Author Archives: Paul B Womack

Swing His Swing


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VOICEOVER: (Narrated by Arnold Palmer)
Swing your swing. Not some idea of a swing. Not a swing you saw on TV. Not that swing you wish you had. No. Swing your swing. Capable of greatness. Prized only by you. Perfect in its imperfection. Swing your swing. I know, I did.

As a golfer, that is the best advice I’ve ever been given. Every time I take a lesson or read a golf magazine or try to swing like I’m supposed to, what I’m left with is so bad even I’m embarrassed to play with me. I’m thinking about the angle I take away the club, rotating my shoulders, swinging inside out, keeping my elbow in, clearing my hips and on and on. It’s mind boggling. And every time I go through that exercise (Because, after all, shouldn’t I be able to crush the ball with ease like the professionals do I watch on TV. That’s like saying I should be able to dunk like Dr. J.), I always end back with my old swing. It’s the only way I can get the club face on the back of ball most of the time. It’s ugly and it’s different depending on what club I’m swinging, but when it comes to golf it is just the way my mind works.

What makes the “Swing Your Swing” advice so good is that it’s not just about golf. This is advice to be heeded about things I’m actually good at doing.

It’s good advice about the way I write. Using sentences that aren’t sentences. And starting sentences with and. And writing down the way I hear words in my head. There is a combination of being an English major and knowing the rules and the experience of writing for advertising and ignoring them in the way I write. There are also all the books I read stuffed somewhere in my head, waiting to sneak out onto the page. But mostly I just swing my swing, or write like I write.

It’s good for the way I design ads and postcards and signs and brochures. I was never taught how to do this stuff. My future wife and a friend of ours started an ad agency. My friend was the graphic artist. I was just a suit. Trouble is, right after we landed our first big client he got in a car wreck, almost tore his right arm out of the socket and he is right handed. He couldn’t work on the computer for three months. So, every day I would sit in his chair in front of his computer and he would tell me what to do. That didn’t make me a graphic artist, but it gave me a swing.

It’s good for the photographs I take. I don’t have a big bag full of cameras and different lenses I wouldn’t know what to do with anyway. I have a digital SLR and one zoom lens that lets me see up close and up to several hundred feet away. So, I take a thousand pictures and find the few that are photographs. Now if I could just focus.

There is a problem with all this, however. When I swing my swing on the golf course, I shoot 90. That’s not going to make me any money on the PGA Tour. My swing has made me a living with writing and designing, though, but I want more. I want to be the guy talking about his new book on Oprah (well, maybe not Oprah). Okay, on Ellen (not really Ellen, either). But that’s the idea. I want everybody to know what I’m doing, like every golfer knows the guys playing golf on TV. And the harder I try to make that happen, the more frustrating it gets. It’s like taking a lesson or trying a tip from a golf magazine. It is supposed to help and maybe it does for a few fleeting rounds, but in the end it’s right back to my swing and obsessing over why I can’t shoot under par like Arnold Palmer.

And then I relax and start swinging my swing again. Because it’s okay to want more. It’s just that the “more” I want may not be the “more” I get. Because MY plan just isn’t THE plan. Most folks have heard Philippians 4:13. It says, “I can do all things through Him who strengthens me.” But I have a ball marker that’s engraved PHIL. 4:12. That’s the verse with the right swing thought. It says, “in any and every circumstance I have learned the secret, both of having abundance and suffering need.” Because God isn’t interested in our swing at all. He wants us to swing HIS swing.

Isadora Caps


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Popular in Europe and North America, the Art Nouveau style had its beginnings in the late 1800s and remained dominant until the outbreak of World War I. Its aesthetic was characterized by extreme decoration, and was evident in architecture, painting, sculpture, furniture, clothing and even jewelry. Some consider Art Nouveau to be a reaction to the Industrial Revolution, when craftsmanship was trumped by mass production and machine-made products.

Art Nouveau typefaces are stylized, elegant display fonts. The type designs are usually extremely decorative, and can include embellished stroke endings, very high and low “waistlines,” diagonal and triangular character shapes, top- or bottom-weighted stresses, angled crossbars, and in some cases, filigreed initials. Some typefaces have more than one of these distinctive traits.

Isadora Caps was designed in 1993 by Sam Wang. He designed over 20 Art Nouveau fonts from 1991-2008, including Handwriting, Celtic and Sarah Caps. Isadora Caps has deep plunging descenders and an open ’round’ appeal.

Avant Garde


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Print

Clean and conspicuous, Avant Garde is a great headline typeface. In text it is a large type, which means you can use smaller point sizes and still remain legible. The “roundness” of the characters stands it apart from many other san serif styles.

