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As he entered the flow of traffic streaming around Omaha, Dr. Dale Martin was not in a hurry. Soft jazz floated through the beige cabin of his Toyota Camry, and the air through the dashboard vents was cool and clean-smelling. He wore prescription sunglasses, a crisp white business shirt, and casual khaki trousers. His jacket rode behind him on a hanger. The mid-afternoon sun flickered through the trees on his right, and Dale hummed along with a tenor sax on the radio. His tires on the road were a brush-like percussion.

The car ahead of him rolled smoothly into a line of commuter traffic.

Sandy was in that car.

With him. With Ernie the fleabag.

Dale turned up the AC and let his mind drift.

In Meadows Ford, when he was seventeen, and a month or so after Sandy dumped him for the fleabag with his red Mustang, Dale had followed them just like this. He’d been a little obsessed, not with the girl or the guy who took her away, but with finding some sort of closure. Boy loves girl. Boy loses girl. Then what? Boy wins girl back? Boy loses her for good? The story sat uncomfortably with him, open-ended, unfinished.

It’s not like he was crazy.

After tailing Ernie for an hour, Dale had stopped his dad’s Corolla and got a soda at a local quickie mart. When he came out, his rival was waiting, the Mustang perpendicular to Dale’s front bumper, a blue Charger blocking him in from behind. It turned out Ernie had friends, and Sandy was nowhere in sight.

Everybody in school knew you didn’t mess around with the fleabag. He hurt people; he hurt girls just for fun. Dale had been a fool. He’d gone out of his way to ask for an ass-kicking, and now he was going to get it. The bigger boy pushed away from the Corolla and casually plucked the soda bottle from Dale’s hand. A couple thugs got out of the blue muscle car.

“How’d you know I was thirsty?” said Ernie, but instead of taking a drink he turned and emptied the bottle onto the hood of Dale’s car. “Why you following us around, man?”

“It’s about my girlfriend,” said Dale.

“What girl?”

Dale told him. And the fleabag laughed and laughed.

“That’s what this is about?” He smiled again. “Give our boy here a beer.”

One of the thugs threw Dale a can of Old Milwaukee.

Boy loves girl. Boy loses girl.

Boy tracks down rival, finds out rival has been dumped in turn, commiserates with rival and rival’s friends during the course of a six pack.

No more loose ends.

Except that the fleabag had lied.

When they drove away, Sandy popped up from the back seat, laughing and giving him the finger.

He hadn’t thought about it for a long time.

Until he hooked up with her on one of the social networking sites. She lived in the city now too, so he started having coffee at a shop in her neighborhood.

Today he’d seen her, but again she was with him. And in the Mustang, refurbished, shining like new, but this time she was driving, and the fleabag was in the passenger seat.

The Mustang pulled off the freeway so abruptly, Dale almost missed the exit. He unbuttoned his collar and caught sight of a scarlet flash darting into a stretch of shady suburbs. He doubted Sandy had seen him.

What would he do if she stopped?

Just drive right on by, he told himself, knowing he would not.

Always keeping the Mustang just in sight, he drove along for miles, the houses becoming sporadic, then non-existent. They were well into farm country when she stopped at an intersection. There wasn’t another car for miles. He pulled in behind her and got out of the car, just in time to see Sandy leap from the Mustang.

“Dale!” she yelled, running to him. “Oh, thank God, Dale, it’s you!” She was crying, hysterical. Was that blood on her arm?

“He’s right behind us. He’s coming.”

“Who? Who is right behind us? What’s wrong?”

“Ernie,” she said, wiping her forehead.

“Isn’t he in the car with you?”

“Take this,” she said, pressing a hot slab of iron into his hand. He looked down at a .45 automatic. “He’s coming. I’ll call for help.” She fiddled with her cell phone and moved back toward Dale’s car.

He could’ve sworn the fleabag was in the Mustang. He turned and examined the unbroken horizon. No dust, no cars for miles.

“I don’t think—”

And then she was in his car, starting it, driving it, aiming it straight down the road past him, laughing and giving him the finger.

