Night Train

Frank sat in a dark corner of Our Place and scanned the unsigned note: “I don’t think she did it.” Neither did Frank, but he couldn’t prove it. Yet. It was one of those cases that had come together too quick, too clean. Big Jim’s body, face down, a penknife in the back. Had to be one of them: Lily. Rosemary. The Jack of Hearts. Rosemary was the obvious one to take that walk up to the gallows.

“I asked her point blank,” said the hanging judge. “Not a word in her own defense.”

“Maybe she was protecting someone?” asked Frank.

“My job is to judge, not speculate.”

And mine is to speculate and not judge.

People in this town are tight lipped, as if their job is also to judge, not speculate. Frank was used to it. People dish out a lot of crap when they’re not being tight lipped, hoping to throw you off track or gain favor, somehow. Everyone’s got their own theory of what went down. Frank’s job was to extract what he could from the tight-lipped, sift through the garbage of the loose-lipped, and get to the truth. He was good at it. Nobody had a record like Frank’s. He was the last resort, the bright side of a coin flip when the logical choice was to give up.

The first thing to know about solving a case is that somebody’s got to want to solve it. Not true here. It’s not that everyone thought Rosemary did it. Lots of people figured it must be one of the other two. They just didn’t care enough to rip everything open on a strictly personal matter. Why upset the apple cart?

“Something funny’s going on,” according to the backstage manager. “I could feel it in the air.” The festival was over, but the real show was about to begin. Other than the drilling, which nobody seemed to mind, everything was quiet. Some girls in back, playing cards. Waiting, yet not waiting. Only the backstage manager’s sense of doom, and nobody to share it with who was willing to listen.

Big Jim owned the mine just outside of town. Gold, silver, rocks, who knows? Arsenic, for sure, but that’s just a byproduct. He could take whatever he wanted and throw it all away. What did he care? The mine was his, and so was Rosemary, with a dish of Lily on the side. When he spotted the Jack of Hearts across the room that night, he knew he’d seen that face somewhere, and he knew he didn’t like it. He just needed some time to figure out where.

Big Jim wasn’t the only one. Lily knew that face, and so did Rosemary. Had Big Jim asked, they each would have shrugged, none of your damn business. He didn’t need their help. He figured it out on his own, then he dragged Rosemary up to find Lily and the Jack of Hearts, to confront the Jack and show them all who was king.

Frank scratched his head. Night Train on the jukebox helped him think. He played it over and over, to drown out the background noise. Up to now, no matter how difficult, he’d always cracked the case. This one was different. Nobody cared except for whoever wrote “I don’t think she did it.” Why the anonymous note? A ruse to throw him off another case? A sideways confession from the real killer?

My job is to speculate, not judge. Could’ve been Rosemary. Or one of the other two. Nobody else, no way. And so we rule them out.

The Jack of Hearts? Long gone. Lily? Long gone. Nothing to go on but Night Train on the jukebox, and a cigar, unlit, hanging from Frank’s mouth.

The Promised Land

By the time the Israelites reached Middleton, Noah and his circus were already there. Several of the tribes sheared off rather than stick to the assigned route along Highway 44. They headed northwest towards New Plymouth, convinced the promised land wasn’t where Moses said it would be. “Why should we believe you? You’re the one who got us lost in the first place.” While that may be true, whoever led them after Moses was no better at directions. Nobody knows where they ended up, because there’s no record of them ever arriving at New Plymouth. That’s about all I can say about the lost tribes. Anything else would be pure speculation.

As for Middleton, it wasn’t all milk and honey, as Joshua had described. But it was good enough after wandering around the desert for all those years. The first order of business was to bake some proper bread. “Where can I find the mill?” Moses asked. And that’s when he learned that the nearest mill was out in Boise, a nearly fourteen hour walk from where he stood. Not only that, you had to cross a bridge and pay a toll just to get there. Moses dug in his pockets, and all he could come up with was a couple of shekels and some pointy rocks he used to dig in the dirt. He was poor, after all. “To hell with all that, we’ll build our own mill.” And that’s what they did. Right in the heart of Middleton. No bridge, no toll.

