Pirates

Pirates: A short story by David Lee Holcomb

The visitor wore cargo shorts two sizes too big, a Dallas Cowboys t-shirt, grimy canvas deck shoes, and a blond ponytail.

“No, ma’am,” he said. “I don’t have a library card. I’m a pirate.”

Kellie Lovell didn’t bat an eyelash. Situations like this came with her job.

“In that case, you won’t be able to take any materials out of the building.”

The man smiled. He was missing a tooth on the left side, lower jaw.

“Yes, ma’am. I understand. Where I’m staying, I don’t have much room for books.”

The librarian nodded. She assumed that the visitor was living in one of two nearby facilities, a homeless shelter and an assisted-living center, which together provided a number of unusual library visitors every week.

“Tell me again the name of the ship?”

“It’s the Bountiful Bess,” the visitor said. “She was the Battling Bess, but me and my friends, we changed the name. We didn’t want to give the wrong impression.”

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Volcano


In the westernmost part of the African nation of Cameroon lies Lake Nyos.

As lakes go, Nyos is not all that large, a bit less than four hundred acres. It is an expanse of still water surrounded by fertile green hills, occupying a crater on the side of an inactive—mostly inactive—volcano, the water held in place by a natural dam of old lava. To all appearances, this is a peaceful, green place.

Far beneath Nyos, however, lies another lake, this one of molten rock, a survivor of the days when volcanoes reared fiery heads, and the region was racked by earthquakes and eruptions. Gases rising from that crucible gradually work their way up through fifty miles of solid rock to the surface, where they escape one prison only to be trapped again, this time by the weight of the lake on top of them. The carbon dioxide escaping from the magma below has accumulated for eons, with hundreds of thousands of tons of gas slowly becoming trapped in the cold waters of the deep lake bottom.

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The Late Blonde


The dead blonde in the babydoll nightie was fast becoming a nuisance.

Danny Zickell struggled to keep his mind on his playing, watching the apparition sashay among the tables. She was mouthing the lyrics to “I Surrender Dear,” her eyes half closed in what she undoubtedly believed was an expression of soulful concentration, while the ostrich-feather trim of her outfit swayed gently in counterpoint to the music.

Under any other circumstances, Danny would have been happy to look at Emily DuCaine all night long: she was five-five, curvy and blonde, with the kind of big, blue eyes that made you feel like you were the only man in the world. Silky Maloney had undoubtedly thought he was the only man in Emily’s world right up until he caught her sharing a sweet little love nest with a trombone player on the fourth floor of the Olympia Hotel.

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Rimbaud

Rimbaud: a short story by David Lee Holcomb

During the years I’ve lived in this city, the hotel at the corner of Centennial and Eleventh Avenue has been a Hyatt, a Marriott, and before both of those, something called the University Suites. Tonight, it is a Hilton. By Christmas, it will be a Best Western.

Someday, they’ll throw in the towel and tear the place down, but not until long after I’ve moved on. The old girl still has a couple of dances left in her; La Quinta and Holiday Inn have yet to take her out onto the floor.

It’s not a bad hotel, and its location is supremely visible, on one of the busiest intersections at that end of town, within walking distance of two hospitals. That said, it’s noisy, and the parking deck is impossible to get in and out of during rush hour.

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Nothing if not critical …

The death of writer and television personality Robert Hughes in 2012 was an event that did not exactly shake western civilization to its roots. His television shows “The Shock of the New” (1980) and “American Visions” (1997) had brought him some fame in the rarefied air of the BBC/PBS universe, but despite a long and wide-ranging career – he penned an  overview of the early European colonization of his native Australia, he contributed to an array of newspapers and magazines, and he even hosted (for one week, before being replaced by Hugh Downs) the ABC television news magazine “20/20” – to most people outside the art world he was almost unknown at the time of his death.

With or without fame, in his views on art Robert Hughes was passionate, pompous, often obnoxious, but he was also unfailingly erudite and articulate, and he left us more aware and better-informed than he found us.

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