Dale walked to the Mustang and looked in the open window.

The fleabag was in the back seat, having taken two through the chest at close range.

Dale looked at the gun in his hand and heard flies buzzing around the bloody mess.

Somewhere Sandy was listening to smooth jazz in his Camry, the air cool and clean-smelling through the dashboard vents. She’d be calling 911 on her cell phone, letting the authorities know where he was.

He didn’t think she’d be in a hurry.

Listen to “Fool Me Twice” in the audiobook two-pack DOUBLE SHOT OF BLUES.

The day before Christmas, and I woke up to a chainsaw alarm clock.  

A local service was pruning the ornamental pear trees in front of my Ozark City record shop even as they hacked away at my early morning slumber. I live in the apartment above Spalding’s Groove, and usually it’s quiet, except for a few weeks during the height of the summer tourist season. 

Six-thirty in the morning, 34 degrees with a winter storm watch, you’d maybe expect some solitude. 

But no.

“They’ve got you working early,” I told the living doughnut vault who leaned against the front of my building, the dim streetlights not hiding my irritation. Rousted out of a bed by the noise, I skipped my shower, swallowed a cup of coffee and dressed in layers to go out. Jeans, flannel shirt, sweatshirt, leather jacket and the dark blue stocking cap that Marti says makes me look like a thug. 

Weighing in at 210 during the holidays, and standing 6’2”, I tried to look especially thuggish to Joe, the portly tree man. He was dressed in khaki coveralls, work boots and a heavy down-filled windbreaker with fluorescent yellow stripes that matched the reflective stickers on his hard hat. The badge there read “See Saw Tree Service.”

Other than the rumbling diesel engine on the bucket truck and the chainsaw revving away above us, the dark street was lifeless and covered with a light film of frozen precipitation that wasn’t quite frost but looked slick enough to be careful on my morning errands.

Joe casually popped the last nugget of a fat, powdered cake donut into his mouth. “Gotta get this done by Christmas, Mr. Spalding.” he said, watching his pal in the bucket above us who chopped and sliced away at the leafless tree’s top branches, a jerky silhouette in the rig’s bright spotlights.  “Dan, was it?”

Despite the sugar, Joe’s breath smelled of onions.

“Yeah,” I confirmed. “Dan Spalding. I own the store here.”

“Not that it feels like Christmas without some snow. I like a white Christmas,” said Joe.

“You’re cutting it awfully close,” I said.

“You an expert on ornamental pear trees?” said Joe. “I guess I don’t tell you how to sell records. Don’t tell me how to trim a tree,” 

I stepped back as a light limb popped away, its dozens of tiny offshoots catching the air to parachute the burden to earth.  It landed on the sidewalk, only inches away from the building, broken twigs snapping up to scratch the tall display windows, shadow lines like fractures in the glass.  

“I meant you’re cutting it close for time,” I said.

Joe shrugged. 

What are ya gonna do?

The six ornamental pear trees had been installed along my street by the city a couple years before. Rooted to earth in open squares of sidewalk, each one was bedded down with enough cedar mulch to cover a parking lot. In the spring they made me sneeze, and in winter, they woke me up when their friends came over for a pruning party.

“Didn’t you guys do a bunch of work down here in November?” I said.

“We work twelve months out of the year,” said Joe.

“I’m just wondering why you didn’t do these pear trees then?”

“I just follow orders,” said Joe. He pulled a cellophane package from his coat pocket and unwrapped the final donut. 

He pushed the empty plastic back into his pocket and zipped it shut.

“Anyway, we’ll be done by noon or thereafter,” said Joe.

“I open at ten,” I told him.

“Won’t bother us, none,” he assured me. “We’ll be down the street a ways by then. You got stuff to do, you go do it.”

Which was such an obvious dismissal, I stubbornly shoved my hands in my pockets and stayed beside him.

Above us, the chainsaw sputtered and died.

“Out of gas,” came a voice from the truck. “Shoulda checked before we started.”

