BEDLAM IN BOLINAS

   chapter 1

Escape from the city of Alcatraz

This time, Highway 1 was not a lonely ride. Now earth, sun and sky were in rhythm with that VW Van which scurried, like a mouse, along the road below. Wayward winding through the rat race labyrinth of their world, our four pilgrims were finally on their way. 

            Papa Harrison and the family were moving on, two progeny in the back seat, and wife Wanda by his side. Phelia sat in the back like an Easter Island statue, lost in her music, staring out into the sky and ocean. Jeb sat at opposite ends from her, reading his book with difficulty, despite the tossing sea motion from the roller-coaster road.

            The van scuttled up and down the coastal highway, while the four passengers rode mental chariots along the paths of their minds. The clouds and sun and fog blended in with the monstrous ocean, much like the stripes of a Persian cat. The sun suddenly broke through the billowing clouds, like a lemming flying over the cliff, and began it's slow motion descent … down into the open sea.

  A hawk soared high above them in the sunlit clouds. So many sunrises, so many moon sets … how many times has he seen them? Waiting, waiting … patiently waiting. He sailed down and down, and zeroed in on the pilgrims, his hawk-eyes following the mouse-like van with keen interest.

  “You should look at this scenery, kids, you don’t get chances like this so often, to see God’s beauty like this,” said Wanda as she turned around to admire her brood.

              “Yes mom,” said Fefe, barely able to hear past the death metal blast from the earplugs.

              “Yeah mom,” said Jeb, his fingers turning a page of his book. Jeb thought, I’ll probably be an old man with gray hair, and mom’ll still be saying "hey kids," and turned his thoughts back to the meandering philosophical excursions of the book.

 Phelia, affectionately dubbed Fefe, surfed the turbulent waves of heavy metal concertos blasting in her earplugs. She accepted this infantile epithet, albeit with annoyance, knowing well that it may stick for life.

           Growing tired of fighting the winding tossing road, tired of mom’s frequent reminders to look at the scenery, Jeb took his walkman out, inserted his earplugs and removed the JSB CD from his player. Then stealthily, when Phelia was looking out the window, he reached across the imaginary line of demarcation, which divided the territories of occupation, his and her property of habitation in the back seat, and he stole, rather borrowed, a CD case with a long-haired freak gyrating on the cover.

          A hawk shadow swept across the road, right before the path of the Van, and Wanda remarked it was an omen. Jeb felt strange emotion brush through his mind, like a rodent running for it’s life, catching glimpses from the corner of his eye of a predator swooping in for the kill.

           Dumping the thought, Jeb deftly inserted the CD into his player and pushed the button. He would occasionally listen to his sister’s music to assess the guitar talents of Van Halen, or whoever. Phelia caught a glimpse from the corner of her eye of exaggerated gyrations of her bother’s head, as Jeb did a guitar rift with fingers flying wildly in thin air, his face grimacing in time to the notes, holding out that last high note for a few seconds with a look of complete ecstasy on his face.

          Phelia knew he’d sneaked a metal CD, and she turned her face slightly to him, with her eyes rolled upward in exaggerated annoyance, having been through these sibling teasing escapades with Sir Jeb the terrible so many times before. Then she said, “You may know it, that your Mr. JS Bach could have learned a good lick or two from our living maestro, Mr. Van Halen ... huh?”

          “Both are geniuses in their own rights,” Jeb admitted, while admiring the green and purple streaks in her hair. “But we’ll see if Van will stand the test of time, like Johann did, who is still going strong after 300 earth orbits, let’s see if Van makes the 300 club or not.”

          “Maybe yes and maybe no," retorted Phelia, "but we’re never going to ever ‘see’ something like that, cause we’ll never know, we’ll all be dead … the whole world may be dead by then, the way things are going.”

          “Ah, you and your blackish wardrobe and death obsession.”

          “Hey, it’s the surest thing we know … in a world we’ll never know.”

