Cover Letter to Publisher(s)

Cover letter

Dear Pulp Literature:

    My name is Michael Osborne, and I have chosen to submit my story to Pulp Literature because your website indicates that you are open to a wide range of fictional works and I believe my story will add something different to the wide variety of stories you seek to publish. Much to my delight, you express an interest in stories that include "fiery feminism" and "indigenous and immigrant experiences." My story, about a Wild West town named Prospector’s Cross, has a unique feminist figure as the central character. She fits the feminist mold because she is a mayor in the 1800s and therefore a political and cultural pioneer. Also featured is a Native American sheriff who demonstrates a strong sense of justice coupled with a no-nonsense demeanor.

    I would like to tell you a little about my journey as a reader, writer, and critical thinker. I am currently enrolled in a creative writing fiction class at Sierra College in California. During the pandemic, students in the class submit their work online and then meet in Zoom workshops to discuss each contribution. The experience has taught me a great deal about the art of telling a good story. During the semester, I have studied and applied the principles of character development, plot, imagery, sensory description, setting, conflict, action, dialog, and so much more.

    As a child of the 60s, prior to many of today’s electronic forms of entertainment, I grew up reading a great deal of fiction. Animal stories, mythology, and science fiction were my favorites subjects. I cried when Old Yeller had to be put down. I shook my head over the foolishness of Icarus. I also puzzled over a story of alien abduction I read at age ten, when the main character mused about possible inflammation of the lungs if the aliens provided their captives with a pure oxygen atmosphere to breath.

    This semester I had the opportunity to immerse myself once again in the fictional world, with stories of castles and chivalry, drug addiction and heartache, adventure and infatuation. All of these worlds are fascinating to me and I love the way in which the reading and writing of fiction frees the mind to explore the world of creative imagination. Among the professional authors we studied were Neil Gaiman and Margaret Attwood, the former presenting his sarcastic allegory for the secret of becoming a writer, and the latter sharing her tips for getting the job done and not boring the reader. We also read, among other works, Ursula K. Le Guin’s "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas", Margaret Attwood's intertextual fiction, "Bluebeard's Egg," and Herman Hesse's fairy tale about "The Poet," Han Fook.

    This semester has also provided the incentive I needed in order to write a complete story from scratch, rather than working on some long-time resident of my in-process bin. The freedom I found in the process was awesome until I realized that my ambitions for the story were well beyond the time allowed. So, I dreamed and brainstormed, hemmed and hawed, found the path I wanted to take, killed many darlings, and slammed out a rough draft. In the process, I learned over and over again the slippery nature of maintaining consistency and continuity. Keeping the characters’ separate personalities intact and believable is a difficult task I had not previously encountered. Moreover, the opportunities for plot holes to appear from nowhere seemed to be a plague of bubonic (or COVID-like) proportions. Three drafts later, I felt much better about my ability to deal with these twin challenges, and then came the workshop.

    At first, I was crushed by my critics and then amused upon noticing that the things some readers disliked were, conversely, enjoyed by others. Most helpful were the comments that really made me think about my story from the reader’s perspective. One of my classmates, Jax, used a phrase that I have reflected upon ever since. During our Zoom sessions he said of an awkward passage here and there, “It took me out of the story.” His comment has echoed in my mind ever since. I do not want to be guilty of ruining my own story by breaking the illusion I have worked so hard to create.

Writing for my class blog assignment recently, I attempted to summarize my feelings about this semester’s experience. “Like nearly everyone, my time is limited and my aspirations are not. Twelve weeks ago, I thought perhaps that I could go against the tide and achieve one of my lifelong goals without it falling prey to the limitations of time. Guess what? I did and it didn't. How wonderful! How marvelous! The thrill of writing a complete short story meeting my standards for entertainment, philosophical content, and satisfying conclusion was so delicious and energizing as to take me to a higher plane of existence where I dwelt for some days. It is an experience I want to repeat. I want to become addicted to the feeling of accomplishment associated with completed fiction. Prior to this semester of creative writing, I had no idea of the empowerment awaiting at the final sentence, the denouement of a fiction created by the focusing my creative energies.”