Joe’s weary sigh carried the weight of the world, which wasn’t a whole lot more than he carried already. He made his way to the driver’s side of the truck with big careful strides, as if on snowshoes. “Slick as a wet hen out here,” he said, pulling one of three levers that were mounted just behind the truck’s cabin.

Above us, the bucket with its lights and chainsaw operator swung toward the street in response to Joe’s control, then fell slowly down to street level. 

“You wanna get the gas yourself, Brian?”

Under the street light, Brian carried the saw away from the bucket and through a puddle of pink luminescence. 

He was taller than Joe. Taller than me, but with the mass of a broomstick. The decorative pear tree had limbs bigger around than Brian’s.

He was older than me too, with a scruffy gray beard that fell in ringlets from the edge of his chin, like strands of twine. 

In one ear was a plastic gauge that looked like a LEGO™ wheel, and an unlit cigarette drooped from his tired lips. 

“You get filled up, let’s take a break for coffee,” said Joe.

Brian grunted his approval and walked to the rear of the truck.

“You got something to do, you go ahead,” Joe told me again.

I watched him turn back to the truck where he opened the driver’s side door. “Union rules,” he said. “Gotta take a break whether we want to or not.”

He climbed up and situated himself behind the steering wheel.

I looked at the tree, assessing the damage done.

Other than the branch I saw come down, Brian hadn’t accomplished much. For all the racket they’d made, only a few small branches decorated the sidewalk. 

Not being an expert on ornamental pear trees, I couldn’t see what more needed to be done, but as had been confirmed earlier that morning, I’m no expert.

Inside the store, I unzipped my jacket and tossed my cap on the counter next to the cash register before snapping on my desk lamp. On the other side of the glass, Joe and Brian warmed up inside the tree service truck.

Might as well get on with the day.

Looking at my to-do list, it all seemed manageable.

Wrap up a couple record boxes. Take them to the post office.

Stop past the bank.

I glanced at the old vinyl case full of 8-track tapes sitting beside the window. 

Trade fodder from a kid who’d been in earlier in the week.

I had to deal with those tapes.

Maybe make that a priority, I told myself, but decided I needed a cup of Mrs. Thapa’s Himalayan coffee first.

I zipped my coat back up and went back outside, making sure the door locked behind me.

Joe waved as I walked past the truck and made my way past the open alley between our buildings and up the sidewalk to Thapa’s Kitchen.

Once inside, the heady smell of warm Gurung bread and rich lentil pan cakes made me almost feel more at home than I had next door. She had the radio tuned to a local jazz station, and Vince Guaraldi was playing one of my favorites.

“Morning, Dan,” said Mrs. Thapa, already dressed in her red apron, with the sleeves of her white cotton blouse rolled to the elbows. “Sit down, sit down.”

I took the first booth on one side of the restaurant under a miniature tear drop chandelier and ordered thick strong coffee flavored with a shot of honey.

“To go,” I said.

“Nothing to eat?” said my hostess.

“Too early,” I said. “I’ll stop in later.”

As I waited, the radio jockey reminded us that the local ice skating rink promised a white Christmas—guaranteed—to the lucky winner of their yuletide contest. I imagined some beleaguered suburban father out there in Ozark City-land, waking up Christmas morning to the sound of a jolly diesel-powered civil servant complete with Santa Claus hat dropping an avalanche of chopped ice onto his lawn because his kid’s name was picked from the radio station’s virtual hat.

I wished that poor guy my best.

Outside, the chainsaw roared back to life. 

Mrs. Thapa brought my coffee in a tall paper cup with a cardboard sleeve and plastic lid. “Such a noise,” she said.

“They’ll be done soon,” I said, walking with her to the cash register.

“Almost as bad as your rock and roll,” she said with a mischievous smile. 

“I’ll bring over that Megadeth record you ordered this afternoon.”

“Oh, you goof,” She smiled. “You’re always teasing.”

And then came some real noise. 

