SW ORE Tales by Mike Bozart - HTML preview

Wendy of Winchester

by Mike Bozart

© 2021 Mike Bozart

Saturday, June 5th, 2021, and exactly 4.76 miles (7.66 km) north of the center of Roseburg, Oregon. It is partly cloudy and a coolishly mild 62.6° Fahrenheit (17° Celsius) at 3:53

PM in the sleepy unincorporated Winchester community. In the shade of a smoky-silver-with-purple-tinted-skirting-parasol atop a round table behind an almost-too-hidden-for-an-outsider-to-ever-find café on the south shore of the North Umpqua River, 53-year-old Wendy finishes reading a short story on her laptop computer. She wow-sighs while setting the plastic tumbler of iced tea down on the flat-black metal lattice. That Jane character is me! Has to be. Am so sure of it. Was going by my middle name back then. But, Stan and Dennis are just fictional characters; they aren’t real people.

Or, are they? Closely based on them? Sure seem like Dan and Steny. Eerily similar. Has to be those guys. How does the author know them? This is unbelievably uncanny! What were the chances of me reading about me in that little, odd, genre-less short story [Capescape] out of all the tens of thousands on this e-book website? One in 71,000. Why 71,000? Why not an even 70,000? But, 71,000 is even. 71

… hmmm … Why did that specific number come to mind.

Because 71 is prime? What about 73? My prime-number-osis [sic] is acting up again. And Earl … he’s Merle. A dead ringer for him. Yeah, would bet my garden menagerie on it.

Dead ringer. Dud runger. [sic] So, Merle ODed on the hog.

[heroin] No wonder I stopped hearing anything about him.

No Merle update in over two decades. Wonder if Charlene

[Earl’s onetime girlfriend] knows. Probably. So, Earl’s really deceased and gone. Must have happened when I was living in Portland. [Oregon] And that guy with the nickname of Krewd. [sic] Think I know of whom is being referred. He could get quite frisky on a first date according to Debbie.

Said that he was ‘all hands on foredeck’ in the parking lot after restaurant dinner no. 1. Glad I escaped his clutches.

And last, but by no means least, Ditch Pooper. [sic] OMG!

Freaking hilarious. Never heard that moniker for ‘the lead moaner’. Guess I was right to be leery of him. Leeza said that he kept her under ‘apartment arrest’. She couldn’t even leave the bedroom when guests came over. Could even hear the visitors in the living room asking about her. ‘Oh, she’s taking a nap.’ What a small-ball wackjob. Such an uber-control freak. With a wafer-thin-blown-glass-fragile ego.

So bizarre to have read this particular one. And when I woke up this morning, thought this would be just another ho-hum weekend. Proves that one really never knows. Whew! Never believed in fate, but this is utterly unreal. What should I do?

Feel like the ball is in my court. Now. How to return serve?

Should I? Oh, why not? I’ll just use a pseudonym. Too. And

send it from that rarely used, probably full of spam now, fifth e-mail account – the Yahoo one. Was that my 1st e-mail account? No, it was the AOL one. The dial-up days. That old oak dining table. Should have kept it. Who has it now?

Hopefully not a Multnomah County landfill.

Wendy takes a deep breath. A gust of refreshing valley wind blows her long-and-in-need-of-a-trim, now-fading-brown-with-several-streaks-of-gray-but-alluring-nonetheless bangs across her attractive, very-light-on-makeup, Taos-taupe-complexion face. She watches a motorboat charging towards the discharge-over-lip, flood-control dam. Oh, no!

Am I watching another tragedy in the making?! Is he pulling a skier? Don’t see one. ‘Better slow it down and make a U-turn, fella. Before your life goes downside-up.’ Like mine.

Did.

The low-freeboard, tall-outboard-engine-propelled watercraft does just that with a mere 20 feet (6 meters) to spare. Two of the three, 30-something, overtly Caucasian, ball-capped men on the boat are laughing loudly; the third got genuinely spooked, and still appears to be not-so-much amused.

Guess they just wanted to scare the newcomer. Or maybe he’s the longtime-no-see pal from their teenage past.

‘Welcome back to Winchester, mother-fucker!’ Where did that rude thought come from? How much beer have they consumed? More than two. That’s for sure. ‘Better be careful, boys. Can’t undo a tragic mishap once it’s done.’