After decades of writing short pieces for classes and blogs, I found the recent experience of participating in a class filled with creative people exercising their imaginations in wonderful and novel directions had been very rewarding. Regarding my own work, I have been greatly encouraged by my teacher, Professor Christopher Hall, to seek a wider audience, and I am excited about the possibility of having my latest story published. The story I am submitting is a Western Thriller titled after the town in which it takes place, "Prospector's Cross." I hope you will find it acceptable for inclusion in your publication.

    Here is an excerpt. “"Carl, what the hell? This guy is deader than last week's meatloaf. You should have just called Bighorse and left me out of it," complained Carrie, who was no doctor anyway. She was a dancer and a dance teacher, and so very far out of her element that it was ludicrous. All she ever did in cases like this was to try and stop the bleeding and give a fellow a sympathetic face to look at and a few kind words to listen to. But today she was busy and had better things to do than to waste time with another shot-to-pieces, bled-out cowpoke.”

    And, here is my teaser for the story:

 ***In the Wild West town of Prospector’s Cross, the mayor has been murdered by a bullet in the back. The deceased mayor’s courageous wife is unanimously chosen by the city council to be the town’s new mayor. She hates the job, but reckons it will give her a chance to find her husband’s killer. Meanwhile, the patriarch of the town’s largest church is, for some mysterious reason, hell-bent on REVENGE against the town.***

Yours Sincerely,

Michael Osborne

Cranking It Out

Like nearly everyone, my time is limited and my aspirations are not. Twelve weeks ago I thought perhaps that I could go against the tide and achieve one of my lifelong goals without it falling prey to the limitations of time. Guess what? I did and it didn't. How wonderful! How marvelous! The thrill of writing a complete short story meeting my standards for entertainment, philosophical content, and satisfying conclusion was so delicious and energizing as to take me to a higher plane of existence where I dwelt for some days. It is an experience I want to repeat. I want to become addicted to the feeling of accomplishment associated with completed fiction. Prior to this semester of creative writing, I had no idea of the empowerment awaiting at the final sentence, the denouement of a fiction created by the focusing my creative energies.

Now comes the time for the hard part, the troubling future. Were I to be honest with myself, I would admit that my plate is too full with time commitments inconsistent with a writer's life. Instead, it is likely that I will continue to deceive myself, thinking "this quandary will succumb to the forces of my will," when I know with certainty it won't. One option is to add the commitment of enrolling in an online MFA program. Truth be told, I have already applied to a couple of these programs and find reminders of my reluctant, halting, start-stop progress lurking in my gmail every month as the schools continue to send follow-up inquiries and enthusiastic encouragements to sign a check and enter the rabbit hole. Goodness, what to do?

There is a psychological mechanism at work in these deliberations, one I've come to acknowledge only within the last few years: I am a better student than entrepreneur. For, when one examines the most basic attribute of a successful, successively published author, one particular quality comes to the fore. Agents, contracts and partners aside, an author must work alone in the hope of finding a market. Writing must be a business or it is nothing but a dabble in creative aimlessness. The hundreds of pages and hundred of thousands of words I have written have so far have only been read by my teachers and fellow students. In other words, people who are compensated in one way or another for focusing their eyes and brains on my work are the only ones who have entered into the realm of Osborne's literature.

I am very accustomed to being a student and methodically cranking out responses to assignments so as to remove them from my to-do list and earn a grade. I am kept going by the little endorphin shots generated from seeing those grades posted along with the encouraging and often entertaining commentary from professors. The problem comes when I have to give up the little doses of pleasurable brain chemistry for an extended period of time during which I must "toil in obscurity," a cliché unavoidable for it's accuracy in regard to the image of me sitting along before a keyboard without the luxury of knowing that at least one person will read what I am cranking out and give me a little reward.

Will I take the easy, though expensive way out by committing to an MFA, of will I writer-up and do the hard work on my own? I wish I knew the answer. Does it really make sense to pursue a masters degree when, as I presume, the majority of published fiction authors never bothered to sign on the dotted line of a university contract and send in their check in hopes of finding a path to publication? My gut says no don't do it, but my wayward heart says yes. I just like school too much. 

Friedrich Nietzsche — 'One repays a teacher badly if one always remains nothing but a pupil.'

