A Collection of Short Stories, Volume 1

A Collection of short stories

Volume 1

by

Wes Patterson

SMASHWORDS EDITION

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PUBLISHED BY:

Wes Patterson on Smashwords

Cover art/design: Debra Cortese (debracortese.com)

A Collection of Short Stories

Volume 1

Copyright © 2010 by Wes Patterson

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author’s work.

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I dedicate this collection of short stories to four special people.

First, my thanks go to my mother, Margaret Patterson, and my father, Henry M. Patterson, without whom this book would not come into existence. Then, I'd like to thank my wife who shares my passion for good literature, who read the manuscript many times and always gave it to me straight. I am also indebted to Samantha Friedman for countless hours she spent putting the finishing touches on the manuscript. And finally, my sincere thanks to Debra Cortese who designed a beautiful cover for this and many other of my books. Thank you all.

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This volume of short stories follow Cal Rowland though his University days, his attempts to understand the meaning of it all, why are we here and where do we go, and how to influence girls to do what he wants.

Contents

The Man Who Would Be

The Prophet

One of Many Dawns

The Clown

Nubbs

University Life

University Life in the South

University Girls

Good Will

The Search

After Midnight

Even Tigers Get Old Some Day…

The Horse Talker

The Man Who Would Be

When John Kennedy opened his eyes that morning, he was lying on his back and he saw the ceiling in his bedroom. Had he seen anything else, he would have truly been surprised, as he had been married now for quite some time and almost as if to prove it, he glanced towards his right, and saw his beautiful, blond, chic, half nude wife sleeping soundly, yet still sexually appealing. Most mornings, he would just grab a newspaper and playfully tap her on the rump to wake her up or devise other interesting ways to awaken her or play any kind of friendly trick. He might use his fingers to tickle her spine, waking her slowly but gently, to start the morning right, but this day he just lay there thinking what a charmed life he had, truly charmed in every way.

It seemed there was nothing he did not have or could not have if he wanted it, the only trouble being that he could only have one wife at a time, he could only eat one meal at a time, he could only drive one car and he could only pilot one plane at a time. There was only so much he could do in a lifetime, even if that lifetime was so full of excitement, leisure, everything, and anything that anyone could ever want. The limits were set for everyone, no matter how fortunate or unfortunate. He would still grow old as fast as everyone else would. Of course, he could employ plastic surgery to look younger. He might even live a little longer than most people, because he could employ the best doctors but nevertheless the limits were set for him, fortunate as he was, just as it was set for the most unfortunate, generally. He found that to be so unfair, because he had so much to live for and in the whole scheme of things, his time to do all these marvelous things was very limited indeed. There were so many things that he wanted to experience, and wanted to do, and yet thinking cosmically, there was so little time to do these things, and yet he had political ambitions. So he could not live a completely hedonistic life and had to use various stratagems to appear to be a leader, a man of the people, normal, sane, intelligent, handsome, and forgo many of the things he would do had he not had ambitions, great ambitions for political office.

So, he was not only limited by time but by his desire to be a so-called somebody in the public eye, be a leader of the people, be the leader of the greatest nation on earth. And so he had to curb some of the things he would really like to do because it would impinge upon his image to the public. He even had to marry a certain type of woman. He had to dress in a certain type of way. He had to act, talk, and behave in a certain manner that would appeal to a great or the greatest percentage of the population. And anything that he might do that would not appeal to the so-called population had to be very carefully hidden. He mulled these matters over briefly, but there was very little he could about them. He could either lead a completely hedonistic life and not care what anyone thought or he could go for the whole pie, so to speak, and be remembered, be immortal. He chose the latter. So again, he was somewhat confined in the things he could do. Things that he might want to do, he might not be able to, for fear of discovery by all the sneaky photographers/reporters and scandal sheets.

As a matter of fact, a leading politician had been scandalized recently by his activities. He had been made all the more aware of the same sort of thing, though maybe not exactly the same thing, likewise happening to him which would ruin all his carefully laid plans, going back even before these plans, to his mother’s carefully laid plans, probably even before he was born. So he lay in bed mulling the advantages and disadvantages of a political life. He chose that life because first of all he chose immortality as opposed to mere hedonism. Secondly, because he had everything, money, charm, education, taste, style, everything a politician might need. He didn’t figure on any serious opposition and really didn’t figure there was any way that he could not reach the highest office of the land.

