Knaves of Haste

KNAVES OF HASTE

w/a Sharon Locke

(nom de guerre)

(c) Saturday, February 27, 2016

Two upperclassmen stood in the way of the double-doors to the water closet refusing to let any underclassmen pass through without one of them first answering a riddle.  One held out two playing cards face down.  The other held out a Bible open to Psalms.

Underclassmen pooled in front of the doorway:  some anxious to pass through, others curious about the challenge, and still others just trying to pass the growing commotion.

"Choose a card and hand it to the one it belongs,” commanded the upperclassmen in unison.

The underclassmen looked like munchkins before towering twin tin-men.  The upperclassmen stood shoulder to shoulder.  Their near arms were held at their sides like toy soldiers.  

From the back of the crowd Master Shiskey wriggled up front to face the imposing upperclassmen.  

"Choose a card and hand it to the one it belongs,” commanded, again, the upperclassmen in unison in response to Master Shiskey standing front and center before them.  Everyone before the doorway hushed.

Master Shiskey, unshaken, paused a moment to poke his head toward the Bible held out to him to read the passage.  He read Psalms 116:11 out loud for everyone to hear:  “I said in my haste, 'Every man is a liar!'"  He then turned to the cards held out for him to pick one.  He pulled a card away from the upperclassman’s grip and held it for everyone to see.  A Jack of Clubs.

Students murmured what does it all mean among themselves while Master Shiskey stood before the blocked doorway thinking to himself.  From within the crowd someone yelled the clubs look like three leaf clovers.  Everyone knew how clover related.  Clover was the patron of their school.  Someone else yelled, over the growing din, does anyone know who Jack is.  

“Jack is a knave,” yelled Master Dudley.

“Yes!” Master Shiskey blurted out himself.

The rest murmured:  Whose Jack?  What’s a knave? 

"Who cares?  Hurry up!" exclaimed Master James on behalf of a handful of boys doing an awkward jig--the very first dance all boys learn when they just have to go. 

Master Bayne came from behind Shiskey, swiped the playing card from his hand and reached it forward to slip in the silver vest of the upperclassman with the remaining card. "He had it, so it belongs to him," Bayne explained as he moved. 

Striking Bayne's forearm up away from returning the card, Master Shiskey first knocked it away and then snatched it from Bayne.  "You fool. The riddle.  Return the knave to the knave," he reproached him. 

"So who is that?" said James dancing a jig. 

"A knave is a liar, replied Dudley. 

"Then who lied?" asked James. 

"'Every man is a liar' read the Psalm," Shiskey reminded the assembled underclassmen.  

"So give them both cards," James shouted back anxiously. 

"Then give the card back," Bayne protested to Shiskey. 

"No," said Shiskey. 

Master Shiskey retook the lead, turning to face the crowd to explain his conclusion. "The Psalm begins, 'I said in my haste.'  Whoever was speaking, King David maybe, regrets calling all men liars.  The confession means he lied.  His hasty comment slandered all the saints and prophets. He was the knave."

"'King,' you said," Master Bayne jumped over Shiskey again. "Two cards they held out. The one we picked was the knave. The other then was a king.  The Psalm quotes a king.  So the knave belongs to the one who held it out to us."  

The dancing boys cheered. Dudley pulled the card from Shiskey and handed it to Bayne.  Bayne reached again to put the card into the vest pocket of the card-holding upperclassman.  Both upperclassmen, in unison, used their free hand to shove Bayne back from the door.  Bayne stumbled back and into Dudley dropping the playing card.  The underclassmen gasped. 

With confidence, Master Shiskey stepped around Dudley and Bayne toward the cardholder. Without stopping for the dropped playing card, he reached forward for the other card the upperclassmen held.  Then without even pausing to look at the face of the card, Shiskey reached to slide the card into the pocket of the Bible-holder.   

The upperclassmen kept their free hand at their side until the card was deposited.  Then with those same hands they gestured to all you may enter. 

"Oh, thank you!" exclaimed Master James leading his dance troop through the parting upperclassmen into the water closet. 

Masters Bayne, Dudley and the rest stood with their jaws agape.  Wayne lifted the jack of clubs off the floor.  

"I solved the riddle," Bayne argued.  "Shiskey pulled the king and gave it to him," pointing at the Bible-holder.  "You shouldn't have shoved me," Bayne  continued his defense. 

The upperclassman holding the Bible pulled the playing card back out of his pocket and held it up high for everyone assembled to see its face.  The crowd of underclassmen gasped again.  

"How?" some uttered.  

Some turned to Master Shiskey for an explanation.  

"But he never looked at the card," still others were saying.  

"All men were liars, he said," repeated others.  

"In haste, he said that," another emphasized.  

"So two cards?" another questioned.  

"The riddle was solved when the king withdrew his contradiction," said Master Shiskey.  "One card was for himself and the other for those he slandered, but he called it back upon himself by his confession that he spoke in haste."

The card held up was a second jack of clubs. 

##

A Matter Of Time

A MATTER OF TIME

w/a Sharon Locke

(nom de guerre)

(c) Saturday, February 20, 2016

The dining hall erupted in jeers when young Master Shiskey entered through the main doors at five past noon to sit for lunch. He was late. He's always late. And everyone was kept waiting to start.

"Now that Master Shiskey has seen fit to grace us with his untimely presence we may begin. Master Dudley will you lead us in the saying of grace this after-noon," the headmaster said with emphasis on the first two syllables of afternoon.

Most of Shiskey's house mates missed that last quip as they were preoccupied sneering at Shiskey taking his seat among them.

"What's your excuse this time, shish-kebob," Master James whispered loud enough for the other boys around him to hear.