           “Yeah, but like Jimi once said, ‘Will I live tomorrow ... dah dah dah woom woom wrannyyy… well I just can’t say,’ whray whrayya [his fingers doing flamboyant guitar licks in the air], ‘but I know for sure, wah wah wah wranyyerr … I’m going to live today….’” and then added some low heavy chords to the air, his face contorting with the guitar blasts.

            “Oh brother, you’re so sixtyish.”

            “Yeah, well, whattya expect, with a steady diet of 60’s music since I was in the crib … and they wrote real lyrics back then. That was the last of the gray matter. Whatever brain cells escaped the frying pans of drugs, were shaken from their moorings by the headbangers in the 80’s.”

            “Very funny.”

            “I wish it were jest.”

After observing the guitar charade antics of her son in her vanity mirror on the visor, and chuckling to herself, Wanda then turned to Harrison and said, “Looks like my daily affirmations are paying off, at long last.”

           Harrison responded, “Yes, you really did yer magic to ole Betsy, cleansing her aura with your sage smoke and mantras before the trip. It sure beats a tune-up, she’s in prime spiritual shape, and that takes front seat to some local yocal mechanic, right?” 

            “If you say,” agreed Wanda, “cars and vans take a spirit of their own, some are in tune with nature, and some can be demons, like that evil car in that Stephen King movie we saw years ago, what was the name? Roxanne or something?”

            Christina … was it?”

Wanda received this with silence and turned to look at the sea.

Harrison wondered if he loaded the van too heavy, as it chugged slowly up the steep hill. Just as they crested the top of the hill, a sudden shaft of light flooded the interior of the van. Harrison instantly grabbed for his sun visor, just as he would have grabbed his gun 20 years ago, when the battlefield filled with bright light. He hoped it was all in the past, the flashbacks. “Hold on old boy,” he muttered to himself. Fears vanished, as the glowing sun bathed the van with warm security.

With a knee-jerk reaction to the bright light, he nudged the brakes ever so slightly, which dislodged a lingering paranoia from the backyard of his psyche … from the back of the van. A bundle of blankets became loosened and dislodged a cold and ominous steel barrel. Sunbeams danced off a shiny casing of some old rifle. Harrison felt a stab of premonition, and he turned around that exact moment and noticed a gun peeking out from the blankets, like a guilty dark shadow recoiling in fear from a bright shaft of light. The long be-gone flashbacks once again flickered across his virtual mind like a fourth of July fireworks shoot-off. Are they finally just a remote figment of neural information, filed away, back there in the brain? … or … he didn’t even want to think about it. He just relished the hot glow of sunlight on his face … those rays of natural atomic energy sure torched out those stubborn dark thoughts out of their caverns.

            The siblings went back to their business with renewed intensity, and the parents stared out at the ocean and clouds and blue sky, which all seemed to iron out those old worry lines that sometimes graced their foreheads.

            Today was the day. Today Harrison genuinely enjoyed his wife and kids.  The farther they advanced along Highway 1, the closer they came to Bolinas … the promised land. And the more they escaped the city of Alcatraz.

            Jeb read his book, and sometimes looked out the window, but he didn’t see the same thing that Wanda and Harrison saw. He essentially scanned the phenomenal world through the wisdom of his philosophy books. Enjoying a pondering on some recent passage of life and its fleeting meaning, his reverie of trance was rudely broken by a sudden proclamation, blasting from the front seat...

        "Harrison! Watch out for that rabbit!" Wanda screamed.

        Harrison screeched to a halt on two front treads and two bald rears, and snapped like a rubber band saying, “Good God … honey, whatya trying to do? Blast my eardrums out of my head and splatter ‘em on the pavement?” He then jumped out the door, to look around for a pancaked squirrel under the wheels. 

        "Okay … it's okay!" he reassured her visage of horror, which masked her face. He reached down and picked up the dusty Maggie like she was his long lost love.

Stroking its fur, he proudly displayed this prize acquisition for everyone to see. Her feline eyes sent a clear and silent message to the staring humans, Thanks for saving me ... can I come home with you?

            "Hey guys, look what we found," Harrison said.

