crying.  People often mistook that look for one of vulnerability, but I knew better.  One night when a Kibbutznik's hand mistakenly got under her dress, I saw Corner put a shoulder behind a snappy little punch that broke the man's nose. Having been raised in an Australian family with nine other children taught her to fight.  Was it this tough femininity which attracted me?  During months shared on the kibbutz we developed a relaxing understanding.  We experimented upon each other sexually without the confines of a 'normal' relationship, satisfying needs other partners couldn't.  As the months passed I began to enjoy the tender moments after our sexual lessons as much as the sex itself.  The insights and stories we shared during those times--our bodies tingling--became the power which held us together.  I didn't feel the need to escape as I did with other women after the sex question was answered.  There were no expectations to live up to, no perceived responsibilities from family.  We met as equals, asking for nothing but passion, and because our feelings were not weighted down with a web of needs and wants, they slowly grew.  Now, looking back, it seems strange we never spoke of our feelings or relationship.  Maybe we sensed that defining it would establish limitations and perimeters, as it had so many times before."Hello Corner," I said, sitting on my stool before her, popping open a beer with my Sikh bracelet."How bloody smug you look; the lion surveying his domain.  I saw your little scene on the porch.""I was going to resist, but I got a hard-on and my controls switched to manual."She laughed and brushed her shiny black hair.  "I'll stay and help you close.  I have a surprise.  Do you have any ... energy left?""A surprise?  I'm looking forward to it.""You're not really making drinks with the bad water, are you?""Robbie's lips are sealed, uh?""You're a real piece of work, you are.  Cholera water.  You better watch your step, Phil.  They're just looking for an excuse to throw you off the kibbutz." "Nah, they need me here. I supply morale.  Where else can they get enough of what makes them happy?  Hell, half the kibbutzniks sneak in here to get lucky, men and women!""Maybe that's why they want you to leave.  A lot of husbands and wives wouldn't like what you've seen." She looked around the bar room.  "It just dawned on me, Philip. This bar is the real you, isn't it?  I mean look at it; pieced together with scraps from everywhere.  This place makes you thrive ... what with your little network of black marketers, and your schemes.""Are you seeing what you want to see, Corner?""Too soon, aye?" she asked, lowering her head.I drank half my beer at once and stared at the ceiling."You know what," she said after a few moments. "You need a Chrisy tree, brighten the place up a bit.  It's not far off, you know,  a couple of weeks.  A tree would make a lot of volunteers feel less homesick.""A big Christmas party ... invite the neighboring kibbutzim, sell twice the booze.""Not for the money, to make people happy.""Of course ... happiness.""By the way, I have some sad news for you.  They have you down to work in the factory tomorrow?""Oh no, you're joking.""I just read the work assignments.""I'll have to change my name with one of the new guys again. That white-out is worth its weight in gold.""You just can't keep to the rules, can you?""I told them I wouldn't work in the factory when I first arrived.  I didn't come to Israel to punch a time clock."      It was after two in the morning when I pushed the last drinker outside.  Corner, pulling off clothing as she worked, dropping each piece to the floor without a second thought, helped me round up empty bottles, sweep the floor, and blow out candles.  She smiled when I approached, took my hand and stroked it, never raising her eyes to mine.  We climbed over the bar and walked through the curtain to the pealing, wrought-iron bed in the back room.  Lying on the lumpy mattress, the bed rocking to and fro with our movements like a bed of kelp on the sea, Corner finished undressing and took out the surprise: a bottle of Tiger balm.  She dabbed it in secret places and told me to describe the sensations as she sat atop me, massaging my shoulders, her lips trembling as she whispered in my ear.  In the morning my body ached wonderfully.  Her nail marks stung beneath my shirt, and I didn't have any skin on vital parts of my anatomy.  If I became excited the pain would surely kill me, and I loved it.