History of Avant Garde
Herb Lubalin and Tom Carnase designed Avant Garde around 1968. It was based on Lubalin’s logo for Avant Garde magazine. The original face was all uppercase. Avant Garde was the first typeface released by ITC when the company was founded in 1970. Next to being used in all types of art publications, Avant Garde was a classic in ’70s advertising design.

The Football Team


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September 13, 2014 – All sanctions on Penn State football have been lifted by the NCAA. The crew on ESPN College Gameday hailed that decision as the right thing to do. On the same show, the same crew declared, rightfully, that every university should have a zero tolerance, no due process, stated policy for athletes who abuse women. Such hypocrisy is baffling. Apparently, abuse of women makes you ineligible for college athletics. It should. However, the systematic sexual abuse of young boys by a coach, with the knowledge of the coaching staff and the school’s administration warrants some sanctions for a couple of years. I wrote the commentary below shortly after the sexual abuse of young boys at Penn State became public. My position then is the same as it is now. Penn State should no longer be playing football. That they are is a weekly reminder to every young man who was sexually assaulted by a Penn State coach that football is more important than the abuse they each suffered. It is an indictment of the shifting moral ground of a society that knows better, or at least should.

November 30, 2012 – I like Rick Reilly. He’s a sportswriter, if you were wondering. He can make me laugh, and he even turns a phrase, sometimes, that sticks with me. (I can’t think of any of them now, but I did remember. For a little while, anyway. Promise.) I don’t always read his stuff, but I did today. My wife told me about it. She knew it would make me mad.

Reilly expressed a seemingly prevalent point of view, at least in the sportswriting community. At least in the northeast. Apparently this group thinks Penn State should be honored because they are playing football. The team is a monument to the power of football beyond the field, or some other grandiose nonsense. He even waxes quite eloquently about it to make his case for Bill O’Brien, the Penn State football coach, as the National College Coach of the Year.

“Into the teeth of the worst college football scandal in American history, into a sex-scandal mess the National Guard couldn’t have cleaned up, Bill O’Brien pulled off a football miracle: He made you forget Penn State was radioactive.

O’Brien went 8-4 in the middle of nuclear winter. He kept popping open umbrellas while it rained bowling balls. He made a numb town feel again. That’s why he’s either the coach of the year in college football this season or you melt down the trophy.”

As if any of that matters. But if you live in Reilly’s world it does. Every Penn State football game this season has been on national TV (ABC/ESPN). The only other team that can boast that is Notre Dame, and that’s because they have their own network (NBC). Every week there is some feel good story about a Penn State student or athlete on one of the sports shows. But I don’t know if Penn State wins or loses, or what the stories are about. Because in this house Penn State football games are never on the TV. Because when there are highlights or stories about Penn State football we change the channel. Because Penn State shouldn’t have any football players. Because Penn State shouldn’t have a football coach.

BECAUSE PENN STATE SHOULD NOT HAVE A FOOTBALL TEAM.

And I’ll tell you why. Jerry Sandusky, Penn State’s defensive coordinator and heir apparent to Joe Paterno, was suspected of sexually abusing children through his The Second Mile football camps over 20 years ago. Everybody in the administration at Penn State knew about it. He lost his status as heir apparent, but he stayed at the school. Twenty years later, when another coach saw Sandusky sodomizing a young boy in the Penn State athletic facilities shower, everybody knew about that, too. The head football coach knew. The athletic director knew. The head of the university knew.

And they covered it up, again. Because of the football team. What a member of the Penn State fraternity was doing to young boys, and had been doing for over 20 years, was deemed less important than the football team.

So, how do we punish such a school when all of this becomes public? Take away what was most precious to them. The football team.

No, not the football team. What about the kids, the football players? These are the same kids that were living under a regime that condoned the sexual abuse of children, right? The same kids whose parents found out about what was happening and still let them stay in that environment. The same kids who would have been welcomed to any other university in the country if Penn State no longer had a football team.

No. Instead, according to Reilly, we honor them.

“Last week, just before that final game versus Wisconsin, Penn State did something chilling and emotional and real. It put the 2012 Nittany Lions on the ring at Beaver Stadium that honors Penn State’s greatest teams.”

I guess in this strange, sad, sick world, what was most precious to Penn State is more important after all. The football team.

Walking in Wakisi


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[ Uganda, Africa Mission Journal – Entry 9 ]

JINJA, UGANDA – MARCH 17, 2012 – It is our last day in Uganda. We are going to the Mashah Village one more time and this time, taking a walk through Wakisi. Jill and I want to meet more of the people that live outside the protection of the Elevare umbrella. We want to see where they live and how they live. Everyone in Wakisi has benefitted from the presence of Elevare – the well, the road, the investment in money and time and love – but most of the people in Wakisi still live the hard village life.

