The Kanc

A short story

by

Steven R. Porter
Smashwords Edition





The Kanc Copyright © 2012 Steven R. Porter. All rights reserved. Written and produced in the United States of America. No part of this story may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without permission of the author.

Works written by Steven R. Porter can be obtained either through the author’s official website: http://www.stevenporter.com or through select, online book retailers. 

Cover design by Dawn M. Porter.
The Kanc

By Steven R. Porter

The Kancamagus Highway is one of the most scenic and breathtaking byways in all of North America, stretching through the heart of New Hampshire’s majestic White Mountain National Forest, and obediently delivering its tourist-laden contents into the kitschy ski resorts around bustling North Conway. The twisting, snaking road built upon the well-worn footpaths of natives long since displaced, scampers around and through the unpredictable rolling hills, valleys and stately mountains, and can be a challenge for any unprepared or inexperienced motorist. In the fall, the leaf-peepers, highlighted by garrisons of old entitled women in floppy hats accompanied by their slow, overweight husbands, clog the popular artery, dodging the occasional exasperated deer or moose, to absorb the fragrance, crisp color and beauty honored, worshipped and revered by generations.
But in the blink of an eye, the vibrant leaves along the grand highway fall at the command of Mother Nature’s steely sabre, and a dutiful and harsh cold marches in, seemingly overnight, to replace the scenic picture book tranquility. Like the original native residents, the local citizens have learned to honor the authority of The Kanc, or otherwise risk becoming its victim, as The Kanc serves as not only the pathway of a great spirited forest bathed in majestic beauty, but it is also a sentinel, hunched down in silence, waiting to strike at those who convey it dishonor. The vindictive mountain blizzards are not too far behind, and always arrive too soon with an astonishing fury, as Dr. Jekyll begets Mr. Hyde, and the highway’s twists and turns become lathered with thick, white snow and glazed with unforgiving patches of black ice that thrust out and terrorize the discourteous like a jab from the point of an ancient sachem's favorite hunting spear.
The visibility along The Kanc was poor from the moment Rick and Annie turned off the interstate and drove east late that afternoon. The combination of rain and raw air had created a bluish, hazy fog. And as it was prone to do during the early winter months, the precipitation was mutating into a heavy, wet snow, sticky and reminiscent of Annie’s own holiday garlic-mashed potatoes, covering the car's wiper blades in two thick, white starchy columns. The thirty mile drive through these mountains during any winter storm was unwise, but during an irate nor’easter, it was flat out foolish. The arrogant Rick Waldron held the steering wheel of his old, restored Dodge Dart at an instructor-perfect 10 and 2 o’clock posture, white-knuckled, peering through his glasses at the winding, white, wiggling, vanishing highway ahead of him.
“You’re not listening to me, are you? I said we should turn back. We ought to go home, now. This is stupid.” Annie grumbled from the Dart’s threadbare passenger’s seat – the only part of the car Rick had not restored. “We’re going to kill ourselves out here… and we don’t even know how to ski.”
Rick sulked and squeezed the wheel harder. Blue veins popped like angry worms from the back of his pudgy, liver-spotted hands.
"This ski vacation is the first respectable gift that insolent daughter of yours has ever given us. I’ve endured forty years of ugly neckties and brown leather wallets waiting for this. I, for one, intend to enjoy it whether you want me to or not. So if you don’t want to go with me, you can get out and walk.” 
“Oh, poor you. Poor old Rick! How is it you’re always the victim? What about Lizzie? You should consider yourself lucky we got anything from Lizzie at all, considering the way you act around her. Why won’t you just accept her the way she is and leave her alone?” Annie asked, folding her arms in a harrumph of disgust. 
Rick squinted into the mushy darkness ahead of him as the car suddenly fishtailed, and Annie’s arms flailed over her head, knocking her floppy hat into the backseat, exposing a disorganized nest of unkempt, thin gray hair. 
“Slow down!” Annie barked, fanning herself. “You’re going to kill us both!”
“I treat our daughter the way she has always deserved to be treated. She’s impudent, slovenly and rotten to her core and you know it.”
“So what is so wrong with her? You blame her all the time. Everything was always her fault, never yours, wasn’t it? Maybe if you had been around a little more often and spent more time with her while she was growing up, she would buy you better presents. This trip was a stupid idea --stupid, stupid, stupid. What is the point?”
“And who is ungrateful now? Besides, you can ski all you want to, but the joke's on both of you. I don’t plan to leave the hotel room. Three days lying in bed watching television sounds like a great vacation to me. To hell with all that running around in the snow… you won’t catch me out there in this weather!”
“Your plan is to risk our lives so you can lie around in your boxers? Why come all the way out here and do that! That’s all you do at home anyway.”
A great, wide, and seemingly lifeless oak tree, its bark split and knotty, exhibiting the wear of over three hundred years of survival in the harsh climate, appeared to hop out of the woodland and take a position in the middle of Rick and Annie’s path. The tree’s long, rugged branches stretched out toward them like arms, one with a fist full of potato-thick snow, prepared to hurl at them at any time, another looking as if it clutched a tomahawk in its spindly, leafless, finger-like branches. Rick’s old and frayed nerves had just enough zip left in them to elude a direct collision, and he swerved. Annie screamed as the front bumper of the old Dodge skidded through globs of freezing slush, skipping the terrified couple and their little Dart back into the middle of the narrow, two-lane highway.
“Oh, my God! Rick! We are never going to make it!”
Rick’s eyes were wide and his craggy old heart was hopping. Without hesitation, he eased the gas pedal down and the car continued on its way.
“Just shut the hell up, Annie! I haven’t seen another car since we got on this road. The way this snow is coming down, if we pull over now, we’ll be buried for sure.” Rick was perspiring, and he ground his teeth, determined not to admit defeat to Annie or the elements. “There’s nothing to worry about.”
“Did you see the size of that tree? It had to be five feet wide. We could be dead right now and it would be your fault you stupid, stubborn old goat!”
“Annie, you overreact to everything. Everything is my fault, isn’t it? I have this under complete control. Our daughter turns out to be a roaring ass, throws away two perfectly good husbands, and it’s my fault. It starts to snow and it’s my fault. You drink too much and they take away your license and it’s my fault.”
Annie cocked her head sideways without releasing her vice-like grip on the door handle. 
“If you had driven me to the mall like you were supposed to, I would never have been behind the wheel that night.”
“And what about the second time? What about that, huh? Why did I have to embarrass myself in front of the Chief and pick you up at the police barracks, drunk as a stinking skunk? I suppose that was my fault, too?”
“You were supposed to be home by five. You told me five o’clock, sharp.”
“You’re the only old woman in New England who can get herself arrested for DUI on her way TO a bar.”
“Don’t patronize me, Rick, please. You were late because you were trying to get in the pants of that fat woman in the mailroom. What was her name, Peggy or something? She smells like day old fish, and you know she lost that finger on her right hand in a bar fight, don't you? What a laugh. That’s the best you can do? Like she wanted anything to do with a heartless, dirty old man like you…. Oh my God, did you see that!?”
What little color remained in Annie’s pale, wrinkled face had melted away. She struggled to tuck her knees up under her chin.
“What! What is it? I don’t see anything!” Rick squinted and stared into the blizzard. He tried to squint through the dense, white darkness, but saw nothing other than more wind-driven snow.
“It was that big oak tree, Rick. The one you almost hit a few minutes ago. We just passed by it again.”
“What? Oh please, spare me more of your drama.”
“I’m telling you, it was the exact same tree. I recognized it.”
“Here’s a newsflash, Mrs. Audubon. There are lots of trees in this poor excuse for a forest. They all look alike. And they all look like, well…trees.”
“I’m telling you, it was the exact same one you almost hit back there. Why won’t you listen to me?”
“Listen to you, how could I not? You never stop babbling on about some fool thing or other. And how would you know it was the same tree? When was the last time you did anything that didn’t involve drinking or sitting on our sofa? You haven’t been outdoors in fifteen years. I’m surprised you would know what an oak tree looks like anyway…unless there was a picture on the back of that bottle of cream liqueur you're always nipping at.”
“Rick, will you shut up and turn around? We must be going the wrong way.”
“There’s only one highway that runs west to east into North Conway and I have been moving straight-on east the whole time. There aren’t even any side streets. How the hell could I take a wrong turn?”
“I don’t know, but we need to stop and find someone and ask directions.”
“Who do you think we are going to ask? Frosty the Snowman? I know.., maybe there will be a nice, friendly Indian chief in an igloo around the next bend. Maybe I can swap you for a bag of beads. It’s dark, it’s night time, and we’re in the middle of a big blizzard and I can't do anything about it. So just sit back and shut up.”
Rick sashayed the steering wheel and leaned forward. The back of the car wiggled and skidded every few yards, as the snow had become even thicker and the visibility was blacker and more suffocating. It was obvious no other vehicle had traveled on the road in quite some time as there were no tire tracks to follow, and as the snow piled higher, the unfortunate Dart had to function as its own snowplow. For some reason, the car seemed determined to continue to drag the couple up the slippery, winding mountain road.
“So why do you think Lizzie gave us this vacation, anyway, after all these years of treating us like garbage?” Rick inquired. “Most years our anniversary would come and go with barely a phone call. Then this year, out of the clear blue sky, she sends us on an all-expenses paid weekend at a fancy New Hampshire ski resort. It’s not like her.”
“It’s not as if you would have noticed that she loves us.” Annie rebutted, her tone indicating she didn’t believe the very words coming from her lips.
“Loves us? What a laugh. I think she’s trying to kill us.” Rick quipped, still searching for a clear view through his sloppy windshield. And then he crumpled his brow. “Wait a doggone minute, she didn’t buy this trip for us, did she? I’ll bet you bought this trip! You did this. This is your idea!”
“Pay for a trip like this on the money you make? What a laugh! I couldn’t buy a pack of gum on what’s in our checking account. No, Rick I did not pay for this trip.” Annie answered with complete confidence. “Lizzie paid for it. It’s just that she doesn’t know it.”
“What are you saying? You stole money from our daughter to go on a vacation?”
“She wrote me a check. I told her I really needed the money. I told her we were behind on our mortgage payments…”
“Ah, so that’s it! That property of ours is the only thing we have and it's worth half a million dollars. She knows that if we lose the house, she loses her inheritance... she would lose everything. That greedy little witch has been waiting for us to drop dead for years. So you used her own greed against her to pay for this getaway. You tricked her!”
“No, I just cashed in a little bit of her inheritance for our own sake, and for her sake. That’s all. For her own good. I supposed that if you thought she liked us more than she does, you wouldn’t be so hard on her. It would be a positive thing for all of us.”
“So you stole her money for her own good? How pathetic! You might want to check the proof on that bottle of ripple under the front seat.”
“So if you are so offended by all this, let’s turn around now and go home. You can call Lizzie, tell her the whole story and give her all the money back.”
