Smith's Monthly #10 Read online

  COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

  Smith’s Monthly Issue #10

  All Contents copyright © 2014 Dean Wesley Smith

  Published by WMG Publishing

  Cover and interior design copyright © 2014 WMG Publishing

  Cover art copyright © by Evenaners/Dreamstime.com

  Smashwords Edition

  “Introduction: The Memory of a Really Fun Idea” copyright © 2014 Dean Wesley Smith

  “Skiing the Graveyard of Souls” copyright © 2014 Dean Wesley Smith, cover design copyright © 2014 WMG Publishing, cover illustration by Darolyn/Dreamstime.com

  “Eyes On My Cards” copyright © 2014 Dean Wesley Smith, cover design copyright © 2014 WMG Publishing, cover art by Syda Productions/Dreamstime.com

  The Life and Times of Buffalo Jimmy copyright © 2014 Dean Wesley Smith, cover design copyright © 2014 WMG Publishing, cover art by Searead/Dreamstime.com

  “Bryant Street” copyright © 2014 Dean Wesley Smith, cover design copyright © 2014 WMG Publishing, cover art by Saniphoto/Dreamstime.com

  The Adventures of Hawk copyright © 2014 Dean Wesley Smith, cover design copyright © 2014 WMG Publishing, cover photo by Wisconsinart/Dreamstime.com

  “Captain Bob: The End of the World as We Know It” copyright © 2014 Dean Wesley Smith, cover design copyright © 2014 WMG Publishing, cover art by Lineartistpilot/Dreamstime.com and Nicky Linzey/Dreamstime.com

  “The Songs of Memory” copyright © 2014 Dean Wesley Smith, cover design copyright © 2014 WMG Publishing, cover art by Jorge Enrique Vilalobos Espinosa/Dreamstime.com

  Heaven Painted as a Poker Chip: A Ghost of a Chance novel copyright © 2014 Dean Wesley Smith, cover design copyright © 2014 WMG Publishing, cover art by Adam Vilimek/Dreamstime.com and

  Rolfimages/Dreamstime.com

  Poems: “Plane Crash Lover, and “Jukebox Memories” copyright © 2014 Dean Wesley Smith, header design copyright © 2014 WMG Publishing, header illustration by Mariagrazia Orlandini/Dreamstime.com

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in the fiction in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

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  Full Table of Contents

  About the Author

  Copyright Information

  Introduction

  THE MEMORY OF A REALLY FUN IDEA

  IN WHAT SEEMS like a land far, far away and long, long ago, I wrote a novel I really liked. I wrote it in the writing method and style that I would eventually adopt to write well over a hundred other novels along the way.

  The novel was my fourth written novel ever. The year was 1987. The place was my small apartment in Eugene, Oregon.

  My first two written novels had been lost in a fire two years before. My third written novel, started in 1986 and finished in early 1987 became my first published novel, Laying the Music To Rest.

  But the fourth novel never saw the light of day. I ran into some confidence problems with it among other things (like making the mistake of having a workshop look at it).

  I wrote the novel on an electric typewriter and never had a computer file for it. As I lost confidence in the book, I put the original draft of the novel and a few other copies of the manuscript into a box and tossed it in storage.

  And that’s where that book still sits, never to come to the light of day.

  That book was called Heaven Painted as a Condominium.

  As the decades went past, my memory of the book turned the sour experience into a good one, and my memory, never good in the best of times, remembered the book fondly, but not in detail.

  In other words, I remembered the basic idea for the book but nothing more past the opening few chapters.

  So this last month, I finally decided to bring the idea back. That happened one evening as I was starting to doze off for a quick nap in a chair in our living room. Suddenly the idea of the Heaven Painted book came roaring back and smashed into another world and I knew I had a brand new series.

  The Ghost of a Chance series.

  I sprang from the chair, which at my age is something to behold, and made notes, and then a few days later I started writing the book.

  That book, Heaven Painted as a Poker Chip, is in this issue. I’m very happy with it. It is nothing at all like the first one (or my memory of the first one) from 1987. I never bothered to even try to find that old manuscript. (Honestly, not really sure where it’s at.)

  So a memory of a very old, unpublished book triggered the writing of this book twenty-seven years later.

  So with this relook at the past, I decided to find another turning point story for me. That story is called “Bryant Street” and I sold it way back in the late 1980s to a small magazine called 2 A.M. Magazine. It was published in 1990, but I wrote the story years before that. I doubt more than a few hundred people saw the story the first time out. If that many.

  Early on I wrote a lot of stories set in homes along Bryant Street. I still do. I’ve had one or two “Bryant Street” stories in this magazine so far. At one point, since I have a degree in architecture, I designed the entire subdivision around Bryant Street and just started down the street writing stories. The Garden Lounge, where my Jukebox stories are set, is at one end of Bryant Street.

  Most of those early Bryant Street stories were also lost in the fire. But because the story “Bryant Street” was out in submission to a magazine at the time, I didn’t lose it. A copy of the story came back to me.

