The Notebook and Other Strange Tales

By Randy Attwood

Quirky stories about quirky people.

A notebook that holds secrets best not known.

A Goth girl who uses her piercings to see what's really going on.

An old man who sees himself as he was  a when young man.

Draining of a park's pond unleashes an undead zone.

The Mormons leave Earth to discover their destinies on another planet.

Can the weakest human save us all?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Randy Attwood
• Release date: Apr 14, 2019
• ISBN: 9781386164661

Randy Attwood

I grew up on the grounds of a Kansas insane asylum where my father was a dentist. I attended the University of Kansas during the troubled 1960s getting a degree in art history. After stints writing and teaching in Italy and Japan I had a 16-year career in newspapers as reporter, editor and column writer winning major awards in all categories. I turned to health care public relations serving as director of University Relations at KU Medical Center. I finished my career as media relations officer of The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. Now retired, I am marketing the fiction I've written over all those years. And creating more.

Book preview

The Notebook

Tell Us Everything

It Was Me (I)

The Strange Case of James Kirkland Pilley

A Match Made in Heaven

By Pain Possessed

The  Notebook

(Jeremy)

I had two phone calls from Don before he killed himself. Each call should have tipped me off. Maybe not the first one, but certainly the second. I couldn’t have gone to him anyway; he lived in another state far away. Still, I could have done something, called somebody. I wonder if Don knew at the time of the first call–the first contact I had had with him in three years–that he was going to commit suicide. When do suicides know for sure: just before they pull the trigger?

He had called that first time to say hello, but instead of wanting to hear an update on my life, he had launched into a rambling account of his own. Then he told me:

You know, the other day I suddenly remembered I left a notebook in the attic of that house where I had my college apartment.

What’s in it? I had asked him. The mention of his college apartment had brought back memories of heaps of books, his cluttered desk, stacks of papers. A mess, but ordered, it seemed, to make an impression of disorderliness.

I can’t remember. Poems, story ideas, philosophical arguments. Maybe nothing, he had replied. I can’t imagine why I hid it. I was in one of my states, I suppose.

Then two months later he put a bullet in his brain.

But not before he had called one more time. He had to confess, he said. Confess to something horrible. I didn’t believe him. I simply didn’t believe what he was telling me. It was too outlandish. That occupied my thoughts when I should have been wondering about his mental state. The incredible confession had been the sign of a tormented and deranged mind crying out for help. A cry I hadn’t heeded. I should have gone to him, but I hadn’t. Now he was gone from me, gone from the world.

That was five years ago. I really hadn’t even thought about him until I happened to return to our old university when I was asked to deliver a paper on the patrons of Victorian art. Driving up and down the old streets, I passed by the house where Don had had his second-floor apartment. It made me remember the notebook and wonder if it were still where he had said he had hidden it in the attic.

The brick streets, the towering elms, the early fall. It all brought back nostalgia for my college life, and it made me remember how envious of Don I had been. He was what I wanted to be, a Balzac sort of character, up at all hours, writing stories, dashing them off through the night in his cluttered cave of an apartment, and then stumbling out in the morning light, his hair as frazzled-looking as his brain must have been, feeling he had accomplished something. I feared all I’d ever accomplish was a neat desk.

He’d miss classes, but I’d keep notes for him. He’d entertain me with the wide range of his thoughts, his ideas, his passions. I was the neat, orderly, scholarly sort, now expert on arcane matters Victorian. He was consumed with the idea of creating things fresh and new. All I could do was study what had been created in the past and make puny comment upon it that really amounted to nothing more than neat categorizations.

The house was in better repair than I remembered it being when Don lived there. I opened the screen door of the small, clean-swept porch and rang the doorbell. Just how was I going to frame this odd request?

(Sarah)

I was sitting with my cheeks in my palms when the doorbell rang, and I wondered why it always rang at the wrong time. Then I laughed and wondered aloud, When would be the right time? It rang a second time. I rubbed the heel of my palms into both eyes and across my cheeks to wipe away the wetness and stood up.

He didn’t look like a salesman.

I’m sorry to bother you, he was saying.

Yes? I blinked my eyes but knew he could tell I had been crying.

I know this is an odd request...

I wondered what he wanted. I tried to connect my life with what he was telling me. He was handsome, but in an unsure sort of way. He wore dark-green, corduroy slacks and a matching coat with a soft-colored, plaid shirt and a knit tie. He had a boyish look about him, his still-thick, black hair with streaks of gray was parted on one side and cut neatly the way his mother had no doubt had it cut when she first took him to the barber chair. He looked vaguely familiar. About my own age. His eyes were a startlingly deep blue. It made me look at them a second time, and then a third.

Do you own the house now? he was asking.

Yes, I said, and thought the way he said the house sounded odd.

In your attic...

The attic? Why am I having more and more trouble connecting my life to what people tell me? Why would he want to see the attic? For a notebook. Why would a notebook still be in my attic?

I really doubt it would still be there, I told him. I don’t like the attic. Too many memories. Why don’t I just close the door on him if he can’t take no for an answer? Why is he still standing there, still talking?