LOVE PILE: Trippin' with Flannery O'Connor

For this post, I chose to follow up on a short story suggested by Paxton, one of the students in my creative writing class at Sierra College. While the story she mentioned is not her favorite, nor mine, "A Good Man Is Hard To Find" by Flannery O' Connor, is a work worthy of any fiction writer's attention because of O'Connor's unique ability to combine humor and horror in the everyday world of the Southern United States. Consider the impromptu eulogy offered by for the grandmother by the story's lead psychopath after he murdered her. "She would've been a good woman," said The Misfit, "if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life." The sentence is so odd and yet so compelling. Trippin' with Flanner O'Connor is a journey into the gothic soul of a strange land, y'all.

There has been a lot of ink spilled in the debate between those who think a reader's knowledge about an author adds value to the reading experience and those who think such background is an interference. Although O'Connor's stories stand on their own, I firmly believe her biography adds to my enjoyment and understanding when reading her. Commentaries are also helpful, and through my brief peering into O'Connor's background I discovered her strong Catholic faith, high intelligence, and hidden agenda in the "Christ-haunted South." She was a Catholic in Georgia, a land dominated by evangelical Protestants, and thus she was a misfit herself. She excelled at everything she put her hand to and was a perfectionist who polished the novel Wise Blood for many months. Most important of all, she wrote in the Southern Gothic mode of horror in order to show how people act when they face danger and death. She did so in order to demonstrate to everyone the need for repentance. And yet, when she writes, she hardly ever preaches unless doing so from the shallow, self-centered, self-deceived thoughts of the freaks populating her stories. How her stories are supposed to be a call to return to Jesus still puzzles me. I cannot imagine figuring out O'Connor's intent without knowing something of her background.

I wonder how deeply an author can bury an agenda without drowning it. O'Connor keeps hers pretty well hidden. I have tried to emulate, though poorly, O'Connor's style to the extent of letting the story speak for itself without layering it with explanations or, God forbid, pontifications. This is a hard thing to do. Striking the balance between allowing a reader to wander down the garden path immersed in the lives and actions of the characters, on the one hand, and spelling things out on the other, is so difficult as to grind my keyboarding to a halt. I want to take a look at some examples of how O'Connor takes readers by the hand without letting them know she is doing so, until the got'cha comes.

In "A Good Man is Hard to Find," O'Connor uses foreshadowing to good effect. The grandmother is fearful of going to Florida because The Misfit is on the loose. "I wouldn't take my children in any direction with a criminal ... aloose in it." She wants to stay behind, and yet she doesn't. The little girl, June Star, says of the grandmother, "She wouldn't stay at home to be queen for a day." Still later, the it is the restaurant owner who provides the title for the story, raises the tension, and gives the grandmother's unconscious mind the ludicrous idea that she can later make a bad man into a good man by persuasion. There is a lot going on, therefore, when Red Sammy says, "A good man is hard to find. Every- thing is getting terrible. I remember the day you could go off and leave your screen door unlatched. Not no more." The grandmother should never have left home.

The way in which there are no wasted words in O'Connor's work is worth studying. She does not go down any side paths unless there is a reason. The stop at Red Sammy's for lunch allows the conversation about danger to continue. This story is all about potential danger and the senseless violence that can enter anyone's life at any time. There are other subtle hints of danger that can work in the back of the reader's mind. The obnoxious boy, John Wesley, asks the grandmother, "If you don't want to go to Florida, why dontcha stay at home?" The grandmother never answers the question except to challenge, "...what would you do if this fellow, The Misfit, caught you?" The only recourse the grandmother sees for herself is fatalistic rationalization. She has her white cotton gloves, her purse, and her "collars and cuffs were white organdy trimmed with lace." Why is this important? The narrator answers, 'In case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady." This is a funny way of thinking, and the reader is drawn into the grandmother's mind.

There are other writing lessons to be imbibed at the knee of Flanner O'Connor. Among them are:

Flat and round characters are used to focus the reader's attention. With little exception, this story is filled with flats and only the grandmother and The Misfit are round and interesting.

No one in the story really changes except for the grandmother. This fact underscores the idea that, in the end, even the most determined and most self-assured among us must succumb to a greater power. The grandmother is a headstrong woman who refuses to admit her inability to control her fate, until she grovels before The Misfit and mangles logic in an attempt to save her own life.

