Another few paragraphs from my book in progress "Dryland".

At age 13, Albert, against the will of his family, took a job cleaning the "Blue Lantern", a saloon owned and operated by Tiger Lil - Miss Lillian Van Antwerp, a Dutch woman, who knew how to present her 350 plus pounds in a manner adaptable in any situation.  At church on Sunday morning she was a commanding personality, directing the attention of all those around her toward the pulpit and insisting that all savored each word of the sermon, as she did for the full hour.  It was at church that Albert first met Miss Lillian and at church where she offered him the job.  Those same 350 pounds on any other day of the week were not as commanding but turned the heads of many a male patron of the Blue Lantern around 10pm after the beer had flowed freely for the better part of a Monday night.  Those same commanding Sunday pounds turned to flowing graceful pulchritude 6 nights a week.

For as many years as he could remember, each Sunday, at noon when the sermon had ended and all the men gathered outside the church to light pipes and cigars and discuss business, and the ladies had time to gather in groups for gossip, Tiger Lil met with the men and had her pipe of tobacco and exercised her right as a downtown merchant to complain - to complain as did the others about the weather, about which ever member of the group had the ill fortune to be absent that Sunday.  And as she moved from different groups of three and four she made a point to pinch Albert's cheek and compliment his behavior and mention what a handsome man he would be someday.  With that attention a friendship grew and young Albert swept and mopped the worn and abused floor of the Blue Lantern early in the mornings before school for his friend Tiger Lil.

One Saturday morning in late October as Albert sauntered through the sleeping village on his way to work he engaged himself in conversation discussing the ill fortune that he had endured as a result of his station in life, or, at least the way her perceived it.  He paused and stood on the board walk in front of the mercantile and pondered the possibilities had he been born to the Tolley family as had his friend Percival, the son of Winslow Tolley, the local banker.  Percy wanted for nothing - what he wanted he got. 

Albert remembered with pain the shiny new Barlow pocket knife that was on display in the front window of the mercantile; the knife that he had dreamed of owning, hoping that it may show up at Christmas that year.  It did, but not as a gift at the Van Dyke's house - Percy got it.  Percy got it and Albert, try, as he might, could not talk Percy out of it as he had other things that lost their new luster after a few days and Percy grew tired of them.  Albert thought of the magnifying glass that Percy brought from his father's office.  Percy showed him how his father used the glass to look closely at some bank notes to determine whether of not they were genuine. 

Albert and Percy exhausted the afternoon one lazy July day playing with the looking glass.  They examined eyes, noses, grass, bugs, and an Indian Head penny with the looking glass.  Finally Percy tired of the play and left for home leaving the glass with Albert to finish out the day as he chose, to use the glass or not.  Albert put the glass in his pocket forgetting for the moment that he had it as he walked home.  At home, Albert sat on the back porch and looked to the west where the sun was sinking lower in the sky. Albert pulled the looking glass from his pocket and used it to examine a scratch on the top of his left hand. 

As he looked at his hand he noticed that if the glass were at a certain angle and distance from his hand that he felt a certain amount of discomfort from the heat of the sun magnified on hand.  If he held the glass at just the right distance so that just a pinpoint of light was concentrated on his hand a small curl of smoke rose from his skin with pain that he could barely endure.  With his new discovery, Albert turned his attention to the ants that scurried past on the porch.  If he was fast enough he could follow the ants with the concentrated sunlight, disable them from the heat and finally burn them with the point of light.  He did this several more times.  Finally he was caught up in the power that he exercised over life - even if it was just the life of an ant, and was confused by the idea that he was even entertaining that thought. 

The thought that there was sanctity in all life and that even as the ants had fallen to his hand there may be a hand greater that would cause him to meet the same fate.  As imaginative and creative as Albert's mind was, he could not have imagined that some 90 years later warfare would be conducted from above with the pinpoint precision that Albert had exacted from his looking glass on the ants.  He was intuitive, however, and was shaken by a stomach-wrenching premonition that he did not understand.   He put the looking glass in his pocket.  He would return it to Percival tomorrow.

© Terry Sutherland

Sans Peur

Terry