“Are you kidding? Not on your life! She owes us this vacation.”	
“So how did I know you would say that? And why should she go out of her way to do anything special for us? Growing up, you missed most of her birthdays, never once showed up at a school play. She would cry herself to sleep, night after night after night.”
“And what about you, Annie? Where were you the night she graduated from high school? Passed out and slumped over a barstool somewhere?”
“You know I was sick that night.”
“The doctor called it a hangover.”
“You always turn this around and put it on me. You drive me to drink.”
The Dart had reached the crest of a large hill, but since Rick was distracted by the bickering, he didn’t realize where he was, and as he flattened the gas pedal to push through another snow pile, the car accelerated and was sent spinning. Both Rick and Annie shrieked as they pirouetted down the road coming to rest sideways across both lanes at the bottom of the hill next to a road sign marking the Swift River. Rick’s heart was beating a mile a minute and Annie cupped her shaking hand over her mouth as if she was preparing to vomit.
“Oh, Rick, please! Let’s just stay here and wait for help!”
Rick struggled to catch his breath. A sense of terror was creeping into the tone of his voice. “We haven’t passed another car in an hour. It wouldn’t surprise me if they closed the highway until the storm is over, the way this snow is coming down now. We might not see anyone else for hours. We can’t just stay out here. We’ll freeze to death. We need to keep moving.”
“Oh dear Lord, Rick, “Look!”
Rick rolled down his window, reached out, and wiped a tiny hole in the snow crusted windshield and peered through. Above them it looked to be that same rugged, old oak tree again, its branches reaching out across the road like before, except this time weighted with heavier snow, its arms arched down closer to the car’s roof, as if it was trying to snatch them up.
“It can’t be! I know what you’re going to say, but it’s impossible. It’s just not possible. It is not the same oak tree. We passed it a long while ago, many miles back.”
Rick slammed the gas and the tires spun sending a chunky spray of snow high into the air, and they headed up the next treacherous hill as adrenaline and terror tore through them both. The vicious driving conditions had become impossible. The storm was defeating them. The Dart battled valiantly, and continued its final crawl to the peak of the next hill, and around the next sharp corner. By now there was no longer a hole in the snow on the windshield for Rick to see through. And as the car reached the hill's apex, Rick jumped on the brake and the car bounded to the bottom, this time crashing through a guardrail and coming to rest in a deep snow-filled gully several feet off of the The Kanc, out of sight, at the foot of an old, sprawling oak tree.
------
Trooper John Whittier had been studying the accident scene for over two hours. A family passing through on their way to North Conway for their own ski vacation had seen the rear bumper of a Dodge Dart protruding from the melting snow and had called the State Police. Whittier estimated that the car could have been buried for over a month–as several consecutive heavy storms had slammed the mountains one after another, and one deposited several inches of frozen rain along the top of it all, creating a concrete, icy tomb three feet thick. The heavy ice had also snapped several of the weaker branches from the nearby oak tree, dropping them over the top of the pile, poking into the snow like wooden grave markers, further cloaking the horrific scene from passersby. It wasn’t until the last couple of days that an unexpected warming trend swept through the valley causing enough snow and ice to melt and expose the restored chrome bumper of Rick and Annie’s Dodge Dart.
Whittier greeted Mr. Robert Pike from the New Hampshire coroner’s office. The two old friends stood together in the narrow, wet breakdown lane of the slushy Kancamagus Highway warming themselves in the unseasonable sunshine, as a current of cars, nearly all with skis strapped to their roofs, zipped past.
“How are you, Bobby? It’s been a while.”
“I’ve been good," Pike said extending a gray woolly mitten to shake hands. “I am already sick of this awful run of bad weather, though. I'm ready to move down South. I hate the cold. But it was a beautiful drive up here today, I have to admit. They don’t let me out of the city much anymore. What a gorgeous day this has turned out to be. Maybe I should come up here more often.”
Pike was a heavy set man who wore a wrinkled tan suit under his overstuffed parka stained from multiple dribbles of coffee. He surveyed the accident scene and wrinkled his nose. He was gripped by an odd sense of déjà vu.
“A couple of years ago… we had a fatality along this same strip of road, I recall.” Pike said, trying to glue the pieces of his memory together. "I see so many wrecks, they start to run together sometimes."
“Yea, we sure did. Right here, same spot.” Whittier answered. “The victim that day had an outstanding warrant on him, and a trunk full of stolen weapons. It was early spring, and the road washed out on him during a thawing flood which hydroplaned him into this very same gully. He was impaled by a branch from that tree -- grisly scene. That’s why the transportation department came out here and installed that guardrail. Looks like it didn’t do much good for these poor folks.”
“Now I remember it." Pike said, rubbing the stubble on the side of his cheek. "But every stretch of this highway looks like every other stretch, and with all this snow, how can you be sure the spot is the same?” 
“It’s this tree.” Whittier explained, pointing to the big, old, foreboding oak that rose overhead. He placed his hands on his hips and looked up at the tree with wonder. “The local arborists and historians have it tagged. They consider this oak to be the oldest tree in the White Mountain National Forest, or at least the oldest they have found out here so far. They think it could be over three hundred and fifty years old. Old enough that maybe old Chief Kancamagus planted the acorn himself.”
Pike didn’t look impressed, and checked his watch as if he was bored, or late for some critical appointment. “I've never had any appreciation for history."
"Kancamagus was the great native leader they named this highway after," Pike said. "Not a lot has been written about him through the years, but he is known to have been a cunning, beloved and vengeful leader. He and his warriors led a bold raid on an English settlement, brutally massacring dozens of settlers after being double-crossed. He was never captured."
"It's all the same to me. So who do we have in the car this time? Bank robbers? International spies?”
“No, not much of a mystery here. About a month ago, we received a missing persons report from an Elizabeth Waldron who was trying to locate her elderly parents, Rick and Annie. She thought they might have tried to traverse the highway and come up here in that big blizzard. We've had an eye out for them both but no one had seen them. I called her a while ago to let her know what we had found.”
“Poor girl, she must have been devastated.”
“No.., I’d say elated would be a better way to describe her reaction.”
“Well that’s odd.”
“It is. But there’s a lot odd about this case. Come here and take a look inside.”
“Oh come on now," Pike said with disdain, cinching up his baggy trousers. "I’ve seen about everything there is to see, Johnny, in my twenty-two years in the coroner’s office. I doubt there’s anything unusual here. I could probably write my report before I even look in that car. I am guessing the victims died of blunt-force trauma as a result of the collision, or they were huddled together trying to stay warm when they froze to death. Am I right? Am I right?”
The slushy snow came up over the top of Pike’s ankles when he looked through the door, and the cold surging into his shoes caused him to hop up and clench his teeth. Pike peered into the open door of the Dart, glanced right, then left, then right again.
“OK, Johnny, you are right, you got a point. This is looking pretty strange." Pike rubbed his cheek with his mitten once more. "They are frozen in place, that’s for sure, but they look like they are… ”
“… arguing?”
“Yes, exactly. How peculiar. Never seen anything like it. Their mouths and eyes are wide open. And I know they are frozen and have been here for a month, but the old lady looks much better preserved than the old man does.”
“Hmm, good point.”
“Do you have any idea why they were up here in a blizzard in the first place?” 
Whittier held up Annie’s purple handbag and pulled out some papers. An uncomfortable look of bewilderment and concern waved through his face as he unfolded them. He handed them to Pike.
“They had weekend reservations at a place called The Cocheco Resort Hotel in North Conway.”
“Sounds nice. A second honeymoon, maybe?” 
“Who knows what they were up to…but as far as I can tell, there is no such place as the Cocheco Resort Hotel.”
"What do you mean no such place? Did they go out of business?"
"No, I mean it doesn't exist, or has never existed, in the state as far as I can tell. I've never heard of it, and I can't find any record of it. I have them looking into it back at the station."
“Sounds like someone ripped-off the poor old couple. What a world we live in...you can't trust anybody anymore. Well if they really were swindled, they’re not going to complain now."
“I guess you've got a point there, Bobby. But that’s not all that’s eating at me. Remember that other accident here last spring? The one we were just talking about? 
"The guy with those stolen guns?"
"During our investigation of that incident, we learned the victim was an inner city kid who stole those weapons from a drug dealer in Boston, and was in a hurry to get them north to Montreal to sell them to his connection there. There was no reason for him to be driving The Kanc that day. Why take a right turn and head out here into this strange forest, especially in the driving rain? What compelled him? What called to him? Something drew him out here that day, Bobby, something or someone that we were never able to determine."
"Why don't you ask your friend, the tree. He seems to see everything."
----------
In his mortal life, the great Kancamagus, leader of the Pennacook and grandson of Passaconaway, was equally cunning and vengeful. Double-crossed by the English, his tribal lands stolen, his leaders imprisoned, and his family persecuted, Kancamagus was destined to become the most ruthless and feared of the native New England leaders. Driven into the great wood of the north beyond Lake Winnipesauke, evading the ruthless English militias at every turn, Kancamagus rallied the spirit of his people and unleashed his rage upon the contemptible. 
For in the courage of Kancamagus there was reprisal for he would cross out those who practice deceit, and that guttural spirit remains woven into the essence of the ancient forest along the beautiful yet treacherous highway that bears his name. Behind each oak, maple or mountain pine, one can still sense the essence of he and his loyal Penacook warriors and allies -- the Saco and the Abenaki--as they wait, silently, patiently crouched, prepared and ready when needed to strike out against injustice, to avenge the honor of their peoples and their desecrated lands.
For his spirit, in these woods, remains.
Author's Note: 
In real life, Major Richard Waldron (b. 1615) was an early, affluent New England Puritan who settled in the northern part of Massachusetts, in what is now New Hampshire. He and his wife Ann resided in Cocheco (often spelled Concheco) near what is now present day Dover. He and his wife had several children, including a daughter, Elizabeth. 
As a magistrate and powerful political leader, Waldron was respected and feared, and has been described as both forceful and ambitious. In 1662, Waldron imposed a particularly cruel sentence upon three Quaker women accused of witchcraft for proselytizing. The women were tied behind a cart, bare to the waist, and ordered to march through eleven townships where they would be whipped at each one. When the women reached Salisbury, the third town of the eleven, the punishment was forcibly halted. Salisbury was under the control of Major Robert Pike, an advocate of religious freedom who was horrified by their treatment, and ordered the women to be released. The profound cruelty of the incident was immortalized in the John Greenleaf Whittier poem, "How The Women Went From Dover."