Throughout the story are examples of dialect. Here is a example portrayed by the serial use of "don't" and the combining of words, southern style, in The Misfit's speech: "Lady," he said, "don't you get upset. Sometimes a man says things he don't mean. I don't reckon he meant to talk to you thataway." Dialect has climbed up near the top of my own priorities in the techniques for creation of interesting dialog.

Knowing how important re-writes were to O'Connor, I am inspired by the way she sculpted every aspect of her story. Here is a good example of exposition that doesn't come off as such. "When he smiled he showed a row of strong white teeth. 'God never made a finer woman than my mother and my daddy's heart was pure gold,' he said." I can imagine the author re-reading her story and then adding this bit of description to put the reader off balance. The Misfit could be a "good man," except that he wasn't and there was no reason offered as to why. The grandmother, her family, The Misfit, ...none of them control their lives. So, beware! Evil is alive in this world (and salvation had better be grasped before it's too late).

The Electric Zoom Acid Test (with apologies to Tom Wolfe)

 I am jumping the gun on our Blog Post assignment this week, for two reasons:

1. I am afraid of forgetting to squeeze this in at the last minute on Friday the 26th, right after our English class has its first Zoom writer's workshop.

2. It seemed like a fun idea to anticipate how the Zoom session will go.

Here are my predictions:

The professor will get things rolling by saying "Somebody has to be first."

Class members will range in their level of participation from almost silent to chatty and perhaps bossy.

Someone will be extremely nervous and shy.

Someone will wander completely off the subject.

The most frequent comment made will be "I liked your story" or some similar derivative.

Someone will conclude their remarks with "I don't know what else to say, that's about it."

The first round will be a struggle for everyone and the process will get easier, later in the semester.

At least one participant will emerge as a sort of peer-guru with great insight and compassion. This person will not be me.

Much time will be spent in struggling to say the right thing, only occasionally succeeding.

There will be both bright spots and cringe-worthy moments.

Someone will blossom and someone will wilt. (Keep the watering can close by.)

Even though I don't have a dog in the fight as of yet, I will see my own errors showing up in others' work.

I will have an awkward, though enjoyable experience and then second-guess myself for the entire weekend.

Everyone will agree the workshop is worthwhile and will look forward to next week, sort of.

Okay, that's about it. I will see how my predictions pan out.

Writers Blog Post #1: Why this is my favorite piece written for ENGL 21 so far...

You Choose #1: Not the Write Way

    My name is Ima Wanabe and I’m a very frustrated writer on a serious odyssey to discover why I remain unpublished. One would think attendance in an MFA program and six summer writers’ retreats would be enough to get my work read by someone other than classmates and teachers, but no, that hasn't happened yet. My whole life is all about writing, and my lack of progress continues to be a mystery to me. I have read all the writing books, hundreds of them, including Stephen King’s On Writing, in which the main advice is to write a lot and not give up. Duh! I religiously watch each new episode of ProWriterTV and iWriterly on YouTube, along with every single installment of Screen Courage, which is saying a lot. I leave great comments, too. I subscribe to Poets and Writers, Writer's Digest, and Bookmarks Magazine. I also almost managed to hit the 50,000 word target for NaNoWriMo eight years running. My Google drive is filled with dozens of nearly complete short stories and six partial novels and an unfinished novella about an aspiring writer, of which I am very fond, and which I just about sent to Simon and Schuster. And then there are the poetry scraps and doodles. So many lines of poetry!