            "My God, I thought it was a rabbit," Wanda said.

            "Nah, it's a talking Manx!" Harrison muttered through his Fu Manchu mustache, twisting his muttonchop with pride.

            Harrison and Wanda tied the knot of nuptial bliss after the war. Yet, Harrison’s earthly joy did not prove interminable, as the shrapnel wound above his right kneecap would occasionally give reminder of the agony of combat. But Wanda’s healing aura made him forget it all … most of the time. Back in the 60's, his duty to fight won over his peacenik leanings, and he served nearly four months of his year-long assignment overseas before coming home.  

            "Cute little munchkin," Jeb laughed, pointing to her distorted behind.

            "Damned with faint praise, oh fair-haired son. Whadya expect from a cat that just about got run over?" Harrison said, holding it by its scruffy neck.

            "Wow, look, no tail! It's a weirdo!" Phelia exclaimed.

            "Hey, be careful, Fefe, you're talking to compadre, here," Harrison snapped back.

            "Yeah, shut up Phelia. Dad, can we just let it go?" Jeb added his second cents. “Wild animals have diseases sometimes, you know. We don't need any more pets, you know.”

            Wanda tilted her head to stare like at Jeb, as if he wore a nazi uniform and sported a blocked off mustache, and firmly said, "Not a chance buster! We’re taking it home!" Once again, just like one of her favorite heroines, mother Teresa, it was mother Wanda racing to the rescue of the downtrodden.

            "Home?” Phelia scowled. “We ain't even moved in yet. Besides it's too far away for any of my friends to come over ... why do we need another cat, Ma? We left one with the neighbors already! What’s the sense?"

            "No sense, Fefe, it's called compassion," Wanda blurted, shooting her an dark glance, with enough voltage to singe the tips of her purple streaked hair.

            "Yeah kids, whadya wanna do?” Harrison scowled, “throw the woebegone cat out the window? Look at her shiver in fright … have some compassion, have a heart … for Pete's sake." 

            Wanda took the cat on her lap and meanwhile the kids fell back into their world. Phelia drowned herself in death metal music, and Jeb took to his philosophy book and his bitter looks at the world.

It was plain to see that the stump-tailed cat had secured her bastion of fortification in this hostile world. Those loveable eyes flashed her passport badge to everyone. They proclaimed that she was sore, abused, and as needful of love as any of God’s creature. 

            The sun hovered beautifully above the sea as they approached Bolinas. It cast a golden glow across the glassy surface of the ocean. Wanda felt a tinkling of hope as they approached the driveway, which was surrounded by a thick clump of undergrowth that lined an even thicker stretch of oak and pine. 

           How long had she yearned to frolic in endless fields of green? To wander the countryside with a panoramic view replete with constellations of flowers dotting the grassy hills, surrounded by a sea of serenity? How long has she sought the ultimate haven for those two souls whom she had brought into this world?

              Her dreams suddenly became her real world, right before her eyes, as a castle-like abode suddenly materialized out from behind a curtain of trees. It was if her dingy basement of gloom suddenly became a universe filled with shafts of angelic light. Ecstasy filled her soul.

            "Hey, we're here!" Phelia yelled.

            The VW Van pulled in the driveway and barely stopped before they all piled out. They stood there in wonder, gazing at their new homestead. This time they weren't going to move again, not every few years like before. Come hell or high rap crap, nobody was going to budge them. They charged through the screen door, led by Phelia dancing in like a Metallica groupie, and Jeb the doubting Thomas.

Harrison followed in sweet serenity with his arms around Wanda. She lowered the cat gently down on the screened porch and entered the house smiling like a Cheshire. 

"Kick out the jams!" Harrison yelled.

            Music shook the walls and brought down city fever into the country surroundings. Dylan’s "I ain't gonna work on Maggie's farm no more..." blasted out from the boombox. Wanda grabbed Phelia and swung her around and stomped her feet. Jeb jumped onto the sofa and then onto the back of Harrison.

