I ate my yogurt and granola, while an egg boiled on the stove. The crone values high-quality protein as a start to the day. When the egg was done, I looked around, and satisfied that all was ready, I summoned her.
Fingertips poised on the opposite shoulders, I called for the wise auld one, and in an instant, the crone was sitting in my chair, and the young maid was gone. My wild, curly hair was still long, but the red had turned to gray.
I cracked the soft-boiled egg and went over the plan for the day while I ate.
I studied the pictures. I’d have to do something to hide all my hair. Finally I put on a blue serge dress, white knit jacket, sturdy walking shoes, and I was ready to make the telephone call.
The young lady who answered the phone put me through immediately.
“Mrs. Curry, so nice to hear from you. So sad about Mr. Rheingold. Naturally, I’m assisting Mrs. Rheingold. Do you need to know the arrangements? We haven’t…”
If I let him, he’d go on forever.
“Mr. Lycroft, Mr. Rheingold called and left a message for me just yesterday. He said it was urgent we speak about my collection. Is there a problem? Are my rings safe?”
Jeremy squeaked as if his tie were a thick rope tightening around his neck.
“Safe? Of course they’re safe. The vault here at Stoddard and Weiss is impenetrable.”
“Fine. I’ll just come down there and see them for myself.”
“I’d be glad to show them to you, but I have meetings outside the office all day. We’ll get to it as soon as possible.”
I tightened the thumbscrews. “Tomorrow, then. We must meet tomorrow. I won’t stand for further delay. I want you to send my Claddagh collection to the Galway City Museum immediately.”
Jeremy tried to postpone, but I was adamant.
“Mr. Lycroft, let’s not argue. It’s time for my exercise. The doctor says if I spend half an hour a day walking by the Pond in Central Park, I’ll live well past one hundred. And I intend to do just that. I’ll see you tomorrow. Your office. Ten o’clock.”
I twisted my long gray hair into a bun, topped it with a hat that matched my jacket, slipped on a pair of overlarge sunglasses, and left the house.
I leaned heavily on my father’s blackthorn shillelagh as I climbed down from the M1 bus on Fifth Avenue near Central Park South.
I avoided the crowded park entrance near the statue of General Sherman, and shuffled along to Sixtieth Street, where I followed the descending path to the comma-shaped Pond that was tucked well below street level.
Two joggers, pushing oddly shaped baby strollers, waved as they sped past me.
I’d just reached the monstrous boulder that sits at a bend in the pathway and was eyeing the empty side lane to my left, when Jeremy Lycroft materialized before me.
I stopped walking and planted my shillelagh in front of me, resting both hands on the solid, knobby top.
“Mrs. Curry, how nice to see you.”
He grabbed my arm and propelled me off the path.
“You sounded so eager to learn about your rings, I decided to meet you here. Let’s move closer to the Pond, so we can speak without interruption.”
His forceful grip was impossible to shake off. He dragged me behind the boulder, in the direction of the Pond.
“Really, Mr. Lycroft, this conversation would serve us both far better in your office. And I could review my collection.”
He kept advancing us to the Pond’s edge. When we were inches from the water, he spoke.
“I’m afraid, Mrs. Curry, that reviewing your collection is exactly what you cannot do. There have been some changes. Many of your rings are not what they were.”
And with a sudden push, he thrust me into the water, which lapped at my shins. My shoes were sinking into the muddy Pond floor. Only my father’s shillelagh kept me from falling.
I raised the shillelagh and smacked Jeremy smartly across his hip. He pulled a gun from his pocket and held it a few inches from my face. Then he ordered me to move deeper into the Pond.
“I planned to drown you. I love the headline. ‘Decrepit old lady, walks by the Pond every day, finally falls in.’ But I’ll shoot you if I must.”
I moved my forehead until it rested against the gun barrel and said, “If that’s the same gun that killed Casey Rheingold, then go right ahead, sonny.”
“It’s the same gun, for all that matters. Casey left me no choice. He kept arguing that you had the right to send the collection to Ireland. I kept stalling. Casey got suspicious. When he insisted on having the collection authenticated, he signed his death warrant and yours, too, since you continue to insist on sending rings you no longer own to Ireland.”
“You stole the ancient Claddagh rings.”
“I borrowed a half dozen and replaced them with excellent copies. I gambled on your dying before anyone looked at the rings again, and then who would know what you really had in the collection. But the thought of an examination by a curator from the Galway City Museum made me nervous. Don’t resist. Walk into the Pond. The end will come quickly.”
He wanted the end. So be it.
“You’ll have to shoot me, sonny.”
And I rapped his chest with the knob of my shillelagh.
His knee-jerk reaction was to pull the trigger twice. The sound of the shots bounced through the bushes and trees. The bullets went right through my skull.
Jeremy froze, unbelieving.
Then he asked, “Why aren’t you dead?” and shot me in the head three more times.
Behind Jeremy, two mounted police officers were galloping past the boulder, riding toward the sound of gunfire.
Fingertips to shoulders, I vanished, leaving Jeremy to explain how he came to be shooting at ducks in the Central Park Pond with the gun that killed Casey Rheingold.
Tadesville by Jack Fredrickson
If you’re reading this, you found my shiny box.
If it was lying on the ground, the hanging twine all rotted, it might mean that it’s over.
But if you found it hanging in the tree, the twine tight like I checked it recent, best you run.
If you can.
Of all the things I’d done, the thing bit me to hell was being a musician. I’d marvel at that, if I had the stomach.
Thing is, most folks didn’t even consider the five-string banjo an instrument of music. It’s not the tenor banjo strummed fast by fancies sporting striped vests and straw hats, doo-dah, doo-dah. The five-wire is redneck, Appalachian crude, favored by working folks in honest denim and sweat-stained caps. Back when I could get about, the five-string banjo was like a wart on a lady’s hand-it wasn’t much seen in society, except in television nonsense like The Beverly Hillbillies or on the lap of that smoky-eyed inbred in the movie Deliverance.
In road bands, when they suffered a five-string at all, it was the banjo man who drove the car and changed the oil. Onstage, he was to stand in the back and bounce the rhythm. And be joked at. Know how you tell the stage is level? The banjo player is drooling out of both sides of his mouth.
In April of 1954, I was twenty-two and had been knocking about with three other Korea vets. We was playing jug band music-an unusual-enough occupation for white guys-hauling around in a chalky blue ’37 Plymouth with bad springs, pulling a flatbed trailer with red spoke wheels that we used for a stage. We split five ways, with Arnie, the guitar player, getting two shares because it was his car.
We’d made our way west from the Catskills, playing in towns too small to hear better. The way it worked was this: We’d pull into some jerkwater in the middle of an afternoon, four slicks in prewar suits and noticeable neckwear. First off, we’d strut around a bit, tipping our hats to the ladies, smiling at the kiddies, building interest. At 4:30, we’d throw the duffels off the trailer and climb up. Me and Arnie would start tuning, playing runs, but it was the washboard man and the jug blower that drew the people. Most folks had never heard washboard and jug, and they’d gather like bears to a dump. Up on the trailer, we’d be whooping and joking like we was having the absolute time of our lives, letting the crowd build.