Before we leave from Surgio’s for the village, some in our group suggest we solicit Christopher, the village headman, to walk with us. He can protect us. When we get to Mashah, Pastor Joseph takes three others from our group into Wakisi and says for anyone who wants to come to follow along. Jill and I linger a few minutes with the children and then follow through the gate. The others are already out of sight so we start off down the road alone. We don’t hurry to catch up. There is nothing threatening about this place. Neither of us has ever felt unsafe, no matter where we’ve been this week. Not walking home alone from shopping in Jinja or among the stalls at the market. Maybe in the crush of traffic in Kampala, but that was cars, not people. And certainly not walking in Wakisi.

Safe, however, would probably not be the feeling if we were walking alone in the streets of the poorest neighborhoods in Detroit or Chicago or even Houston. There’s a reason for that. In Wakisi they are poor, but they are content. They don’t want to be poor. They strive to make their village a better place. They do whatever they can to make their lives better. But they are happy in their struggle, and they appreciate help when it is given. That is not the way it is in our cities. We have substituted entitlement for appreciation. And when anyone feels entitled to what someone else has, they will never be content until they have it, and “it” is not an attainable thing.

Am I thinking about all that when we are walking through Wakisi on our last day there? Probably not. I am thinking about the children who come rushing out from their home shouting, “Sweetie! Sweetie!” as we come to the first bend in the road. No we don’t have any sweeties we tell them and that’s okay. They still swarm around us, eight or ten of them from two to twelve years old. They want hugs and kisses and love. They want me to take their picture with my camera and show them what they look like. I don’t know if they’ve ever seen what they look like before. Perhaps as a reflection in the river. As we are playing with them their mother comes to us and touches my arm.

“My husband is sick,” she says. “You pray, please.”

She invites us into her home, through the front door made with sticks and tied together with rough twine, into their living room that is smaller than the closet where we keep our coats at home. Her children follow us in, all eight of them. The last two have to stand outside in the doorway because there is no more room.

Father pulls back a torn sheet that separates the living room from their bedroom and joins us. He is a tall man. I put my hand on his shoulder and ask, “Are you sick?”

“Yes,” he says. “My chest. Can’t breath.”

I ask him what his name is, and “Gusulwani” is what it sounds like he says. I repeat the name back to him and he nods, and that’s the name I use when I pray for him. It is a short prayer that calls for God’s Spirit to wrap its arms around him and his family and protect them. But it is not the prayer that matters, it is the moment. It is the spirit that rushes in through the door with the breeze, the smiles and the thank yous from Gusulwani and his wife, and the faces of the children staring up at me in wonder as we leave the house. It is the invitation to “Come back. Come to our home, please,” as we wave to them and continue our walk into Wakisi.

We see many families and their mud or clay brick homes as we walk down the red dirt road. We see mothers and their daughters carrying water up from the river. We see babies sitting by the fire playing in the dirt as their mother cooks. As we get down to the river we see young men spreading the silver fish from their nets on the ground with a hand made sweeper. And all along the way the children rush out to meet us and want us to take their picture. Some even follow along with us after we’ve passed their homes.

It is a great way to end our trip here, and we continue to wave and talk to the children we saw on the way as we return to Mashah. When we get to the last bend in the road, Gusulwani’s eight children come rushing up to Jill. They don’t ask for sweeties this time. They know we don’t have them. This time they just want the hugs and love.

People Watching


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The camera is an extension of what you’re watching. I see crowds as a blur and landscapes as something far away – I don’t take very good pictures of crowds or landscapes, most of the time. My eye’s focus always seems to narrow. I see a piece of the landscape or a single face among the many. So, that’s what is usually in the photographs I take. These images are some of the people I found myself watching.

From the Script: Unforgiven


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When I first saw Unforgiven in the theater in 1992, this scene is what I walked out with, replaying in my head. In these two or three minutes are the movie. William Muny may think “He’s not like that no more,” but this scene tells the story of what he was. Can you become someone different, someone better? Sure, but it does not erase where that new someone started. Forgiveness is up to us, and God, and no one else.

EXT. OPEN COUNTRY – DAY

Open country at sundown seen from a low hill, and you can
barely make out a lone RIDER approaching in the extreme
distance.

VIEW ON MUNNY

Standing on the rise and watching the rider in the distance.

THE KID
Is that what it was like, Bill, in
the old days… ridin’ out with
everybody shootin’… smoke all over
an’ folks yellin’ an’ bullets whizzin’
by?

The Kid is behind Bill sitting under a large oak drinking
from a whiskey bottle.

MUNNY
(absently)
Yeah, I guess so.

THE KID
Shit… I thought they was gonna get
us. I was even… scared a little…
just for a minute.
(pause)
Was you ever scared in them days?

