A Title Goes Here

By James Babwe

A strange collection of interrelated, open-ended fictional stories about an established mobile home community that is compelled to relocate.

• Language: English
• Publisher: James Babwe
• Release date: Aug 28, 2019
• ISBN: 9781393097150

James Babwe

I've known James Babwe since the day he was born. He wasn't aware of it at the time, and he's not exactly sure when he did gain a conscious awareness of the connections and mutual interests, but those components have been present for many decades. He hopes you don't throw Skool into a raging bonfire before you finish reading the first ten pages or so, and he hope you find however many pages you read to be helpful.

Book preview

1

Take a look.

The campus is deserted. Hundreds crowd around the crime scene behind the school cafeteria. It’s a familiar re-run for the residents of this place and, as usual, the events unfold about 25 yards away from the back gate.

Police officers remind people to stay behind the yellow tape while first responders are either angry or grateful about the overtime hours that add to the growth of next week’s paycheck and (at the same time) make them late for dinner again.

Paramedics talk into handheld radios or smaller devices pinned to their lapels. They speak in codes which sound otherworldly to anyone who happens to be out of that loop. Private security personnel (under permanent retainers because of the frequency  of incidents such as this one) push the crowd back from the chain link fence to make room for the recovery operation and support vehicles which will soon back into place  at the edge of the quicksand pool.

Paid for with lottery funds and supplemented with obsolete military equipment originally designed and manufactured for wartime use, combat vehicles transport SWAT officers, who are needed for show but not deployment. Not this time, anyway.

Also making its second public appearance in the city, the impressive (and exorbitantly expensive) Law Enforcement Emergency Mobile Intervention Vehicle (LEEMI-V)—an absolutely immaculate custom made Airstream trailer oversized and armored to protect its occupants and contents from just about anything less powerful than long range nuclear explosives displays the oversized five-pointed gold star of the PMBPD.

APPROVED FOR BONUS overtime today, officers circulate through the crowd to hand out bottled water. Community-based policing workshops taught these officers to gently remind people to stay hydrated.

MEANWHILE, ON OPPOSITE sides of the infamous Pelo Madera Beach Quicksand Pool, young trainees and cadets stand in an impressive line to maintain safe a distance between protesters chanting to fill the pool with cement and permanently cover it as opposed to the protesters chanting environmental slogans which express the desire to preserve the muddy anomaly.

On one side, it’s Human beings, go away! Natural quicksand needs to stay!

On the other side, it’s Fill the pool with rocks and dirt! We are sick of death and hurt!

Based upon a recent news report, organizers on the con side of the issue couldn’t think of a catchy rhyme that would work with the word cement, which is why the rocks and dirt are in there.

2

Politely excusing himself as he weaves through the crowd toward the quicksand pool, the middle school’s longtime vice principal, Neil Gumwinder lightly touches everyone he passes. They don’t say it to his face, but the school’s current students as well as those who attended approximately 20 years ago tagged him as Mr. Creepwinder.

The vice principal finds his wife, Pat, and comforts her with a long hug. Ms G enjoys a much more positive reputation among students past and present. In fact, she is understandably admired.

One reason is this. As the school’s PE teacher and swim coach, Ms G has rewarded well-behaved students by allowing them to touch the Olympic Silver Medal that hangs in her office. Students know she broke a world record and missed the Gold by less than half a second in the 100 meter freestyle in 1984, and they are also impressed by the way she always remembers to praise the champion. Whenever she talks about her Olympic experience, Ms G reminds students (and others) about how lucky she was to be part of the American team.

On the wall next to where her medal hangs, written in ornate script is the following quote: Luck is when preparation meets opportunity.

Today, though, Ms G is uncharacteristically disconsolate. Through tears, she tells Neil, I had an opportunity to save that young man’s life, and I wasn’t prepared. All I had was my clipboard. All I had was a clipboard.

Neil reminds her, It wouldn't have made a difference, Pat. It’s not your fault.

The Pelo Madera Beach PDs most trusted officer, Sergeant Orlando Otto overheard the Gumwinders’ brief exchange  as he approached the couple. He echoed Neil’s words.

Pat, the fence is there. It’s almost always up. And whether vandals have knocked it down again or left it alone, there isn’t a person anywhere near here who doesn’t know about the dangers. Listen, even when the fence is flat on the ground the warning signs are still legible. Take a look. You know this. There is zero mystery here. Zero. The kid knew better.

With his huge wingspan—the same as his 6’8" in height—Otto enveloped the Gumwinders and coaxed them into the comfort of the mobile command center.