Danish Laughter and Castles

DANISH LAUGHTER AND CASTLESPhotos and text copyright 2013

From the castle wall I stare down on Vordingborg harbor.  This town was the capital of Denmark when Shakespeare wrote of a Danish Prince named Hamlet.  And so like Denmark, defined by history, by the past, my life, my past, is entangled in this town's net. Built without cement, the Goose Tower stands today.As I walk among the castle ruins, the sun warming my face, the scent of spring crops and wild flowers carried on a breeze, it is hard to imagine the bloody battles that occurred here. Attacked by Swedes and Germans, occupied by the Nazis, all that now stands of the nine towers and 800 meters of wall is a remnant of the outer wall, the moat where ducks paddle about, and the Goose Tower, a medieval tower with a huge goose atop.  Legend says the goose was put there by King Valdemar Atterdag (I have to admire anyone known as ‘Valdemar tomorrow is another day.’) to taunt the Hanseatic League to the south, around 1360.  But the truth is the goose first flew above the tower in 1871. It takes years before the locals will admit the Hanseatic league, who the goose was meant to taunt, came and plundered the golden goose. So like the battles I imagine here, catapults flinging diseased animal carcasses over the walls, soldiers screaming and fighting with swords and bleeding into muddy puddles, my own memories hack at me with a sword dulled by time. Undoubtedly, as with the battles of old, a woman stood in the eye of my hurricane. And yes, like the castle around me, the battles waged here tore down my defenses, my towers of pride.  Without the battles peace would not taste as sweet. Scandinavian churches have seen bloody battles.It is difficult to imagine a more ideal setting, and that is why we chose Vordingborg as a base for our vacation, from which to see the sights.  There is something joyful about diving into the tourist throngs, knowing an island of peace awaits you later in the day.  And that is how we used Vordingborg.  Being refugees from Big City, USA, we wanted to relax and walk along forest paths, sit on quiet beaches not packed with tourists like Disneyland.  We wanted to check our city stress for country simplicity, taking measured day trips to see the sights.  This village was ideal with its little cheese shop and sidewalk cafes, not to mention the fish market at the harbor and walking paths through the forest, where dashing peasant often startled us, and, on pristine mornings, still silent and covered with dew, we were lucky to see a doe leading her foes into the brush.This is more than a dream vacation.  In my twenties I had been world traveler, living to travel and roaming the world, my playground, picking apples in Switzerland, grapes in France, wintering on a kibbutz.  I sewed my jeans up with dental floss. My back pack became part of me. I could hitch hike across Europe faster than trains could carry me.  When I met her I tried to change.  You can’t imagine how difficult it was to go from hitch hiking Europe and experiencing new places and people daily, singing at the cars on a Paris onramp, laughing with Ethiopians in an African bar in Cologne, to finding myself in a provincial Danish town, the only foreigner there, working in a factory on a tiny island, staring out at the world through a one foot square window, watching snow cover the fields.  My life, my heart, withered.  Inside I cried to be accepted, to be able to speak to people without a look of amazement coming over their face when they heard their language spoken with an American accent. My Saturday-morning-cartoon-Danish startled so many. After a few days of seeing the sights in Copenhagen, a city where we found it difficult to find anyone who spoke Danish, we were happy to head south, away from the big city.  Through an online service we rented a little cottage beside Freden’s Skov (Peaceful forest), a short, barefoot walk from the beach. Evenings were spent on a mattress, sipping red wine before the wood-burning stove while shifting out of the corporate office mindset, pretending we could stay forever.