Munny turns from watching the rider’s slow approach and walks
over to The Kid who can’t see the rider from where he’s
sitting.

MUNNY
I don’t remember, Kid. I was drunk
most of the time. Give me a pull on
that bottle, will you?

Munny takes a big pull on the bottle, returns it to The Kid,
and walks back to the edge of the rise to resume his vigil.

The rider is a little closer now and the sun is a little
lower. It is very beautiful.

THE KID
(drinking heavy)
I shot that fucker three times. He
was takin’ a shit. He went for his
pistol an’ I blazed away… first
shot got him in the chest…

The Kid wipes whiskey from his chin. He has been working
hard to make the hysteria he feels into a high… but it
won’t quite come.

THE KID
Say, Bill…

MUNNY
Yeah.

Munny is watching the rider and the rider is closer.

THE KID
That was… the first one.

MUNNY
First one what?

THE KID
First one I ever killed.

MUNNY
(preoccupied with his
vigil)
Yeah?

THE KID
How I said I shot five men… it
wasn’t true.
(long pause)
That Mexican… the one that come at
me with a knife… I busted his leg
with a shovel… I didn’t shoot him
or nothin’.

Munny is watching the rider and the rider is much closer but
coming at a walk and Munny goes back over to The Kid for a
pull on the bottle and he’s trying to make The Kid feel okay
when he says…

MUNNY
Well, that fella today, you shot him
alright.

THE KID
(forced bravado)
H-hell yeah. I killed the hell out
of him… three shots… he was takin’
a sh-sh-shit an’… an’…

The Kid is shaking, becoming hysterical, he can’t go on, and
Munny hands the bottle back.

MUNNY
Take a drink, Kid.

THE KID
(breaking down, crying)
Oh Ch-ch-christ… it don’t… it
don’t seem… real… How he’s…
DEAD… how he ain’t gonna breathe
no more… n-n-never. Or the other
one neither… On account of… of
just… pullin’ a trigger.

Munny walks back to the edge of the rise and watches the
rider and it is a lovely sunset happening and he is talking
to no one in particular.

MUNNY
It’s a hell of a thing, ain’t it,
killin’ a man. You take everythin’
he’s got… an’ everythin’ he’s ever
gonna have…

THE KID
(trying to pull himself
together)
Well, I gu-guess they had it…
comin’.

MUNNY
We all got it comin’, Kid.

VIEW on the rider at the foot of the rise and it is Little
Sue and VIEW on Munny pulling the saddle bags off and Little
Sue is still mounted. They are under the oak tree and it is
dusk and The Kid is just sitting there with his bottle.

MUNNY
I was watchin’ you… seein’ if you
was followed.

LITTLE SUE
(scared to death)
Silky an’ Faith, they rode off to
the East an’ two deputies was
followin’ them.

Munny has lit a little candle and spread a blanket and he is
opening the bags to count the money.

MUNNY
(pouring out the coins
and bills)
You wanna help me count, Kid?

The Kid is leaning against the tree in a semi-stupor.

THE KID
I trust you, Bill.

MUNNY
Well, you don’t wanna trust me too
much. We’ll take Ned his share
together so you don’t figure I run
off with it.

LITTLE SUE
(startled)
Ned’s share?

MUNNY
(counting)
Yeah, he went South ahead of us. I
guess we’ll catch him before…

LITTLE SUE
(blurting it out)
He’s… he’s dead.

MUNNY
(counting)
No he ain’t. He went South yesterday.

LITTLE SUE
They… they killed him. I… thought
you know that. I thought you knew
because…

MUNNY
(looking up)
Nobody didn’t kill Ned, he went South
yesterday. He didn’t even kill nobody.
Why would anybody kill Ned?

Little Sue just looks back at him, scared, trembling.

MUNNY
(realizing)
Who killed him?

LITTLE SUE
Little Bill. The… the Bar T boys
caught him and Little Bill…

MUNNY
He hanged him?
(Little Sue shakes
her head “no”)
Shot him down?

LITTLE SUE
N-no. He… he beat him up. He was
making him… answer questions…
and beating him up… and then…
Ned just died.
(pause)
Little Bill didn’t mean to kill him…
he said he was sorry an’ all… but
he said it was a good example anyhow.

MUNNY
(outraged)
Good example! Good example of what
I’d like to know? He didn’t even
kill nobody… he couldn’t do it no
more.

LITTLE SUE
They got… a sign on him says he
was a killer.

MUNNY
(flabbergasted)
A sign on him?

LITTLE SUE
In front of Greely’s. It says, “This
here is what happens to…”

MUNNY
(incredulous)
They got a sign on him in front of
Greely’s?

The Kid just has his head in his hands, it’s too much for
him and Little Sue is scared shitless of Munny.