But there were bigger problems. After The Flood, Middleton was left an island, without any way to leave other than boat or jet ski. Moses hadn’t realized it at first, because on his way in, he’d simply parted the waters like he always did, without a second thought. But he had better things to do than stand around parting the waters all day long, even though he was the only who could do it. Let somebody else figure out how.

As mentioned previously, Noah was already on the scene, and the locals had tapped him to take charge of the new flood control district. It was a natural fit. “We’re going to have to move the town,” said Noah.

“Move the town?” There’s one thing people can’t stand even more than being told what to do. It’s being told what to do when they don’t want to do what they’re being told to do. This was one of those circumstances. “We just got here!” Technically, not true, but cosmically, yes. They hadn’t been here that long.

“Is it my fault you built this town on a flood plain?” asked Noah. Everybody looked at each other and realized that no, it wasn’t Noah’s fault. Despite the grumbling, there wasn’t any better solution. So they moved the town, but not all at once. That would have been way too big a deal. They did it in stages, as leases expired, and as new people moved in from back east in Boise. Seems even the Boise folks thought the bridge tolls were too severe.

Years later, when the Californians arrived, they’d have to move again to avoid having to build a brand new wastewater treatment plant. We’ll come back to that.

The important thing to consider is that now that all the wicked people had been wiped out in The Flood, and now that all the slaves, including Edward G. Robinson, had escaped from the Pharaoh in Egypt, anybody who was anybody was now right here smack dab on the island of Middleton. No taskmasters, no bridge tolls, and hardly any rain whatsoever. Ah, the sweet taste of freedom, at last.

Now they were free to fight amongst themselves.

The Off Ramp

The Children of Israel were hungry. Tired of wandering aimlessly in the desert for all those years with nothing to eat but crackers. Nothing against crackers, but everything gets old after a while. Moses unplugged his hearing aid. It was the only way he could hear himself think. He knew he had to come up with a plan, and quick. The Children of Israel were starting to doubt whether he really did have any idea where they were going. “I’m not Jesus, I’m only Moses,” he told himself. Nobody cared. They just wanted something, anything but crackers. He called out to God, “show me a sign.” But God was busy making manna, which the Children of Israel were also sick of. Even with His perfect hearing, he didn’t catch Moses’ cry over all the other complaints coming in from that caravan in the desert.

The caravan moved on. Moses sent for Joshua, who was younger and quicker than him. “Run up ahead, see what’s going on, and report back to me.” And so he did.

Days passed, and no sign of Joshua. Moses had just about given up when Joshua appeared, as if out of thin air. The desert will do that to you. It’s called a mirage, but in this case the mirage was real. “What’d you find?” Moses asked. He couldn’t believe his ears, even with his hearing aid cranked up all the way.

“A land of milk and honey,” Joshua recounted. “Anything and everything a man could possibly want. Less than a day’s walk from here.”

Moses gathered the Children of Israel and shared the wondrous news. The people were skeptical that such a place exists, but having come this far, they figured “might as well go all the way.” Besides, nothing out here but crackers. What the heck, “let’s do this.”

Joshua’s sense of time and distance was off. You could say it runs in the family. Three days later, Moses spotted the off ramp. “Middleton,” it read. Like a sign from God, or the Department of Transportation.

The off ramp was long and steep, and when they finally reached the top, you could see for miles in all directions. But no Middleton. Moses called Joshua aside and said “what’s the deal?”

Joshua pointed to the east, down Highway 44. Nothing but nothing, as far as Moses could see. “Trust me,” Joshua assured him. And he did. The Children of Israel, not so much, but they were excited for the milk and honey after years of nothing but crackers and the occasional manna from heaven. “Okay,” Moses said. “Blow your horn, let’s get this train wreck moving.”

Joshua lifted his shofar (a musical instrument carved out of a ram’s horn, first used shortly after the golden calf incident, so God could scare the sh*t out of the idol worshippers) to his lips and blew. And the caravan headed east down Highway 44, in search of the land of milk and honey.