Relative Bearings - Collected Short Stories

By Frank Walters Clark

The Collected Short Stories of Frank Walters Clark.
7:10 To Detroit: A young sailor comes home from the war in the Pacific to find his world turned upside down.
The Barn: A young couple's hopes for the future are destroyed in a firestorm.
The River, The Corn and the Coyote: In a season of extreme water shortages, a dirt-poor father's faith is put to the ultimate test.
The Graduation of Eddie Calibresi: A teenage boy learns a life lesson in a very troubling fashion.
Orange Hills of Eron: On a distant planet, two soldiers face off with lizard-like enemies in a deadly game of blink.
The Inheritance: In a time of war, a son honors a family tradition while his mother fears the consequences.
Into Something Good: After years of living alone, a short order cook finds new meaning in his life.
Last Accord: A Vietnam veteran on death row rages against a system that condemns an innocent man.
Last Man Standing: When a circus act turns deadly, the owner, Hank Granger, takes an extreme measure.
A Minor Miracle: A retired Russian general reflects on an uncommon act of kindness in the heat of World War II.
Not So Fast: A down-on-his-luck detective takes a new case that nearly gets him killed.
Preying Game: A young boy learns about revenge from an old Miccosukee shaman.
Then There Were None: A son survives a needless tragedy caused by his alcoholic father.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Frank Walters Clark
• Release date: Mar 12, 2021
• ISBN: 9781637959046

Frank Walters Clark

Among Frank Walters Clark's passions are reading and writing detective and science fiction novels, music, contemplation/meditation, & love of Nature. Biking and hiking are two of his pasttimes, among others. Mr. Clark presently lives a satisfiying and singular life with his cats, Banjo, Billie and Ebon on the Gulf Coast of Florida, USA.

Book preview

notes to a writer

One of the blessings of being a creative writer is the appearance of a multitude of story ideas, at the oddest and sometimes most inconvenient moments.

One of the banes of story creation, however, is not being able to get those ideas written down as fast as one would like.

No keyboard or writing utensil can move fast enough to be adequate.

Bright lights, leading one on.

Confusing paths along the way. Indecision as to which one is best for conveying one’s storyline interests and emotions.

The stories include here map out several of the paths I have followed to get to where I am as a creative writer and author today.

A Minor Miracle

A retired Russian general reflects on an uncommon act of kindness in the heat of World War II.

In the face of his physical handicap and a life of near monastic solitude, combined with fifty years as an officer of the Red Army of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the tall and angular General Aleksyi Polenko still considered himself a man of discipline. It was discipline his father had taught him at a young age that was primary to an officer's success. His father had also said that discipline should be primary to a soldier’s natural inclinations as well.

On a gold chain around his neck, eighty-year-old General Aleksyi Polenko still wore the German round that had shattered his right knee in the winter of 1944. It represented more for him than a symbol of luck: it served as a constant reminder to himself of the immediacy and the impartiality of death. His life-long restraint as a soldier had been what led him away from the loathing and self-denunciation that had accompanied the loss of his leg and had been what lifted him out of his dark and disturbing thoughts after the war came to a close.

Using a cane made of strong Siberian oak as a supplement to his artificial leg, General Aleksyi Polenko, as was his custom, slowly walked the perimeter of the army base’s central square, watching young soldiers march up and down the quadrangle in the bright morning light. The stiffness of their postures always reminded him of the day he turned six, the traditional first day of a boy’s long and often arduous path toward manhood.

A general in his own right in those days, his father, Constantin Polenko, had ordered him to stand at rigid attention—without supervision—for hours in the cold darkness and pouring rain outside their family’s home near Victory Square in Leningrad. No matter that the cobblestones in the street were growing sheets of ice, the general had a point of soldiering to make with his young son.

Looking down from a brightly lit second floor window, his father had sat in his study at his perfectly ordered desk near the warmth of the fireplace, reading from the translated works of Immanuel Kant. Smoking his pipe, he had glanced out at the boy on occasion, using the stem of his hand-carved meerschaum bowl to silently correct the boy’s posture from where he sat observing.

General Aleksyi Polenko remembered hearing his mother, Katarina Yelena, berating his father later that same cold November night. Having been silent long enough in the matter, she had carried her soaking wet and shivering son upstairs and toweled him briskly until he was rosy and dry. Then she had helped him on with his nightshirt and tucked him into a goose-down bed covered with pure white pillows, scarlet quilts and fresh linen sheets, and hinting of her husband’s tobacco.

General Aleksyi Polenko had never forgotten his mother’s display of affection that night, nor did he forget his father’s stern but simple lesson. It was not just about a boy’s newfound understanding that a soldier never abandons his post, it was also about a disciplined soldier standing bravely in defense of the homeland, no matter what battles heaven and earth—or man—may wage.

* * *

Half a century earlier, on a fateful and cold morning in the winter of 1944, the Nazi high command had, in the drive north to Moscow, deployed a division of tanks accompanied by a battalion of troops and an artillery column across snow-banked fields and through the stark forests west of Stalingrad. Himmler’s orders to his commanders were to take control of that city through what he and his generals had perceived as a sparsely defended approach.

