These are micro-stories I wrote for What Pegman Saw, a prompt my wife and I hosted for a few years in which we used a random photo from Google Street View and then wrote a couple hundred words about it. Most of the stories I wrote were pretty short, and more than a few may have a lot more rope than I was able to give in this context.
Here are a few of them:
FAR NORTH
Dimwitty knew right away that he wasn’t cut out for the military, but he wasn’t cut out for much else either. His Uncle James was a rear admiral and pulled some strings to get him in to the Coast Guard.
Basic was a cakewalk and next thing he knew he was on the USCGC Burton Island cruising around the Arctic Circle installing radar stations.
He’d been granted shore leave at Resolute Bay one day in early July and was awed by its vast emptiness. He couldn’t say why he loved it. It just felt right.
This opinion was not shared by any other members of the crew. They called it “toilet,” “ass-end of the universe,” and similar. Dimwitty was strangely insulted.
That September the Burton Island was ordered back to Oakland and that was that. In Oakland, Dimwitty got a 72 hour pass and went AWOL.
He knew where he was going.
A DREAM BENEATH A TREE
Dubreiel slouched in the shade of a roadside tree, his despair and pain intolerable.
The wound in his foot ached horribly, and for a moment he regretted casting his pistol into the pond the previous night. I could have at least shot myself, he thought.
But the warm May breezes were heavy with the scent of apple blossoms. They combined with melodious birdsong to soothe him, and soon the young deserter was fast asleep, softly snoring with his chin against his tunic.
For years afterward, he would try to recapture his dream beneath the tree that day, the phenomenal sense of hope and curiosity it contained.
Even half-remembered, the force of it was such that when he awoke some hours later he was, for the first time in his life, certain of what he needed to do next.
He stood and dusted off his uniform, then set out limping up the road.
What Pegman Saw: Brittany
TRUTH IN SILENCE
It was years before I realized my father was a criminal.
I am sometimes tempted to argue this point, but everybody already has an opinion. Once the tabloids got hold of a story, it didn’t matter if what they said was true or not. When a mob smells blood, that’s all the bastards can think about. Trying to fight it is like trying to keep out the tide with a push broom.
We come up here from Ohio in 1971. I was twelve. Pop swung by the school and pulled me out of Mr. Elfbrandt’s third-hour history. We got into his Jimmy and headed north.
I made a game keeping my mouth shut, seeing which of us caved first. I didn’t ask, he didn’t volunteer. We drove in total silence across two-thirds of the continental United States and a big chunk of Canada.
Looking back now, I can see how much he appreciated it.
LAD
We had what they called a hook stop like you don’t see these days.
That’s where a freight slows down just enough so the brakeman can toss out a mail sack, then lean way out to hook the outgoing sack off a pole.
Sometimes it’d be weeks before we had enough mail to justify an outgoing sack.
Not a lot of writers out here.
Once I was riding the ranch fenceline and come across a half-skinned steer lying in the dust.
Looked like somebody thought they killed it, but while they were peeling him he come alive and took off.
The rawhide rope around its neck was Apache, so I guess that’s who done it.
Until ’37 or so there was a group of Chiricahua living in the hills between us and Mexico, a tough bunch who never surrendered.
I heard a story one of their girls got captured and wound up marrying a Mexican.
What Pegman Saw: Cloverdale, NM
GRANDMOTHER’S COUNTRY
The Bull was taking his time, speaking a few words and then staring across the fire in long silence.
The smoke was terrible, but the old man did not seem to mind it. His granite countenance gave nothing away. Some of soldiers said it was Sitting Bull himself who killed Custer, but Maclester chalked that up to garrison malarkey. Nobody had survived that jackpot to tell the tale. Nobody white, anyway.
Maclester shifted his weight to ease the strain of sitting cross-legged for so long. He glanced at the Candanians and immediately felt better. The older Mountie was groaning while the younger one made faces like somebody was crushing his balls.
The intepreter turned to Maclester. “He says the buffalo are gone, and that the Mounties can no longer feed his people.”
“Tell him,” said Maclester, “if they come back to the United States there will be food enough for all of them.”
Dear God, he thought, let that be true for once.
FANTASMAS EM TODA PARTE
I learn this from Bonifatius Mbwale.
He is known to lie, but to tell a proper story both truth and lies are often employed.
Bonifatius is a man of such power that it is better to believe him than not, for to contradict him can lead to many evils.
Bonifatius tell me, “You walk around Benguela and see a white beach, a casino, a stretch of lawn green as seaweed. But I see a fleet of slave ships, a row of log cages in the sand, a mother weeping as her child is tied to a tree and whipped.”