MUNNY
The questions Little Bill asked him…
what sort of questions was they?

LITTLE SUE
About where you an’ him
(indicating The Kid)
was… an’ where you was from… an’
what your names was… an’…

MUNNY
What’d Ned say?

LITTLE SUE
L-lies… at first. About how you
was just passin’ through and didn’t
kill nobody… an’ Little Bill kept
askin’ questions, mixin’ him up,
catchin’ lies… an’ then he’d beat
on Ned an’ Ned would cry and lie
some more an’ then… then…

MUNNY
Then… what?

LITTLE SUE
A cowboy come in sayin’ you killed
Quick Mike in the shit house at the
Bar T…

MUNNY
An’ Little Bill killed Ned for what
I done?

LITTLE SUE
Not on purpose. But he started hurtin’
him worse… makin’ him tell stuff.
First ned wouldn’t say nothin’…
but Little Bill hurt him so bad he
said who you was…

Munny looks up sharply. Little Sue is scared, her voice
quavers…

LITTLE SUE
He said how you was really Three
Fingered Jack out of Missouri… an’
Bill said “Same Three Fingered Jack
that dynamited the Rock Island and
Pacific in ’69 killin’ women and
children an’ all?” An’ Ned says you
done a lot worse than that, said you
was more cold blooded than William
Bonney or Clay Alisson or the James
Brothers an’ how if he hurt Ned again
you was gonna come an’ kill him like
you killed a U.S. Marshall in ’73.

MUNNY
Didn’t scare Little Bill though, did
it?

LITTLE SUE
N-no, sir?

MUNNY
Lemmee see that Schofield, Kid.

THE KID
Wha… what f-for?

MUNNY
(sharply)
Lemmee see it.

THE KID
(giving it to him)
Sure. Sure, Bill.

Munny takes the pistol and begins to check it methodically,
inspecting the load first… and The Kid watches nervously,
shifting from foot to foot.

THE KID
You… you could keep it, Bill. I
ain’t… gonna use it no more, I
ain’t gonna kill nobody.

Munny, still checking the gun, glances up and meets The Kid’s
uneasy gaze.

THE KID
I… I ain’t like you, Bill.

Munny looks back at the pistol, checks the sights.

THE KID
You… gonna take… the money?

MUNNY
(to Little Sue)
You better get on back, Miss.

And Little Sue, still mounted, breathes an enormous silent
sigh of relief and turns her horse away hastily and Munny,
satisfied with the pistol, sticks it in his belt and walks
over to the horse and pulls his sawed-off shotgun out of the
bedroll.

THE KID
You could have it. All of it.

MUNNY
I thought you wanted to buy spectacles
an’ fancy clothes an’ all.

THE KID
I’d rather be blind and ragged than
dead, I guess.

Munny looks at The Kid who is behaving bravely but is
trembling anyway, scared, and Munny’s eyes are full of
brutally painful memories.

MUNNY
Shit, Kid. I ain’t gonna kill you.
You’re… the only friend I got.

– Unforgiven starring Clint Eastwood. Script by David Webb Peoples

Like Home To Me


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I’m a big city boy, but I love small towns. The county courthouses, the eclectic main streets, the attractions and ideas of artwork – they draw a picture that is comfortable to me. Maybe it was the small town where my grandparents lived, and the summers I spent there as a boy, but small towns always just feel like home to me. And who is FiDENCIO LOPEZ, anyway?

 

Back in Time


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Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
                – from Ulysses by Alfred Lord Tennyson

Last night I watched Skyfall again, on the new EPIX movie network. As I was watching, I could still hear the whispers of things I believe are true. That makes this review something more about how time manipulates us than the movie, about how technology fights a battle with experience that only one can win.

This Bond, Daniel Craig in his third film in the 50 year old series, is older and he sometimes fails. That sounds familiar to all of us who began watching Bond decades ago. We are older and we have sometimes failed. We have been rushed along the rapids of the internet and the laptop and over the waterfall of the smart phone and Facebook and we are still here. To most of us, to me at least, new technologies are challenges to be overcome, mastered. I’m not sure anyone born in the last thirty years sees technology that way.

“I can do more damage on my laptop sitting in my pajamas before my first cup of Earl Grey than you can do in a year in the field,” the new Q, played by a very young looking Ben Whishaw, tells Bond at their first meeting.

All these new toys are part of this generation’s every day life. I was born, however, on the cusp of all this. Too young to be caught up in the tidal wave of cultural change that washed the first Bond away in the late 1960’s, and too old to believe that any technology fundamentally changed me, or the world. My grandmother went to town in a horse-drawn cart when she was a girl. Before she died, men talked to her through a piece of furniture with a picture tube from the moon. But those technologies weren’t there during the depression when her husband died and she had to raise four children by herself, and that experience molded her more than a man on the moon.