Rhunes for Harold Bluetooth Denmark is a small nation of islands. Jutland, the large peninsula that sticks
into the Baltic North of Germany, is the largest land mass. Copenhagen, the capital, is on Zealand, a large island to the east of Jutland, between Germany and Sweden.  On the Southern tip of that island sits Vordingborg. The Danish royal family can trace their blood line back to about the year 1,000 A.D., to Gorm the Old, who sat king over England.  Probably the most famous Danish king is often mentioned today: Harold Blue Tooth.  That’s right; Blue Tooth technology is named after Harold, who united the warring tribes into a kingdom, because of his ability to make diverse factions communicate.  The Blue Tooth logo is the Nordic runes for Harold’s initials. During long evenings spent laughing and eating with Danish friends, drinking ice cold Aquavit (water of life), called ‘snaps,’ a drink that dates, like so many things in Denmark, back hundreds of years, it often occurred to me how charming and fun loving the Danes are, yet when I looked on a map, I laughed because I could not find a neighboring country they had not fought or conquered.  Was my country now doing the Generals plan the invasion.same thing?  Was the U.S.A. still in its angry, rebellious teenager years, as yet innocent of the horrors of war on its own soil? I wondered. Was my country going through the same maturation process I had been through with love?  Did the U.S.A. need to experience the horror of war on its own soil to value peace?  Is that what Denmark had gone through? Prehistoric burial mound near Vord.Such thoughts are why I enjoy travel.  It allows me to lift the ‘sunglasses’ of culture and upbringing, and peer at life anew, to perceive new ideas and mentalities, to shake free of the heavy weights that seem to pull me down in the waters of judgment, and rise to the surface for a breath of new thought, new air.  Although Vordingborg seems a sleepy village drifting away in the mist of glories past, it is the home to a tremendous festival every spring.  http://www.vordingborgfestuge.dk/.  From the ninth to the fourteenth of July is festuge, party week.  Music groups from all over Europe fill the stage beside castle walls.  Mimes and comedy acts perform on Algade (the walking street) to laughing crowds. Sidewalk beer stands keep everyone happy as families carry silver-haired children on their shoulders.  For a short few months their world is warm, and the Danes get out and shake it.  They laugh and dance.  During festuge Vordingborg is a living country fair. It always cracked me up to see how quickly the Danes would grab the kitchen table at the first sign of Rented summer house beside forest.spring sunshine, and carry it outside to sit with friends and drink cold Tuborg and discuss the good weather.  It was during one such patio gathering with family, the conversation turned to circumcision. Finding out that I was circumcised, the family demanded I show them!  Yep, right at the table. But alas, some things are best left a mystery.    No matter how hectic our day of sightseeing, upon return to our little cottage, hidden behind a green hedge, we pulled off our socks and slipped on sandals and walked to the beach so we could sit with wind song, sigh, open a cold Tuborg and watch sailboats, and cars as colored dots traveling over Faro brogen (Faro Bridge). Street and castle wall on Mon. Lise-Lundslot, Mon.A day trip we had to take several times was along the coast of rolling fields and white-washed churches, through the village of Kalvehave, on the southern tip of Zealand, and over the bridge to the island of Mon.  (The name has a diagonal line through the letter o, from one o’clock to seven o’clock. It is one of three vowels found in the Danish language, and not in English, creating sounds only made by English speakers by sticking out the tongue, to the amusement of many a Dane).  This side trip is comprised of three stages.  The first is a visit to Mon’s KlintMon's klint: Cliffs of Mon.(Cliff), the most dramatic landscape in Denmark, and the highest point in the country.  Standing here with the white cliffs below, the Baltic imitating the Caribbean, sparkling with a lovely turquoise color, I remember a house not far from here, where a woman set her hand on my leg beneath the table.  It changed my marriage.  I was young and hadn’t experienced how that type of deception lays waste everyone involved.  I had not drawn the line in the sand of my life and said I would not cross, no matter how green the grass of a friend’s woman.  Another plus to an excursion to Mon is a visit to Lise-Lundslot.  If ever there was an estate to inspire a fairy tale, it is Lise-Lund.  So apart from the world, it should have its own time zone.  I compare it to the Taj Mahal.  Not for grandeur, but because both were built out of love for a woman. How inspiring to lie on the grass and watch swans and ducks in the pond, and lovers stroll the grounds.  