Bonifatius tell me the ghosts cannot abide the blindness of those who walk through them. He say they compel him to make the witch magic as he does, to sicken these people and remind them of the suffering they ignore.
Bonifatius tell me that all ghosts must have their blood tribute.
THE VANISHED WORLD
Young Nor is not listening. He stares into his phone, rubbing it with an index finger, the old man notes, the way one might stroke a parrot’s head.
Old Nor tips his wicker chair to take advantage of the shade cast by the broad-leaf elephant ear plant that has been next to the doorway for a hundred years.
“When the Royal Navy was in port,” says the old man, “this alley was as lively as any place in the entire city. It was called Barber Street. One would always see cobblers at their benches, fortune-tellers sitting on their Arabian carpets, ice-ball vendors and kachang puteh sellers, opera singers, and of course the monkeys.”
The boy looks up. “Monkeys, Grandfather?”
“Certainly. Monkeys made the finest thieves. A thiefmaster would set them to the crowd, where they would dart among the people and snatch whatever valuables they could before fleeing to the rooftops.”
“No!” says the boy.
“Oh yes.”
The boy smiles.
Sometimes I would supplement the story with a bit of historical background, as with these:
FATHER CARES
It was just after eleven when the bell began tolling. The loudspeakers played a recording from the San Francisco Temple days, the whole church singing
Go down, Moses, way down in Egypt’s land
Tell ole Pharoah to let my people go
while Father’s voice, urgent yet calm, said the words I’d come to dread these many months here:
White night! White night! Run for your lives!
After Aunt Essie had signed over the Indianapolis house to the Temple, I knew I needed to stay with her.
We’d gone to San Francisco, then to Ukiah, and finally here to Guyana.
At first I’d believed in Father, even thought he could read minds.
He was a powerful preacher and did real good in the community.
But now it was all astray.
He ranted and raved, never slept.
His boys all carried guns.
“We need to go, Auntie,” I said. “He’s lost his mind.”
She shook her head. “Father cares.”
From a survivor’s account of the Jonestown Massacre:
There were loudspeakers all over the compound, and Jim Jones’s voice was on them almost 24/7. He couldn’t be talking all the time, but he’d tape what he said and then play it back all day long. And the rule was that we couldn’t talk when Jim Jones was talking. So on the loudspeakers, he’d suddenly call out, “White Night! White Night! Get to the to the pavilion! Run! Your lives are in danger!” Everyone would rush to the pavilion in middle of the encampment.
Then he would tell us that in the United States, African Americans were being herded into concentration camps, that there was genocide on the streets. They were coming to kill and torture us because we’d chosen what he called the socialist track. He said they were on their way.
We didn’t know this at the time, but he’d set up people who would shoot into the jungle to make us feel as if we were under attack. And there were other people who were set up to run and get shot — with rubber bullets, though we didn’t know it at the time. So there you were, in the middle of the jungle. Shots were being fired, and people were surrounding you with guns.
Then a couple of women brought out these trays of cups of what they said was cyanide-laced Kool-Aid, or Flavor-Aid — whichever they had. Everybody drank it. If we didn’t drink it, we were forced to drink it. If we ran, thought we’d be shot. At the end of it, we were wondering, Why aren’t we dead?
And then Jim would just start laughing and clapping his hands. He’d tell us it was a rehearsal and say, “Now I know I can trust you.” And then, in the weirdest way, he said, “Go home, my darlings! Sleep tight!” We weren’t really in mood for sleeping tight at that point.
POMP
In essence, it was a royal journey through the Carniolan estates so His Majesty might receive the hereditary homage in person.
Simple enough, but Emperor Leopold placed great value in pomp. Nothing less than three brigades of horse guards in full turn-out, fifteen gilt carriages to carry what amounted to his entire court, dozens of gallopers in silver armor, trumpets and flags, and so on.
Most important of all was that the Emperor be greeted enthusiastically by all the citizens along the route, so we had a job of it ensuring the local militias would be in full dress, muskets and cannons ready to fire the appropriate salutes as we drew near.
Because of the herculean efforts of my staff and myself, we managed to avoid disaster, save for one enthusiast who contrived to be in front of a cannon. Though the salute charge was blank, the man was still blown in two. Regrettable.
Leopold I was Holy Roman Emperor, King of Hungary, Croatia, and Bohemia who ruled the Holy Roman Empire until his death in 1705, the longest reign of any Hapsburg. His reign is known for conflicts with the Ottoman Empire in the east and rivalry with his cousin Louis XIV.
After more than a decade of warfare, Leopold emerged victorious from the Great Turkish War in which he recovered almost all of the Kingdom of Hungary from Turkey.
The incident described above actually occurred shortly after Leopold’s election.
I really like these and love the concept. Will you all host these again? I'd love to participate in something like this.