And possibly after that, after serving his term as a politician, he would be less scrutinized. Of course he would be older then, but then possibly he could indulge in all these other activities, fantastic activities which he had thought about and had well enough money for and probably would be able to do after his term in office was over. But he would be an old man then, fairly old, and would he be able to enjoy all these other more or less forbidden activities? Again, he found it so unfair that he would live approximately the same life span as a person who had practically nothing to live for. He had so much money that he could hardly keep track of it, whereas there were many people who would gladly give up their life in a second because they found it so completely devoid of pleasure, happiness or fulfillment. Whereas everything he did, every person he met, everywhere he went, was a complete delight.

People fawned over him, wanted his autograph, wished to exchange a word, continually congratulated him on merely being alive, on being himself, on the hopes they had for him as a leader, as a political leader, and every day was a new adventure in narcissism. How much adulation and idolatry could one person possibly have and enjoy?

Every day something was planned after work, usually with his wife and they would enjoy themselves with others so that the most could be obtained from life. He had to do something constructive in order to keep in the public eye, to appear valuable, needed and interesting and always in the news so that he could lay the ground work for the political campaign to come. Then he thought all this thinking about the limitations of life, and especially of his own life, limitations imposed by time, really didn’t help in any way and only served to slightly depress him as he lay there, listening to the slow methodical breathing of his wife.

There was something planned for today after work, as usual, but today or rather this evening, might be a little more pleasurable than merely going to a dinner party, being fawned over, and exchanging meaningless words with important people, and having his wife being bored to death and invariably complaining afterwards about the lack of intellectual stimulation as most of his associates were more politically inclined than intellectually inclined, although there were some that provided some intellectual stimulation for him and his wife. But what he was actually thinking about was not work, the so-called work that he did every day which was really not work of any kind but appeared to be and everything was in appearances. Appearing to the general public as if he was actually running an important political magazine was extremely important, and valuable, although people didn’t have the slightest idea of what it was that he actually did. So his mind turned towards the evening, being as every day was pretty much the same, and he felt far more bored than people with much less intelligence, charm and less to offer the world than he, because they were freer to do what they wanted, and he returned to that topic, the topic of being free to do whatever he wanted to do and that he wasn’t free to do what he wanted to most of the time and then his mind returned again to the evening.

There was a vacation, actually a wedding was planned or a wedding reception, he wasn’t sure which but he would be able to indulge in one of his socially approved and seemingly gallant, or avant-garde hobbies… his airplane. Instead of taking the private jet or the usual plane, he would be able to pilot his own little single engine Piper Saratoga II from a small New Jersey airport to the family residence in Hyannis Port about 300 miles away and they would get there in about an hour and a half and he would have the company of his wife and her sister who wanted to come along.

Here he was, in addition to everything else, a pilot, a pilot not of a jet or a passenger plane but of a single engine fun type plane in which he could take people on short jaunts from one place to another and he enjoyed immensely flying and people were always so impressed that John Kennedy could do so many things, even fly.

He thought maybe he could learn to operate a submarine, but that sounded ridiculous, for what reason would he learn to operate a submarine? Things like this often came to his mind, because of the confinement he felt. He felt that he might want to learn about a submarine but that would not in any way be logical for his position and place in the world. Submarines were out and that was it even if he had a great interest in them, which he didn’t anyway. But he did look forward to the plane ride. He had flown this route many times with his wife and she was both afraid and bored with the whole thing and preferred private transportation and only after his urging with the idea that there would be photographers, and paper reporters there at the airport when they took off would she agree. And every little thing counted as he built up his image to appear the all American man, the pilot, dancer, the connoisseur, etc. and this was one thing that he actually enjoyed because he felt there truly was an element of danger involved as he was not a very experienced pilot.

Finally after contemplating life’s inequities, he reached over with his index finger and tickled his wife’s spine until she turned over and omitted some soothing, comforting sounds and he kissed her lightly before getting up and starting to dress, to begin a day which promised to be a day much like all other days.

Eventually the so-called workday ended and he had made arrangements to meet his wife and her sister at the small New Jersey airport where they would take off if conditions were right. First he would check weather conditions from his office, before leaving and if all was ok, at that point, he would call his wife first, his wife would then call her sister, and they would all arrange to meet at the airport. When he checked the weather reports everything seemed fine for the short hop of 300 miles and he put in the call to his wife.

