idea

capers the farseeing scrivner, a man with a gift and  a curse,

had a shack with its back on the alley

that ran behind Muffin’s Emporium,  a somewhat odd building perched, round a s turtle, dead on the wouthwestern corner of the place known as

scofflaw square

“poems Promptly written” read the sign above the door, although few of the customers who came to capers could appreciate the information.

Horace Muffin was a careful man, precise and thorough.  every morning when he opened the emporium, he placed in a pocket of the sign in his window a list of things he intended to accomplish during the day and a list of things he would need to do on his way home.  At the end of the day, when he turned the sign around, so that it read Closed to the rest of the world and told Horace Muffin that the world beyond his window was now Open for him, he would remove both lists, and stand for a minute, perusing them and contemplating the things he had accomplished and wondering how it could be that he had not taken care of everything on the list.

Then he would close the shades in the windows, check that he had doused all open flames, and let himself out into the night.

In the tidy shack across the alley, Capers would be preparing his evening meal, most likely to be a small potato, boiled; a piece of cold bacon, a good hunk of yellow cheese, and an apple

later I shall tell you about capers’ home, the door with four hinges, and the outhouse in his landlord’s garden, accessible only by way of the shack’s south garden window.

and I will tell you about capers’ mother and her oracular relatives and the inordinate number of orphans residing in the area surrounding scofflaw square.  and perhaps if you are very good you will hear about the orphanage.  That is, the Goode Orphanage.  We will not be discussing the other Home, which was in no way good.

The Warning

She changed her mind.

Leaning down, almost intimately, she looked him in the eye and spoke, softly.  “I’m going to tell you a secret.”

Stepped behind his chair, and put a hand on his shoulder, as if to hold him there, in place.

Whispered, stirring the fine hairs on his ear.  “Remember today.  When you are about to have your last thought, when you are tied to a chair in a cheap motel, and the gun is touching your head, I want you to remember you could have stopped it all.  But you won’t, and since you won’t, know now that this will be your last thought:  you don’t walk on a friend, and you don’t cheat a dealer.”

She kissed the top of his head, a loud smack in the still room, and left.

That was the day life became interesting.