Everyone in earshot smirked with heads down to avoid eye contact with the headmaster.

The next morning, Shiskey found his pocket watch with its crystal face cracked. The watch was in his vest pocket where he had left it the night before. He could still see the watch was telling time. In fact, he noted he arrived on time to breakfast, lunch, and dinner and every other appointment that day.

Shiskey spent the next day observing the comings and goings of his peers. One student was always entering the room late with his eyes darting from making contact with his.  This, finally, prompted Shiskey to speak with the headmaster. That someone had stolen his school-issued pocket watch, he declared, without mentioning the broken one he kept concealed.

Two days after the alleged theft, the headmaster called Master Shiskey's house to his office, all twenty boys.

As each boy filed in and took a seat on wood benches along either side of the room against the walls, the headmaster kept an eye on his pocket watch recording each boys' time of arrival. Master Shiskey was not the last one to enter the room. Five minutes after everyone else, Master James arrived with a stunned look upon his face at everyone else seated and waiting on him. He reached into the pocket of his signature red vest--the color of their house--and pulled out his school-issued pocket watch. It read 1:59 p.m. He looked up somewhat relieved but somewhat perplexed.

"Master Shiskey," the headmaster started, "we are assembled as you requested."

As James moved quickly to take a seat, Shiskey lept to his feet.

"Master James," Shiskey called out, "would you please check under the coat stand for a pen dropped there?"

Still feeling somewhat off, having arrived last, James turned obediently to check. He leaned over from the waist to fan his fingers beneath the stand. In doing so his pocket watch poured out and hit the hardwood floor. He scooped it up quickly and checked the face. Then slid it back into his vest pocket.

"Did the crystal crack?" called out Shiskey to James.

James neglected a response while with one hand he reached under the stand and with the other he held his pocket watch in place. The face of his watch was not broken, but what he found under the stand was a pocket watch whose face was cracked. He stood upright and turned back to face everyone, but he uttered not a word.

"Headmaster, we need new watches. I suspect Master James has a penchant for breaking his in the manner we just witnessed. And mine runs slow, which is why Master James was last to arrive."

All the boys gasped and murmured until Master James broke in. "Are you accusing me of something," James cut back.

Shiskey turned to the headmaster while answering James. "No, I am proving something. I hid that pocket watch under the stand. It is yours. It still tells correct time. The crystal is just cracked. The watch in your pocket you took from me. It is mine. It is slow. It requires constant rewinding, and resetting. I confess I knew that, and so my tardiness is my failure to attend to my watch. But evidently Master James was unaware of this when he swapped his cracked watch for my slow one."

#

The headmaster smiled recalling he had witnessed The Very First Case From The Cabinet Of Capers Of Child Constable Shiskey Chateau.

##

~725 words

The Sicilian Solution

THE SICILIAN SOLUTION

w/a J.K. Ryeanne

(nom de guerre)

(c) Saturday, February 13, 2016

It was a bitter but still night when Clancy went outside to light a cigarette across the street.  Inside the bar that he had just left, two political operatives representing opposing presidential candidates from the same party continued to speak together in hushed whispers over stiff drinks.  What he overheard spun about in his head for a political thriller.  

Clancy drew a cocktail napkin from his pants' pocket.  He shivered.  His cheap hearing aid tickled uncomfortably in his ear with tiny snaps of static electricity.  On the paper were notes he jotted hastily just before he had finished his drink, pulled on his jacket and left for a smoke. 

Outside he didn't hear the pre-debate show interrupted by breaking news.  A Supreme Court justice had reportedly been found dead of natural causes.  As the news continued, the front windows of this small bar blew out with a loud boom followed by flames reaching after the shards of shattered glass flying out across the street.  The glass that hit his hand and face stung like bee stings.  The force of the explosion swept him off his feet.  He hit the ground hard and painfully.  Then the scorching heat from the flames passed over him in the midst of the bitter cold for a fleeting moment of comforting warmth.

Clancy laid in the debris while the blown out bar across from him glowed noisily in the cold winter air, like a fireplace.  His mind was somewhat detached from his body, which was numb and unresponsive.  Perhaps five minutes passed while he laid in place when he heard the sound of a distant siren.  Within seconds, however, a fireman was standing over him.  

“Can you move, sir?” he asked.

Clancy, mostly on his back, swept his arms up creating a smear of charred debris and glass in their wake, like making angel wings in the snow.

“Were you in the bar, sir?” the fireman asked.

Clancy, becoming aware of the paper napkin still in his hand, nodded yes.

The fireman leaned down on one knee and--looking about for anyone looking at them--took a long shard of glass off Clancy’s chest and forced it through the soft under area of his neck.  Clancy reacted like a man choking, reaching his outstretched arms for his neck.  He gurgled blood and died as steam from his blood cooled in the bitter night.

The sound of the siren was growing louder.  The fireman seeing the napkin pulled it from Clancy’s hand.  He also rifled through Clancy's pockets for his cell phone.  He rose and moved toward a couple huddled on the ground by a lamppost.  

“Were you in the bar,” he called to them as he glanced at the napkin.  It read:

1. A lame duck president facing Supreme Court challenges to his unconstitutional actions turns to a flawed presidential candidate facing criminal prosecution for her treasonous actions. 
2. The duck offers the perp a presidential pardon in return for a Supreme Court nomination. 
3. The obstacles are a lack of a vacancy, the futility of replacing a liberal with a liberal, the current opposition party filibustering until a new president is elected. 
4. Solution:  create a vacancy among the conservatives, goad the conservatives to filibuster, inflame the passions of liberal voters, the perp wins the presidency, the duck pardons her, she nominates the duck, a neutered Congress consents. 
5. Possible title:  The Sicilian Solution

~600 words