As he was driving to the small airport in New Jersey where they were to meet, about 50 miles away, he thought of the disintegrating state of his marriage. He reached down to the console and picked up a plain brown bag with an open bottle of white wine and took a large swig. He then patted his left shirt pocket to check that he had remembered to bring the Vicodin pills that had been prescribed for him after the paragliding accident where he broke his ankle. As a matter of fact, he just had the cast removed yesterday. His mind then returned to the subject of the state of his marriage. He had married the right women in every way, externally and politically. But, after the initial rush of romance and sex had worn thin, after about 6 months, they realized that their interests were completely different. She had little interest in the political–sports arena in which he devoted almost all his time. He would come home from work and find strange people in the penthouse which were her intellectual friends, gathered to hear some professor or some eastern yogi who would expound on some esoteric subject on which he had no knowledge. As a matter of fact, the rift lately had become wider and wider and she actually left the penthouse for three nights, that is left him all alone while she gallivanted around with all her intellectual friends and didn’t even bother to return home for three days and three nights. This acerbated the rift between them and he had no idea just how far this whole thing was going to go. He hoped this little plane jaunt might help to ameliorate things, at least for a while. This was becoming a major issue in their marriage as each tended to gravitate towards a different group of friends and were seeing less and less of each other. So, although to the public at large it appeared to be a perfect marriage, in actuality they were having bitter arguments and seeing less and less of each other. The possibility of divorce occurred to him but even that seemed to be precluded because it would again impinge on his political image. He couldn’t understand why she just couldn’t be content with eventually being the first lady of the land and forget about all these intellectual pretensions and interests which she cultivated with her own group of friends.

As he was driving it occurred to him that it would take him longer to drive to the airport than it would to fly to where he was going. But of course, it was all a calculated political thing anyway and one that he actually enjoyed.

The ridiculousness of his life occurred to him at times but he accepted these things because he knew that the photographers would be at the airport and he dressed just so, for the occasion. He had trained personnel pick out his wardrobe so that it would contrast with that time of the evening. His wife was also an expert on fashion and undoubtedly would make a stunning appearance and he also made sure beforehand that the sister was passably attractive so that reporters and photographers would have the perfect little story for their next scoop, would have the perfect little story of the dashing young pilot, flying his wife and her sister to the wedding reception rather than traveling like the common people by commercial jet or train or any such mundane avenue.

When they got to the airport, after posing for the appropriate photos and answering the same questions with the same answers over and over, which he had well memorized by this time, it became all business as far as the flight was concerned. He had used the small Essex County airport many times before and was familiar with the personnel. And now all that was left to do was have them check out his plane and call for a last minute weather report for the immediate vicinity and everything en route to and including the landing field where they would have the reception. They had planned to make this a day flight and leave at 6:00 p.m. but his wife’s sister had to work late and consequently they had to leave just before 9:00 p.m., making it a night flight. When he made his calls, all the weather reports were well within the safety limits of his license, which was restricted to flying in good weather, although he felt he was perfectly capable of navigating in a storm should one come up. Weather reports are never 100% accurate, but he never wanted to take even the slightest chance, if there was a chance, that there would be inclement weather, heavy clouds or a storm. But when he made that final call, everything was well within limits and he anticipated no problems.

This would be the high point of the day, as he certainly didn’t look forward to the reception itself. What he really liked was the plane ride and the power, the control he had over three people’s lives, and the feeling of power it gave him over everyone, as he hoped he would feel politically, maybe in the far future or maybe even sooner depending on political events.

The photographers were still shooting as he opened the quaint doors of the small monoplane. As he opened the door for the sister, because of the ever increasing problems in his marriage, he considered the possibilities, knowing all the while it was very slim that anything would develop.

He then boarded the plane, strapped himself in, checked all the gauges by the book, and then proceeded to warm up the engine and took his time to allow the photographers to continue to flash away. In fact, he enjoyed all the rigamarole involved in flying just as much as the flying itself.

Then there was the take off to look forward to. The take off and the landing were always the most exciting times, if you can call that exciting. Just floating up there in the wild blue yonder required no skill at all, and sometimes it even got embarrassing as the conversation would lag and when that happened he would busy himself with the instruments unnecessarily, as if he actually had something to do on a clear calm night. He might actually cause the plane to go in one direction or another and then correct it if embarrassing lags in the conversation ensued and on this trip it did ensue, at least for him, as the two women were talking about their college days, reliving all their delightful experiences during college and after and he already knew everything his wife had to say ten times over so he began to amuse himself by daydreaming of whatever might come into his mind and whenever he was asked something he tried to catch the final drift of the conversation to emit the appropriate grunt and generally agree with whatever was said.