    During the last few years my quest for success has become more diversified and now includes a number of techniques guaranteed by my friends, Craven and Misty (who are writers like me), to show me the light at the end of my tunnel of despair. These forays into the alternative world began with a weekend of verbal abuse and sleep deprivation at an EST revival in Sausalito, aboard a houseboat once owned by the prolific philosopher Alan Watts. It was intense, especially the part about not having access to a restroom for twelve hours. Then, in March of 2019, I began subscribing to the Writer's Diet program, from which I receive a recipe card every Monday to allow me to recreate the meals eaten by famous authors such as Kate Chopin, Kurt Vonnegut, and Ursula Le Guin. In addition, my friend Misty sold me a whole set of cards with yoga poses designed to achieve the precise positive mental attitude I need everyday. In September of 2019, I traveled to visit Craven’s friend in Brooklyn who sold me a lock of Isaac Asimov's left side burn, the one he always fiddled with while writing. It is very gray and curly, befitting its wise owner. Last July, at the height of the pandemic, I Zoomed into a Kagyu calligraphy class taught by a genuine Tibetan Monk who was actually painting live from his secret sanctuary in Rio Linda. He wore an orange mask to match his Kasaya robe. Very feng shui. Best of all, following up on a tip from Misty, I recently found on eBay one of the real--I can’t believe my luck!-- typewriters used by Ernest Hemingway while he lived in San Francisco de Paula, Cuba. It even has a burn mark from one of his cigars. I hope mine is the winning eBay bid, for with that Corona No. 4 in my possession, I will surely find the success that has eluded me thus far.

Commentary:

ignotum per ignotius

    This little doodle was fun to write because I think it's funny and Professor Hall said it is, so it must be. The mediocre quality of the prose is intended to convey the impression of someone who has written a lot and has the mechanics under their belt, but has yet to develop any depth, relying instead on exuberance over craft. The poor writer is lost in the forest of misguided efforts, and I admit to feeling some kinship with this wrapped-around-the-axle character, despite our different enthusiasms. Since I tried to write in a voice somewhat apart from my own, the experience reminds me of a first-person horror story I wrote in high school which featured the diary of a teenage boy with Down syndrome.

    My intent was to go down an array of fruitless self-help pathways and thereby reinforce the importance of completion and follow-through if one is to be successful as a writer. It's no good to "almost" do anything, and time spent pursing alternative routes to achievement are often just expensive forms of procrastination. In my experience, challenges are best faced head-on.

    The part about the Tibetan Monk is intended as a personal tribute to my Asian Humanities professor, Christine Vona, here at Sierra. I enjoyed her class and learned valuable life lessons during the course, such as the importance of being present in the moment. I have attempted to remember and incorporate the ancient Asian philosophies in my daily walk, and I thought the inclusion of a shallow appreciation of Tibetan art would add an inoffensive spin to my parody. Among the perhaps too subtle touches of humor is the unnecessary capitalization of "Monk," treating the word as a proper noun.

    As for the Latin phrase above, it means "the action of offering an explanation which is harder to understand than the thing it is meant to explain," and is thereby in keeping with the impression I tried to convey in my favorite piece written so far...

Prospector's Cross

   Mayor Joanie Flinn pushed her way past the cowboys who were gathered in a circle and staring down at something or someone lying in their midst on the dirty plank floor of the Stumble In Saloon. The smell of stale beer, hard liquor, human sweat, and dried cow manure was palpable. There was another smell as well, less pronounced and sadder. It was the smell of blood. As soon as Joanie broke through the circle and gazed down at the crumpled body she became angry.

    "Carl, what the hell? This guy is deader than last week's meatloaf. You shoulda' just called Peabody and left me out of it," complained Joanie, who was no doctor anyway. All she ever did was try to stop the bleeding and give a fella, if he deserved it, a sympathetic face to look at and a few kind words to listen to. But today she was busy and had better things to do than to waste time with a shot-to-pieces, bled-out cowpoke. "What's his name, anyway?" And one of the drunks said, "Gill."

    Carl, the enormous saloon keeper, saw his error. "Yup, you right, ma'am. Sorry to bother," he said in a low rumble as he stood behind the bar twisting alternately one end and then the other of his waxed mustaches. He addressed the circle of cowboys. "Okay you bunch of drunks, grab a let or an arm or something and carry Gill here over to the undertaker's will ya? I'll get the mop and bucket." 

    "Nah," said Joanie, "you can get the body out of here, but leave the blood puddle where it is and just set a stool over it. The sheriff will have to write up a report." 

    "Alright," said Carl. "It's your place."