A crack and a smash and the sound of shattered glass. I flinched, and Mrs. Thapa came around the counter, waving me away with my coffee.

“Go see, go see,” she said. “Pay later.”

“If those frickin’ idiots have put a limb through my display window,” I began.

Of course they had.

The combination of light and shadows from street lights, truck lights and the orange pink band at the horizon made the spectacle of a tree limb reaching through my store window like the tentacle of some great wooden squid, almost elegant.

Joe leaned over the jagged threshold, inspecting the damage, while Brian stood close to the truck, the dormant chainsaw hanging from his fingers like a broken appendage. 

“What the hell, guys?” 

The limb had three prominent forks which reduced down to a few dozen smaller branches and sprouts. Two of the arms had plunged into the front of the building, taking out the first of the three adjoining windows, the fresh cut stump laying across the sidewalk, perpendicular to the building.

Already something didn’t look right.

“Oh, uh, hey. Yeah,” said Joe, rubbing the back of his neck so that his hardhat fell down to the bridge of his nose. “Our bad, Mr. Spalding.”

“Our bad?” I strode past Joe to the shattered pain, held my arms out to demonstrate the enormity of their bad. “Our bad? That’s all you’ve got to say?” I took a sip of coffee to clear the mad from my throat. 

It didn’t help.

“There’s a tree in the front of my store!”

“Don’t…uh, worry,” said Joe, backing toward the truck. “We’re bonded. Insured, I mean. It was an accident.”

“I hope it was an accident,” I said, moving along the length of the branch.

It didn’t look like an accident.

For one thing, the bucket hadn’t moved since I’d stepped inside Mrs. Thapa’s. Add to that Brian’s presence beside the truck. 

I decided to get in his face. Or maybe the kick of Himalayan caffeine wouldn’t let me do anything else.

“Question for you, Joe. What were you pruning down here? Recalling, of course, that I’m no expert.”

“That was my call,” said Brian. “I thought that side looked dangerously close to your store.”

“Did it?” I looked back and forth from the store to the tree. “Glory be, if you don’t have a good eye there, Brian. Because you know what? It’s sure as hell dangerously close to my store now.”

“We sorta lost control of it,” said Joe.

“Yeah,” said Brian. “That’s what happened.”

I gulped some more coffee and turned my back on the men. Looked at the space where the tree had fallen in. 

How much would a new window cost?

Fallen in?

I gave the limb a second look. And a third. 

Then I looked at the pear tree, figuring angles in my head, judging distances.

I’m pretty good at judging distances. 

See, before running the record store, I was an investigator for the State Highway Patrol. Used to work a lot of accident sites on wide open expanses of road. Got pretty good at things like angles and distances.

The front of the store was open to the elements, so I walked over and looked inside at my desk. One stray branch had tipped over my lamp. Another had pushed my legal pad to the floor.

There was the old, brown torn vinyl case full of 8-track cartridges.

With one difference.

Being careful not to cut myself on the jagged edges along the sill, I leaned way inside to be sure. 

One tape was missing.

It had been an orange cartridge with a hand-made label listing some familiar hit songs.

Back in the late ‘70s, you could buy blank 8-tracks just like blank cassettes. They weren’t as plentiful as their more compact relation, but custom tapes showed up in collections on occasion.

The kid who brought the tapes in yesterday said they had belonged to his dad.

When I examined the tapes the night before, the orange one had been especially interesting.

But not for what was on it.

I took another slug from my coffee cup, then reached in and set it on my desk.

I turned around and looked at Joe.

The pocket that had been empty except for an empty donut wrapper, was now full of something, and it was zipped shut.

I hitched up my belt and hooked a thumb next to my concealed holster. I wasn’t ready to pull a firearm on Joe based on my suspicions, but it didn’t hurt to send him a message.  

Joe didn’t get it.

“I promise we’ll make this right, Mr. Spalding,” he said, walking toward the sidewalk. “Like I said, we’re insured and everything.”

“You want to tell me what this is all about, Joe?” I gave him my best flat-eyed look and put a sense of command in my tone. “What it’s really all about?”