I’m not saying that technology isn’t good or we don’t need it. We couldn’t live our lives today without it. We reject it at our own peril. And the Bond of Skyfall, the old dog, knows his job better because of his experiences, but he may not be as good at it because the technology he needs to do it now is not part of who he is, like it is part of the new Q.

These were the whispers I heard while I watched the movie. They were drowned out, occasionally, by other voices, voices that asked why so many recent spy thrillers have a list of deep cover agents that’s been stolen. It’s a fall back of the story telling somehow, like the machines taking over in so many science fiction movies. Actually, it’s the rise of the machine in Skyfall, too. But they haven’t taken over just yet.

No, Skyfall is a harbinger of the old, when men were men and women were Bond girls. Much of that feeling is due to Daniel Craig. I thought Clive Owen would have been a better choice when they selected a new Bond three movies ago, but Craig has been a revelation. I had been caught up in the savoir-faire shell Bond had become, mostly a caricature of Sean Connery’s James Bond. But I am glad to see, finally, a Bond to match the original. Someone a little uneasy in the halls of power, almost a gentleman, but grittier. And the three Daniel Craig Bond films, Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace and Skyfall, are the best three consecutive Bond films since the first three, Dr. No, From Russia with Love and Goldfinger.

Judi Dench as M tells us why this new Bond is better when she quotes the Tennyson lines above. After she speaks these lines, the Bond we always knew was there reveals himself anew. This Bond will not yield, his experience will not let him. So, when M asks him, “Where are we going?”

Bond answers, “Back in time.”

Cast the First Stone


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MURDER, YOU WRITE: How about taking a stab at thrilling and chilling the masses in our Mystery/Suspense Short Story Contest? Winners will be based on overall originality of plot and character development, with the plot hinging on at least three of the following clues: a murdered relative, red dress, piece of jewelry, pool of blood, magazine subscription, painting, abandoned car, clergyman, fax machine, golf bag, fire drill, heat wave and a partridge in a pear tree. (Got a little carried away there. Ix-nay on the partridge.) First Prize $3,000; second prize, $1,000.

The car had been sitting in the Park and Ride parking lot for at least a week. It was a dark blue Ford Taurus, brand new, the sales sticker still on the window. Mr. Seizler had parked next to the car for the past three days.

“Is that your car parked next to me?” he asked the lot attendant.

“Naw sir,” the attendant answered after Mr. Seizler pointed out which car he was talking about. “That ain’t my car. That car’s been here awhile though.”

The attendant was a wiry little black man with white hair. He wore a light blue jacket with the city’s Park and Ride logo on the lapel, and he didn’t seem to miss much that went on from his booth by the lot entrance.

“I remember that car,” he said. “A lady in a red dress left that car early one morning last week. It weren’t no going to work dress either. It was a going out on the town type dress. Low cut in the front and slit up the side so you could see what she had to offer, you know what I mean? But she was wearing it though, and she got on the bus downtown like she was going to work.”

“Shouldn’t you call the police or something and report it?” Mr. Seizler asked.

“What for?” the attendant asked back. “That car ain’t breaking no laws. It’s just taking up space on my lot. I ought to call a tow truck, that’s what I ought to do.”

Mr. Seizler didn’t think about it much the rest of the day, but when he got back from work the car was gone. He rolled down his window and stopped his car at the attendant’s booth.

“Where’s the car?” he asked.

“The police, just like you said,” answered the attendant. “I called for a tow truck and police came instead with their own tow truck.”

Detective Lou Lewis followed the police truck to the impound. There was an APB out on the car and the owner, a fifty-two year old priest from Sainte-Julienne in Canada. The bulletin came from the Service de Police de la Ville de Montreal and went out all across southern Quebec and upstate New York, and to Pinellas County in Florida. No one had seen the car or the priest for two weeks. The owner of the towing company matched the license number the parking lot attendant called in with the APB. He even called the police before towing the truck and charging his fee. Would wonders never cease? Now all Lou had to do was get the car to tell him where the driver was.

“Hey LuLu,” said the uniformed officer driving the tow truck when Lou got out of his car at the impound.

“What?” Lou answered sharply. LuLu was a nickname he was none too fond of, and which stuck for that very reason.

“What do you think, you’ll find the body in the trunk?” the cop smarted off.

“Just be careful, will ya,” Lou answered without a smile. “Maybe I’ll find something. If you don’t mess it up first.”

There wasn’t much to find, but there was enough to get started. There was an earring stuck between the cushions in the back seat, a golf bag in the trunk, and a copy of GOLF Magazine from the lobby of a motel on Gulf Boulevard. The earring helped corroborate the parking lot attendant’s story about the woman. The magazine gave him a place to start looking.