They all let go of a few thousand years of city fungus and screamed until their new house rocked with the pride of lions. Then reality pummeled down out of their blue highways … as something strange caught the corner of Jeb’s eye.  

            "Hey everybody, Check this out!" yelled Jeb, as he stared out the back window.

            They all drifted out onto the back porch, to see what Jeb was talking about, and they saw a huge wooded area looming behind an expansive lawn, with a huge boulder like rock jutting up on the western edge of the woods.

           “Will you look at this colossal back yard!” said Phelia, “and that rock … it’s monstrous ... looks like that rock they call … uh, Gibraltar, is it?"

            Then it seemed that they all simultaneously looked at the rock and then past it about 50 yards, there stood a large jungle of trees, very thick. It was funny how they all stopped for a few long seconds and stared in silence at the woods. There was an eerie premonition they all shared, a peculiar look on their faces ... something uncanny, something beggaring description …something wrong about those woods … something they were unable to put a discerning finger on.

           They knew something was awry, yet couldn't get the exact  thought or words for the sensation. As they gazed intently at the woods, as invisible eyes stared back. Looking around the rotting stumps and grayish trees, many small eyes surveyed them with keen interest. 

            A hawk sailed low and silently over the lawn, slowly, observing, looking … looking for prey? Or just out for a joy flight? There were no signs of rodents, nothing. No life at all. The silent hawk was the only sign of life. He flapped his wings and picked up speed and circled the boulder and then flew over the house.

Harrison was the first to break out of the strange reverie, and offered, "Uh, us ex-city cats will have to take a little shut-eye."

The others agreed with nods, and seemed to snap out of the hypnotic trance, and they all turned their heads slightly, but something kept their gaze fixed, they could not peel their eyes away from the bizarre scene.

“When Jeb and I get back from Frisco with the U-haul and all our stuff tomorrow, we’ve got a two week vacation. Then it's back to the real world again, me back to the grindstone and the kids with summer jobs."

They all seemed to simultaneously break eye contact with the woods, and then they all turned around and walked single-file, back into the house, but their collective thoughts remained in their new back yard, in a sort of stupefaction. 

They naturally went to their own rooms, it was obvious who's was who's, and Phelia called out from her room, "Hey, mom, can I sleep with you tonight?"

             "Sure, honey, come on in," Wanda said.

            "Yeah, I'll stoke up a little fire on a cool night," Harrison said. "Well, I guess I'll sleep in the back room, since Fefe will be sleeping with you tonight."

"Yes," whispered Wanda, "You know that she is a little scared about the first night in a strange house, even though it's ours, and despite how she thinks she's such a big girl." They both grinned at each other.  

             They turned to their respective rooms, and both noticed something. The glare of the overhead lightbulb beat down on them, and reflected off the trigger guard of Harrison’s AK-47, hanging out dangerously on the coffee table.

            "Huh, honey... Why'd you bring the gun along, anyhow?"

 "Well ... you know we'd all feel a little more secure with my trusty ole rifle hanging around,” Harrison said, pulling at his moustache, putting on his macho veneer. “It's our first night in a strange new land, so I brought it along, just to be sure."

            "Sure," said Wanda, "we moved all the way out here, far away from all the crazies in the city, and you’re still paranoid? Like there’s crack-heads walking around outside our yard? You can relax a little now, dear, we’re safe! We made it to the country, it’s safe here, no criminals. They’re all stoned and drunk, back there in the city, looking for their next victim. Anyway, just keep the safety catch secured on that howitzer.” She took a deep breath and looked a little more relaxed after saying all that.

 “Oh look out the window,” said Wanda, trying to change the subject, “see that gorgeous moonrise! The country is so peaceful ... but isn't it funny there’s no birds in the yard?” She seemed to tense up again. “I saw them all over the place … when we were driving up the road, they were swarming all above our car … but this back yard seems to be like a dead zone for … where’s the life? Her eyes darted back and forth, from the yard to Harrison, revealing her trepidation.