And I think of the girl in the butcher’s shop who packed the picnic lunch for us, so shocked that we would eat Frikededelle (Danish meat balls) without slicing them on bread. Very unDanish, you know. Country road 'self serve' veggie standBy the time we reach Stege, the main town on the island and our 'Put coins in milk container.'final stop, the sun is coloring the clouds with crimson highlights. We sit at a harbor table beside the water and sip white wine while trying to devise a scheme to buy Lise-Lund. But as our glasses become empty we realize that hunger beckons, so we abandon our high finance scheme as folly, and walk to the brewery on the main street for fresh baked bread, home-made salad and soup, and a berry flavored ale that makes me laugh with pleasure. For dessert, pastries equal those of Paris and Vienna can be purchased in either bakery found on the main street, and should not be missed. Castle wall of Stege, MonBuilt with the wealth of a long past Herring industry, this beautiful port A two faced king, really?town, with some of its fortress wall still standing, is a simple jewel.  Shopkeepers lament how Copenhagen takes their children with its schools, pubs and nightlife. They do not listen as I explain with awkward Danish, that Stege itself is a treasure: its peace, charm and simplicity coveted by city dwellers.  Yes, for pilgrims like myself who have traveled for years and been herded through the world’s attractions like Chartres, Chichen Itza, the Pyramids of Giza, the simple, quiet charm of Stege is comfortable and healing. Broken up for building stones. A wonderful surprise we found near our summer house was something very rare.  While on a magical country walk along a winding road bordered with fields, I spied something strange: A rise in the middle of a field, covered with huge boulders.  These rocks were not piled about by nature.  There were standing in a circle and supporting a tremendous slab above them, forming a Stone Age burial chamber, or Dolmen, dating to about 3,500 B.C.  It was a rare experience to sit atop the structure and imagine the burial ceremony taking place. Only about 10% of Danish Dolmen survive today.  Most were used for building supplies.  Even Ornehoj(eagle high), as this Dolmen is called, shows scars from a mason’s drill. I wonder how many of the old stone houses nearby are built with Dolmen fragments. Sausage stand in the square.The final day trip is to Nykobbing, Falster.  On the island of Small square on walking street.Falster and nearly four times the size of Stege at 16,394 inhabitants, Nykobbing is a beautiful, charming old city that Danish royalty used to frequent.  Peter the Great once stayed here as well!  Its walking street is filled with great clothing stores pubs.  We even stumbled across a jazz club and enjoyed a few songs at a sidewalk table, along with a mug of Carlsberg Klassic.  For those of you interested in the middle ages, close to Nykobbing you’ll find the Medieval Centre theme park.  (www.middelaldercentret.dk/engelsk/welcome.html)  Here you and the family can enjoy a medieval town, jousting, dining, etc.  The morning of our last full day we watched a doe and her two foes nibble the dew covered grass beside our house.  One generation was aiding another, strengthening it, teaching it so that the trial to come would be surmountable.        How like parents are memories.

Once Spoken

copyright kevin r. hill
ONCE SPOKEN
Breathe deep, now relax, you can do it.  I brushed my slacks and noticed the ceiling reflected in a polished shoe.  With taunt fingers hooked around each other I bent forward and glanced at my barrowed Rolex. It was about to be show time, and this show had to be just right.The hostess smiled from behind a podium and pulled the microphone to her mouth.  "Raphael, party of three, your table is ready," she said, her voice amplified across the old mission converted to a restaurant.   I heard Liddy’s high heels clicking on Saltillo tiles, smelled her perfume a second before she turned the corner and stepped into view.  Still the same perfume.  I wonder how many men think of her when they smell it.  Now act preoccupied and happy.  Liddy turned the corner and lit up like she was on stage.  She smiled and leaned forward, squinting. "Oh, Tucker, you look so nice."  She scratched the lapel of my blazer, pressed her nails into my hand and kissed me. It means nothing!  You've heard it a thousand times.  Now smile and do the act.I glanced at her cleavage and that body that stopped cars.  Memory betrayed me and swept me back to a hammock on a Caribbean beach, a bottle of tequila, and Liddy contorting above me, sweat mixing a bitter taste with her perfume.  I remembered her hair tossing about in the shower as she clung to the pipe over head.  "Thanks, Liddy, you look beautiful; you always did.  I'll bet every guy in town is chasing you.”"They sure are!  These cowboys, Tucker, they're aggressive," she whispered, sliding close and hugging my arm. "I'll tell you all about it.""Isn't your ... boyfriend coming?" "Oh Tuck', he can't afford this place.  I've wanted to eat here for so long.  Thanks for taking me.  I'm poorer now than we were in Mexico.  Oh."  She pouted like a little girl. Don't be affected.  She does that act for strangers.  You remember. I remembered lying on the bed of our little palapa in Mexico, laughing as she stripped before the window so the neighbor boys could watch."I think we're ready," I told the hostess.  