The reddit website is now on Wendy’s backward-slanting flat screen. She scans several discussions on improbable connections. Read it. Shred it. Edit. Or …That’s it! A letter to the editor. Actually to the author. Aw, Thor. Key-hammering time. Yeah, e-mail him an update on me, myself and I. That’s it. Hope he won’t be offended. Some writers have such igloo-esque mindsets. Bomb-shelter mentalities. Well, here’s where I lob my neural grenade into his gelid sanctuary.

Rattle his woothie. Woothie? Where’d I see that word?

She begins typing in her word-processing program.

Hello Mike,

Hope you are well. Or, well enough. Not in the bottom of a well.

That wouldn’t be so well. And, well, enough of this insipid intro.

I am Jane. Yes, she is me, and I am her. I’m the Jane in your Capescape short story, Agent 33. (And, BTW, what is that psecret

psociety all about? Pseems psurreal. [ sic] Is it a nefarious cabal?

Or, just a psly psubterfuge? [ sic]) Yes, that character has to be me.

Don’t fret; I’m not threatening legal action. Yet. The lawsuit is on hold. Hey, relax; I’m only joking.

Anyway, Stan and Dennis got most things right. However, they did get a few things wrong.

On the correct side of the ledger … Yes, I did wind up in Portlandia (still re-watch episodes of that zany satire) for a spell.

Even lived in a small, almost-A-frame abode (the roof planes did not meet exactly at the apex). However, when I awoke to the sight of some grizzly-bear-head-masked man peeing in my little birdbath, that was it; was out of there within a fortnight. (Oh, I stepped in his feces while hosing the urine out of the concave concrete disc; was livid!)

And, yes, I was rather singular back then; was quite shy, and very selective. But, no, I wasn’t a lesbian then, and am not now.

Though, I have several lesbian friends. And sometimes I think that one of them wishes I were. [chuckling by the swollen stream, and gathering stares from the younger folks] But, I digress.

As for being too smart for the scene … I was no Rhodes scholar; was just cautious. Curiosity led me to them. Their sound was, shall we say, somewhat different for that locale. Rest assured that I was never a groupie, nor anything close to such. Never had any romantic interest in any of them. Well, maybe the bass player. But, he was already taken.

I did marry a rather ordinary (by Portland standards), though super-nice guy named Leonard. We got along quite well and had one child, a boy, Nicholas. He was average academically –

certainly not a straight-A student. Our little Saint Nick, though, was incredibly kind and very empathetic – always concerned about his friends, and even complete strangers. I say was because he is no longer with us. He died when he was only nine years old when the canoe he was on rolled over the edge of the dam on the North Umpqua River in Winchester (just north of Roseburg on I-5).

During the capsizing, he bumped his head on the concrete spillway; was knocked unconscious and drowned. Soon my husband was gone, too (a suicide four months later; the grief had crushed his psyche). It all happened in 2005 – the year I wish we could have skipped. If I could only go back in time …

As for me being a solitary writer typing an abstruse novel in a dark room … well, one never knows what the next phase of one’s life might be. Thanks for the hint. I just may pursue that.

Oh, I strongly recommend Molecule 131 for synaptic stimulation.

It dissolves in most beverages. And re-entry is nothing like LSD.

Zing! Gotcha! [chortling like the Jabberwock]

Wendy Jane Williamstrohnez

p.s. Proffering 7:4 odds on this. A sure-fire-in-a-straw-hut bet.

Wendy clicks on the Send arrow icon. Hope that doesn’t wobble his spinning top. Too much. Wonder if he’ll reply.

Soon? Ever? Really want him to confirm that Jane is me.

Jane is I. The correct English. Though, English is so …

“Would you like anything else, miss?” the mid-20-ish, strapping, blue-eyed, blonde-haired server suddenly asks.

Wonder who he’s balling. The owner’s daughter? Or wife?

Oh, to be 26 again.

“I’m fine. Thanks.”

“Waiting for someone?” the waiter then asks as he massages his lumbar region. Did he blow his back out screwing her? Why am I thinking such prurience?

“No, I’m actually done.” She hands him her debit card.

Eleven mind-meandering minutes later, Wendy rises to leave. When she arrives at her Mazda, she looks back at where she was seated. Wow! The parasol top seems to be a mirror image of the underside of those cumulous clouds.

<chirp-chirp>

Much thanks for your valuable mind-time!

p.s. I have transcribed many other tales similar to these.

Longer pieces include a suspense-filled erotic e-novel ( Gold, a summer story), two novellas ( To Morrow Tomorrow and Mysterieau of San Francisco), and three novelettes ( Kron by Night, Foxfire, and Lost in Lost Cove).

Click HERE to return to Table of Contents.