Important? How could a ten-year-old notebook left up in an attic be important?

(Jeremy)

Women just consume me. I think that’s why I’ve never married. I just feel faint in their presence. They are such an affirmation of life for me that I can’t imagine tying myself to just one. Their variety, and my reaction to that variety, continues to astound me. That’s why I enjoy teaching at a large university. There is always a changing, fresh supply of the creatures. I really stand in awe of them. I’ve yet to meet one who fails to bewitch me. When I see one who’s just been crying, I want to put my arm around her, draw her near, tell her to shush, and collapse her into me. The woman before me was handsome rather than pretty. Solidly built. Strong-looking arms. Her brown hair should have been cut into a shorter style years ago, but obviously she was stubborn and wore it braided and then piled around her head, wisps sticking out here and there.

I know it’s a bother. I really apologize. But, well, you see, my friend killed himself a couple of years ago and I have no idea what’s in the notebook, but I thought I’d look. Something of his that I could have.

Smile now, Jeremy, I told myself. Smile that deep, gentle, kind smile you use when the young undergraduate lasses come to your office with questions, tears in their eyes over the C-minuses on their papers.

(Sarah)

I liked his smile. It seemed to speak from his heart.

You’ll have to go up there alone. I don’t like to go up there. It’s where my husband hanged himself. Five years ago.

Just saying it made me bitter again. I always said hanged himself instead of killed himself. Killing himself would have been one thing. A dozen decent ways to do that. He could have run his damn truck at 80 miles an hour into a bridge piling and they would have called it an accident. Or he could have gone out into the woods and blown his brains out with one of his damn guns. But instead I found Roger in the attic, where he had turned himself into a human plumb bob whose point pierced through to the bottom of my gut.

Come on in.

(Jeremy)

The carpets had been removed, the wood floors stripped and polished, and woven rugs were everywhere I looked: on the floors, hanging on the walls, lying over the backs of sofas and armchairs. The house should have been a riot of colored yarn, but everything looked slightly dusty. Drapes were drawn, and little sunlight made its way into the rooms where the life of color awaited the beams of light. Looms were set up in the living room, in the dining room, and even – as I looked down the hallway through to the kitchen – in the eating area, but they looked long unused. Projects started, never completed.

A brilliant deduction on my part tells me you weave, I said and added, My mother used to weave. Finally a smile came to her lips. It was like a smile that had been long unused, a stranger to the lips that formed it.

I owned a yarn store downtown. But I’m no businesswoman. I need to sell these looms off, but I hate to part with them.

It’s such a contrast to when my friend lived here, I said, and reached down to finger a shawl thrown over the back of a nearby rocker. This is lovely work, I said as I caressed the ugly mixture of dull colors. I hated weaving and knitting. It was why I moved south: so I’d never have to wear another damn sweater.

Thank you. Did the Franklins own the house then?

Yes. A nice elderly couple. I wonder what happened to them. They rented out the summer porch upstairs.

It’s my favorite place to weave. I have the 72-inch loom up there. Mr. Franklin died and his wife sold the home and moved to a nursing home. I used to visit her. What was your friend’s name?

Don.

His last name? Maybe I knew him. I was in school here then, too.

Bowerman. Don Bowerman. We were both English majors. I’m sorry. I never introduced myself. I’m Jeremy Broad, I said, remembered my smile, and slowly extended a hand. She took it. Her grip was firm, her fingers dry – somewhat rough – and I imagined the thousands of yards of yarn that had passed through them. My mother’s hands had had that same dry rough feel to them, as if the fibers of the yarn had sucked all the moisture out of her hands.

Sarah Winston. She told me her name and the smile came again. Would you like a cup of tea?

Oh Jeremy, Jeremy. Go very slowly now.

I’d like that very much.

(Sarah)

As his hands touched the shawl I had woven ten years ago, I felt drawn to the stranger, although he didn’t really seem like a stranger. His face was familiar. His name, Jeremy Broad, rang a bell, but I couldn’t place him. I realized I hadn’t felt this drawn towards a man in many years, since before Roger hanged himself. Weaving had been my salvation. I used Roger’s money to buy a yarn store, something I’d always dreamed of doing. It kept me busy, running the store, setting up classes, and then the creation of goods from the skeins and balls of yarn. I wove a protective wrapping around my heart, but the whole thing failed, and the only thing I was left with was that protective wrapping around my heart. How had he found a loose end, and why was he starting to unravel it? I repeated his name, Jeremy Broad, as if it had a magic I could use to make full my empty life.

Why did your husband kill himself? he asked from the kitchen table. I felt slapped. I looked up at him from the counter where I was laying out the things for tea. People asked that question shortly after Roger hanged himself, but soon the question disappeared. When new acquaintances learned Roger committed suicide they never asked the impolite why?

Why did Don Bowerman kill himself? I decided to return the slap, but he didn’t flinch. His chin was still resting in his hand, the elbow on the table and those blue eyes still staring