A Pointed Gun Is Not A Question Mark_Chapter Four of THE GIRL WITH SILVER EYES

 

"He who measures a person's worth grasps only illusion." 

- Ancient Basque proverb

Lucas wore the veneer of civilization easily as he did all of his disguises.

Inwardly, he was as wild and fierce as his mother ever was ... if not more so. Perhaps it was a remnant of his unknown father.

He cared even less about his father than he did about the gun held steadily at his heart, the least vulnerable part of his body.

His utter disregard of her gun obviously bothered Moira.

"I could kill you right now and get away with it, you know,"

His eyes became hard, and his voice irritable. 

"People kill one another for so many inane, shallow, pointless reasons. And ultimately, they destroy themselves doing so."

His words became little more than a whisper. 

"A pointed gun is not a question mark, Moira. It is an exclamation point."

His right hand became a blur ... and suddenly, her gun was in his hand.

"This is a prop gun. The safety is on. You've been shouting -- Please kill me!"

He flipped open the cylinder, showing her what he had already seen: there were no bullets in the gun.

"Pl-Please don't kill me."

"Why would I? I don't want your life. I just want to know where I can find the girl with silver eyes."

Her pale face puckered as her thumb jerked up over her shoulder to the mock-up movie poster on the wall behind her.

"You mean Deirdre Manes?"

As Lucas took in the poster for the movie still in production, an image of himself with long donkey ears flashed before his eyes.

A Bible verse came to mind: Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.

He sighed. It was a great life if you didn't mind making a fool of yourself every so often ... like now.

He cursed himself in Basque: artaburu : corn head, idiot.

A girl with eerie silver eyes looked down on him from the poster, clutching the most cursed book in all of existence.

Donovan didn't want that girl at all. He wanted to damn his soul for her book.

THE WIND HAS ITS OWN FREEDOM_Chapter Three_ The Girl With Silver Eyes

 

"When Ortzi put madness in the wind and loosed the bridle on the lightning, He called it Woman." 

- Ancient Basque proverb

For a woman holding a gun on a man, the blonde didn't seem to recognize Lucas. But then, she had only seen him the one time.

But Lucas recognized her. Moira wore sexuality like some women wore expensive perfume.

The barrel of the gun was rock-steady, and to unbalance her, Lucas said,

"Is this the Bureau of Indian Affairs?"

"Huh? Funny man, aren't you? Though you do look Indian."

"Half-Basque actually."

Lucas made a show of looking at his wristwatch. 

"As in half-Basque Two. Speaking of which, isn't this after hours even for a workhorse like DeMille?"

Recognition widened her azure eyes, 

"Hey, I know you! You're the numb-nuts who thought giving DeMille that tiny working model of a guillotine would make up for not being in the prop makers union."

Lucas shrugged. "It was worth a shot."

"You disappeared on us. What happened?"

"I got drafted."

"There's a lot of that going around ... dying, too."

Moira pulled back the hammer. "What brings you back at this hour?"

Lucas didn't have to ask her that question: her left fist was filled with the petty cash from the open safe behind her.

"This was the last place a fellow draftee, Lt. Eileen  Henderson, was seen alive."

"Aw. don't tell me: you were in love with the broad."

"I am incapable of love."

"You and every other man I've ever met. At least you're honest about it."

"My memory's too bad to lie."

Her gun steadied on his chest, "You ever not a smartass?"

"Sometimes I sleep."

Her eyes narrowed. She leaned towards Lucas with a curious malice that carried with it an undercurrent of sexual heat.

Lucas reminded himself that an affair that starts with a woman pointing a gun at you always ended badly.

"You know what's going to happen to you?," sneered Moira.  "You'll grow old and run out of yourself. That will be justice."

"No, I'll die first, and that will be mercy."

Run OF DeMILLE_Chapter Two of The Girl With Silver Eyes

"When you try to tell DeMille something, he doesn't hear you. He hears your motive for saying it or what he believes your motive is for saying it.

He hears some of the implications. But he doesn't hear the obvious meaning. It is the occupational hazard of being a movie director."

 - Lucas to Major General William Donovan

Turning the corner

That's what Lucas called it when a child. If he desperately wanted to go some place he had already been, 

he would reach inside himself, picture the place, and shift his thoughts ... and he would be there. 

It was not easy by any means, more like forcing a reluctant antique car into third gear.

A damned nuisance is what his Basque mother called it.

And it scared her to death.