  So since I had brought the Heaven Painted idea to the present, wrote it fresh, and gave it a new life, I figured this would be a good issue to put “Bryant Street” in. Sort of an old home week of story ideas.

  Then, in a continuing effort to pull back from extinction a few other fun and old stories, I have included a really silly and somewhat goofy story about Captain Bob. That story was first published in a very, very tiny regional sf magazine called Sirius Visions. I think exactly twelve people saw it on first publication.

  Also in this issue, I am including a Jukebox story that I published in the small paperback and electronic stand-alone form. The subscribers to my short stories saw it, but not many others. The reason that I am including “The Songs of Memory” is that the story is the start of the linking stories between the Jukebox world and the Thunder Mountain series.

  I hope in the next few months to write a few more linking stories and the first jukebox novel, so I wanted to get this story back into awareness, at least in my own mind.

  There are five stories total in this issue, plus the full novel, plus the two serials and some poems. As with every issue, I’m proud of these stories and novels.

  Ten issues down and still going strong. And I’m still having fun, which is the most important thing for me.

  I hope you enjoy the stories and the brand new novel, the first of a brand new series.

  And thank you all for the support. It means a great deal to me.

  Dean Wesley Smith

  June 8, 2014

  Lincoln City, Oregon

  I used to waterski early in the morning when the surface of the lake seemed like a mirror. Looking down into the water as the boat pulled me across the calm waters, all I could see was a reflection of myself flashing over the surface.

  But to me, there always seemed to be something beyond, behind, deeper than just my own reflection. Those moments cutting over the water felt magical.

  So years later, remembering those times, I wrote this story about Benny, who needed something special in his life, who needed to do something special with his life.

&n
bsp; Benny’s father found the magic before he died. Could Benny stand to face his own life, his own reflection, as he skied?

  Or would his own soul join the graveyard flashing past below him? That’s a question we all face at one point or another.

  ONE

  “HIT IT!” THE vagrant stood near the front entrance shouted to nothing in particular, then went back to staring out the window at the city spread out below the Penthouse Bar.

  His words brought a faint ripple of a memory, but I ignored it and glanced over at my only two “real” customers, a guy about thirty and a younger-looking blonde with, from what I could tell, a real driver’s license saying she was twenty-four. They huddled over their strawberry daiquiris and talked in lovers’ whispers. Nothing short of this twenty-story building tipping over was going to bother them.

  The bar had everything, from plush dark-leather seats in all the booths, the tables, and on the couches to one side of the small dance floor. Dark oak bar and pillars accented everything else with a tan carpet that helped ground the place along with the indirect lights tucked along the walls and in panels in the low ceiling. And around three sides of the room there was more glass looking out over the city than I could ever imagine trying to wash.

  The huge room’s lights were kept low everywhere except the center circular bar so that customers could enjoy the fantastic view of Boise spread out below them. That’s why everything was dark wood and leather, to not distract from the view. I didn’t much notice the view anymore. But everyone who came in from the elevators sure did.

  The room could hold two hundred people, but at this late hour on a Tuesday night, there were only the two lovers, the vagrant, and me on the entire top floor high over the city.

  The vagrant stood, moved over closer to the window and eased himself down into the ten-person booth. Behind him was a wall that divided the big room from the back area and restrooms. It was covered with autographed pictures of famous stars who had visited the hotel.

  Somehow it felt odd to have him sitting there. How he had gotten past the hotel security I would never know.

  I studied him while he stared out over the lights.

  His hands looked red, stained by the cold night air. He wore a rolled up blue stocking cap, a dark blue, naval-style coat, and shin-high mud-waders over the tops of the cuffs of his pants.

  He kept his eyes averted as if not looking at me would keep me from throwing him back out into the cold.

  Maybe it would. I didn’t much care at this point. I had slowly come to hate this job, the snobby college kids who thought this place was their own world, and the businessmen and women who didn’t even notice the “help” as I was called.

  One more person snapped their fingers at me and I would be gone. There had to be more to making a living than dealing with these people.

  I went back to restocking the beer and pretended to ignore him.

  He kept gazing out the window and didn’t say another word.

  Twenty minutes later I had finished all the stocking and was cleaning the well when he decided to break his silence. He stood and moved closer to the bar.

  “You ever water ski?” he asked without taking his gaze away from the city, standing with the side of his head in my direction. His voice was hard and deep, but his words were clear over the soft, background music.

  I wiped off my hands and studied the strands of brown hair jutting from the side of his stocking cap. “Sure.”

  “Ever single ski?”

  “Sure. My dad taught me.”

  He nodded, but still didn’t turn around to actually look at me directly.

  I glanced out over the city with all its lights sparkling in the cold winter air. I couldn’t see anything in particular he was staring at.

  Why the hell was this guy talking about water skiing in the middle of February? Maybe thinking of warm things was one of the ways he kept himself warm.

  More likely he was completely nuts.