The tale is one of an evil time,
When souls were fettered and thought was crime,
And heresy's whisper above its breath
Meant shameful scourging and bonds and death!

But Waldron's brutality wasn't reserved for Quakers and witches alone. In 1676, as the leader of the New Hampshire militia, Waldron was assigned the task of gathering up Indian fugitives who had escaped north at the end of King Philip's War. Many of the fugitives had settled with the local, peaceful Penacook tribe, and Waldron was determined to root them out, as the English considered harboring fugitives an act of war. But rather than attack, Waldron created a ruse and invited the tribe to participate in a "friendly" war game. Once the Indians had discharged all their weapons, Waldron's men surrounded them. The fugitives were then separated from the local tribe and sent away where they were either hanged or sold into slavery. The local Penacook never forgot or forgave Waldron for this treachery.
Thirteen years later, under the command of Chief Kancamagus, the Penacook extracted their revenge at what is now known as The Cocheco Massacre. In retaliation for a series of cruel injustices imposed upon the natives by Sir Edmund Andros, Governor of the Dominion of New England, Kancamagus sent Indian squaws to each of the Cocheco garrisons to ask for shelter for the night, which was granted, as it was a routine request. From inside, the squaws were then able to unlock the garrison doors, letting in the warriors and leaving the community defenseless. In the attack, several homesteads were burned and over 50 settlers were either killed or captured, including Waldron himself, now elderly, who met a cruel and perhaps appropriate demise. After being tortured for some time, the warriors took turns slashing Waldron's chest with their knives, one by one, "crossing out" their accounts with him. Weak from the abuse and loss of blood, Waldron died when his attackers forced his helpless body to fall upon his own sword.
Kancamagus' attack was executed perfectly, but as expected, he and his warriors were then branded as dangerous fugitives themselves. From 1689-1692, several English militias attempted to engage and capture them, and all failed, as the Penacook warriors and their allies continued their attacks on area settlements. It wasn't until the English successfully captured Kancamagus' family in a surprise assault on his camp on the Androscoggin River that he was forced to make peace. Once reunited with his family, Kancamagus disappeared to live out his days in the forests of northern New England and was never heard from -- in human form -- again.

"WARSONG OF KANCAMAGUS"
by Mary H. Wheeler

(JUNE, 1689)
At the old fort in Pennacook
The Indian sachems met,
An insult had been given
Which no red man could forget.

