Tracks: it never happened

By Robert M. Leger

Crazy collection of short stories.These stories usually start with the inspiration from a picture, and the pictures are supplied, free to publish, from Unsplash. I recently learned that C.S. Lewis was inspired to write the Narnia tales because when he was a boy he had an image in his head of a faun holding a bunch of packages, standing next to a lamp post. I find that starting the story is the easy part. 

 

Sample, from "Mrs. Frost at Tea":

She sipped her cooling tea, thinking back on George. He had been the first. Matilda was very helpful, even efficient. All Mrs. Frost had to do was to begin telling her friends that George had gone on a business trip, to the continent, and wasn't expected back for some months. Then she'd let it get around that perhaps he'd met up with someone, somewhere in Italy actually, and wouldn't be returning at all. Her friends were respectfully sympathetic, pretending they didn't know he'd run off, pretending that Mrs. Frost was expecting him back, perhaps next spring. But, of course, he wouldn't be coming back. No one expected him. That worked out well.

 

That awful American solicitor was next. He was a horrible man, snooping around with his suspicions. When his company sent someone else looking for him some days later, Mrs. Frost simply said, yes, they had spoken, but no, she hadn't seen him for quite a few days now. But, by the way, did they handle problems like missing paintings? It seemed that right after that solicitor had stopped by, one of her very valuable paintings had disappeared. The company said no, that was outside their realm. They never returned.

 

The fragrance from Mrs. Smythe's hollyhocks returned. Very pleasant. Perhaps today would be a good day to pop across the street. She could ask if Gertie's supply of fertilizer was getting low. Mrs. Frost had a good supply of compost going, that might help. But Gertie had her own supply, too, Mrs. Frost remembered.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Robert M. Leger
• Release date: Jul 26, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201171025

Book preview

Sky Trails

Part of the it never happened Collection

By Robert M. Leger

Copyright 2020 by Robert M. Leger

All rights reserved

This book or any portion of it may not be reproduced or used in any form without express written permission, except for brief quotations in a book review.

Printed in the United States of America

Independently published

Portions of this book previously appeared at

rmleger (dot) com

Contents

88444

Believers

Oregon Trail

Remains

Steel

Sabotage

Snow Walk

Snow Poem

The Misanthropic Vampire - A detective story

Rain

Shields Up

City Mouse

Country Mouse

‘Canes and ‘Quakes

Judgement at the Airport

Time

The Golden Coast

Late for Mass

Nebuchadnezzar

Mabel Washington

Moldy Building

Picture credits

88444

It was gray, everything was gray.

Prisoner 88444, usually just called eight-eight, sat on the edge of his hard wooden bed, trying to rouse himself for the day, when he realized everything was gray.

His clothes were gray, the wood in the bunk-house was gray, his shoes – such as they were – were gray. Even the guards’ uniforms, which were supposed to be dark black, had suffered too many washings, and they were mostly gray, too.

As he stood in the food line, he saw what was being slopped into their tins – something that might have been a porridge or an oatmeal, but it was definitely gray. Also lukewarm. Also thin.

Eight-eight’s job, if you could call it that, was cutting down trees. It had taken him almost a week before he realized that if he wanted to get that done, he’d have to sharpen his own axe. No one bothered to worry about that. It didn’t really matter.

Every day, and he no longer knew what day of the week it was, he and the rest of the prisoners in his group, shuffled off to the end of the rail line. They were building a rail line. Except, it was clear no one really cared about it. It didn’t matter. It just had to be done.

Eight-eight would fell a tree, often taking at least an hour to do so. Then he’d trim off most of the branches. Then he’d drag it to where other prisoners would square it off, roughly.

Still other prisoners, other numbers, would drag the very green lumber to the very rough rail bed and pretend to set the beams firmly in place. Sooner or later another crew of numbers would drag the cheap-steel rail on top, nailing it down with inadequate nails.