  “You ever ski early in the morning,” he asked, “right after sunrise, when the water is glassy smooth, undisturbed by wind and the waves of boats? So smooth that you can see your own reflection?”

  The memory of those mornings flooded back.

  I could feel the rope pulling me through the crisp morning air.

  Back and forth, back and forth, my cuts across the waveless surface so effortless it felt like flying. The difference between water and sky a line I crossed at will.

  I had skied those early morning runs many times.

  Every year, on the last day of our week long vacation to Driscoll Head Lake, Dad would wake me up real early. It would be barely light and the dew would still be on the pines and the path down to the dock. I always complained.

  Then he’d fire up the boat, toss me the rope and life jacket, and in a few quick minutes I would be out on the lake making wide, deep slashes across the mirror-like water.

  Then I’d remember why Dad loved it so much.

  Every year Dad let me go first and we’d go north up the lake. I always skied hard, at times my shoulder almost skimmed the surface. Then I’d take Dad on a long run down the lake to water I hadn’t disturbed.

  He’d make his long, lazy swings behind the boat and I’d watch him smile like I never saw him do any other time.

  Looking back now, I think Dad put up with Mother’s constant bitching about vacationing in the same place every year because he wanted to make that one run. Maybe making that one run was what kept him going during those long graveyard shifts at the plant.

  The summer of his last year, when he was so sick, he wanted me to take someone up to the lake and make that early morning run for him.

  And for me.

  He said I should do it every year. It would give my life balance.

  I had promised him I would. But I never had.

  Not once.

  I had always been too busy.

  But I still remembered the silence of those early morning runs, the feeling of something so special that a crazy vagrant’s question triggered ten-year-old memories at two a.m. in a smoky lounge.

  I shook my head to clear it as the vagrant slowly turned and moved the few steps to the bar.

  His face was as red and weather-beaten as his hands, but his eyes were deep blue and as clear as any spring water.

  He stuck out his hand. “My name’s Craig. Edward Craig.”

  I took his rough hand and tried to match his strong grip. “Ben Hodges. Benny to everyone here.”

  The vagrant nodded and seemed to laugh. “It’s nice meeting someone who knows. Would you like to make a run? I’ll steer for you if you’ll steer for me.”

  This guy was totally nuts. Of that I had no doubt. I was suddenly very annoyed at myself for not calling security and getting him out of here when I had the chance.

  “I’d love to,” I said. “But I don’t have a boat and it’s February.” I shrugged and gave him my best bartender “You’re-out-of-luck-so-go-the-fuck-away” look.

  The vagrant smiled and for a moment I thought he might laugh out loud. His gaze held me and I could tell he wasn’t laughing at me, more enjoying the moment with a deep understanding, like a parent watching a child open presents on Christmas morning.

  “Look at this city,” he said, waving his hand at the windows. “Imagine it as a lake. During the daylight hours it’s choppy with human activity. Rough. Hard to stay on the surface. But in the late-night hours everyone is asleep and the souls of the world are smooth like a surface of lake at sunrise. Wouldn’t you like to ski that?”

  He looked at me as if I should understand his ravings. Hell, I wouldn’t know what he was talking about if he stuck it up in neon.

  I glanced out at the city and then back at him. My favorite time was between two and six in the morning. No one around, no waiting in lines, no stupid drivers, no loud noises.

  But I had no idea what he meant by skiing it.

  “So just how do we go about doing that?”

  Again the vagra
nt smiled as if explaining an obvious answer to a child. And after a bitch of a long, slow night bartending, I didn’t much feel like being treated as a child.

  “Benny,” the vagrant said. “If you simply stood on a water ski, you would sink. Correct?”

  “Of course. If a jetliner stops in midair, it falls. I know the physics involved with lift. What’s that got to do with skiing on a city?”

  “Right now,” the vagrant said, indicating the bar around him. “You and I are stopped. We are, for lack of a better way of putting it, dead in the water. We can’t even see the surface. But it’s there.”

  “Yeah, so?” I said. For some reason this guy had me so irritated, I wanted nothing more than to show him how stupid he was being. “And what kind of boat floats on this surface of yours? And what kind of engine are we going to use?”

  This time he actually laughed. “We don’t need much of a boat to ski among the souls. In fact, this stool will do nicely.” He dropped onto the bar stool, adjusted himself, and continued.

  “For power we use the mind and the force of change. But as with flying, it is the movement that is important. Remember that. The movement is the critical part. Now, are you ready?”

  “For what?”

  “Why, to take the first run. I’ll steer for you and then you steer for me. What will it hurt to try?”

  Now I was beyond irritated and starting to get damn mad. “This is nuts, you know that? And your scam isn’t going to work. You’re not going to get a free drink just by spouting a wild story about skiing.”

  The vagrant’s smile disappeared and his eyes dimmed, as if he had aged ten years in a fraction of a second. He shook his head slowly. “He said you wouldn’t believe.”

  “Believe what, for God’s sake?”

  He shrugged, the coat draping like a huge weight over his shoulders. “It doesn’t matter. Your father warned me—”