A Little Fiction and Fun
The mission was for all authors in the stable of my publisher to contribute an entry to a compilation titled "The Insominac Tales of Chaucer's Women".
The scenario, as set up by the editor, is a group of women are guests at a luxury spa. A thunderstorm takes out the electricity. In due course the women emerge from their rooms and gather in the lobby.
The setting is perfect. Outside the lightening blinks and the thunder roars. After some wine and with not much else to do, the ladies begin telling their secret stories.
Book Info Here
Below is my submission to this compilation. It's a good story methinks, and there's a political operative involved that should keep you guessing. Although older folks might remember the incident very well.
Forthwith:
The Summoner’s Story
Okay, I’ve listened to your stories and now that it’s my turn I’ve decided to tell a story that I’ve never told before. In fact, the only one other person in the world who knows what happened would be my second husband.
He made me promise to never tell anyone and despite my big mouth, I never have. In fact, when I tell the story here I will, of necessity, have to keep names and identities secret. I shall replace the events with fictitious names for both the people and the places. And if anyone here should ever repeat my tale, I will, of course, deny it.
We were living in a New England state. My husband was a deacon in the church, a small Methodist sect. I am not Methodist by birth, am not Methodist now, and will never be Methodist again. Not that there’s anything wrong with Methodists mind you, except for this one incident that I’ve always regretted.
Anyway, it was a chilly Autumn night as only New England can bring. Daylight saving time had just began the prior weekend so the sun was down by around 6:30 pm. My second husband, Winston, and I, were at the church. We were cleaning up the church and nave for a wedding that was scheduled for the following Sunday. Methodists make a lot of money on weddings, did you all know this? Yes they do. My second husband’s church charged over $500 for the use of the church for weddings, $800 if the bride and groom were not Methodists. For the eight hundred bucks the bride and groom can be any denomination, even atheists.
As a church deacon it was expected that Winston would help with church activities which would include clean up for impending nuptials. And so we were both dusting pews and wiping alter rails. Suddenly we heard a huge splash.
Now the church was fronted by a largish pond but make no mistake it was but a pond. That splash we heard sounded as if a tsunami was about to roll over the church and kill us both with it.
Of course we both stopped what we were doing and for a brief second wondered what we should do. Like two deer caught in the headlights, we looked aghast at each other for only a few seconds but in those few seconds we communicated more than we had during our entire marriage. Our shocked eyes debated if we should run for our lives. One of his shocked eyes warned that we shouldn’t leave the church unattended. One of my shocked eyes told him the church could wash away to oblivion before I would die for the thing.
“What the hell was that?” Winston finally said with his mouth.
Before his sentence was done I ran out the front door to see just what the hell it was. By the time my eyes located the source of the huge splash all I saw was the trunk of a car slowly sinking below the water.
“It looks as if a car has plunged into the pond,” I shouted to Winston who was behind me but not quite out of the door.
What happened next gets confusing so it’s important to understand the setting. The church did have a telephone. Of course Winston and I both rushed to it as the logical thing to do would be to call the emergency people and have them come out. Now I suppose our plan was to then dive into the pond to aid whoever had went in but with events happening so fast we never voiced this strategy. We never got a chance to help the people who went below the water because we never had a chance to dive in. In fact, the fellow who was driving came up to the church before we could even think of jumping into the pond.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Anyway, back in those days there was no 911 service. To call the cops one had to know the actual phone number of the closest police station. To call the cops on that church’s phone we had to know the code to access an outside line. The church, it would seem, did not allow just anyone to use the phone. One had to know the three digit code that allowed a user to call out.
“I think it’s the last three numbers of the pastor’s social security number,” Winston shouted frantically.
I, meanwhile, was cursing and hitting every combination and permutation of three digits I could think of. I’ve since learned that the possible three digit codes that exists numbers in the millions. I was dialing 111, 222, 333 …, beginning with this logic.
“Why the hell does the church do this?” I remember shouting in the frenzy. Winston, meanwhile was still trying to remember the last 3 digits of the pastor’s social security number. I really wanted to smack him because by now I think the man was in such a panic that dealing with the memory of the pastor’s social security number was somehow soothing to him. He was lost in some sort of time-space continuum is what I’m saying here. I’d have slapped him surely were I not hitting 3 digits numbers furiously.
“It was being abused,” Winston said, pulling his eyes out of his head for just a moment. “I remember him telling me his social security number was one of the first ones issued in this state,” Winston then continued with his insane memory jog. Only a Methodist would consider knowing the pastor’s social security number something people should do.
The thought of Methodists abusing their church phone did momentarily cross my mind I admit, this even as people might have been dying below the waters of that pond outside. I suppose that the scene with me and Winston might have been comical but at the time we were both deadly serious. I had about as much a chance of hitting the proper three digit combination in my random attack as Winston had to remember the pastor’s social security number.
“Hello? Is anybody here?”
Winston and I both forgot 3 digit numbers immediately. We wended our way from the church study to the front door. A disheveled and very wet man was very busy wringing the water from his fancy suit.
“Are you okay?” Winston asked/shouted.
The man was, as would be expected, disoriented.
“Mary Kay,” the man said, over and over.
“Where is Mary Kay?” I asked. Winston had evidently decided that a phone call to someone was still in order and lapsed back into that coma thing as he tried again to remember errant social security numbers.
