The Cool Blue Blog

Harmony

It was our usual Friday night out at the Harmony Tavern. The usual crowd was there, doing the usual things. I was waiting for the band to start up, The Night Crawlers, a Chicago blues band featuring Big Joe Carter. Justin was waiting for something else.

"Im gettin tired of this shit," Justin said. Susie, our waitress, had just placed our beers neatly in front of us and she had given me a wink while doing this so I was thinking just the opposite.

"Tired of what? Waiting for the band? You know they start at nine."

"No Bobby," he was exasperated with me already and we had only just arrived. We didnt see each other much anymore, in fact these monthly Friday nights were just about it. Wed graduated High School, and I went off to work and Justin continued in school. And it seemed to me that each time I saw him, he was more on edge, always fired up about some issue or another and he got annoyed with me when I didnt "get" what he was fired up about. The true fact was, I "got it" but I didnt really care.

So I grunted in response and looked to catch Susies eye again as she moved through the room. He continued anyway.

In the Garden

The first thing one notices about him, if one notices him at all, is his pale blue eyes. The face in which they are set is square, rugged, and deeply lined, giving the appearance of great age and wisdom. This face is framed with coal black hair, closely cut, and without a hint of gray anywhere. He is not an old man. And he is not often noticed.

His lithe but muscular body is dressed in green work clothes, and he holds the push broom out in front of him sweeping down the hallway on the thirteenth floor of the Greystone office building where he is employed as custodial engineer, AKA janitor.

He swept past Jason Banks associates, and stopped to polish the brass handle on the ornately carved door. This whole side of the building was taken up by this small importing business but no employee was about this time of night. A little further on he swept past Daniels and Ornstein, Attorneys at Law, whose firm occupied the other side. There was activity here even though it was past eleven o’clock on a Thursday night. He stopped in front of the door which led to the waiting room and thought for a minute. He had business here.

Entering, he could hear the voice of Robert Daniels as it projected through from a conference room somewhere to the right.

"Ladies and gentlemen. We have less than ten hours before the pre-trial hearing," the loud, deep voice proclaimed, "and we have nothing. Nada. Squat. I do not want to have to tell our most important client that I can not keep him out of jail until his trial. No, ladies and gentlemen, you will stay here until every stone has been unturned and the key to his release is sitting neatly typed and on my desk ready for court in the morning." There was a pause. "Is that clear?" Silence. Louder, "IS THAT CLEAR?" The affirmation was equally loud as the man with the pale blue eyes removed something from his pocket and positioned himself.

A door slammed and footsteps hurried his way. The custodian stepped forward just as Robert Daniels attorney at law stepped around the corner. The two men collided with enough force to knock the lawyer backward, and dislodge the object the custodian was carrying.

Devil's Tale

The woman's scream was heard by the early morning hillside and across the valley scattering every bird around. Talesman stopped what he was doing and scanned the terrain, then changed direction and made for the campsite marked by the tuft of smoke.

Off the trail, the ground was rough, but he was dressed for it and rugged enough. His incessant wandering through the difficult mountainous terrain of the gold rush west had made him lean and hard. Sometimes he thought of settling down to an easier life. He could do it easily by publishing the stories he collected. The stories of hardship and survival, sudden success and total failure, love and hate, life and death. The stories that lay quiet enough in the leather bound book in his pack. He thought of it but he couldn't do it. For it was not the task assigned to him. But answering this call was part of his task, and maybe there was a story there for him.

The clearing he found himself in was littered with mining equipment, supplies and garbage. The far side ran up against a hill, part of a mountain range and it was blasted through in the typical manner of a small operation gold mine. The woman was crouched near the mines' maw franticly attempting to minister to an indistinguishable mass sprawled on the ground. Talesman dropped his bag and ran to her side.