"Oh, I'm sure we'll see some of our feathered friends tomorrow, surely our hawk friend will come again,” assured Harrison. “You know we just got us a piece of heaven on earth!" he added to ease her tension. They both hugged each other and whirled around in joy.  

            "You better go rest so you can get up tomorrow,” said Wanda. “Gotta go back to the crazy city and get our stuff."

            "You're right as usual, you little worry wart," he said as he kissed Wanda lightly on the cheek, grabbed his AK-47 and a blanket just as Phelia returned.

            "Be nice to your mom and don't push her off the bed tonight," Harrison said to his daughter before she left with Wanda. "Good night, Jeb."

            "Night, Dad," Jeb said and headed for his room with a book and pillow tucked under his arms. 

The cool autumn night seemed to usher in the Bolinas ocean breeze … and the night fog crept up along the cliffs like a cat's-paw. As Harrison stoked up the fire, he gazed out the dark windows into the moonlight, and his attention riveted on the ominous patch of trees. Staring out the window for a moment … he turned to sit on the sofa and started to write. No better time now to get my two and a half pages a day in, he thought.

Here was Harrison’s moment of triumph. Ah, to drink deeply in the lake of supreme satisfaction! That gut feeling of the essence of a real man, knowing that sustentation is granted to his dependants! To give wife and children a lasting security in the midst of a vile world! He can finally sit back and breath easy for a change. They had arrived at last, into homestead security, free of tribulations, full of lasting peace and love. Maybe more time to finish my long belabored novel, he thought. As he wrote, he drifted off into a restless sleep. His pencil and paper dropped to the floor and the fire simmered down.

            She would much rather be reveling in some slam pit at a Metallica concert, than doing the family thing, doing this big move out of town, so far away from her world and her friends. She often thought, what’s wrong with my friends? It’s my life. Mom’s such a wrench in my gears.  Deep inside, she really loved her mom, more than she was consciously aware. It’s just that the wrenching transition from juvenile confusion to adult maturity proved a particularly hard metamorphosis, and parental appreciation was not always manifest. 

            Oh well, she thought, I have my plans, and mom has her plans, and God always has His last word on it all. And then she experienced a rare regurgitation of education, gleaned in her checkered career of impersonating a high school student, and vaguely remembered some old Steinbeck line, [or was it Shakespear?], she thought, Oh well, what ever, or whoever said it, she was still thinking, the plans of mice and men …yeah, that’s the line I was trying to remember… yeah, I’m the mouse all right …you can definitely say that I’m the mouse in this fairy tale…that’s for sure … and ole Tom’s right around the corner...

Wanda brushed back her blonde hair lovingly and soothed her with soft, reassuring words, "Don't worry, honey, you'll make new friends. Besides, we won't be moving anymore, either. Dad's made us a solemn vow. He just wants some quiet to finish his novel. Let's give it a good go. No pain, no gain. All of us must have something to complete by being here."

            "Ma, Dad still writing his first novel. He began about fifteen years ago, before I was born..." Phelia scowled.

            "Now, now, Fefe, don't be so hard on Dad. He's worked hard in jobs he doesn't like for years. Give ’m a break. He’s tried hard to make a home for you kids. We thought the San Francisco scene might be like the 60's, fun-loving, flower-empowering, and inspiring. Well surprise, it wasn’t, cause things always seem to change in time. So, it's a higher source that has brought us here. Let it go, tonight, Fefe, just go to sleep little Fefe, and dream sweet dreams…."

            Phelia was already drifting asleep, bored and tired from the hectic day ... and so she was not so annoyed by the sing-song voice of her mother … not as much as usual.

“…Just go to sleep little Fefe, and dream sweet dreams ... little Fefe girl …  dream of a better world..."

            Phelia’s annoyed facial expression soon melted into that misty area of trance, somewhere there between sleep and wakefulness, as Wanda crooned on and on, “dream of a better world, my child, dream of a higher world….”