    Joanie stood up, brushed her skirts with her hands and noticed a brown, flop-eared dog wandering in under the batwing doors and sniffing the air. Amid much grunting, the body was hoisted and its bearers lurched toward the exit. Mayor Joanie was already gone when Carl looked around for her again, expecting more instructions, but only finding the doors swinging back and forth in the wake of her departure. "She's in a mood today," he said, tossing a scrap of beef to the brown dog who snapped it out of the air and looked on with mournful eyes. Deputy Degs, who'd done the shooting, halted the progress of the body for a few moments while he removed the dead man's gun belt and untied the holster from around the man's thigh. "Ok, boys," he said as he ran his fingers over the tooled leather, thinking and brushing the cow dirt from the cartridges. "He should'a handed this here over while he was still breathin'. Young and dumb. Young and dumb." He shook his head.

    Across the tracks, on the other side of the little burg, judge Mortimer S. Brooks raised one heavy black eyebrow and swung his gavel down, sending another man to the gallows. The condemned prisoner was taken back to his cell to wait, and the bailiff shooed everyone out of the courtroom, post haste. This was Saturday and, like Joanie, the judge was in a hurry, not wanting to be late for the fall dance recital. He went immediately to his chambers, where he grabbed two bright yellow tickets with the words "Swan Lake" emblazoned in black ink. His daughter, Clarabelle had just turned twelve, and this was her first public performance. He could already hear the intermezzo blaring from the gramophone outside the opera house across the wide, newly paved street to announce the approaching performance and give impetus to the people joining the line that straggled down the covered wooden sidewalk. The ornate Opera House was the finest building in the newly renamed town of Prospector's Cross.

    Soon everyone was seated, including the Mayor and the Judge. Heavy black drapes were drawn across the windows and three lime lights illuminated the dancers on the raised stage. During the performance, which ran about an hour, there was some commotion in the audience when Mrs. Miller, wife of the town's largest stockholder in the nearby copper mine, refused to remove her huge bonnet. Mr. Miller finally convinced her to doff her headgear after the sheriff strode up to the front row where she was sitting, and stopped the performance in the middle of Clarabelle's pirouette, much to the dismay of Judge Brooks and his wife. The sheriff addressed Mr. Miller without even looking at the man's wife, saying, "You can get your rich ass out of here if you can't set a good example for all fine folks behind you. Or would you rather ruin this here performance even further and get your taxes raised to boot?"

    At end of Swan Lake, after a full five minutes of enthusiastic stomping and clapping, all of the dancers went out and mingled with the audience in the lobby, their slender bodies and makeshift tutus interspersed among gentlemen in heavy black suits and women in gaily colored full length dresses and bustles. Myrtle, the town secretary, took the opportunity to approach Joanie, who was clicking her champagne glass against the judge's and congratulating his daughter's "tripudium mirificus." Joanie didn't mean to be pretentious with her use of Latin phrases, she was an educated woman and simply wasn't shy about using her gifts and enjoying erudition. Tilly, the town secretary, cleared her throat and motioned for Joanie to step outside for a moment.

    Once on the sidewalk, Tilly spoke quietly. "Mayor, we've got a problem."

    "Just one?," said Mayor Joanie, exhaling and smiling with a certain world weariness, along with genuine warmth. She adored and trusted her young, girlish secretary, who had grown into a valued assistant and advisor over the past two years.

    "No, there's never just one. Obviously." Tilly roller her eyes, then became more serious. "I'll rephrase. There are a number of new problems and updates you need to know about right now." She glanced at her notes. "These are in approximate order of importance. First, we've got a rumor that the Smith boy, 14-year-old Tommy, is planning to put a bomb of some kind under that stage here at the Opera House."

    Joanie looked frightened for a second, then furious, and putting two slender fingers in her mouth, she took a breath to whistle for the sheriff. Before she could blow her earsplitting call to arms, Tilly put a hand over the mayor's mouth and loudly whispered "Wait!" The mayor looked exasperated, then forced herself to relax.

    "Oh, I should have known, you've already got things under control, eh?" Some sarcasm crept into her tone.

    "Well, let's just say Sheriff Bluehorse already knows. Let me get through the rest of the list before you talk to the sheriff." The mayor muttered "alright" and Tilly went on.

    Tilly took a deep breath of her own. "Second. The Wekings are really, really angry about the town's new name. They say it was their ancestors that built the first houses here and Kingville is the only possible name for the town."

    "Damned Wekings are a pain." Joanie held up a finger and thought for a moment. "So, tell me why a bomb under the Opera House is only slightly more important than the Wekings griping about a name change?"