These after-college stories seemed so much the same only varying in whether a certain girl married such and such who did such and such and made such and such or she married a more influential and interesting person who did such and such and made such and such and lived in a more desirable location and was therefore one step ahead in the social pecking order. Of course, this became increasingly tiresome. He tried to relax in the perfect atmospheric conditions, but his mind continued to wander, mostly into the future to pleasurable activities he might be able to engage in at the wedding reception. He might even be able to flirt occasionally with someone, if his wife was not in the immediate vicinity.

Suddenly he received an emergency message to descend immediately as he was directly in the flight path of American Airlines flight 1484. This certainly woke him up and he descended immediately, watching the big airliner zoom overhead. From then on, things resumed their usual boring state and then he remembered he had to turn right and go out to sea, and then at another point he had to turn left and approach the airport and come coasting right in and he had already made his turn to the right and was starting to descend towards the airport which was clearly visible when unexplainably he ran into thick fog. At this time of the evening the haze was usually thick and it made it impossible to discern the horizon because the sea blended right into the sky. So in essence, there was no horizon. He knew he was descending at a quite a rapid rate to land so he pulled up and intended to circle the field until he could break through the haze and make a landing. He looked at the altimeter and it indicated that he was flying level, but he felt that he was descending and continued descending so he pulled up to get up higher. He certainly didn’t want to take a chance of flying too low and crashing or narrowly avoiding a crash. Again he looked at the altimeter and it showed a quite rapid climb but he felt surely it must be malfunctioning as he felt they weren’t climbing at all. He felt they were flying completely level, and his concern was such that he said to his wife, Honey, do you think were climbing, flying level, what do you think?

Why are you asking me? she shot back, Don’t you have your instruments?

Yeah, I know, I know but what do you think? The instruments may be wrong. Are we level or are we climbing?

I think we’re level, she said. It seems like we are level to me.

How about you Melanie?

I don’t know, said Melanie. Everything seems fine to me.

Well then, he said. We must be level. This altimeter must be wrong. I checked everything out at the airport. But these gauges sometimes fail you know, this being the computer age and all.

And so getting confirmation from both of his passengers and flying by the so-called seat of his pants, that is how he felt and he felt they were perfectly level also, he relaxed, and the sweat on his shirt slowly began to dry out. He saw that the altimeter registered an unbelievable 15000 feet and he commented again Remember we got to get these gauges checked out. This altimeter is completely non functional. But he had no sooner said these words than they broke through the fog and to his horror he saw from the nose of the plane that they were actually in a very steep climb and the altimeter was right.

Not only were they in a steep climb but the engine was already going phutt, phutt, and as soon as he heard that distinctive sound, right then, even with his limited knowledge as soon as he heard that distinctive phutt, phutt, he knew there was only one thing that would happen next. The nose would go down into a dive and only a very, very experienced pilot could ever pull this plane out of that dive. Immediately he tried to level the plane before it stalled but it was all too late, and the plane went into a death spiral and no matter what he did, they were going down.

Amid the screams of the women which only added to his panic, the only thing he could see was the Democratic National Convention of 2012 and he was walking off the stage after his inaugural speech to the applause of thousands in the convention centre and millions of TV viewers at home and for some reason that’s about all he wanted to see and when they hit the water all time stopped like a gigantic clock.

This was in 1999.

Exactly 70 years before, in 1929, when aviation was in its primitive stages, a man named Charles Lindbergh was attempting the seemingly impossible, to cross the Atlantic solo to prove that international flight might be possible. He was a man of mathematics and physics, of weight and thrust, not of emotion and a man who did things his way, alone, by himself. He had put together this plane called the Spirit of St. Louis and there was an international race, with the Orteig prize of $25,000, to see who could cross the Atlantic first either way, from New York to Le Bourget, or the reverse. Many pilots from both sides of the Atlantic had tried, failed and died already. He decided to start the next day but he couldn’t sleep and got up at 3am. It was pouring rain and the runway was gutted and muddy.

Put it off for some other time, they all said. You can’t possibly take off in this mud because you can’t get the speed up to clear the trees and telegraph poles.