Sir Edmund had attacked their friend
And plundered without law,
And in the solemn council
Each voice had been for war.

Ignoring former treaties,
Which their allies ne'er sustained
Of slight, and fraud, and falsehood,
And unfairness, they complained.

Their mutual accusations
Made a list both dark and long;
And each could well of insult tell,
And individual wrong.
The council had declared for war,

And formal invitation
Had been to all the warriors given,
According to their station.
And now in circles seated,

With the chiefs and braves within,
The stern-faced red men waited
For the war-dance to begin.
Then up rose Kancamagus,

And ferocious was his air;
High up he swung his hatchet,
And his brawny arm was bare;
The eagle's feather trembled

In his scalp-lock as he sang,
And far across the Merrimack
The Indian's war-song rang.
"War! War! Lift up the hatchet!

ring scalping knife and gun,
And give no rest to foot or breast
Till warfare is begun!
Look where the braves are gathered

Like the clouds before a flood!
And Kancamagus' tomahawk
Is all athirst for blood!
My fathers fought the Tarratines,

And the Mohawks fierce and strong,
And ever on the war-path
Their whoop was loud and long.
And Kancamagus' daring,

And feats of vengeance bold,
Among the Amariscoggins
Have been full often told.
Will the warrior's arm be weaker,

And will his courage fail,
When in grounds well known he shall strike for his own,
And his people's foe assail?
Will the son of Nanamocomuck

Stand trembling, like a squaw,
When the sagamores around him
Are all hungering for war?
War! War! The foe are sleeping,

And the scent of blood is sweet,
And the woods about Cocheco
Await the warrior's feet!
From silent ambush stealing,

We will capture, slay and burn,
Till those plundering, cheating English
Shall the red man's vengeance learn!
Their chiefs about Piscataqua

Refused my proffered hand;
The bad whites at Cocheco
By treachery took our band,
They have treated us like reptiles,

But the red man's day is nigh:
On Kancamagus' wigwam pole
Their bloody scalps may dry!
I am eager as the hunter

When the fleet deer is in sight,
And the arrows in my quiver
 Are all trembling for the flight!
War! War! Lift up the hatchet!

Bring the scalping-knife and gun!
The shade of Nanamocomuck
Shall glory in his son!

ENDNOTES

Beals Jr., Charles Edward, Passaconaway in the White Mountains. (Boston: Richard G. Badger Publisher, 1916) Chapter IV.

Benner, Dana, "Kanacmagus led Pennacook uprisings against English encroachment"" Nashua Telegraph, July 11, 2010.

Wheeler, Mary H., "Warsong of Kancamagus" Granite Monthly Vol. III (Concord: John McClintock Publisher, 1880) 263.

Whittier, John Greenleaf, The Complete Poetical Works of John Greenleaf Whittier (Boston: Houghton Mifflin and Company, 1884)437.

Wikipedia Contributors, "Richard Waldron" Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Waldron (accessed December 2011)

Wikipedia Contributors, "Dover, New Hampshire" Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dover_New_Hampshire (accessed December 2011)

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by Steven R. Porter



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The notorious underworld gangs of South Boston are gone, but loyal men still meet to glorify them in the backrooms of the raucous neighborhood pubs. So when Riley Lynch, a shy, bright and likable Irish-Catholic kid from Southie is accepted to a prestigious college in New York, his proud family and their old connections rally to support him. But in doing so, they inadvertently expose disturbing secrets from his family's past that cause Riley to question everything he was raised to believe. And it is only through the passion of a pure and innocent heart that he and those he loves can be rescued from his family's dark legacy, and from the control of a rising, new and ambitious mob kingpin.
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PROLOGUE


There are 1,225 inmates in the overcrowded maximum security wing of the cold, gray Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center, representing 1,225 tales of terror, woe, heartbreak and dread; tales of wrongful arrest, mistaken identity, legal incompetence, misunderstanding, and morality tales of misdirected revenge.
There are also 1,225 tear-jerking sagas from the 1,225 mothers of those inmates who swear their boys were all good boys, altar boys, friendly, smart and full of life –- all with loving friends and caring families. And each with a set of clueless neighbors who make tired statements to reporters like, “he seemed like such a nice boy” or “I never thought he would have done such a thing –- there must be some mistake.”
This is the story of the 1,225th inmate -- a likable and friendly fellow named Riley Lynch who drove his sedan over the head of a notorious underworld kingpin squishing it like a vandalized Halloween pumpkin, killing him stone dead, and who then felt mighty good about it.

CHAPTER ONE


Riley Lynch awoke to the shuffling of a little girl's sensible patent leather shoes along the gritty sidewalk outside his second floor apartment window. At first annoyed by the interruption of the first good sleep he had enjoyed in a year, he smiled and a warm wave of contentment enveloped him. Other children were gathering outside his window, too, tittering and chattering, no doubt waiting for the arrival of the morning school bus.
Riley's roommate, Mikeé, was not as sentimental. Also rustled by the noise, he groaned, rolled over, and muttered unintelligible obscenities to himself.
Riley had just enjoyed his first night outside of Massachusetts's maximum security Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center, or SBCC. His unexpected release caught everyone by surprise -- he had been sentenced to 35 years to life for the murder of a business associate and didn't even have a parole hearing listed on the prison docket. He was hustled to the prison administrative offices late in the afternoon, told to sign some papers, and was whisked out the prison's rear gate in a private car before he had a chance to absorb what was happening. It wasn't until last evening when he checked into the room with Mikeé at St. Peter's Center (sort of a halfway house to house recent parolees waiting for a permanent residence) that the veracity of his unexpected freedom began to sink in.
The colder than normal November air gushed into the room when he opened the dirty window to watch the kids at the bus stop. The air, rich with car exhaust and a bitter urban dust, filled his mouth and lungs with purpose, and he welcomed the frosty twinge deep in his chest. There were a few surprise snow flurries in the air as one of those cruel Alberta clipper cold fronts was pushing through New England, reminding everyone of the harsh winter that was assembling its legions just over the western horizon. The kids didn't seem to be bothered by the cold air or biting wind one bit, and wrestled through it like a litter of cavorting puppies. All their moms huddled together clutching Styrofoam coffee cups, each one wrapped and bundled with more vigor than the next, and had they brought along their Sherpa guides, they would have been prepared to survive any Himalayan expedition. They hopped up and down together like players in a choreographed amateur community ballet. To the moms' relief and gratitude no doubt, a yellow bus appeared and approached them from the corner.
"What the hell are you doin'? Close the damn window! I am freezing to death over here," Mikeé exclaimed.
"Oh stop your whining, this is a glorious day. A great day to be alive."
Mikeé Evans was a beast of a man, over six and a half feet tall and appeared to many to also be six and a half feet wide. He made the cheap cot he spent the night sleeping on look like it belonged stashed away in a little girl's doll house. The sight of the top of his big, bald, black head protruding from beneath the epic mound of his snow white blanket created a frightening sight, as if a coroner had thrown a body blanket over a dead giant. A stranger might find it hard to believe there was just one person inside the mound. Riley and Mikeé had become good friends as part of the morning kitchen crew in the prison cafeteria. They were both clever enough to figure out on their own that volunteering for the unpopular, pre-sunrise work shift in the kitchen meant they had access to the prison's food supply when it was still fresh off the supply trucks, offering a chance to enjoy the not so spoiled parts, and before the first shift guards took all the blueberry muffins. It was by sheer coincidence that they were paroled and assigned to St. Peter's at the same time.
"Come on and get up, Mikeé... I smell breakfast and we're not cooking."
"Oh that does smell somethin' sweet now, don't it?"
Never known to be late for any meal, Mikeé glided downstairs first, and joined a rag tag collection of a dozen other recent parolees for breakfast in a community room that served as the St. Peter' Center's place to watch TV, play cards and enjoy a meal. A large, new, widescreen HD-TV sat in the corner and babbled on about traffic, stocks and the unseasonably cold weather. Mrs. Cavanaugh was St. Peter's house mother and program supervisor, a spry elderly woman in her mid seventies so full of energy she outpaced women half her age. Her "boys" (as she preferred to call them) huddled around a breakfast table too small for half of them, and the sight of the arrival of Mikeé and his girth caused a collective groan. Mikeé took his seat between two of them, and with one purposeful deep breath, spread his elbows, and moved all twelve men at the same time. Mikeé's sheer size, giant white teeth, bulging white eyes, and ear to ear grin, were the only things preventing a fresh, new murder.
Mikeé enjoyed an evil chuckle, "Heh... heh... heh."
"Oh, my," Mrs. Cavanaugh said, "what a big boy you are!" And from behind, Mrs. C put her head on Mikeé's shoulder and gave him a wide, creepy bear hug. Her pale, wrinkled arms didn't reach all the way around him. Mikeé's back stiffened and he scrunched-up his face. He endured an eerie feeling of discomfort as her hands slid down his thick arms and massaged his biceps. The tone of his chuckle had changed.
"Heh... heh... heh?"	
One of the men noticed Riley on the stairs, and all waxed silent as Riley descended. A few of the men stood up.
"Good morning, Mr. Lynch."
"How are you, Mr. Lynch?"
"Here, take my seat, Mr. Lynch.
"A pleasure to see you, sir."
Riley was used to the attention. Before he could complete the act of sitting he was handed a plate overflowing with eggs and hash browns from one direction and an extra large mug of hot, steaming coffee from another. Mrs. C offered him a nervous yet reassuring pat on the shoulder.
"You just let me know what you need, my boy. I'll take care of everything."
"Thank you, ma'am."
All eyes were on Riley as he savored his first home-cooked bite of non-prison food in months. Mrs. C was an exceptional cook, and the rich flavor of the buttery hash browns and fluffy yellow eggs distracted him. The cons continued their polite and silent vigil until Riley opened his eyes and looked up from his plate. He glanced with precision to the right, then glanced with precision to the left, and then with the flair of a 17th century monarch, he instructed the table with a brief expressionless nod that he was satisfied with the offering and it was now acceptable to continue the meal. And as if someone had fired a starter's pistol, the men sprinted into their breakfast.
No sooner had the normalcy of chaos been restored, then the room once again fell into an uneasy silence.

...and now breaking news from Boston's Channel 9 News Center. I'm Marcia Small. Channel 9 has learned that mob boss and convicted murderer Riley Angus Lynch has been released from the Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center. Lynch was convicted in the grisly killing of well-known mob associate and Los Angeles restaurateur Giovanni "The Chef" Marcellino. The Attorney General's office will be holding a press conference later this afternoon. We will be bringing you that press conference live. Stay tuned to News Center 9 for continuing updates as we... 