    "Well, they are planning to come armed to the town council and you know that a hundred Wekings with repeaters and six shooters are not going to back down when faced by our sheriff and his deputy."

    "Yeah, we know they love their Winchesters and Colts. That shot-up fellow in the saloon, he's not a Wekings is he?"

    "No, a Forgiven."

    "A different kind of pain in the ass. Probably ordered a sarsaparilla for his health. What was his beef anyway?"

    "Afraid of the Wekings, what else? Said he had a right to protect himself."

    "Ye gods! What else you got?"

    Tilly cleared her throat again. "There are three more items and I'll go through them quick so you can focus on saving the Opera House. A couple of strangers arrived in town a few days ago."

    "So what? We get strangers in here every week now that we are a regular stop for the railroad. Which reminds me, we need to add some more rooms to the hotel."

    "It's a Greenie and a Parpull," said Tilly by way of an answer. Like eveyone else in town except the mayor, she pronounced Purple as Parpull. 

    Joanie didn't like the way this discussion was going before, and now her hackles were raised again. "I will not allow prejudice any influence in my jurisdiction. Those men have every right to visit or even stay in this town as long as they aren't vagrants."

    "The Greenie is selling moonshine to the lowlifes on the other side of the tracks. And the Parpull has been doing some roofing in trade for food and seems to have consumption. They are both bedding down behind the stables."

    "Anybody gone blind from the Green's moonshine or been exposed to the Purple's cough?"

    "No ma'am, not so far as I know. I was thinking about having Degs follow them around for a while."

    "What about the other deputy? What's his name. Something weird like Bilks?"

    "It's Blooks, and he is the final item on my list. He quit right after the saloon incident this morning." At this news from Tilly, the mayor brightened. She never like Blooks.

    "Let's make the Green a deputy. How green is he, anyway?"

    "I don't know," answered Tilly, perplexed.

    "Do you have the names of these gentlemen?"

    "John Harry for the green guy and Pancho something for the Parp."

    "John Harry's a slave name. Him we can save. Pancho something will have to go, if he really is sick. Get Doc Richards to check him out. That it?"

    "Yes ma'am."

    "Well get going, then. I need to have a talk with the sheriff and the Wekings." Mayor Joanie eyed Tilly, put her fingers back into her mouth and blew. The Sheriff gulped his champagne and hurried over.

    "Yes ma'am," he said, touching the brim of his hat.

    "Wekings," she said.

    "Yes ma'am," was his reply and the two of them headed down the street, striding quickly toward the newly painted white church with no cross. As the got closer a shot rang out an a puff of dirt near Joanie's right boot kicked up as a rifle bullet buried itself in the unpaved street. She never broke stride.

    "Wait here," she grumbled and left the sheriff standing by himself as people everywhere else ran for cover.

    "But ma'am..." the sheriff's strained voice trailed off.

    "As long as the Lord wants me doing this job, he'll protect me," said Joanie, repeating an oft-used phrase. "And if he changes his mind, I'll be the first to know", she concluded under her breath. No rifle report followed the first one and she went up to the door of the church and pounded her fist. When no one answered, she listened and could hear hushed voices from the inside. She waited a full minute as the afternoon sun warmed her back and sent a bead of sweat trickling down her left temple. She heard the sound of someone on a rooftop pumping another cartridge into a Winchester. Finally the door opened and she went in. Someone else inside close the door.

    Five minutes later 

    

   

Albiny with pink eyes like a rabbit.

Purple kneeled and crossed himself. The mayor, taken aback, said, "You never said anything about this one being a Sinner!"

"Oh, yeah. I actually did know that and forgot to mention it. He wears a big silver cross with Jesus nailed to it around his neck."

"Good Lord. A Sinner. I never thought I'd see the day."

"I though you didn't approve of predjudice."

"There are limits to everyone's tolerance. Even mine. Do you know they pray to dead people?"

"Do you mean Jesus and Mary?"

"No, I mean ordinary people. They call 'em Saints and they elect more of them to the metaphysical office all the time, based on the miracles associated with these people."

    Mary Joanie believes in empty jails and a busy undertaker. This is the what the Romans believed.