Eight-eight, when he’d first thought about it, calculated that the rail might stand one passage of a multi-ton train before splaying out to uselessness. He’d thought, at first, of telling someone, of trying to be a good worker, of seeing if there was anyone who cared enough to do the job right.

That was when he first realized – it didn’t matter. It had to be done. It would be done. He and the other numbers would do it.

This day the line of numbers trudged at their usual speed, heads down, not looking about. They might have marched that way forever, never realizing where they were, if a guard didn’t rouse them from their near sleep-walking.

Start here, he’d say, and the numbers would split into their regular groups.

Because eight-eight needed to find big trees, he had to wander further from the track than the others. And he had to have room to swing his axe, so the guards sometimes lost sight of him for a moment. But they weren’t worried. They were nowhere. There were no villages or towns for miles. The hills, the gray hills, rose quickly to mountains that were unpassable, even if you were fit. Eight-eight wasn’t fit.

But he was strong enough, just, to still swing the axe.

He slugged into the trees, looking for something suitable, even though he knew, it didn’t really matter. Still, there was just enough pride in him, a very faint flicker, to want to do a good job.

He sighed, but found a tree big enough around to be worth making rail ties from and he began setting up. He had to clear a few smaller bushes so he’d have room to swing, but that only took a few minutes.

Finally he began hacking at the tree. It was the wrong kind of tree he knew. Too soft. Easier to cut down, but it probably wouldn’t hold the nails that held the rails. Didn’t matter.

He hacked and hacked. After thirty minutes he had a good cut ringed around the base, and feeling warm, he stopped to take off his shirt. He hooked it on a branch and as he looked up, he saw a pair of dark eyes staring at him.

He gripped the axe tighter, near the head, but the eyes moved forward, followed by a medium sized, thin, dog, tongue hanging out, tail wagging. In a moment, eight-eight realized this animal, also mostly gray, but with some brown splotches mixed haphazardly in, was tame, or anyway, more afraid of him that he was of it.

Eight-eight tried to shoo it away, with absolutely no success. In fact, the dog came closer and closer, finally laying at his feet.

In spite of himself, he gave it a little scratch on the top of its head.

He knew of course, that that was all he could give this dog, a scratch. There was not one single scrap of food to be spared for a dog, a mongrel, a stray.

Eight-eight stiffened up, shooed, then shoved the dog back and began chopping at the tree again. The dog moved a few steps away, then laid down, watching him.

Another half an hour and eight-eight heard the tree cracking. He chopped a few more strokes to get it to fall the right way, then pushed it the rest of the way. The dog trotted off a few feet to get clear, but then bounced back, excited at this new thing.

The gray man started chopping little branches, hooked up his dragging harness and started pulling his load to the shapers. This pulling was getting harder and harder on his legs, but there was nothing he could do about that. He saw the others he knew he needed, and trudged towards them. They made no effort to come and help him with his load.

But when he got closer, one of them - was is three-five? - asked him, Who’s your friend?

It took eight-eight a second to realize he was talking about the dog, who had dutifully followed him the whole way back. It showed no particular concern about the other men, nor much interest either. It seemed content to give all its attention to eight-eight.

He shook his head. Beats me. It just started watching me, following me.

One of them went over to the dog to give it another head-scratch, which it appreciated, but the mongrel mostly just focused on his new-found master.

Eight-eight had no time for the dog, though, as he was expected to get another tree right away. He shouldered his axe and lumbered back to where he’d been moments before. The dog followed him.

Throughout the day, eight-eight cut trees, hauled them back and said nothing. The workers’ lunch proved to be similar to breakfast, a gruel of some kind, gray, but not oatmeal. When the guard finally blew the end-of-day whistle, eight-eight was exhausted, as usual.

On the slow walk back to camp, the dog tried to follow closely next to him, but the guard scared him off, barking at the dog more than the dog barked at him.

Neither eight-eight or the guards intended to let the animal in the compound, but it snuck in anyway.

Now things changed. It was no longer a case of not having anything to feed the dog, now