          Jeb laid down and propped his head on a pillow to read a little Nietzsche. The Ubermensch was here long before the sunshine supermen invaded the Bay of Frisco, and Jeb was a thinker long before his Dad and Mom made their daring move from Frisco. It was a dubious change in life, in Jeb’s book. It’s certainly an exercise in “will to power,” he thought, but not much in the “beyond good and evil” genre … not in his mind. He took a wait-and-see attitude to this drastic move to bleak isolation.    

 Jeb, well, he was pretty much the same old Jeb, wherever he was fated to be. In a bustling city, or in some two-horse poe-dunk town, he was invariably on the same path, always in quest for the figmental kismet, known as the philosopher’s stone. Right now he was the young man of the family, looking for the right college to enter, having several scholarship offers. His skills at the books and writing final exam papers was all in tow, but his aim in life was often a mystery to his concerned parents. Scarce to find a practical bone in his body, he was way too sagacious to the transparent lies of this vaporous world, and wasn’t about to volunteer for a life of menial servitude.

He looked up at his wall and imagined where would be a good spot to put up his favorite Nietzsche quote: "But all joy wants eternity - wants deep, deep, deep eternity!" It was a quaint little room with low ceilings and disgusting blue rug. He attempted to dive deep into “Beyond Good and Evil,” and then he fell victim to somnolence as he sank into a deep snooze, after reverentially clutching the book to his chest.

  Harrison was the last to fall asleep, disturbed somewhat by the weirdness of the day, like when the Manx seemed to talk to him … and when the spine-chilling feeling seemed to wash over them all, when they collectively stared at the preternatural mass of trees in the back yard. ‘Oh well,’ he thought, and tried to get to sleep. 

 He was relieved to be here, but he felt it was a risky move. His freelance work was selling rarely and his novel was moving slowly. In three weeks he was going to take a salesman job, traveling and selling water purifiers.

            They were all sawing logs before long.  The night air was cool and they all slept well. All except Jeb, who lay in bed, awake again. The inadvertent lack of car noise and city street insanity, by sheer absence of such, forced him awake. Silence was hard getting used to. His ears, yet rough-hewn to country serenity, did not catch the constant burble of animal life coming from the woods. He got his flashlight and book out to osmose a bit more of Nietzsche before succumbing to those slices of death he called ‘sleep.’

  Before the final plunge into deep sleep-land, he looked out the window into the back yard again. The moon shined bright, casting a whitish glare upon the large boulder and the thick patch of woods. The boulder leered at him, like some grotesque insurance commercial.

  It struck him like a dream … those brazen woods. He gazed in amazement at their countenance, how utterly eerie they loomed … especially in moonlight. His head hit the pillow and before long he vanished into the pits of dreamland. 

  Phelia woke up a little later and looked out the window and saw hundreds of shining dots of light in woods ... or was it eyes? She recoiled from this phantasm in disbelief. She rubbed her eyes and craned her head forward to look again … but they are gone.

            The night was thereafter without incident … till the wee hour of four o’clock in the dead of night. A low moan issued from Harrison's room. He tossed and turned in troubled sleep. His malformed face writhed with some agony … as moans rose and fell. Then suddenly he shot up from bed with terror written over his face.

 He grabbed the AK-47 and bolted out the back door into the dark night air. Diving to the ground, rifle in hands, he crawled forward on all fours, making ground move under him as he advanced toward the enemy.

            Suddenly he yelled, "Gooks at 2 o'clock, open fire!" In prone position, he squeezed off a volley of 3 shots, the rifle belched fire … loud reports desecrating the night air.  He barked, "Hitler and his cronies in the woods! Bury their stiff asses!" He then raised up to knee position and fired a whole clip of bullets into the twisted mire of woods.

 AK-47 slugs exploded on trunks of rotted trees, spraying chunks and splinters in all directions.  Some shells found flesh and bone as shrill animal cries ululated about the night air, issuing thunder claps of fear and pain.

            A mother cat shrieked when a rude slug grazed her tail. The bullet demolished a tree branch with a fury. The black cat vociferated wildly as her eyes shot open wide in amazement and her claws stretched out for as if to scratch out the offender's eyes. She dared not jump in any sudden way because she was fat and heavy laden with kitten embryos within her belly.