The villagers in Wyoming called her Sorginak ... and witch is the closest thing in English for that term ...

but it was close only as the moon is close to the earth.

She had been a fierce, wild woman and to see her frightened had shaken the little boy.

Lucas still felt her fingers as they had dug into his shoulders as she shook him.

"Never! 

Never do this again. I am allowed to live for I am useful. This thing you can do comes from your father, and they will kill the both of us if they find out you can do it."

And he never had ... as long as she lived. 

His only regret was that Sheriff Danvers' death agonies had ended so quickly.

A woman's voice snapped behind him. "What the hell are you doing here?"

Lucas grimaced.

That was the drawback about "turning the corner." You couldn't peek around it before you did.

The Girl with Silver Eyes

"He knew his measure and the full measure of the person he longed to be."

 - Major General William "Wild Bill" Donovan of his enigmatic O.S.S. operative who went by only one name, "Lucas."

Donovan appraised the prisoner with cold eyes and gestured for the M.P.'s to leave his office.

As soon as the door closed, the man casually tossed the handcuffs on Donovan's desk.

"They chaffed my wrists."

Donovan remembered one of Lucas' legends, 

(an alias lived long enough that a cursory examination would be fooled)

was that of a stage magician.

"You're AWOL, out of uniform, and your hair is not regulation." 

"Your sin is greater. You killed Henderson."

"I gave her a graduation assignment that is all. She died attempting it. The O.S.S. is not for girl scouts."

"And I attended her funeral. Sadly, it was held in Wyoming ... a state where I am still wanted for the murder of Sheriff Danvers. So I had to go incognito."

Donovan tapped a manila folder. 

"It says here you were cleared ... that Danvers hanged himself after writing a confession for your mother's murder."

Lucas shrugged. "The governor was friends with the sheriff and knew Danvers would gleefully get into everything ... except a coffin."

Lucas flashed a papercut smile. 

"So there is an unofficial 'Shoot On Sight' order on me. I prefer not to be unofficially dead hence my showing up as Eric Strauss, famed magician."

"Are you saying the sheriff was assisted in his hanging?"

"Of course."

Donovan stiffened, and Lucas continued. "Gravity."

Donovan sensed a calm, pent-up violence in the man ... much like the eye of a hurricane which heralded terrible destruction to come. 

Donovan had seen Lucas, upon entering, coolly assess the entire office and all it contained ... even himself.

It unsettled him, and it goaded him to uncharacteristically ask a needless question.

"What do you think of my office, Captain Lucas?"

Lucas' eyes flicked over the walls lined with yellowed photos of dead comrades, old mentors, and faded medals awarded for forgotten deeds of valor. 

The walls, dense with the past, formed a sad kind of insulation against the present world and all its dangers.

He kept all that to himself and instead said, "The past fills this room like a tide of whispers."

Donovan growled, more mad at himself than at the captain, "Rather melodramatic."

"I do not apologize for the way I think, sir."

"The shrinks say you are sociopathic."

Lucas shrugged. "Psychiatry is in its infancy. But I do admit my moral compass usually points to self-interest."

"Then, why attend Henderson's funeral? The coffin was empty."

"But it represented my only friend." 

Lucas ironed his face with a palm. 

"Integrity is not a conditional word. It doesn't blow in the wind. You do what you feel is right, or you're a weather vane."

"The doctors say you don't feel."

"Don't trust doctors who go by the book, Major-General. One day, you may end up dead due to a misprint."

Donovan looked off into the distance, seeing things Lucas was just as happy not knowing, then gruffed, "You want revenge for her murder?"

"No. It won't bring her back."

"Too bad. Your graduation assignment is to finish hers. Find the girl with silver eyes."

"Where do I start?"

"Where else? Hollywood, the land of false fronts, empty dreams, and emptier souls."

"Now, who's being melodramatic? And could you be a bit more specific? Where in Hollywood?"

"Her last communication was that she was going to burgle the office of director, Cecil B. DeMille ... then nothing."

"Speaking of nothing ...."

Donovan blinked twice. Lucas had simply vanished.

 No smoke of flash powder. No glare of mirror. He had simply disappeared.

A coldness took him bone-deep. The perfect cover for a true magician would be to pose as a fake one.

What had he just unleashed upon Hollywood?

THERE ARE MOMENTS THAT TRANSCEND POLITICS

 

I am ancient enough to remember when John F Kennedy and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King were killed.

Sadly, I believe Mr. Gingrich is mistaken.

The hate, the prejudice, the corruption is too strong.