He needed to interview Ms G, and he needed her first-hand account of events.

I don’t particularly enjoy this part of my job, he reflected, but conducting the interviews and writing the report is a necessary part of the process.

The Gumwinders nodded.

Can I get you some iced tea, lemonade?

Otto pushed his name placard to the side of a laptop computer, hit  the power button, and before placing his hands on the keyboard, he reminded Ms G, Listen, I’m required to tell you something you already know, Pat. You are not a suspect, so if my questions strike you as kind of cold, keep that fact in mind, okay?

Summoned with a quick hand signal, the cadet who would fetch drinks recited a list of choices.

"We have vitamin infused, triple filtered, purified organic, sugar free, zero calorie, zero carb, and pink. We have pulp and no pulp. And you have a choice of cubed ice or crushed.

Otto went with the vitamin infused, no pulp, cubed ice as did Ms G while Neil needed a few seconds before deciding to go with the purified organic, sugar free, pulp, and crushed ice.

Maybe it was nervousness, maybe it was a sign of stress among the three of them, but prior to asking questions of his witness, Sergeant Otto and the Gumwinders engaged in a conversation about the varieties of tea they had dismissed in favor of the lemonade.

All three of them agreed that the vitamin infused, zero calorie, sugar free green tea was great when they last met to discuss the details of the drowning prior to this one. Neil asked the sergeant whether he’d ever had the chai mocha with crushed ice and dreamily described that one as his all time favorite. Pat started to detail her preferred tea drink, but interrupted her description with a statement about how weird it is that I do not remember the name of the previous victim but I do remember the name of the kid who was two back of Wilfredo today.

Neil reminded her of the name and then, from memory, recited the names of the 12 most recent drowning victims claimed by the quicksand pool.

"I understand the value, the scientific importance of this natural anomaly, but something has to be done. Something has to be done. 

If nothing is done, we haven’t done enough," he concluded.

SERGEANT OTTO, POLITE as always, reminded himself as well as the Gumwinders, Okay, we need to re-focus here. And before we start with the questions, I need you to listen to one of the calls we received from dispatch shortly after the first one that reported the presence of a male in the pool.

Otto turned to his laptop and pressed play,

The three of them listened to the audio while following along with text on the monitor.

DISPATCHER: 27 Charles. Station M. 10-43.

OTTO: 10-4, Station M. 27 Charles. Ready to copy.

DISPATCHER: 27 Charles. BOL. WMJ. seen running from PMMS 15 ago. Subject is 4’10", 80 pounds, dark hair, blue baseball cap, black t-shirt, jeans. First name R-E-X. Last of T-A-N-N-E-R. This city. Lives in the canyon. Subject reportedly walked onto board and removed unknown amount of cash from 10-50 and left scene immediately. Station M.

OTTO: 27 Charles. 10-4. 10-69. Multiple prior contacts with this subject. Responding Code 2.

I SAW THE KID TAKE the money, said Pat. The kid grabbed a two-by-four from who knows where and he used it like a bridge. It’s still there. I think. He walked out quickly, like a tightrope walker, perfect balance. He snatched money from the drowning boy, and ran away through the crowd toward the boulevard.

Would that be PMB Boulevard? asked Otto.

Yes. I don’t know the boy—the one who took the money. He’s not one of our kids, and if I had to estimate age, I’d say nine or ten.

Okay, thanks. We’ve ID’d the kid with a high degree of certainty, so we’ll deal with that later. For now  . . . may I ask you a few questions about the teenager in the pool?

Yeah. Go ahead.

In fact, instead of asking you questions, let’s try this. Talk to me. Tell me what you saw. Talk to me about what happened.

I can do that.

Great. I’m going to be typing notes, and I’ll go over those when we’re done here, okay?

Yeah.

Start as close as you can to the beginning. First sight. First memory. Anywhere.

"Well, before I saw anything, I heard screaming. I was leaving my office and I heard screaming. That turned out to be from several of our kids who were on the way home. And it wasn’t the kind of giddy, girly, we’re-having-fun screaming kind of screaming. There was obviously something seriously bad happening, so I ran toward the pool. When I got within ten yards or so, I could see two teen-aged boys, one standing by the side of the pool, the other in the pool struggling to stay afloat. By the time I actually got to the pool, the boy was struggling to keep his head out of the muck, flailing arms, swearing up a storm at his brother, who didn’t make any effort whatsoever to help.