"Your middle name is Angus?" Mikeé inquired. "Heh... heh... heh." Riley smiled and said nothing. No one else dared laugh.
Mikeé was not as intimidated by Riley's presence as the other parolees. Although they had met and become friends in the prison kitchen, Mikeé knew all about Riley through his own connections in the New England and New York criminal underworld. Mikeé had served just two years of a seven year sentence for racketeering after being caught running a very lucrative gambling enterprise on behalf of a New York strip club owner. (Mikeé insisted he was framed.) He knew Riley's name from the scuttlebutt on the street but didn't meet him until they were both assigned to slice bread one morning at SBCC. Mikeé was never one for watching much television or reading newspapers, so he had missed most of the sensationalized trial that made Riley Lynch a local, and notorious, celebrity. And although friends, both men were intelligent enough not to trust the other.
Following the news report, Mrs. C wasted no time leaving the room, zipping about the three story house closing windows and securing the door latches. She knew what would happen next. It wouldn't take long for the reporters to figure out where Riley was staying, and she assumed that at least one of the fine, upstanding young men at her breakfast table would no doubt already be dialing their cell phone.
"What do you think, Mr. Lynch? What are they going to say?" One of the men inquired.
"Don't know... don't care," he responded, with a terse and unemotional demeanor. "The AG never did get much right anyway. It's just more grandstanding. He's going to explain how it's possible that a convicted murderer gets released and it's not his fault."
"So whose fault is it?"
"It's not anybody's fault. But that is one hell of a good question."
Riley's brief early morning moment of contentment was gone, replaced by the sudden anxiety of notoriety. He never wanted to be famous, never mind infamous. He had started to accept the permanence of his life behind bars and didn't expect to ever see true freedom again. Hope, in all forms, had been abandoned. And these mood swings were now exhausting him.
"Oh dear, oh dear!" Mrs. C whispered peering into the street from the front door, wringing her cupped hands high on her chest. Three black Lincoln Town Cars had appeared along the curb at the front of the Center. Two large men with the letters FBI emblazoned on their sweatshirts hustled toward the building and glided through the Center's doorway, dusting by Mrs. C as if she was cloaked in invisibility.
"Mr. Lynch, come with us." One of the agents demanded.
"Am I being arrested? I'm not going anywhere without my lawyer."
"I am Agent Manning, This is agent Wills. You are not under arrest, but it would be in your best interest to come with us now. Mr. Ward will be waiting for you when we arrive."
From the moment he was notified of his impending release, Riley had been trying to reach his defense attorney, Malcolm Ward, but could only get through to his answering service. Riley surmised Ward was off on some Jamaican holiday with a sassy new office paralegal -- again -- and wouldn't be heard from for a long while. Ward had represented Riley in the murder trial, and although he lost the case -- with intense public scrutiny -- his willingness to be perceived as a brash mob lawyer, along with his flowing white hair and a dark, mysterious avant-garde look, guaranteed his future professional, and financial success.
"You've heard from Malcolm? Where are you taking me?"
"That's classified, sir. We'll tell you when we get there."
The rhythmic purr of a news helicopter could be heard near the Center, it was getting louder, and was the only encouragement Riley required to go along with the agents. Outside, a gathering storm of vehicles in all shapes and sizes were assembling along the boulevard including a limousine, several police cruisers and then a second deafening helicopter. A news truck with a satellite dish mounted on the roof, so large it wanted to capsize, drove up onto the sidewalk, scattering bewildered pedestrians and the leftover bus stop moms. With one hand, Agent Wills grabbed Riley by the back of his pants and tossed him into the back seat of the Town Car like a sack of dirty laundry. Through the frenzy of blowing snow flurries, lying on the back seat, Riley could see what looked like a police sniper stationed on top of the factory across the block.
"Like vultures circling over a fresh kill," Mikeé muttered as chattering reporters with microphones popped up like April tulips all along the sidewalk. Mrs. C had bolted the door, but the others struggled to peer through whatever grimy window they could find. One of the men unbuckled his pants, pirouetted, and mooned the TV cameras from the dining room window, and was able to watch his pale, pimpled bottom across the room on the new widescreen TV, in high definition.
"Looks like Mr. Lynch gonna have a busy day. Heh... heh... heh." Mikeé declared.
The three black Town Cars sped away.

CHAPTER TWO


Throughout his life, Riley Lynch was never the type of person who ever chose to make a scene or even wanted to be noticed for that matter, and being physically average in every way, he was content to blend unnoticed into any group. Riley was smart, or scary smart as an elementary teacher once described him in a news interview following his arrest, and what he lacked in social grace he made up for in intelligence and cunning ingenuity.
It wouldn’t be until much later in life that he appreciated how badly people would always need him.
Way back in eighth grade at South Boston Middle School, he developed a mad but secret crush on a pretty classmate named Tammy Meeks. She was shy, petite, well-dressed, soft and quiet, and on the rare occasion when she would look his direction, her big brown eyes would drown him, and he would look away as if he had glanced into the piercing rays of the sun. Riley was careful to never sit in front of her in class, and though it was rare for her to utter a word to anyone, he didn't mind and took innocent pleasure in the simple rhythm of her breathing as it soothed and warmed him. When a teacher would call on her to answer a question, she would blush on cue -- and he would blush right along with her bearing witness to both their acute social anxieties -- and would cheer and celebrate in silence when she answered the question right. Once she missed school for an entire week, and Riley's overactive imagination concocted an array of off-beat fantasies explaining her absence. Maybe she had been kidnapped, or perhaps was lying in a ditch somewhere bleeding to death. (It turned out that she had gone on a surprise Vermont ski vacation with her family). If the teacher assigned Tammy a male partner for some sort of class project, the rush of jealousy would cause his teeth to clench and his fists to stiffen. And on those days when the teacher droned on, and the weather was warm, and an enticing spring breeze whirled through the classroom, he would stare from behind at the gentle curve of her cheek and imagine the two of them walking together on the spongy carpet of needles in the old pine forest behind the city park. Here, he would share his innermost thoughts, and she would always be smiling and laughing. And in his daydream, he wouldn't dare look away but would instead stare with power and confidence into her cavernous brown eyes. She would always smile, close her eyes and lay her sweet head upon his chest.
Though he wasn't sure if she knew his name.
It was unimaginable to Riley that anyone could find any flaw with Tammy whatsoever -- in his mind, she was perfect in every way. But Tammy's innocent childhood had been pillaged by the evil Yvonne Tannen -- a bully of epic proportions even by eighth grade middle school standards. Yvonne was tall, blonde, and wore a faded army jacket that up close smelled of mildew, cigarettes, sloth and decay, and who sported big, bony shoulders wider than those of most boys her age. The sane, observant children knew to stay out of her way, but it didn't stop her from preying upon the weak and defenseless just the same. And that year in eighth grade, poor sweet Tammy, as innocent as a grazing gazelle on the savannah, became tasty fresh meat for the school's most dominant and hungry lioness.
It all began with juvenile nasty name calling, such as: "Hey, loser..." "Hey, pig..." "Hey, slut..." and worse, and the negative attention escalated every day. Each time Yvonne, with chest pumped out and shoulders back, would strut past Tammy's desk, Tammy's books would be victimized and fall, and loose papers would flutter down to her feet. Yvonne would grin and circle, but Tammy never looked up, instead, she would blush, the corners of her lips would turn down and with steadfast determination, she would stare at her desk waiting for the torment of the moment to end. All eyes in the room would fix on the two, including Riley's, whose gaze was firm and whose head was bursting with heat and fire. He swore he could feel and see the waves of fear emanate from Tammy's body, and he wanted to absorb them for her like a telepathic sponge. Riley fantasized about making a chivalrous charge and pounding the snot out of Yvonne in front of everyone, slaying the dragon, but Riley had never struck anyone in anger, and wasn't sure how to go about it. And he had to accept that Yvonne was much more powerful than he was, and the mere thought of the humiliation that would ensue from being beaten-up by a girl was more than anything he could endure. So day after day, Tammy would absorb the punishment and pain alone, and Riley, too immature, too much of a coward and too ill-equipped to help would watch within his own self-imposed torture chamber from across the room.
Yet despite his own fear, he felt compelled to do something, there was no one else, so Riley appointed himself Tammy's secret, private sentinel. He stalked Yvonne and studied her tendencies, memorized her class schedule, remembered where she liked to hang out, the amount of time it took to get to her locker, the amount of time she spent in the lavatory, and the length of time it took to eat her lunch. He wrote ample remarks, filled a notebook with observations, and discovered that Yvonne would terrorize Tammy eighty percent of the time during three critical moments of the school day -- at second lunch, then during Mrs. Beckmeir's anarchic honors English class, and finally at dismissal, when the girls walked past the rows of buses on their way home. Riley then went about creating diversions as each of these key moments would come up. As the girls reached the buses on Monday, Riley pushed his buddy Donnie into a bus monitor sending the monitor's hot coffee spewing across both Yvonne and Tammy, resulting in an innocent and befuddled Donnie getting one day's detention. On Tuesday, when Yvonne started to approach Tammy in English class, he persuaded his friend Anthony to belch the first few lines of Hamlet's famous Act 3 soliloquy, which annoyed Mrs. Beckmeir but was guaranteed to keep her attention:
"To be or not to be, that is the question. Whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune....blaaaaaatch."
And then on Wednesday, Riley saw Yvonne heading for Tammy at lunch and read on her face an intense and rabid determination. He was in the process of paying for several ice cream sandwiches from Agnes the lunch lady and was going to give them away free to create a scene, guaranteed to attract Yvonne, but Agnes interfered.
"Sorry Mr. Lynch, you are allowed to have just one ice cream sandwich per day." Agnes said.
"But these aren't for me, they're for my friends."
"Then let your friends come up and buy them themselves. The school nutrition policy says you can have one. It's not healthy. You will get fat."
Now short on time, Riley paid for one and headed for the girls, but realized he wouldn't make it. To his right on the wall was the red school fire alarm and before he could think about what he was doing, he pulled it and ran. The deafening alarm screamed through the lunchroom, and everyone jumped up, stuffed a last bite of sandwich in their mouths, and headed for the exit doors as they had been drilled so many times before. For Riley, it was a pure, selfless act of love and bravery well out of his character. Following the fire drill, after the fine men of the Boston Fire Department had declared the building safe and drove away in their bright red trucks, every known troublemaker in the school was called down to Principal Leonard's office one at a time. Mild-mannered Riley was not included on the guest list, and it became evident that no one in the school suspected him. Riley never knew it, but Yvonne had been called to the office first, claimed to be an eyewitness, and fingered Riley as the culprit. Principal Leonard laughed. Riley? Not likely. The principal's inquest was a complete failure. The interrogation netted no suspect. No one was ever accused or punished for pulling the false alarm that day. Tammy was saved from the bully's wrath one more time.
Riley was never late to class, or ever missed a day of school -- except once. His mother had brought him to the dentist that morning, and then hopped the bus to the mall to run a few quick errands where they enjoyed a rare one-on-one lunch together without interference from his six brothers and sisters. Riley's mom, Sarah Lynch, worked two jobs and raised her seven children by herself, her husband Seamus Lynch had disappeared from family life before Riley was born. Riley walked into class feeling pretty special that day, and couldn't wait to tell his friends about his morning and all the wonderful reasons why he was late.
Mrs. Wanda Beckmeir was South Boston Middle School's grouchy old, polyester-clad English teacher. Her classroom was disheveled and always too hot, forever warmed by the collective trapped exhales of hundreds of bored pre-teens, but always accented with a subtle whiff from whatever packaged, high calorie snack food was hidden in the top drawer of her desk that day. Decades old posters covered the walls of her classroom, many torn or falling, and all were yellowed and faded. The room was always loud and discipline non-existent. Students learned it was a lot like recess, except it was right before recess.
When he marched with confidence through the classroom door that day, he stopped cold in paralyzed terror.
The class of twenty or so boys and girls of Mrs. Beckmeir's English class stood in a circle, chanting, "Hit her again harder, hit her again (clap) (clap)... Hit her again harder, hit her again (clap, clap)."
Riley realized he had not been there that morning to protect Tammy.
Tammy lay on her back on the floor with Yvonne sitting on her chest; Yvonne's knees were holding down Tammy's arms and Yvonne was pounding her with a right fist, then a left fist across her bloodied face. Tammy was screaming in horror, and her legs were kicking in all directions sending one of her black patent leather shoes high in the air and toward the door. Riley found he had forgotten how to breathe or speak, and his legs wouldn't move. The beating lasted seconds though for Riley and Tammy, time had stopped dead making it feel like hours. From out of nowhere two teachers charged into the room. Mrs. Beckmeir had felt overwhelmed when the fight started, and darted out to get Mr. Aronson from the math class across the hall to provide reinforcement. Mr. Aronson, who also served as the assistant football coach, utilized the efficiency of his burly frame and grabbed Yvonne by the back of her grubby, stinking army jacket, lifting the big girl up with one hand and dragging her out of the room, arms flailing. Yvonne swore like a midshipman as she passed through the door and disappeared up the hall.
Mrs. Beckmeir cradled Tammy's bludgeoned face in her arms. A gory design of blood, snot, spit and tears painted the front of the teacher's yellow cardigan and overstuffed blue polyester pants, and Tammy gasped for air and wailed. The once unruly flash mob of eighth grade cowards now stood silent. A shrill Mrs. Beckmeir barked at them.
"Everyone, get to your seats! Immediately! Now! Oh my dear Tammy, let's get you down to the nurse and get you cleaned up, honey."
The minute Tammy and Mrs. Beckmeir left, the class burst into loud conversation all at once as everyone started chattering on cue.
"Holy shit, Riley, did you see that? Where the hell were you? You almost missed it, that was un-freakin'-believable." Anthony said as if it was the most exciting moment he had ever witnessed.
"I had a dentist appointment," Riley explained, heart racing, still trying to catch his breath and trying not to cry or vomit. "My mom just dropped me off. Does anyone know how it started?"
"Tammy got destroyed!," Donnie chimed in, "I'm glad Yvonne likes me, she is friggin insane. Tammy is a whack-job anyway, I'm guessing she deserved it. I don't know what she did to Yvonne, but it must have been something good. Tammy just sits there and never says anything to anybody; I wonder what she's hiding? She's just weird."
"Yea, Tammy's weird and gross," Riley said to his own astonishment. He had failed to protect her, his guilt ran deep, and he knew that because of the great impenetrable and immature caste system of middle school society, he could never admit fondness for someone now so ugly, unfeminine and humiliated. Tammy was now beneath him. It was an unwritten rule that to retain one's stature at the top, one must look down upon the dirty, strange outcasts below and work hard to keep them there.
When the bell rang and the classroom emptied, Riley fell back and was the last to leave. He retrieved Tammy's missing shoe placing it on her desk with both hands like the laying of a wreath on a fallen serviceman's open grave.
The very next day, Yvonne was back in class being the same rotten, evil kid she had always been as if the fight never happened, bullying others at random, auditioning new, fresh victims. Outside the classroom window, Riley caught a brief glimpse of the Meeks' family van with Tammy strapped into the front seat, arriving on school grounds. Within the hour, the van was gone. Riley and his friends surmised that there were some intense meetings happening with Principal Leonard and Tammy's mom and dad at that very moment. They were right. Part of Riley never wanted to see her again and hoped she would just disappear, while in his heart, he craved her presence, her essence, her being, and her every breath.
Riley stayed after school that day along with Anthony and Donnie to attend the middle school baseball game against cross town rival Roxbury. The three boys didn't care much for baseball, but it was an excuse to hang out and fool around and avoid homework -- plus Mr. Aronson always gave extra credit to athletic boosters. The fight between Yvonne and Tammy was already fading from the collective memories of most of the class, replaced by new fights and melodrama, and was taking its place among the great stories of middle school lore, but not for Riley. Riley stood at his locker depressed and teeming in anger. He was angry at himself for not being there; he was angry at the evil creature Yvonne for the senseless violence she had unleashed; he was angry at Tammy for not saying anything or fighting back; but most of all, he was angry at Tammy for shattering all the fanciful daydreams and fantasies that gave him hope for true love.
From his locker, he could hear Mr. Aronson and Principal Leonard talking through the thin walls of the English room.
"We need to separate the Tannen girl from the Meeks girl," Principal Leonard began.
"That crazy Tannen kid is NOT coming into my room," Aronson shot back. "I already have my hands full with the other two animals you sent me last month. I don't have to take her. And I'm not taking the Meeks kid either. I am too crowded."
"Look Bob, we can't leave them together. If anything else happens, it's my ass. I spent an hour with the Meeks' lawyer this morning. We have to keep this girl safe."
"Why don't you just tell Wanda to control her own damn class? We have watched Yvonne bully Tammy all month. Wanda is afraid of Yvonne's fucked-up parents; you know that -- so she won't even look at her never mind reprimand her. That's where the real problem is. We have all watched Tammy get abused. It's Wanda's responsibility to do her job, why is it always mine to do it for her?" And Mr. Aronson stormed past Riley and back across the hall.
A cold wave of realization came over Riley. 
They knew.
They knew all along. They knew Tammy was being victimized, dissected like a jigsaw puzzle piece by piece, and they watched from their selfish perches as those pieces were shredded and cast into the wind, each along with a little piece of Tammy's soul lost forever. They knew what Yvonne was doing to her every step of the way -- and they didn't care... not one bit. They watched and let it happen. It didn't matter to any of them. The bastards.
By the end of the week, Tammy returned to sit in her usual seat, her face still swollen, her once soft pink cheeks replaced by lifeless gray bruises from Yvonne's vicious assault, on display for all the world to see. Yvonne sat in the back of the room. Riley tried not to look at either of the girls again.
After eighth grade, Riley and his classmates graduated on to South Boston High School, though not Tammy. That summer, the Meeks family moved away. He would never be able to forget her.