Just fill up the tanks to the top, said Lindbergh and started walking down the runway. He took his handkerchief out, tied it to a stake, and drove the stake into the ground at a certain point on the runway. The plane would have to leave the ground when he passed that handkerchief or he would never make the trees. He could abort the take off at that point if he had to.

Again they said, Lindy put it off for another day. You’ll never get the speed up on this muddy, gutted runway. You’ll never clear the trees.

But he couldn’t wait any longer. He hadn’t slept for 24 hours and he wouldn’t get any more for another 36 hours. He got in the plane, warmed up the engine, checked his gauges, just like John Kennedy did 70 years later. He could see the handkerchief and it told him which way the wind was blowing. He knew he would have to be up by that point and he backed the plane up to the far end of the hanger, raced the engine a couple of times, swung around and took off down the runway as everybody cheered. He kept his eye on the handkerchief and when he reached that point the plane made a sudden lunge off the ground and he then gave it full throttle but unfortunately it bounced back to the ground but there was no choice at this point and he kept the throttle on full. He thought, Damn it. I hope I make those trees and the telephone poles and don’t join the legions of other pilots who went down. He gave it maximum thrust and saw the trees rapidly approaching and as he passed over the trees he felt the plane’s vibration.

Another foot or so and I would be down on the ground, he thought.

But he had made it. Made it, he thought, all I have done is get into the air.

The real test lay ahead. The last land he saw was Newfoundland and then he flew interminably across the ocean and was blessed with clear weather. He dozed off more than once only to be awakened 10 or 20 feet above the sea by a fly in the cockpit. He thought about the physics of flying and that fly. Did it actually add any weight to the plane? He had even thrown out half of his sandwich to lighten the load and conserve fuel. That fly had saved his life a number of times and he wondered if it weighed anything as he crossed the ocean.

Eventually he saw a number of fishing boats and circled low to ask them where Ireland was, but all he got was waves. Then he saw land and it was the Irish coast, and the word got out all over the world that he had made Ireland but he did not have enough fuel to make Le Bourget airport. The word was that he was running low and might have to crash land.

Lindbergh cleared the English Channel and made his way to France with his maps. It was easy to find his way to Paris and he could see the huge searchlights of the airport but the cloud cover was like thick soup and he couldn’t see the runway. All he could see was the large search lights swinging back and forth and all he could hear was the hundreds of thousands of people shouting below, and he looked at the gauges and saw that the fuel gauge registered empty so he leveled off around 2000 feet and started circling while descending slowly. Watching his altimeter and his fuel gauge, he hit 1800, 1700, 1600, and continued to circle while dropping and still couldn’t see the field. He dropped lower, flying completely by instruments and descended to 1500, 1450 when suddenly there was a break in the clouds and he saw the runway lights. But he was in no position to land and he had to circle one more time and hope that the cloud cover hadn’t closed by the time he returned. He made that last circle and the runway lights came into view and he put the Spirit of St. Louis down on the runway at Le Bourget just as light as a feather.

There was nothing to it, he thought as he glanced at the empty fuel gauge and Lucky Lindy just sat in the plane while the crowd went wild and tore open the door and carried Lindy off on their shoulders, even though he was not one of their own. It had been done. He had proved it. And when all the reporters came to interview him they found him with a small bottle and a fly in it and the bottle had held some juice because nothing he carried was superfluous and the reporters asked in French Is this your gift to France, a fly? And he said No my gift to France is intercontinental travel. This fly saved my life twice or I would have went down if he hadn’t wakened me. Lindy wanted to fly back to the US but the crowd tore the plane apart and it was impossible so he had to come back by the slow method, by ship. At home the whole country celebrated and he rode in a ticker tape parade honoring him before hundreds of thousands of cheering fans in New York City.

And that was in 1929.

And a decade later, in 1939, after Hitler had rolled over Poland and threatened that whole part of the world, Germany had come rapidly to power and had the fastest plane on earth, the Messerschmitt 109. Lindbergh had personally gone to Germany and had learned that they were building a bullet-proof tank and that they had plans of actually launching rockets all the way from Germany to England. Lindbergh went to see the President and advised him, He who rules the air will rule the world and Germany has the Messerschmitt, the fastest plane on earth, and not only that but Germany has already achieved a complete war machine, the likes of which no one has ever seen and is far in advance of any opposition. He advised uniting with Germany