She led us across the quiet dining room.  The fire crackled and made the room glow.  Everything on the table seemed to welcome us: the red linen, the fine silver, the flickering candles.  I pulled Liddy's chair from the table and she sat down, so graceful, so feminine.  But the animal side, you remember.  No, don't think about it!  Go on with the plan.  Smile and be light hearted.  I held the tie against my stomach and sat down. "This is a beautiful place," I said, sweeping the room with my gaze. "It must be the adobe that makes it so warm."Flamenco guitarists crossed the dining room and came to our table.  "It was built in the sixteen hundreds.  Look at the windows," she said with wide eyes, leaning across the table, rubbing a foot on my leg. Pat her leg and ignore it.  Pat it like a brother would pat it."Yeah, you can see how thick the walls are.""All the windows are shaped like a cross.  That's because they used to shoot Indians.  With the shape of the cross they could swing a rifle any direction.  Just think, real wild Indians used to ride right outside."  She moved her leg higher."Liddy." She smiled."Isn't your boyfriend waiting for you?""Ah ha, he trusts me.  I'm a good girl," she said, smiling."Like I trusted you?""Oh Tucker, I'm sorry." She pouted.  "I tried to wait, but a girl's got to get some dicking or she goes crazy."  Back out of it.  Smile and look around the room.  Don't let her think you're affected. I picked up the wine list and ordered a Cote du Rhone for fifty dollars. She withdrew her foot for a moment, and when I felt it return I knew she had removed her shoe.  I smiled and looked around the room.  Liddy tilted her head to one side."That was expensive wine.  Are you sure you can afford this?"I laughed.  "Sure.  But didn't you bring some money with you?""What money?  I'm broke," she said, sitting up straight. "Oh, don't worry; we're going to have the most expensive items on the menu.  Just like old friends should."  That was good.  Keep it like that.  String her along."I'm sorry if I hurt you, Tuck.  I mean with all our plans and stuff.""No Liddy, it didn't mean a thing.  He sure knows how to make that guitar feel, doesn't he?"   I nodded toward the old musician."Neither of us really wanted to get married, did we?"  She picked up my hand."No," I laughed.  "We were just good in bed together and in a strange country.  I guess you cling to someone more in a different country.""Yeah, oh baby, we were good together.  We had so much passion.  I sure love my Butch ... he has such muscle ...and those eyes, oh Tuck, you should see them."Breathe and smile.  Look at the musicians like you're not concentrating on what she's saying.  Just a little longer.She tossed her blonde hair over a shoulder. "But Tucker, he doesn't do me like you used to."  She rocked her water glass and leaned forward.  "I hardly ever get the big one with him," she whispered, digging her foot into my crotch."I think I'll have the lobster.""Are you listening?""We all make choices, Liddy.""I mean only one night, Tuck.""I have someone else now.  She wouldn't like it." Perfect.  Now get through the meal and make the play. We talked about Mexico, about spear-fishing on the reef, and about our parrot.  Greeny learned to imitate Liddy's screams during orgasm.  We laughed about how he would do his wild thing scream when we had friends visiting.  Of course we reminisced about the hurricane, how our house had been destroyed.  I wanted to ask her how she got out of jail without so much as a fine when she was picked up for working without a permit.  But I had my suspicions.  I had partied with the immigration officer who arrested her.  But such is life. We ate slowly and savored each bite.  With desert, a second bottle of wine, liquor and coffee, the bill was well over three hundred dollars.  When it came time to pay I took out my fine billfold and looked over the bill.  A moment latter I sat it on the table with the billfold on top, and excused myself. "I'll be right back.""Never keep a lady waiting," she said, running her gaze up and down my pants.I walked to the toilet.  Just wait until the hostess leaves her station, then hurry. A few minutes passed before the hostess walked away from her podium.  Without looking back into the restaurant, I pushed open that massive front door that had once held attacking Indians out, and got in to my car, pulling off the tie as I started the engine.  She would probably wait about five minutes before opening the billfold and finding the fragment of an old hand written note, the writing of a woman in love, that read: ‘I’ll wait for you, Tucker.’ No, no hard feelings.  Washing dishes would be good for her.  Liddy always found a way out of trouble. As I drove through the mesa, the setting sun casting a beautiful golden hue over boulders and cactus,  I felt free, like I could just drive and drive forever on that road.  And then I thought about the laws that keep us all in order, living together.  When I thought about laws and courts, I realized there should be some sort of justice system for crimes of the heart, because some words once spoken change the course of a person’s life and can’t be so easily released.