A Curious
Incident In The Daytime
By
Will Mayo
It happened back in the late Spring of 1983 while I was away at
college that a renegade soldier high on Angel Dust and gone missing from the
local army base broke into my parents' townhouse in the Amber Meadows
subdivision of Frederick Maryland. He ran wild through their home lost in fear
and confusion as sirens sang through the morning air. Till at last the officers
of the day came storming through the front door only to see the buck private
grab my mother from behind around the waist.
The policemen drew their guns. "Drop her!" they shouted
at the uncomprehending soldier. He trembled but did not move.
At that moment, my father, quickly seizing the moment, grabbed an
old antique chair from beside him and broke it onto the soldier's shoulders and
head. Down to the floor fell the soldier gone AWOL on an untimely leave.
It was then that my mother turned round, spied the priceless
antique in ruins, and said to my father,
"Joe, why did you break Aunt Mary's chair?"
It never ends.
State Of The Art
by
Will Mayo
When the cops got me to
the station in Needles, California following that arrest for Grand Theft Auto
out in the desert in 1977 (a trucker claimed he'd seen me behind the wheel of a
stolen car, I knew nothing about the matter) I asked them to loosen the handcuffs.
Said they were killing the hell out of me.
The officer in charge of
the matter stepped behind me and with a wide eyed look on his face turned my
hands round and about and keyed the cuffs off my wrists which by then were sore
and bleeding.
He held the cuffs up to
the light where he examined them. Saw them glimmering all twisted and torn and
ready to fall apart.
“State of the art,” he said with a catch in his
breath and let them clatter down to the floor.
After that and a brief
but humiliating strip search I was escorted to my cell. No one messed with me
but I vowed, just the same, to never mess with the law again.
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An Old Hunting Ground
by
Will Mayo
Death stalks us. Always. He appears
in those odd little moments such as when you suddenly discover that a friend
whom you haven't spoken to in over 20 years has passed away or maybe when you
realize that somebody actually much younger than your own self is gone as well.
Moments that haunt the soul. And then you begin to find that the list of dead
friends and relatives has piled up so high and so frequently that you simply
can no longer keep track of it all. You begin to give a little start at every
knock on the door and every footstep just outside your window. Can that be him?
you ask yourself. Can that be the Reaper? After a while, you mind it not at
all. The departures are just so not worth bothering with anymore. You begin to
enjoy living again. And then, suddenly, he is there, Death, and you greet him
with the fondest embrace. It is beautiful in its own way. He lights the way.
You quickly follow. And just then it all fades to black.
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Love Of Learning
by
Will Mayo
I can remember too that time that I was 10 and my father
was a mere man of 45 and he was helping me with my homework one evening when
all of a sudden I broke out crying. Concerned, he looked at me and asked,
"Why are you crying, son?"
"I'm crying," I said, "just as Alexander
The Great cried when he felt that there was no more land left to conquer. For
one day I'm afraid that there will be no more learning to be had."
"Son," he replied. "There will always be
learning to be had. You can bet your boots on that."
"Are you sure?" I asked.
"Absolutely."
Then I patted my textbooks and said, "Let us
continue."
Closer than ever, we studied throughout the night.
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