Somewhere deep in the forest, between the farthest reaches of the old city and the advancing German machinery, Captain Aleksyi Polenko and his bedraggled band of leather tanners, carpenters and farmers lay waiting. Drained by frigid winds and running low on ammunition, all of heaven and earth seemed to be falling apart around the inexperienced thirty-year-old captain and his men. Ordered to sit tight, he and his company had been charged with defending a desolate countryside ripped apart by bullets and shells, while at the same time being swallowed by heavy snows and blistering ice.

The roar of tanks echoed between the trees, the sounds seeming savage to Captain Aleksyi Polenko, and at times the guttural shouts of Nazi soldiers floated through. With bullets threatening and the tired and dirty faces of the old men and young of his charge turning to him for reassurance, he knew it was time to steel his troops.

Pick your targets, he cautioned. Aim as carefully as you do with your deer, and waste not a single shot.

His company of men had come from everywhere and nowhere: bustling cities, nearby villages—some had come on foot over the plains of their motherland that were covered in the summer with wheat and barley. All were huddled together now though, in shallow ice-slickened ruts and behind boulders and trees thickly skirted with snow, shooting at the unknown and hoping with unspoken words each day they would live to see nightfall.

Against the numbing cold, Captain Aleksyi Polenko and his soldiers wore layers of rags under their coats and uniforms and kept their blankets draped around their shoulders at all times. During the lulls in fighting, their rifles required constant movement of the bolt action, to prevent them from freezing up.

Discerning at last that his men’s hearts and minds were not in this wretched place, Captain Aleksyi Polenko knew that, without these most basic of commitments, the fight to save the lands of their fathers and mothers from the invading forces would be lost. He worked the cold bolt of his rifle in quiet determination, then grimly sent another unmindful German soldier to his death.

How could he reach men whose sole concern was how not to freeze? he asked himself. Or how not to die? Then, when he least expected it, a minor miracle stumbled out of the white-washed corridors of the forest to reveal itself.

Cradling his rifle in one arm and leading his bound prisoner at the end of a short length of coarse rope, Corporal Fyodor Goroshenko dragged himself through the angling snow and past the guarding eyes of his comrades. His quick gulps of breath steamed in the frosty air and his coat was heavily stained at the shoulder with the frozen blood of a wound. The young, tow-haired German he led, a boy of no more than sixteen, was disheveled and afraid, his heavy, gray wool uniform torn and streaked with dirt and ice.

My captain, Corporal Fyodor Goroshenko gasped, yanking the young boy to his knees as he fell to the ground exhausted in the icy wind.

A patrol, Captain Aleksyi Polenko remarked to no one, eying the young German. There will be others, no doubt.

Kneeling at his corporal’s side amidst the whine of bullets and the blowing snow, he probed the young soldier’s wound, his ministrations those of a loving sasha. Shaking and alone, the German boy drew back from the enemy captain. In the hoary light, his were the eyes of a trapped and frightened animal.

Sergeant Korobskii! Captain Aleksyi Polenko suddenly yelled over the wind. Find something to tend to our brave comrade’s wound! And move him away from the line.

Right away, captain, Sergeant Korobskii answered. A red-haired and freckled giant of a man, Sergeant Korobskii slung his rifle across his back and, in one continuous motion, swept the unconscious corporal up in his arms like a feather, then hurried toward the rear of the storm-ravaged camp.

Private Stolnyev!

Yes, my captain! the compactly built Stolnyev said, running to his captain’s side and kneeling close with his rifle in the tearing wind.

Give this boy your blanket and, if there is any left, a cup of this morning’s soup!

But, captain, Stolnyev protested.

Do as I command, Private Stolnyev!

As Captain Aleksyi Polenko lay in the spiraling drifts of snow trying once again to free the bolt on his rifle, he saw the young boy, under Private Stolnyev’s close and watchful eye, sit on the roots of a black elder tree, pull the blanket tight against the cold, then suck greedily at the cup of thin soup he held in trembling hands.

Mostly melted snow and shoots of artic willows and the occasional hare or bird, the soup was all Captain Aleksyi Polenko’s men could manage under extreme battle conditions. With the constant skirmishes and the high value placed on ammunition, it had been weeks since his soldiers had been near—much less eaten—any real food.

But here was the enemy, a misguided boy, sitting amidst their own camp and warming himself with one of their much-treasured blankets. And eating their soup.

Such a strange occasion, Captain Aleksyi Polenko thought.

There was nothing civilized left but to call it a minor miracle. Then, with that simple thought, he saw the framework of a plan emerging.

Listen to me, comrades, he called to his men. It appears our enemies are filling their ranks with small boys to carry out their intended assault on the motherland. This means we have less to fear and more to hope for.

Most of his men had stopped firing and lowered their rifles and were peering at him with puzzled looks. The orchestra of screaming shells had gradually faltered to nothing, and the freezing snow had brought with it a surreal and momentary blanket of quietude.

Come closer, men, Captain Aleksyi Polenko paused, waving them into a huddle. All their guns, large and small—and probably their tanks as well—are freezing, like ours. But many of their soldiers must now be mere boys. Boys who have not been weaned—as we have—in the ice and snow. These children, must be terribly cold and terribly hungry, finding themselves thousands of miles from warm, inviting homes and loving mamas and sashas.

He pointed at the boy. I can see from that one, he went on, "that they are under-trained and under-disciplined. They cannot go for days and nights as we have, without the luxury of food or shelter. Here is what we must do—and do quickly—if we