The mailing label on the magazine said Sea Breeze Motel with an address near the Gulf Beaches. It was hard to tell about the motels on Gulf Boulevard; some were nice, most were tourist traps, and some were just sleazy with hourly rates. Lou didn’t know what kind of motel he’d find until he got there. The Sea Breeze Motel was sleazy. Not quite hourly rate sleazy, but definitely not the kind of place you would expect a priest to be staying. Detective Lewis showed a picture of the priest to the clerk at the front desk.

“Yeah, I seen him,” the clerk said, “but he weren’t wearing no collar when I seen him.”

“When was the last time you saw him?” Detective Lewis asked.

“A week, ten days ago maybe,” the clerk answered. “He had a room here for about a week. Had a girl over a couple of times.”

“The same girl?” Lewis asked.

“Yeah, the same girl,” the clerk confirmed.

“What’s her name?” pursued the detective.

“I don’t know. Cookie or Candy or something. Something you eat I’m pretty sure though. She’s just some of the local talent around here.”

“She’s a prostitute?” Lewis clarified.

“Well, yeah,” the clerk shrugged.

And Lou believed him. The clerk was a big, fat guy with greasy hair and a scraggly beard. His Hawaiian shirt wasn’t big enough to cover his whale white belly hanging over his trousers with the top button undone. He probably knew a lot of the local talent himself, but he had no reason to lie to the police. In fact, he probably had more reason to tell the truth since it wasn’t him that was in trouble, and that was why Lou believed him.

Still, believing and understanding didn’t follow each other this time. At least he had a little more police work to do. He had to find the girl in the red dress. He had to find out what the priest was doing with the girl. Even the abandoned Ford not being reported for over a week was an untidy detail. But he began by contacting the Sainte-Julienne police department that initiated the Missing Persons report.

“This is Detective Lewis of the Pinellas County P.D.,” he told the duty officer in Sainte-Julienne. “I’m calling about the bulletin your department put out down here on Father Robert Hebert and his Ford sedan, license number 83C 492.”

Lou could hear the officer shuffling papers looking for the report and heard him saying, “Do you have something for us?”

“I’ve got the car,” Lou answered. “I’m still looking for the priest.”

“Let me get the sergeant,” the duty officer said, “you better talk to him about this. I can’t believe you really found the car down in Florida.” The bulletin told the officer Pinellas County was in Florida, and he knew he needed to get someone in charge.

“Detective Sergeant LeClerq,” said the new voice on the phone. “What do you have for us Lewis?”

“Not much,” Lou responded. “I really need to know what you can give me. I told the duty officer we’ve found the car, but not the priest. The priest has been seen with a local prostitute. We haven’t found the girl yet, either.”

“A prostitute?” the Canadian detective questioned.

“That’s what I said,” answered Lewis. “What can you tell me about this Father Hebert?”

“Most popular man in the parish,” LeClerq answered, disbelief still in his voice. “Started a halfway house for runaways at the rectory. They make there way up here sometimes out of Montreal. The only reason we forwarded the APB to you guys was the other priest down at the church told us Father Hebert has a brother in St. Petersburg.”

“You got an address on this brother?” Lou knew a lead when he heard one.

“Yeah, hold on,” answered LeClerq, and then said, “The brother’s name is Francis Hebert.”

Lou Lewis took the address and got to work. He was beginning to have something to work with now. The priest’s brother lived in a pretty nice neighborhood north of downtown St. Pete. It was an old wood and brick house, probably built in the twenties, but kept nice with flowers and palms in the yard. Francis Hebert answered the door and invited Detective Lewis into the house. They sat in the Florida room with the rattan rocking chairs and the TV in the corner.

“I haven’t talked to Robert since I told him Candace left,” Mr. Hebert told Detective Lewis. “It was the same time I reported her missing to you guys. I haven’t seen her for more than three weeks now. She’s just turned eighteen.”

“I don’t know anything about Candace, Mr. Hebert. It’s your brother I’m here about,” Lewis explained. “Did you know your brother was in town?”

“He said he was going to come find Candace for me,” Mr. Hebert answered. “Probably just came down to play golf, if he came at all,” he continued with a hint of anger, well hidden. “Always too damn cold to play up there where he lives. But it’s Candace I’m concerned about, mister. Robert can take care of himself. I never talked to him since I called him up in Canada.”

“What did you tell him about your daughter?” Lewis continued.

“Robert has always had a special place in his heart for Candace,” was Mr. Hebert’s answer, “ever since her mother died when she was about twelve, even before that, really. She is a beautiful girl, you know. I told Robert I thought she was still in town. And I told him,” and Lou saw something like pain, or guilt perhaps, wash over the father’s face, “and I told him I thought Candace had been making money selling herself.”