This time he got it.

And turning, bolted down the alley way.

“Joe!”

Next thing I knew, I was laying spread-eagle on the sidewalk, eating cement. If I didn’t bite clean through my lower lip, I might as well have. My mouth was awash in blood and the back of my neck felt like it’d been hit with a dump truck.

Or a chainsaw.

I rolled over onto my back and saw Brian running around the back of the truck, assault saw still in hand.

“Damn it,” I said. I really hated being hit from behind.

Especially when I should’ve known better. Should’ve guessed they’d be in on the heist together.

“Heist,” I said to myself as I crawled up to my hands and knees, then pulled myself to my feet. “The Great 8-track Cartridge Christmas Heist.”

Nope. Just didn’t have a ring to it.

I walked into the alley where Joe had run, and heard a clanging sound from the rear of the building.

Fire escape.

I followed the noise at a jog.

Rounding the back of my building, I saw my blue garbage dumpster, emptied the morning before, my bolt-locked back door, and my old Dodge van parked near the door.

Joe was on the old iron lattice work fire escape, slogging his way up the steps, two flights from the roof top.

What kind of idiot would go up?

“Coming after you, Joe,” I called, but if he heard me, he didn’t show it. His entire focus seemed to be on getting up the stairs.

I pounded after him, two steps at a time.

He made it to the roof just before I did and had time to shuffle his way across the level lumpy tarred surface to the front of the building.

“Brian!” He called out between gasps for air. “Brian! Catch it, man.”

Red-faced, panting, hardly able to stand, he leaned against the waist high brick edifice edging and jerked at his pocket zipper.

Ah-ha! Maybe not such an idiot after all. 

He got me to chase him up on the roof, now he could throw his ill-gotten gain back down to his buddy who could scurry off and leisurely disappear in the downtown before I could even get back down the steps.

But for Joe, one stuck zipper stood between success and failure.

He pulled at his pocket with increasing frustration.

I pulled my compact Glock semi-automatic from its belt holster.

Desperate and panting, Joe ripped the zipper of his windbreaker open with a grunt and the bright orange cartridge fell out onto the roof.

He bent, picked it up, and called again for Brian.

“Drop it, Joe,” I said, showing him the gun.

He forced a chuckle through the heavy breathing. “You gonna shoot me for a worthless 8-track tape?”

“No. I’m gonna shoot you for what’s inside the tape. Tell me about the heroin, Joe. Is it yours? Was that your kid that brought the tapes in yesterday? Guess he didn’t know about your stash?”

“You got no clue,” said Joe, clutching the tape in trembling fingers. 

I took a step and waited.

“This job. Me and Brian. Working trees. You know how dangerous that is?”

Once he started talking, Joe couldn’t stop.

“You know what kind of toll that takes on a guy?” he said. “Especially somebody Brian’s age? The wrenched back and bunged up joints? Smashed fingers? The pain, Spalding. The chronic pain.” 

“There’s legal pain medication—” 

“There’s not,” said Joe. “There’s prescription. And if the script ends, there’s nothing.” He held up the cartridge, “Nothing except this.”

And I knew what he meant.

After the kid left the tapes, I gave them the once over. Eleven of the dozen tapes were of no commercial value. Number twelve was something else. Held together with transparent tape, the shell clicked apart easily enough to reveal its contents. 

Three plastic packets of high-grade heroin.

But not for Joe.

“You’re right that Brian’s kid didn’t know. Don’t blame him.” Joe slumped against the brick ledge. “Let my friend have the dope, Spalding. Let him live pain-free for a while. Is that such a bad thing?”

“It’s not the answer,” I said. “I’ve seen what that stuff does to people. I was planning to turn it in to an associate later today.”

“An associate?” Joe laughed. “That’s right. I heard you was a cop once. Don’t you mean you’re planning to turn Brian in? That’s what you meant, isn’t it? Turn in my friend? Hell, he’s the victim here. Not you.”