All I had was my clipboard and when I reached out and extended my clipboard to the kid in the pool, he tried to grab it, he tried to hold on, but he couldn’t get a grip. I tried to lean closer hoping he’d be able to hang on, but it didn’t work. It didn’t work. And within the space of two or three minutes, his head sunk. 

It disappeared. And the flailing stopped. His arms went still. That’s with the other kid did his thing with the 2 by 4 and grabbed the cash from the drowned boy’s hand."

Otto stopped typing, looked at Pat Gumwinder and asked whether she recalled anything specific about the verbal exchange between the boy in the pool and the other boy who made no attempt to help.

Swearing mostly. A couple of words from the one standing and watching, but quite a stream of obscenity and profanity from the drowning boy.

Pat, I’m going to ask you to go ahead and take my laptop right now, and if you would, I’d like you to just type a list of the words that were exchanged, or if you have a clear memory of the dialogue, the exchange of words, feel free to key in as much of the conversation  as you can. You up for that?

Yeah. I can do that.

As the sergeant handed his computer to Ms G, he noticed the arrival of the Coroner.

Escorted by two motorcycle officers and followed by a large black SUV, the Coroner’s driver maneuvered the large white van through a slow u-turn and then backed the vehicle close to the edge of the quicksand pool. This was not the first time for the Coroner and his staff. They had all responded to tragedy here many times. After setting the parking brake, the driver and the Coroner exited the van and brushed past the police cruiser where Wilfredo’s brother sat cuffed in the back seat. Emotionless, the older boy seemed to be gazing all the way through the goings on like someone who just lost the ability to see. Head up, eyes open, the older brother appeared to be staring into oblivion, past the reality he was largely responsible for creating. Later that afternoon, when questioned at the police station, the boy told detectives he let his brother drown. When asked whether it was intentional, an attorney there to represent the boy told him not to answer the question, but the boy ignored the instruction, nodded and simply said, Yes, it was. I did it on purpose. It was intentional.

3

FYI, this short chapter is the one I told you about earlier. It’s the part that contains a description of how the coroner’s assistants lassoed the drowned teenager’s arm and attempted to haul his body out of the quicksand pool. Unfortunately for onlookers and the coroner’s assistants, the boy’s arm was ripped away from the corpse and flew into the crowd, crashing into several horrified spectators before hitting the ground.

I have no idea how three average-sized individuals could have generated the physical strength to yank a human arm out of its socket, tearing the muscle tissue, the ligaments, the tendons, the bones, and the skin completely off the dead kid. That’s exactly what they did, though. You wouldn’t have believed the amount of blood that spewed all over the place. Everyone standing within 20 to 25 feet of the flight path was splattered as the teenager’s arm ascended to approximately 15 feet and over the crowd prior to its ugly descent. Those who heard the sharp snap as the extremity broke away from its deceased owner’s upper torso will never forget the sound.

Anyway, if you don’t want to read the potentially disturbing passage that follows, feel free to skip to Chapter Five. It’s not like you have to read every single word on every single page to catch the gist of what happened that day at the quicksand pool or any other place described or mentioned later.

After surveying the scene and assessing the overall situation, three of the County Coroner’s assistants agreed on a strategy for removing Wilfredo’s body from the quicksand pool. All three were reasonably experienced not only with this kind of extraction, they gained their experience right here in the same location.

Leonard grew up in New Mexico and spent his childhood on a cattle ranch. As usual, he returned to the van for a heavy duty rope, which he fashioned into a lasso.

Imelda walked to the van with Leonard and fetched a large yellow plastic bag. That would be the temporary container once Wilfredo was removed from the deadly slop.

Bert took care of crowd control and took on the responsibility of making sure the curious didn’t get too close to their operation.

None of the three expected the job to be as gruesome as it turned out to be. Neither did anyone in the crowd. Neither did the Coroner. In large numbers—close to half of those who were there—witnesses to this brutal occurrence were sickened to the point of vomiting. In fact, so many of those present at the time spewed a foul-smelling technicolor lunch, paramedics ran out of plastic puke bags.

Believe it when I say the last thing anyone wants to see in that kind of situation is the sight of paramedics shrugging their shoulders and holding their hands out, palms up, apologizing for being short on the bags.

And as anyone can probably imagine, the gross sight of the arm alone was already enough to send lunch (and breakfast as well) up and out in a sudden defiance of gravity. The sheer volume of vomit was as equally (at least) appalling as the dismemberment.

In a courageous attempt to minimize the shock, the Coroner watched the events unfold, removed his own white lab coat and rushed to where the arm