 She remained still, protecting her unborn, when a shock of bullets burst upon her tail …and the blast rang in her ears. A strange glow of fierce animosity seemed to radiate from her womb, as if the unborn kitten knew of the attempted assassination and was furious and spitting rank revenge upon his foes.

            "What the hell's going on?" Jeb sat up like a stiff on a biopsy table.

            He jumped up in his underwear and ran to the front room. It was past four in the morning, and his last memory was dozing off in the midst of a philosophical search... "Hey, Dad, did you hear that ... Hey, Dad! Dad!," he called even louder when he couldn't find Harrison anyplace.

            Another loud bang! And another! Another!

            Wanda and Phelia came running out too. "Jeb, what's happening? Where's Harrison?" Wanda cried out.

 "I don't know! I thought he went to bed with you all! Jeb screamed out, puzzled and angry.

            They all ran to the door and opened it. Another bang! Then again two more loud cracks went rapidly.

            "Mom! Look over there!" Jeb yelled.

            Wanda looked but couldn't see anything.

            "Dad! Dad!" Phelia yelled out and began running into the dark air.

            "Fefe, come back here, girl! Good God, what's going on?" Wanda began to cry and shout.

            Jeb ran into the yard, right behind Phelia. He shot past her and caught Harrison around the neck, and the projectile force of his body shook the AK-47 loose, and it dropped on the ground.

            Both went tumbling on the ground. Then Jeb jumped to his feet and howled to Harrison, "Dad! Dad! Wake up! Hey, Dad! It's me, Jeb and Mom and Fefe!" Jeb kept screaming and shaking Harrison, who kept mumbling as Jeb pulled him back to the porch.

          Harrison looked at Jeb in total delirium and garbled some barely decipherable words, "Krauts! Gooks! Gotta kill'em all! Gimme mah gun, son!"

           "I will, Dad, just come on into the house!"

           Harrison kept mumbling and stumbling along with Jeb. They struggled through the back door and Harrison fell on the sofa.

          "Damn Gooks and Krauts," Harrison whispered weakly, coughed and fell into a deathlike sleep, sputtering gibberish through a drooling mouth.

          Phelia cried and Wanda consoled her. Jeb rubbed Harrison's head, trying to calm him into a comatose sleep and tranquil thoughts. Finally, as Harrison let go of his mumbo jumbo babbling, he quieted into a lip-sputter, then silence, and sweat beads slid off his forehead and dripped to the rug.

         "What happened, Jeb?" asked Wanda.

          Jeb pointed to a green bottle, empty and barely visible under the sofa. "Looks like Dad tried to celebrate on the sly, or something. Don't think he meant any harm … huh mom? Never seen him this way before, have you?"

         "Not as long as I've known him, Jeb," Wanda said, "He's a good man, Jeb. It wasn't anything. He just has some more healing to do, I guess.

          "We'll all talk about it tomorrow," Wanda said. "Let him sleep peacefully … now go back to bed everyone."

          "Hey!" Phelia cried out with a start.

          The Manx cat jumped onto the window sill, announcing his presence with a loud shrill. Standing in the window, back arched by her bizarre anatomy of short front legs and longer hind legs, she stood petrified from the recent gunshots. Hissing a few times more at the window, she leaped off the sill and scampered across the porch.

         "Shooo ya loco gatto,” said Jeb, “and get yer stub tail outta here. Well, anyway, good riddance to the city of Alcatraz, huh Ma?"

        "Night, son," Wanda said without comment.

        They all dispersed to their bedrooms, leaving Harrison lying on the sofa, sprawled out like an impaled prisoner of war. Jeb slunk off to his bedroom and Wanda and Phelia left for their own room.

        As Wanda looked through her bedroom window she saw many stars in the sky. What a strange sight for her to see a patch of trees and other twinkling lights in them! ‘It all looks like a bright carpet covered with Christmas lights,’ she thought, and she became overcome by her new rural sleep with its fresh, green air.

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  Chapter 7 just added