If Joe dropped the tape into Brian’s waiting hands, there was no way I’d catch up with the guy. I had no solid evidence of any wrong-doing, and I’d sound like a crackpot to anybody willing to listen. 

Then there’d be no way to help Brian at all.

“I promised my buddy a white Christmas,” said Joe. “Get it? A guaranteed white Christmas. Just like that radio contest.”

“Joe.” I motioned with the gun. “We can get Brian some help. Some closure. We do this your way, it just perpetuates his misery.”

Joe looked down at his hands.

“To hell with you,” he said and pitched the cartridge high over the edge. 

“Catch it, Brian!”

For a split second, the spinning orange cartridge was suspended in mid-air. Like a clay pigeon.

In the Patrol they make you go in every so often and qualify with your firearm at the range. It’s a test they make you take to prove you’re proficient with your weapon. I got high marks.

Every single time.

I pulled the trigger and the cartridge with its contents exploded in a puffy white cloud.

“No guarantees, Joe.”

It wasn’t the gift Brian wanted for Christmas when he and Joe had planned the raid on Spalding’s Groove.

But with the drug samples and plastic shards I’d collect from the sidewalk, I hoped it was one that Brian could eventually live with.

Professor Chester Clowes, Ph.D., MA, BS, two-time recipient of the Morgan County Arts Association Modern Painting and Chili Soup cook-off competition and the university’s most promising candidate for tenure in 1962 leaned against his desk and, clicking away at his compact camera, caught the reactions of his students to his latest work.

Such meager minds as they possessed would never grasp the scope of his art game.

Without glancing at the modest five by five canvas only just unveiled on the easel behind him, he put the camera down and answered the question leveled at him by the pert blonde in the front row.

“Why yes, dear. My painting does indeed depict a murder.” 

“It’s a typewriter,” said a plump specimen in blue cardigan who sat in the back, her eyes like saucers of milk.

“And it’s bashing somebody’s brains in,” finished Clowes. “Does that disturb you? Does it make you feel squeamish? Anybody?” He reached for the camera, scanning the tribe of doughy boys and leggy girls and wondered which of the female litter he’d go home with tonight. “Anybody?”

Silence. 

Typical, bourgeoisie silence. 

As must’ve met Manzoni’s 90 tin cans of excrement or Duchamp’s Fountain.

He scratched at his pompadour and, wiping his fingers on his corduroy slacks, sighed.

“Qwerty Murdyis your essay topic for the weekend,” he said. “Just as Brush Stroke and Plaster Pairs were last time.”

The most asinine of your writing to be publicly ridiculed on Monday.

He didn’t say that last out loud.

As the class filed out past his desk, Clowes noticed an older man in a rumpled suit limp forward from the rear of the classroom. When they were alone, the crumbling relic introduced himself. 

“Detective Grant,” he said. “Like to ask you about your work.”

“If you mean my paintings—”

Grant nodded. “The paintings.”

“It’s a game,” said Clowes. “An art game I play with the students. Presenting them with horrific depictions of violence, I collect their simplistic reactions on film. These candid photos,” he said, patting his trusty camera, “are the true works of art.”

“I’ve got some pictures too,” said Grant, reaching into his suitcoat, tossing three glossy prints to the desk.

Clowes took in the stark images.

The redhead he’d bedded in February at the bottom of a bathtub, her naked arms and legs encased in heavy plaster. The blonde from two weeks ago, a paintbrush protruding from her bosom.  The skinny brunette from last Tuesday, her skull mashed beneath a heavy old Smith-Corona. 

Living representations of his three art game paintings in black and white.

Though not living at all. 

Not anymore.

“You’re not accusing me?” said Clowes, giving way to what Kierkegaard surely would’ve labeled the heat of an existential moment.

“We’ve got greasy fingerprints from all three scenes,” said Grant. “Hair gel.” He picked up the camera and examined the loops and whorls there. “Yeah. I’m accusing you.”

“My God, man. I would never….” Clowes’ words trailed off as his mind tumbled through a series of free-verse that didn’t make sense even to him.