CHAPTER THREE


The Lynch family existed in an old, cramped, three bedroom apartment on East Broadway, just above Murphy's Used Bookshop, in an Irish Catholic lower middle class neighborhood a few miles south of downtown Boston. One of Riley's favorite pastimes was to browse through the musty boxes of new arrivals in the back of the bookshop before old Mr. Murphy had a chance to sort them out. It was here where he learned all of life's lessons in the absence of his father -- from Asimov, Pohl, Heinlein and Wells, or from Christie, Conan-Doyle, Poe and Wolfe; or from Orwell, Huxley, Verne and Thoreau. And he learned all he needed to know about girls and sex from Anais Nin and D.H. Lawrence, or so he thought. Mr. Murphy let the family borrow as much as they liked for free, and in a family with little discretionary income, it was popular entertainment. Riley's apartment was a favorite hangout for his friends, too, as there was always some activity going on, and if things got boring, the boys would slip down to the bookshop for impromptu browsing, hoping to discover a discarded Playboy or Penthouse magazine buried among the great pyramids of paperbacks, Readers Digest, and National Geographic.
Riley was lucky to be the youngest of seven and to have three older brothers and three older sisters to care for and fuss over him when his mother was at work. His mother Sarah worked two different menial jobs to make ends meet -- one as a part-time secretary to a local real estate developer, and the other as a cashier at the Blue Hills Wal-Mart.
Sarah Lynch was an absolute wonder of a woman, thin, plain and mousy but with a bottomless store of energy -- Riley never remembered her ever being tired. (Many years later at her funeral, Riley commented to his sister Meghan that she looked all wrong, as it was the first time he had seen her lying down.) Sarah could work two jobs, clean house, prepare gourmet meals for eight, pay bills, shuttle the kids to school for activities, and still have time to volunteer at church, read romance novels, crochet, and chat on the phone for what seemed like hours with her nosy sister Eileen. Sarah would be hovering about the apartment whistling show tunes when Riley woke in the morning, and would still be humming when he went to sleep at night. He assumed she never turned cross, and did not sleep.
Riley never met his father Seamus who ran off a few days before he was born. Only his eldest brothers and sisters remembered their father much at all, and those memories were fading. Seamus Lynch was a dark and mysterious man, a licensed plumber by trade, and was a true son of a bitch (as his Aunt Eileen called him) who would turn up every year or so in a conciliatory mood, bearing money and exotic gifts for the kids, and who would stay just long enough to impregnate Sarah then disappear again. Sarah claimed she never knew where he went, though she was able to figure it out sometimes from the papers the sheriffs served or from the questions from the police detectives' periodic visits. No one would have blamed Sarah if she had divorced dashing Seamus the bum years earlier, and many encouraged it, but she found the concept morally offensive and wouldn't hear of it -- she never considered it to be an option. Seamus Lynch had not been heard from in the many years since Riley's birth, and though no one would admit it aloud, they assumed he was no longer alive.
When Riley was 13, his brothers (Sean, Ryan and Liam) were 19, 17 and 14, while his sisters (Erin, Meghan and Siobhan were 21, 15 and 14) respectively -- Siobhan and Liam were twins. Mr. Murphy called the children the "Irish Septuplets" with great affection. And though Erin and Sean were both adults, they still lived at home and tried to contribute to the family well-being as much as they could.
Both Seamus' and Sarah's families traced their roots in the old neighborhood back over 150 years, having arrived with the immigrants from Ireland in the 1820's. They came to the new world to sweat and toil in the old textile mill which still stands refurbished now as an artists' colony a few blocks away. East Broadway was the heart and soul of the Irish community both then and now, populated by row upon row of tightly constructed three-story, flat-topped red brick buildings, most with identical faded green awnings and frilly white curtains. The lower level of most buildings serve as some sort of shop or restaurant, each owned and operated by an Irish merchant whose family's roots in the community were well established. (Except for Theodora's Greek Restaurant on the corner who, as Mr. Murphy used to say was allowed to stay because, "the Irish can't make good pizza... and Mr. Theodora wasn't Italian.") Pride in the neighborhood kept the streets safe and clean, and would only became disorderly on weekend evenings when the pubs would fill with drunken suburbanites creating trouble to excite their dull, meaningless lives.
Many of the pubs had private backrooms where local and trusted men could still hang out, visit and play cribbage, nine card don or penny ante poker. Sarah lived in constant fear of these rooms. During her childhood, the notorious Winter Hill Gang would meet in the Dog Rose Pub below her parents' apartment, and she would talk about how her father would stay awake nights listening for any sign of disagreement, terrified that misdirected bullets would launch up through the floor killing his family in their sleep.
In the Sixties and Seventies, the FBI had pretty much wiped out the murderous old street gangs and chased the organized criminals out of town, ending a dark and brutal era in the neighborhood. But the street legends and lore remained, and the men would still gather in the pubs to share stories of life in the neighborhood when men were men, the world was right, the community was one, and the Southies ruled New England.
And it was the mythology and legend that Sarah feared most -- that Riley, Sean, Ryan or Liam, would become attracted to these patriotic war stories and would join all the other young mob wannabes who were caught up in the romance and intrigue of the past. Even though he was just 19 and not yet of legal drinking age, Riley's oldest brother Sean was already hanging around the dank pub backrooms, drinking with the boys, and not coming home until the wee hours smelling of beer and exhale.
Sarah prayed to God for her children's safety, well-being and mortal soul every day. She and Eileen built a small but elegant altar in a spare closet in the family's already cramped apartment, complete with statues, candles, chalices and ornate holy relics, to save busy Sarah the time of walking all the way down the block to St. Finian's for her daily worship and prayer. It wasn't uncommon for older, pious neighbors to drop in unannounced from time to time, often during spats of bad weather, for an opportunity to pray, and gossip. Sarah would almost always share a Hail Mary with them. The Catholic faith was an essential part of all their lives, it fueled Sarah's every breath, and she would demand respect and allegiance to their faith from each of her children at all times. 
Sarah's proudest moment would occur many years later when Ryan was ordained a priest and had she lived to see it; her darkest would have been Riley's arrest and subsequent imprisonment for the mob related murder of Giovanni Marcellino. Ironic it is that both these paths began in St. Finian's CCD classes on Spring Street.
St. Finian's, a glorious, gothic, white marble church was home to the neighborhood Catholic community, served as a place of worship, and was the area's largest soup kitchen, meeting hall and parochial school to the neighborhood. The church was created over 100 years earlier from the sweat and inspiration of the neighborhood's Irish immigrants who constructed pointed spires so tall Riley assumed they reached through the clouds to the heavens themselves; its ceilings high and proud, and its large windows stained and intimidating to the impure soul. It was obvious to all who entered that oh yes, God did in fact live here. And despite Sarah's profound faith, devotion and impeccable service to Father O'Connell and the parish, she just couldn't afford the tuition to send her brood to the church school. So the kids took the yellow public school bus with all the heathens to South Boston Elementary and Middle Schools, and three nights a week, the children would be schooled in their Catholic faith by deacons at the free CCD classes at St. Finian's.
Riley thought of CCD classes as "guilt classes." The boys would be separated from the girls, and then sorted by age. Father O'Connell and the deacons would drill the teens in the immorality of sex, infidelity, masturbation, abortion, contraception and a colorful array of other perversions that Riley hadn't even heard of never mind understood. Deacon Sabol, an old, sweet Lithuanian man who also ran the church soup kitchen, was responsible for Riley's group. Once a month, old man Sabol would invite each of the boys to meet with him in private to counsel them on whatever was on their minds and explore their faith. Each time it was Riley's turn to go, he would become apprehensive and his spine would tingle -- an inexplicable internal radar alert warning him of impending danger. Riley almost always found an excuse to avoid Deacon Sabol, often with Liam's pre-planned interference. (He learned from his brothers to avoid "the funny deacons.") At the end of each class, all the devout, God-fearing young students would rifle through the desks of the day students stealing pens and other items to sell at public school the next day, or to trade with the other CCD students on the walk back home.
"What did you get?"
"Just a few pencils and a notebook."
"I got a pencil sharpener this week, and a sticker book.
"I got a Hershey Bar."
"Whoa.... you made out, man! Trade me! I'll give you the pencils and the baseball cards I got last week for the Hershey Bar."
"Oh, no friggin' way! You'll have to do better than that. It's white chocolate with almonds."
Riley despised CCD classes. At the ripe old age of 13, he was questioning his faith. Why wouldn't God let his devout mother divorce his loser of a father and re-marry a nice man like Mr. Murphy? Why did the kids who steal the most things from the school always get to be the altar boys on Sunday? Why was he afraid of such a nice man like Deacon Sabol? Why would he get punished by God for wanting to hug and kiss Tammy Meeks, but God wouldn't punish the psychotic Yvonne Tannen and make her end her reign of terror? He did not understand, and CCD was not giving him the answers his mother promised it would. Liam said he used his brain too much.
While Riley traded hot Catholic school contraband with his friends, Ryan often stayed back to worship and study with Father O'Connell in the rectory. Ryan was working on a full-boat scholarship to Sacred Heart University, in Fairfield Connecticut to study theology (Father O'Connell was pulling a few strings). No one in either Seamus' or Sarah's prodigious clans had even set foot on a college campus, never mind attending class.
Sarah would never be more proud of her boys.
Riley was never more confused.
Sarah's bubbling pride with her four handsome boys (Riley smart and inquisitive, Ryan pious and driven; Sean responsible and practical; Liam devoted and helpful) didn't match her boundless disappointment with her three distressed girls -- Erin, Meghan and Siobhan.
Erin, who was the eldest at 21, was short, dumpy, drank heavily and pursued her life in a constant foul mood. Sarah believed that had it not been for her daily morning prayer to St. Thomas Aquinas, the patron saint of students, Erin would never have graduated high school. She had many friends but each was a more negative influence than the next, and many an evening's family dinner ended in a shouting match between Sarah and her cranky eldest daughter over Erin's irresponsible use of her burgeoning independence. Erin worked as a waitress across town at the 24-hour Howard Johnson's several nights a week, and though she would make a modest contribution to the household finances, more times than not she would drink away her tip money with her friends at one of the local pubs on her way back to the apartment.
Meghan was 15 and tantalizingly pretty. Her long, luscious red hair, soft smile and deep blue eyes turned many an adolescent head, and she knew how to use all of it. Meghan seemed to have a new boyfriend every other day, whose longevity depended upon their devotion and ability to acquire and shower lavish gifts upon her. And once the hapless new boy's wallet had been drained, a cheerful Meghan would bat her red silky eyelashes and move on.
Siobhan was 14, quiet and withdrawn. She was born 10 minutes after her stronger, bigger twin brother Liam, and being so small and underdeveloped, was given less than a 50 percent chance of survival. It was only through the miracles of science that the doctors at Massachusetts General Hospital on Fruit Street were able to save the poor girl (or, as Sarah would explain, the miracle of prayer) and Siobhan was expected to live a long and normal life. Though older than Riley by a year, Siobhan was small and skinny and assumed by outsiders to be the baby of the family.
Whenever thinking about his crazy brothers and sisters, Riley always recalled one especially unforgettable and infamous Christmas from his childhood.
Each Christmas Eve, as is the long observed Irish tradition, a single red candle would be lit in the front window as a symbol welcoming Joseph and Mary to their home if they might happen by. It was Riley's responsibility, as the family's youngest, to light that candle each year, and even at age 13, it was still an honor. The family gathered round the well-decorated window and Riley lit the candle as his family sang a heartwarming rendition of Silent Night.
Mr. Murphy had kept the bookshop downstairs open late to capture the last few procrastinating Christmas shoppers, then he joined the Lynch family upstairs for dinner. Mark Murphy was a widower, who lived alone in the suburbs, but loved the old neighborhood and loved books. His only child, a grown daughter named Mary, lived and worked as a translator in China for a pharmaceutical company, so he was often alone and adopted by the Lynch clan each holiday, serving as a de facto "dad" to the kids -- a role he, and the kids, accepted with enthusiasm.
The Lynch apartment was filled with the intoxicating aroma of mince meat, cinnamon and spiced beef. Sarah was at her culinary best, and had somehow whipped up an authentic Irish Christmas feast complete with an amazing Christmas dessert pudding, with rum sauce and raisins, that was legendary in the neighborhood, while still clocking extra hours at Wal-Mart and getting all the present-wrapping finished well in advance. And there was another dinner to prepare and serve the next day when Aunt Eileen and her family came to visit in the afternoon.
At around11:30, led by a triumphant Riley, they all started the trek up the hill to St. Finian's for midnight mass. East Broadway was calm and breathtaking, with twinkling lights and garland in the window of every storefront and apartment, and other families were coming out to join the Lynch's on their short pilgrimage. The loudspeakers above the patio of Theodora's Restaurant broadcast Good King Wencelas, and light fluffy snowflakes fell and nestled together on the sidewalk on the crisp, windless night.
"Looks like St. Stephen must be plucking his Christmas goose a little late this year," Mr. Murphy told them gazing up at the moonless, flake-filled sky.
"Mom," Erin began, "do we have to go to mass tomorrow morning since we are going tonight?"
"I don't want to go either," Meghan interrupted, "my new boyfriend Aiden wants me to go to his house in the morning."
"Yes, ladies, you will be attending mass in the morning, too. We haven't missed a Christmas Day mass since your father and I were married."
"Isn't that redundant? To go tonight, and then tomorrow?" Erin asked.
"No, Erin. Mind yourself."
"I am an adult. You can't make me go, you know."
"And I don't have to feed you either," Sarah replied in jest, sensing Erin was trying to pick a fight. Riley sensed a battle brewing, and fell to the rear. Meghan thought it safe not to repeat her request.
"I'm not going in the morning," Erin volleyed, "and there isn't anything you can do about it."
Sean had heard enough. "Erin, zip it. We're going to church in the morning like we always do. Relax."
"Don't tell me what to do. I do not need to relax."
"Come on Erin, not tonight. Don't do this tonight," Ryan chimed in. 
"We stick together as a family, "said Sean.
"If we are a family, then where's Dad? I'll bet he's not at Christmas mass tonight or tomorrow," Erin said.
Sarah's heart sunk. It was the only thing her kids could say that could chip the enamel of her spirit. No matter how hard she worked at it, she could not replace Seamus' presence in the family. The older kids still missed him.
"Your father..." Sarah paused, swallowed, paused again, and then resumed. "...is a very special man. We all miss him, I know you all do. I do dearly. But I know that God watches over him wherever he is, and he is with us at church tonight because his presence is strong and in my heart now. He is with me, with us, tonight... on Christmas Eve, right now. I feel him." Mr. Murphy put his arm around Sarah and gave her a reassuring, tender squeeze.
There was silence among the group as the kids recognized the serious and dangerous turn of their mother's voice. "Your father gave me seven of the most precious gifts ever -- each one of you. As God gave his only son Jesus to us, your father gave all of you to me. I am truly.., truly blessed by God."
Tiny, little Siobhan had not said anything all evening -- always the first to enter a room, and the last to leave, and always the last to say anything to anyone. Siobhan's eyes watered, her mouth turned down, and she looked at Sarah, with affection and love.
"Mommy, I am blessed by God, too."
"Yes dear, you are... we all are blessed. Each one of us."
"No Mommy, I'm pregnant."

Also Available
by Steven R. Porter



Attracted by the heavenly vistas, cool summer breezes, and affable residents, professional spiritual channelers Clement and Jessica Bradford relocate their family to the coastal island of Manisses to raise their two eccentric daughters in a storybook New England atmosphere -- and talk to the dead.
But a foolish mistake from their past haunts them, and when a local girl goes missing, it takes the whole family, including a peculiar doll named Otto, to stop history from repeating itself.
Manisses is a rollicking adventure told through a thousand years of history, where you'll meet a brave native maiden, a demure pirate, Prohibition rum-runners, a vengeful witch and many others -- all connected through time by an inconspicuous pile of rocks.
  

ISBN-10: 1478354801 / ISBN-13: 978-1478354802
Bonus Sample Chapters from
Manisses