WASHINGTON POST:

"Trump leaves rally after loud noises erupt."

CNN:

"Secret Service rushes Trump off stage after he falls at rally."

FORBES:

"Will surviving gunfire (not being shot, mind you) be Donald Trump's next appeal to black voters?"

Perhaps they can't help themselves ... literally. Their paychecks depend on writing and saying things like this.

The Secret Service is now blaming the local police.

Oh, really? Where were the drones? 

The Secret Service snipers had the gunman in their sights for 2o seconds before firing ... after he had already fired.

As Hamlet once said:

"Something is rotten in the state of Denmark."

I WAS ASKED TO WRITE A FRIEND'S OBITUARY

 

It was quite the challenge since I knew he would be reading it before going into major surgery.

I may let you visitors read it if I can get his permission ... he survived with flying colors ... black and blue.

I write of this since when I tried to comment on C. Lee McKenzie's substack page today, I had to go through a dizzying gauntlet of questions ...

I was asked to give a short bio of myself ... 250 words or less ...

My first was rejected ... too long, so rather than let it go to waste, here it is ...

“One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality.”

- Albert Einstein

Most writers are curious by nature. We look at the world around us and wonder at it.

Who are these people? What are we all doing here? Where are we heading? Why do we do the things we do? How will we achieve our goals? 

Who am I? I am what I do.  I write of hearts in conflict with themselves in a world we little understand.

Who am I? I am a seeker.

WHAT WOULD YOU WRITE AS A SHORT BIO?

REASONS TO BLOG ... even if no one is reading _ IWSG Post

 

It is July ... right before the 4th.

Many are too busy with the fiery celebrations and the summer heat to visit your blogs.

Me? I am imprisoned in my apartment by a Shelter In Place from a leak in a local Bio-Lab. 

I didn't even know we had one. So if you don't hear from me. Ah, it was bad.

Your number of visitors may tumble.  Don't worry.  

It's all good.

Sounds illogical doesn't it?

What possible reasons could there be for blogging if no one is reading?


1.) SEARCH ENGINE BENEFITS
 

This may be the most obvious benefit of blogging. 

Search engines give preference to websites that have fresh, relevant content.

 Hubspot research shows that updated blogs get 55% more traffic than blogs with old posts  —

 even if there are no readers!


2.) INFINITE SEARCH ENGINE

 Your content keeps working for you month after month!  

I research my most often visited posts.  Many of them are years old.  Some are from last week when I was sure no one was visiting.

People Google all manner of subjects.  

Who knows when someone will be looking up something you wrote a post on?

We work hard to gain followers.  Me, I am on my 16th year.  My followers are my friends.

To lose one would hurt.

It is often harder for people to remember to visit if you change addresses ...

Sometimes that one extra step to visit costs you a frequent visitor.  

Why take that chance? 

A thought:

Several of my friends have switched from blogger to Wordpress, thinking their old posts would always be there on Blogger.

Not so.

Now, their addresses have been given to food and fashion blogs.  Two of them in languages I cannot read.

I work hard on each of my posts.  

They are my cyber-diary entries.  

To think all that effort and creativity would evaporate into nothingness feathers the insides of my chest with icy wings.

Just something to keep in mind.

3.) A VERY COST EFFECTIVE AD!

If you write interesting posts, readers will glance at your sidebar 

and perhaps decide to take a chance on one of your books ... 

even if you never mention them in the post.

 
4.) YOUR CONTENT ENGINE
 
Your investment in a consistent stream of quality content 

can be leveraged in many ways to support a content marketing strategy. 

I use links from blog posts in some of my comments on other blogs with posts that relate to them. 

They may garner visits.  They may not.  

But links provide the possibility of more visitors, right?


5.) PR


A constant stream of new posts will encourage old readers to drop in after a time to see what new things you are talking about.

Should an old or a new visitor speak of your post on their blog or web site, 

you have an opportunity to garner a new audience for your work.


6.) NOT EVERYONE Does Social Media

You provide new content for those lonely Non-Social Media souls looking for something new to read.  

Your blog may be stumbled upon by someone who hears of you from a link or from an email.


7.) YOU MAINTAIN THE HABIT and KEEP THE DREAM ALIVE.

Get out of the habit of steadily writing new posts, 

and Life will find a way to fill in that vacuum of time.  

You may find yourself without new content for weeks after July -- 

especially with December Madness looming over the horizon.

 WHAT KEEPS YOU WRITING YOUR BLOG?