Still holding the camera, Grant waved an age speckled hand at Qwerty-Murdyon its wooden pedestal.

“You’re no Vermeer, that’s for sure.” Grant smiled. “’Course he worked from life. Not, er, death.”

“Vermeer?” Clowes felt the perspiration drill up through his pores, his internal thermostat dropping into an icy abyss. He wasn’t able to work his jaw, couldn’t seem to close his gaping mouth.

Grant tilted back his hat. “Used to be a painter myself,” he said. “Before I got into theater.”

“Theater?”

“Yup.” Holding the camera in both hands, he pointed it at Clowes and snapped off four quick shots. “Theater.”

Speechless, Clowes turned to the door as the redhead, the brunette, and the blonde from the glossy photos came toward him. 

But they weren’t ghosts.

“Thanks, Uncle Ray,” said the blonde, kissing the old man on the cheek. 

“You’re alive?” Clowes stumbled backwards.

The redhead picked up the photo of herself in the bathtub. 

“Surely this didn’t disturb you, Professor?” She looked at the others. “Anybody?”

Grant gave his niece a squeeze before handing her the camera. “Get that film developed,” he said. “And get me some copies of those last three. They ought to get a lot of laughs down at the playhouse.”

“I don’t understand,” said Clowes.

“You wouldn’t,” said Grant. “It’s probably a little too sophisticated for you. But don’t fret, Chet. It’s just a game.”

It was a dark and stormy night. 

Inside his flooded cabin at River’s Edge, up to his cadaverous ribs in a swirling brown tide, Ezra Baas struggled to keep a round mahogany picture frame pressed to his drenched, woolen shirt. 

He pushed toward the open door.

The sorrowful wail of water-logged timbers filled his ears as his home gave way to the onslaught of rain. Lightning lit the ravaged interior. Ezra dared glance over his shoulder.

Except for shirt, tattered pants, and the Sears, Roebuck frame clutched in his fingers—all was lost.

All he’d ever had, and all his sainted mother had brought from the old Dutch country, across the ocean, and across half a continent to the West.

Fine dining chairs of hand-hewn oak circled in Ezra’s wake, struck with rigor, legs pointing skyward in death. 

Loose pasteboard photos floated past on a skin of debris, lost in a stinking foam of churning river water. 

The old mantel clock, washed from its perch.

A spinning wheel, listing like a ship to starboard.

Too much to save.

Ezra had waited too long, sure that the rain would stop. 

Confident the mad river of 1908 would recede.

He stayed awake watching, but fell asleep.

He woke half-drowned.

And reached for the most important thing in the house. 

The mail-order frame his mother called “The Mahogany Lily” with its protective glass and spun wire hanger.

Hung above her bed, it was the first thing the sun lit every morning, the last thing she saw each night.

Her eyes held the Lily even in death, her final words making Ezra promise to keep the piece always in the family.

He swore he would.

With renewed vigor, he thrashed against the tide, rocks and nails and who-knows-what slicing into the soles of his feet. 

After an endless trek, he fell against a cottonwood south of the place, clinging to the tree with both arms, the treasured frame pushed tight between bark and wool shirt.

Exhausted, he felt pinned like Jesus on the cross.

But he’d saved The Mahogany Lily.

Salvation came with the morning sun and a patch of muddy red clay at the base of the tree.

The waters were receding, and Ezra retrieved the beloved picture frame from the ground beside him. 

It was none the worse for wear.

 “It’s too bad about the little drawing inside,” he said aloud.

Though it was nothing, really.

Just an old, old drawing mother used as a placeholder in books and finally stuck in the frame as something to show off.

“A drawing of Mary and Martha,” she once told him. “Done by somebody one of our cousins knew in the old country. Somebody named Remberson or Rembrandt. Something like that.”

Ezra peeled the tattered strips of paper from the glass and balled them up into a soggy wad.

He tossed the wad at a bird.

Mary and Martha didn’t matter.

He had saved The Mahogany Lily.