On sale now

Chapter 1



Wequai was not aware of the significance of the moment, or her role as part of it. She was not aware that the violent battle that raged around her was to be a momentous turning point in the history of her people, an unrecorded but significant instant in time, and though it was a mere speck on a page of the infinite calendar, it was a moment that closed a millennia of peace and started her people on a decline after enjoying thousands of years of prosperity. And she was not aware of the plight of her brave young husband and brothers who were off defending their stout woodland village from a vicious enemy invasion. For Wequai was with child and she was determined with every force of her being to protect it -- and though there was expected be one more moon before her first child's birth, the uncompromising pain in her belly demanded otherwise. She feared that the child she would bring forth might arrive to a village that would no longer exist to welcome it.
Skirmishes among the coastal tribes were nothing new, and occasional raids to steal foodstuffs and weapons between rivals, and some occasional retribution, were an accepted part of everyday existence. But the sheer size of this attack was something different, much more forceful and vicious, and brought with it a current of doom and finality. The attack had been predicted by the elders, who watched the tension build for weeks. The warriors of Wequai's tribe had been sharpening their spears and crying out before the spirits, searching for the inner strength and skill they would need to defeat their great allies turned enemies and regain their village and way of life from the clutches of imminent annihilation.
Wequai burrowed into a pile of soft deerskins stored at the back of a wigwam in a remote corner of the compound where the tribe stored the bulk of their winter supplies. In the distance, the horrifying crashes and echoes of mortal combat crept closer and grew louder. The urgent sounds of men running past her along the dry, pounded earth at first calmed her fragile nerves, a welcoming sound that the warriors of her village were charging ahead to defend and protect. But the longer she laid still in her hiding place, the more anxious she became. She worried the village would not have enough brave men to fight off the attack, and the waves of pain in her belly were growing more intense, closer together, more jagged, and more urgent.
The battle raged through the afternoon, and as the sun retreated to the west, a moonless summer night fell over the stained battleground. Sweltering beneath the pelts, Wequai emerged and tore a small hole through the birch bark of the wigwam to examine what she could see of the scene. From her veiled corner, she could make out enormous fires glowing from the distant parts of her village, and she listened as the valiant songs of warriors were replaced by screams of pain, terror and death. She realized that the wails of the little children she was hearing in the distance were actually the cries of once brave men now dying -- some no more than 12 or 13 harvests old. She saw cragged old women and little children run by, terror welling in all their eyes, many stumbling and screaming. She saw hundreds of skirmishing warriors, as if dancing with their own shadows in the darkness, slowly moving toward her. Wequai began to chant and hum a peaceful song her grandmother, an honored medicine woman, taught her when she was just a little girl, to be applied like a salve to sooth her tattered nerves. The tip from an angry warrior's long, sharp spear slashed through the wall of her shelter, tearing a gash the length of a grown man, sending shards of wood and bark to rain down upon her. Though she remained unnoticed, she knew her time to move on, or die, had arrived.
Though the compound had surrendered to darkness, the terrible battle raged on. The pain in Wequai's abdomen was continuing to build, and she crawled through the entrance of her shelter and emerged into the chaos with one arm wrapped firmly under her belly. Ahead by the shore, there was a clump of sassafras trees and juniper shrubs where she believed she could remain unseen, or failing that, behind it was an old dugout canoe, stored by her fisherman uncle, that she thought she might be able to use to escape. The village smelled of a smoke that Wequai recognized, but it wasn't the sweet, comforting smell of cod stew or venison turning over the dinner fire -- it was the unmistakable, unforgettable, horrific odor of seared human flesh.
The fetid smoke helped shield and distract Wequai from the invaders who had now overtaken the village. All the buildings and wigwams had been set ablaze by enemy torches, and waves of intense heat were carried through the village by the cooling evening coastal breeze. Wequai dragged herself toward her new hiding place, and she leaned her exhausted, aching body against the side of the long canoe.
The vessel was more than the length of three grown men, and contained all her uncle's seafaring hand-made nets and tackle. As a child, she had been assigned the tedious duty of hollowing out the great log herself, using a bone hatchet and red-hot oak embers from the dinner fire to burn and smooth the vessel into shape. Standing up to her waist in the cool, salty water of the cove, she tried to push it out to sea, but did not have anywhere near the strength. For the first time since she had begun her labor, she screamed aloud from the pain of the impatient child inside searching for its own means of escape. Lifting one leg up over the side, she flopped into the front of the canoe on her back upon the netting, and surrendering to her hopeless predicament, her eyes welled with tears, and she sobbed.
Wequai was very small for her age of sixteen, but tough and wiry, and she wiggled and burrowed deep into the fishing nets. She braced her thin, spindly legs against the frame and did all she could to stay quiet between the sharp spasms of pain. She accepted that her child would be born here, in her family's canoe, as a gift from the gods, but without the aid or comfort of her husband or grandmother, sisters, or any of the trusted women of her village. Though the war raged around her, she tried not to think about the fate of her family. But now that darkness engulfed her, she was awash in fear and loneliness.
Before she could weep for herself or her family too long, the boat rocked. Wequai felt a sudden thud and looked up. Standing in the canoe above her was a warrior, as if dropped by the gods from the dark sky above. Through the glow of the fires burning in the distance, she could see enough of the war paint on his face to realize he was not of her village. Wequai opened her mouth to scream in terror, but was so paralyzed with fear, no sound would come out. Then she realized he did not see her -- it was too dark and she was too low in the vessel. She also saw, upon his sweaty, painted face, a look of terror she had not seen upon a man's face before -- it was clear he was afraid of something, and looked to be escaping it. Upon her bare feet, she felt the trickle of a liquid, the warrior's blood, painting and tickling her dusty ankles and toes. She closed her eyes tight, held her breath and remained still and silent.
The stranger grasped an oar, and straining with all his might, was able to push and detach the heavy canoe from its mooring, setting it afloat upon the tranquil cove. The hissing sound of invisible razor-sharp arrows sped by them both, a few embedding themselves in the solid, thick, oak walls of the canoe. Others splashed harmlessly into the water. The warrior paddled with fury, grunting and breathing deeply as the canoe picked up speed and headed into the shadows, toward the cove's narrow mouth and into the open sea.
An especially intense pain struck Wequai's belly without warning, and she was able to control her silence no longer. Her sudden, high-pitched cry startled the warrior, who let out his own intense, terror-laden scream. Together, the pair screamed for their lives into the blackened night, spinning the vessel around in a circle upon the ocean. The situation might almost have been comical, had both inhabitants of the boat not assumed they were about to be killed by the other.
The warrior reached out and grabbed Wequai by her clammy forearm and pulled her close. He clenched his teeth and peered into her eyes, trying to determine whether she was friend or foe. His breath was hot and rhythmic upon her face and he smelled of spice and tobacco smoke. He was much bigger and stronger and larger than any man in her village, and she thought the grip he had on her might snap her arm in half like a birch sapling. She gasped and trembled, and feared her heart might leap from her breast. She knew that with very little effort at all, if he chose to, the man could toss her into the sea to drown. His arm brushed her stomach and he realized she was heavy with child. He paused, then extended his enormous, weathered palm to stroke her swollen belly. With little effort, he pushed her back down to the floor of the canoe upon the nets and resumed rowing, uttering not a syllable, content that she would be no threat in her condition. Wequai sensed his compassion, took a deep breath, arched her back in the agony and relief of the moment and the pain, and escaped consciousness.

Chapter 2 

The island was anything but flat, and featured several rolling and a few steep but majestic hills. At the point of the island along the shore there stood a curious outcropping of large, stunning black rocks, highlighted by a single tall black boulder that reached higher than, and as stately as a tree. Although it took millions of years of violent geological upheaval, millions of years of ice and snow, and millions of years of sharp, stone-carving winds to mold and create these rocks, the outcropping and boulders appeared to not belong, as if placed in that very position by the hand of a god with great care, much the way a whimsical child might place a beloved toy into a fanciful diorama. 
Wequai leaned against the massive rock, her shoulder comforted by the colossal boulder, as she gazed across the sea toward the mainland, feeding her newborn son in the warmth of the morning summer sunshine. She could see smoke rising from the shore where she believed her village stood and only now did she appreciate how massive the battle must have been, as it appeared to her that the entire sky line was ablaze. The canoe that had delivered them to the island had been swept back out to sea by the incoming morning tide, and it bobbed in the waves in front of her, drifting away, taunting her, well out of her reach. She longed for her family, and wondered if any of them had survived, and if she would ever see them again. She longed for the love and wisdom of her husband who was a skilled and brave warrior, and she was confident he must have killed many of the wretched enemy. But most of all, she wanted to show them all the beautiful baby boy she had brought into the world -- the newest member of her proud tribe. Her son had been born in the early hours of the morning, all blue, skinny and messy, and silent, without a scream, near sunrise, behind the immense black rock which now gave her shelter from the cool morning sea breeze. 
The great warrior who had saved her life, rowed her across the sea, and carried her up to the shelter of the great rock, was dead. He laid on his face in the matted beach grass by her feet with several arrows sticking straight up from his neck and back, dried blood bathing his ribs. She sat in awe of his strength and courage, and realized the warrior had achieved a level of heroism that Wequai had only heard in her grandmother's honored stories. She remembered nothing of their voyage across the sea that night, fading in and out of consciousness throughout the journey, now arriving at the conclusion that this warrior had been sent by the gods to save her so she could give birth to her son here on this island. Everything had a purpose. The chaos would someday make perfect sense.
As she stared at his stiff, lifeless body, she marveled at the size and tone of the muscles on his shoulders, arms and calves, and the perfection of his smooth, tanned skin. She reached over and stroked his cold shoulder, lovingly, to thank him. He was beautiful, and she believed he must have been a great husband -- for a heathen. She pulled her baby from her breast and held him out to the dead warrior.
"Here, my son, look upon the brave warrior who sacrificed his life so that you could live. Do not forget him, for he was sent by the gods just for you." The baby opened his eyes for the first time, albeit briefly, revealing two pupils big, round and as black as the night sky under which he was born.
"Oh my, little god! Your eyes are so beautiful!" Wequai bubbled despite her dilemma, waves of joy bounding across her face. "We need to give you a name, so I will call you... Manisses! The little god."
Wequai held Manisses with both hands, naked, toward the sky, and bowed her head to thank the spirits for the gift they had bestowed upon her. She looked down at the body of the poor, dead warrior once more and wondered if he, too, had a wife and child. She assumed he did, and shared their sorrow.
"Well, Manisses, I believe his wife to be very beautiful, and that she was blessed with many children. A warrior this strong and powerful must have been a wise leader, too, and very well respected." Wequai paused and looked at him, troubled. "But I wonder what he was running away from, when he jumped in Uncle's canoe? A warrior with this much bravery and honor running through his veins would not run from a great battle. That's why I know he was sent to us by the gods to save you."
Wequai spent the morning pulling up the grasses from around the great rock, making a small bed for the newborn Manisses to lie upon, layering it with soft milkweed fluff. She removed what little clothes the warrior was wearing and swaddled Manisses in them. And in the warrior's beaver-skin belt, she found a knife.
"A gift for you, and for me," she said, tucking the little god into his cradle of fresh island grasses.
But her concern turned from her new child to the local island residents, and she wondered if she was alone. Tribal legend had taught her that both her tribe and people originated on this island, and being so isolated, they were able to grow and improve their culture without complication or fear of aggression. The island was just visible along the horizon from her village on shore, and was believed to be no longer inhabited. The fishermen knew to stay away from the island as it was a sacred and spiritual place -- a place where the gods came to play and rest. She decided it best to seek out the island people and try to tell them what had happened -- that is, if they existed at all. 
Every muscle in her body was stiff and sore, and she found it difficult to stand and walk. But Wequai was born with the brawn of a small boy, and her wiry frame was built for climbing. In her youth, she had climbed every tree in her village faster than any of the boys. She pulled herself up on the rocks and began her ascent to the top. The rocks were slippery, smoothed by the island's constant winds and sprinkled at its edges with white sea salt, and although her aching back and legs argued, she climbed with great care, and was able to reach the top.
From the peak, she could see a great distance in all directions, and nearly the whole island. The ocean was calm, its waves small and blue, and the sun was hot on her back. The rocks themselves were already absorbing the heat of the day and warmed the soles of her feet. Wequai held her balance and scanned the horizon. There were signs of life everywhere -- gulls, ducks, plovers and birds of every kind -- even a few white-tailed deer bounded by off in the distance, no doubt once captured and brought to the island by those early ancestors. But there was no sign of recent human habitation. There were no settlements, no smoke fires, no field, no wigwams, and no moored canoes.
Manisses and Wequai were alone on the island.
Wequai stood on top of the great rock for a long time. She looked away toward her home in the distance, across the sea, and at the smoke that filled the skies and mingled overhead with the grey summer clouds. She was overcome with despair and wondered how she would ever get home. As a young girl, she had a beautiful voice and loved to sing, and her grandmother taught her more songs than any of the other girls in the village. Wequai inhaled, and the heavy, humid sea air filled her chest. With her arms raised and palms open, Wequai sang a song to the island that welcomed the morning, one of her father's favorites. And though she sang loud and with beauty, only Manisses, sleeping in his soft nest of grass and milkweed far below, and a perplexed cormorant pulling on a rotting clam, were on hand to enjoy her sweet, honest, soulful performance.
There was an abundance of crabs and lobsters crawling along the beach, so if her exile on this island would be long, Wequai knew she would not starve. She despised the salty, pungent flavor of shellfish, and accepted her fate as a punishment from the gods for all the complaining she did as a child whenever her mother served it at the communal meal. But it wasn't the sustenance of survival that worried Wequai the most, it was the corpse of her gallant hero, lying face down in the grass by the great rocks, already crawling with ants, that would not do well for long in the blazing summer sunshine.
Wequai strolled along the shore and gathered a few crabs for her lunch, and was delighted to see birds' nests nearby so easily accessible where she might happen upon a few eggs, as well. She also collected a few large quahog shells that she could use to chip into tools. But her priority was to first quench her raging appetite, and then to bury her savior.
The soil in front of the big rock was soft, sandy, and easy to move, but filled with small stones. Wequai cursed aloud each time she dug in and dragged her knuckles across one of the ragged little rocks, and she broke several useful shells. She remained tired and weak, still recovering from her traumatic ordeal, and it took her two days of periodic bouts of digging, napping, and feeding Manisses to create a pit round and deep enough for the warrior's heavy, lifeless body.
Wequai lined the pit with soft needles from the small pitch pine trees that grew near the shore, to provide the warrior a comfortable resting place. Although her enemy, his courageous acts proved him deserving of a burial fit for a sachem -- and she would do her best to provide it. Once the pit was prepared, she attempted to drag him into it, but he was too heavy. She struggled, groaned and cursed as she pulled on his arms and legs, but she was barely able to move him along at all. Sitting, she placed her feet on his hips and gave a great scream, pushing with all her might, and his body, after much effort, rolled over. It was the first time she had seen his face in daylight, now bloated and disfigured, and she was both struck by its beauty and reviled by its misfortune. She paused for awhile to examine it, so she would not forget it, and could describe it to Manisses once he was older.
The body fell into the pit at an awkward angle, arms and legs pointing in all different directions, and it took some time for Wequai to arrange the naked corpse into its appropriate, honorable pose, head facing toward his homeland.
As was custom, a warrior was to be buried with all his most important tools and possessions, but having arrived on the island with merely a breechcloth and a bone knife -- two items that Wequai and Manisses needed to survive -- the warrior would be buried naked and without a weapon. Wequai surmised that since the spirits sent him to save her, they would understand when he arrived in the afterlife unadorned. And if he was embarrassed when he got there, she thought, he was not of her village -- he was, after all, just a savage.
Once arranged in the pit, Wequai laid leaf upon leaf over the body, leafs she had painstakingly picked herself from the low growing red and green shrubs, chanting a song throughout the private ceremony. In her village, she carried no special title or responsibility, but had attended many burial ceremonies and could recreate most of it from memory. She did the best she could, improvised a bit, and sang her warrior many enchanting songs, wishing him a safe journey to the afterlife. When the burial ritual was complete, and all the soil was returned to the hole, she sat against the great rock and brought little Manisses back to her breast. Wequai sang to him and wept as she watched the sun set beyond the orange horizon, over her old village, blanketing them in a friendless darkness.
Chapter 3