“Is that why she left?” Lewis asked, “because you found out what she was doing?”

“I’ve known about Candace for a long time,” Mr. Hebert answered flatly.

“Do you have a picture of your daughter?” Lou asked quietly. Mr. Hebert left the room and brought back a picture with the fresh face of a Catholic high school girl in her crisp white school uniform and plaid skirt.

Lou took the photograph and didn’t ask any more questions. There was something beyond what Mr. Hebert told him, but it wasn’t his job to assign guilt to people he questioned. Lou just had to gather what information he could and put the pieces of the case together. That was the job.

When he got back to the station, there was another piece of the puzzle waiting for him. The bloated body of Father Robert Hebert had washed up on the inter-coastal near John’s Pass, wearing his civilian clothes and priest’s collar. The coroner’s report wasn’t in yet, but the cop on the scene said it didn’t look like he’d drowned, not enough water in his lungs. But the body had been in the water for several days.

John’s Pass wasn’t far from the Sea Breeze Motel and that was where Detective Lewis went next, with the photograph of Candace in his jacket pocket. The clerk was still there, a regular fixture, and Lou asked him if he recognized the girl.

“Yeah, that’s Candy,” the clerk said. “It’s Candy, right? Knew it was something you eat. She was in here earlier, but she wasn’t working.”

“This is the girl that was with the priest?” Lou confirmed. The clerk nodded. “Did you tell her I was in here asking about her?”

“No way,” the clerk answered. “She’ll be back here tonight for sure.”

“I want you to set me up with her,” the detective said.

“That ain’t my job,” the clerk said, throwing up his hands.

“It is tonight,” Lou told him and looked hard at the clerk. “Give me the room the priest had.”

The room was small with just a dresser and a bed and bathroom with a shower. There was no place to sit except the bed. Lou sat there with his feet up, waiting for Candace. The knock on the door didn’t come until almost ten. Lou opened the door and Candace was wearing the red dress, low cut like the Park and Ride attendant said. She came right in and sat on the bed.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

“Have you seen your uncle lately?” Lou skipped the formalities.

“No,” Candace froze, but it was a thin lie. She got up from the bed nervously and she looked like a young girl to Lou for the first time.

“I’m Detective Lou Lewis with the Pinellas County Police Department,” he said and showed his badge. “We found your uncle today in the inter-coastal. Why don’t you tell me about it?”

Candace collapsed back on the bed. “I didn’t do anything to Uncle Robbie,” she said. “The first time I came here, he tried to get me to go back home, but I don’t want to go back home.”

It was all spilling out now. “Then I came back again. I knew he was still here, his car was still outside, and I didn’t want him to tell Daddy where I was. I started, you know, trying to get him excited. I always thought he liked me, you know, not like a priest should. He never did anything like Daddy, but I could still tell he liked me. So I started undressing, and he let me at first. All I had left on was my panties and then he just sort of keeled over. He grabbed his collar off the dresser and he put it on. Then he got up on his knees and looked at me like he was praying or something.

“He said something like ‘You’re just a little girl, Candace,’ but I didn’t say anything. I just stared down at him like Daddy used to look down at me. Uncle Robbie sort of stared back at me for a second and then he just fell right into me. He was, like, sprawled there on the floor after I pushed him away.”

“What did you do then, Candace?” Lou asked, sitting down by her on the bed.

“I tried to get him out of here,” she said as she got up slowly and went to the closet by the bathroom. “I dragged him out with his arm around my shoulder like he was drunk and put him in the back seat of his car. Then I came back and got the bag he had sitting at the end of the bed. I’ve still got it where I’m staying.”

Lou watched her in the mirror over the dresser as she pulled a windbreaker jacket out of the closet. Candace looked at the jacket, and looked back at Lou in the mirror. “I’m not a little girl, you know,” she said. Her eyes sparkled with tears, and Lou saw the same wave of pain or guilt that had washed through her father’s eyes. “I don’t want to go home,” Candace continued with determination. “I knew if they found Uncle Robbie here, Daddy would find out where I was for sure. So I took him to the bridge at John’s Pass, around to the back of that parking lot by the beach, and pulled him out of the car. I didn’t throw him in the water, he just kind of rolled in when I couldn’t hold him anymore. After that I took the car to a Park and Ride somewhere over in St. Pete.”

She came back to the bed then, bringing the jacket with her. “It was his,” she said as she dropped the jacket in Lou’s lap. “It’s been in there ever since. Nobody’s stole it, can you believe it?”

Candace looked down at him, the tears pooling in her eyes finally overflowing and washing away her painted face. Lou nodded without expression and went methodically through the priest’s pockets. There was nothing there, just the picture of a Catholic school girl stuffed in the inside pocket.

© 2012 Wasted Space Publishing