“I looked for her,” the man said. “I swam all over the bottom of the creek.”
“My God!” I shouted, the realization of what the man was saying sweeping over me. “Are you telling me there was a passenger in your car? “ Then, not waiting for the man to answer, “and she’s at the bottom of the pond?”
“I searched every nook and cranny of the creek,” the man continued. He was not answering my questions but was more talking to himself in a dazed voice.
“911!” Winston then shouted, startling both me and the man. He ran back to the church study. “That’s it!” Winston yelled. “That’s the last 3 digits of his social security number.”
I am really serious, this part of the story is not changed. The damn last three digits of the pastor’s social security number was 911. I’ve thought about the serendipity of this quite often since the event and will laugh to myself.
“What’s the number of the local police station?” Winston then called out.
Of course we didn’t know that number and no way would we get a seven digit number either randomly or with social security number prompts. Winston’s shout did, however, spur the wet man to action. He ran back to the study, grabbed the phone from Winston’s hand and pressed his thumb firmly down on the switch hook.
“Don’t call the cops, please,” he begged us.
In the light of the study I got a closer look at the man. I could not believe my eyes. The strange wet man was the GOVERNOR OF OUR STATE!
When I queried him he admitted he was indeed Governor Kane.
“I was just at a meeting with my advisors. Mary Kay was our recorder. I was dropping her off at her house as a courtesy.
Governor Kane, I remember thinking. I was not a political person but I never did like Governor Kane. The man was a hopeless womanizer for one thing. I remember not believing for a moment that Mary Kay was with him so he could drop her off at her house. Governor Kane and Mary Kay whoever were likely heading to or from some rendezvous.
Suddenly I realized that poor Mary Kay was still at the bottom of that pond. “Dial 0,” I yelled to Winston. Governor Kane kept his thumb firmly on the phone’s switch hook.
Winston made no move to pry his thumb off. I lunged across the room and begin pounding on the Governor’s thumb. At some point, and I’m not clear when or why, but at some point Winston grabbed the phone from both of us.
Did Winston dial “O” for operator? No, he did not. Instead Winston sat the phone down calmly.
“I suppose it’s too late for Mary Kay,” Winston said quietly.
Governor Kane nodded his head affirmatively. “I will notify her family. I will also call a search and rescue team in the morning to recover Mary Kay’s body.”
I stood in complete shock and considered how I could dive in the water and look for Mary Kay. One, I couldn’t, and still can’t, swim. Two, I was no lightweight if you get my drift. I knew I’d sink like a stone. While the pond wasn’t all that deep, in the middle I understand it was almost fifteen feet in depth. Plenty deep to drown in.
“So what do we do now?” I asked lamely. I mean I was totally at a loss. The whole nightmare was surreal to me by this time. Nothing was going like it seemed to me it should. Even Winston was acting oddly.
Winston told me to take the car and go home. He said he was going to phone the pastor to let him know what happened. Then he was going to take the Governor home.
The rest, as they say, is history.
Evidently the Methodist Pastor, I forget the man’s name but I still recall the last 3 digits of his social security number, drove over to the church. Because I did take our car and go home. By then I was in shock and a bit frightened, as if I’d been accessory to a crime. Which I was.
Winston didn’t come home until 5 am the following morning.
“This is probably going to hit the news big,” he whispered into my sleepy ears. “It’s very important that you grant no interviews. We did nothing wrong and in the end both you and I as well as the church will benefit.”
Well, Winston and I did benefit. A few month’s later we purchased a beautiful home directly on a beautiful lake. Winston quit his job. We bought all manner of furniture and toys and cars and anything we wanted.
The little Methodist church was razed and a grand new one was built. The spire reached clear through the clouds.
There was a news frenzy about the Governor and Mary Kay, as would be expected. I granted no interviews. I quite enjoyed my new house and Mercedes Benz. In fact, what with the incident receiving all the news coverage, some of you might remember all the juicy details. However, any resemblance to any persons living or dead is coincidental, I must caution. You might recall that during the entire scandal there was never any mention of a Methodist church or two members of that church who were the first to meet the Governor in his wet and disheveled state.
The Governor has gone on to bigger and better things and is still quite influential in politics. In fact, the Governor was himself quite active in his church. Ten years after the accident, the Methodist church was torn down, the land, and the pond, were taken over by the federal government as an “historical” site.
Pastor 911 was arrested several years ago for molesting the choir boys. Winston, who became involved with a church member’s wife and left me penniless, has since died.
It’s only me left and I know that no one would believe me or my story. But here’s the surprise. I have it right here, let me pull it out.
Of course it’s only a picture. I have the real thing at home. Go on and look. It might look like a simple necktie and yes that’s what it is.
However, this particular necktie once belonged to Governor Kane. There’s a bloodstain on the front, look closer, lower right hand corner. The Governor had cut his lip in the accident and some of his blood got on the tie. He had removed the tie that night and I absent-mindedly grabbed it. I say absent-mindedly but now I consider I grabbed it on purpose.
Many years ago this tie wouldn’t mean much of anything. But now? With all of the advances in DNA? I’m quite sure Governor Kane’s DNA is on file somewhere.
Anyway, I think my husband, he’s my fourth, might be cheating on me. In fact I suspect it’s why he sent me here this weekend.
I figure it might be time for me to pull out that necktie.
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