Prissy poked the stiff squirrel with a pointed stick.
"Yup, he's dead." She proclaimed
"Are you sure?" Abby asked, stroking her chin.
"Yup, I'm sure." Prissy nodded, with all the cocksure confidence of a seasoned coroner.
"I don't want him to bite me." Abby crossed her arms and clutched her ribs, fearing the critter would burst back to life.
"He won't bite you if he's dead."
"Where did he come from?"
"I don't know. He looks gray like all the squirrels back at my old house where I used to live in Connecticut."
"How did he get here? We don't have any squirrels on Manisses."
"I dunno. Maybe he came over on the ferry. And stop asking so many questions!"
 The two girls squatted over the unfortunate, dead animal in front of a great, large black boulder and continued probing, poking at it, and rolling it over. Its bushy tail fluttered like a flag in the stiff breeze. The girls had no way to know, that thousands of years earlier, a scared, lonely, young native girl named Wequai nursed her newborn son and sang to her gods on the very same spot. 
Prissy was a curious and precocious little girl, with short dark hair and small, round wire-rimmed glasses, shrewd well beyond her ripe old age of nine. She was undersized but athletic, and preferred being outside running around across the rocks on the beach behind her parents' house, chasing gulls and searching for pirate treasure, than inside playing with toys, watching television or even reading a book. Although Prissy had cast off many of the traditional baubles of a more typical modern girl, her constant companion was her ragdoll, Otto. Otto's hands were filthy and his fabric worn through, a victim of months of constant attention, and his blue, marble-like eyes had been re-sewn and re-glued many times by Prissy's mother, and were now well out of alignment. Otto was the only person in the world Prissy would consult when she was in trouble, had a question, or needed advice. Otto was considered neither a toy nor a friend, but instead he was Prissy's spiritual advisor, mentor, and guide  -- a cotton and canvas blended Dalai Lama held together with a few bits of thread, yarn and a silver safety pin.
Do you think we should bury him, Otto?" Prissy asked.
Otto looked at Prissy and appeared to ponder the question, but as was often the case, he didn't respond.
"I think we should have a séance." Abby suggested. "Then we can ask the squirrel to tell us why he is here."
Abby was Prissy's neighbor, classmate and loyal friend, fair and feminine, always donned in the most stylish dress, never a blonde hair out of place, as one would expect from the daughter of such affluent, well-connected parents. Abby cherished all her material things, her salon appointments and the attention, but she reveled in Prissy's friendship, too, as she enjoyed living vicariously through Prissy's more eccentric activities and adventures. Abby knew she could often convince Prissy to try things she was too frightened, or unwilling, to try herself. In many ways, Prissy enjoyed the challenges and dash of hero worship, and though she had no interest in them for herself, she did enjoy listening to Abby brag on about her expensive new boots, the silver brooch her dad gave her, or the hours she spent in the island salon getting pedicures with her mom. Prissy and Abby, opposites in almost every way, held the same tribal instinct, were good friends and knew that they somehow needed each other.
"OK, then. Let's have a séance. We can ask the squirrel what he thinks he is doing being dead here on our island!"
To the casual passerby who might be eavesdropping on the girls' conversation, a request from one nine year-old to another for a séance might wrinkle an eyebrow. However, for Prissy, it was not at all unusual. In fact, it was a normal and integral part of her everyday existence.
Prissy's father, Clement Bradford, was a professional spiritual medium. Just off the docks, across the street from Manisses' bustling ferry landing, Clement had opened a small practice where he could offer his clairvoyant services to the throngs of tourists who disembarked from one of six daily ferries sent overflowing with passengers eager to explore the island's rich splendor. Its convenience just over an hour from the mainland, made Manisses a perfect destination for summer day trippers, bike peddlers, hikers, and adventurers of all ages, including many who preferred to just sit in one of the countless upscale lounges, slurp raw oysters off the half shell, drink white wine, and enjoy the refreshing, cool summer breeze.
It was here Clement Bradford decided to scrape out a living and support his family. 
Clement and his wife Jessica had moved to the island of Manisses just two years earlier after partaking in a weekend getaway themselves, and they fell in love with the never-ending, spectacular views and the friendly, no-nonsense Yankee islanders. It was a wholesome and beautiful place to raise their two smart and eccentric daughters -- sixteen year-old Lucretia and nine year-old Priscilla, Lucky and Prissy, who they worried about fiercely. Lucky had been performing poorly in school and had fallen in with a tough crowd of teens, making daily calls from the high school vice principal both dreaded and common place. Lucky had twice been escorted home in the back seat of a Hartford Police Department squad car, which had not gone unnoticed by her younger, observant and impressionable little sister.
So Clement and Jessica left their practice and apartment in the Hartford, Connecticut suburbs, liquidated their meager life savings, rented a small storefront on Water Street, and purchased a dilapidated farmhouse that they couldn't afford on a far point of the island that featured a large but unusual stone outcropping, to raise their children in a healthy New England storybook atmosphere -- and talk to the dead.
"Let's start." Prissy commanded. "Everyone hold hands."
So the three of them -- Prissy, Abby and Otto -- sat cross-legged in a circle around the dead squirrel, and held hands.
"Everybody close your eyes." Prissy commanded again, rocking the three of them side to side. Otto's grubby feet dragged back and forth in the sand on the ground, but he did not complain.
"Oh mister squirrel... speak to us. We ask for the spirit of mister squirrel to come to us now, on this island of Manisses, and tell us why he is dead." The girls continued to rock side to side, and the squirrel remained quiet. A large white seagull circled overhead, its screech piercing. Abby opened her eyes and looked up, squinting into the bright, hazy blue sky.
"If he poops on me, I'm going home."
"Shut up and concentrate. We must have total concentration at all times or we will scare the spirit world away. You stay quiet, too, Otto."
Otto remained stoic and obedient, and complied with Prissy's request. It was well within his nature to be supportive.
"Prissy? I have a question. When the squirrel talks to us, what is he going to say? I mean... is he going to speak English, or is he going to talk squirrel? I don't know how to talk squirrel."
"That's up to the spirit world. My dad says that sometimes, the spirits don't talk. They give you a sign, or a feeling. Sometimes, they communicate with a sound or a noise like a knock on the wall or a creak in the floor. And sometimes they will put a hand on your shoulder, or give you a hug, or even make you feel suddenly hot or cold."
"That's creepy."
"And sometimes, the spirit will call out your name or just put an idea right into your head out of nowhere so that even though you don't speak squirrel, the spirit squirrel will talk to you in your own brain."
"But Prissy, I don't want the squirrel in my brain!"
 "You won't have a squirrel in your brain, you dummy! The squirrel's soul will talk to your soul inside your brain. Souls know how to talk to each other because they are both souls. Now be quiet, close your eyes and concentrate."
Prissy, Abby and Otto sat in their vigil for several more minutes without uttering a sound. Around them, the sea breeze raked through the tall spartina grasses causing a pleasant, rhythmic hum, and the seagulls shrieked and chattered, flying in perfect circles overhead. The surf had been building all morning, indicating a summer storm might be moving up the coast from the south, and the waves had become taller and crashed on shore with a bit more force and regularity than before, even showing off an occasional, fluttering white cap.
A single, sturdy gust of wind blew by them sending sand, salt and a few loose leaves into Abby's face. Abby shrieked and scrunched up her cheek muscles to keep the flying debris out of her eyes and mouth, but some of it did stick in her beautiful, flowing golden hair.
"Ewww!" She exclaimed. "I got dirt all over me!"
"Maybe it's the squirrel talking to us." Abby suggested. Otto chose not to share an opinion. "Maybe he's telling us he blew in here from the mainland on a big hurricane!"
"Why would the squirrel's soul throw dirt in my face? I don't want to do this anymore. I want to go home." Abby broke the circle and stood, brushing dirt and sand from her frilly new dress.
"You can't go home until we bury him. We have to give him a proper Christian burial like they would do at church."
Abby waited while Prissy jogged down to the beach, rooted around in the surf and returned with a large, empty quahog shell. She handed Otto off to Abby, dropped to her already dirty knees and began to dig a hole -- a much smaller hole than Wequai had dug for her hero warrior, but a burial pit sufficient for a squirrel none the less. And it didn't take Prissy long to finish. Using the stick she had been digging with to poke the little corpse, she flipped it into the hole and covered it up with the loose sandy, salty soil. The tip of its gray, fluffy tail protruded from the pile.
"There, now. Let's say a prayer."
The girls stood together, closed their eyes and bowed their heads, each praying for the lost soul of the anonymous squirrel, together, with a solemnity with which a pastor would have been proud. When the prayers were complete, Prissy took a deep breath and the girls turned toward town.
Abby paused.
"Prissy, wait. We forgot something. We need to make a cross to mark the grave. All the graves next to the church either have crosses, headstones, or both!"
Prissy sighed, considered the request, nodded her agreement, and returned to the diminutive grave site. She retrieved her stick and scratched around in the earth beneath the great boulder until she found another to make the cross. Once she located the second suitable stick, Otto offered one of his shoelaces so she could lash the two sticks together. Abby took the cross from Prissy and planted it firmly into the ground, with a seriousness not expected of such a little girl, at the head of the squirrel's shallow grave.
Neither girl would ever know that the sticks they used to create the squirrel's handmade cross were artifacts from the leg bones of a heroic, ancient native warrior.
"That was a waste of time. Nothing interesting ever happens on this boring old island." Abby complained.


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