Newton and Halliday’s seaside supper is spoilt by the sight of a man terrorising a small girl. Incensed by the horrifying scene —unusual, even in sixties Singapore— the airmen attempt to rescue the girl; a humanitarian act which leads them to a part of the city very few Europeans see.

A Roti at Dawn

Halliday stared over my shoulder, loaded chopsticks halfway to his mouth. ‘Hallo,’ he said. ‘What’s going off here?’

Pete Murphy and I followed his gaze. A small, ragged child was running across the road, making for the tables standing under the stars. I clicked my tongue in disapproval; even in Singapore City, little girls should be fast asleep in their beds at three in the morning.

Ours was the nearest table to the road. Suddenly we had a fugitive hiding amongst our legs.

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A tourist in a South American backwater must fight for her survival.

Basket Trap

It took Helen about ten minutes to make a basket trap with her shirt. She knotted the sleeves and tied the shirt wide open to a couple of branches that she had rammed deep into the riverbed. In time, fish would swim into the shirt and be unable to turn around. She waded out. Standing waist-deep in the water had rinsed some of the blood and semen from her jeans and singlet, but for now, preserving forensic evidence was the least of her worries. She berated herself again for choosing such a remote area of Brazil for her holidays when she could just as easily have picked Rio de Janeiro or somewhere back home in Australia.

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Sometimes the most random and unexpected events create echoes that last a lifetime, as in this story of two soldiers thrown together in a way that neither could have foretold.

Easy Duty

When he saw the evening news, Rick Hines felt a rush of emotion he’d been trying to bury for forty years.

“This afternoon, a sixty-year-old man opened fire in the food court of an Atlanta shopping center,” said the announcer, as the tv screen flashed to a tape showing several ambulances parked in haphazard urgency, just inside the yellow police tape. “Seven people are dead, ten wounded. After a fifteen minute search, the police cornered the shooter in the back of a toy store, where the man turned the gun on himself. He was pronounced dead on the scene. The shooter has been identified as Gene Reynolds, a recipient of the Purple Heart in the Vietnam War.”

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G. Lloyd and his buddy Big Dave have a way of stumbling into things.  Sitting in a desert bar they decided to go see what all the talk about Extra Terrestrial Aliens and Area 51, the super-secret Air Force base in the Nevada Desert, was all about.

Illegal Aliens

Big Dave and I tended to change bars every so often.  We’d get bored or something would happen and we’d get eighty-sixed or the bar would suddenly disappear like The Hole in the Wall or Mickey’s Mouse Hole, but mostly we would just go looking for adventure at different places, which was how we ended up at the Windy City Saloon out in Mojave.

I had found the Windy City on a trip through the city of Mojave during a time I lived at Edwards Air Force Base with my wife Master Sergeant Michele Helm. That was about the same time I first met Big Dave Dodge at the Hole in the Wall Bar which was out in the desert from Edwards.

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Mary’s bar in Singapore’s out-of-bounds “Great World” is being terrorised by three airmen. She appeals to Halliday for help. On learning that the bullies work on Tech Wing, RAF Changi, Halliday talks a reticent Newton into visiting the bar. But, of course, it is Halliday who engineers a solution.

It’s a Great World

I gaped at the fiery-headed airman coming into Technical Wing’s Disciplinary office. In the six months I had been stationed at RAF Changi I had never before seen Halliday sporting the marks of battle. ‘Gawd help us, Red – what hit you?’

‘A fist – what d’you think?’

‘It’s not like you to get into a brawl – what happened?’

‘Some bully-boys from Changi were wrecking Mary’s bar. I tried to stop them.’ Halliday shrugged. ‘There were three of them…’

‘In the Great World,’ I stated. ‘Out of bounds – like you.’

‘Okay, okay – that doesn’t make it all right to destroy someone’s business, does it?’

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Technical Wing’s Adjutant, Warrant Officer Lesley Pocket, is in a stew. An important parade is imminent, involving all RAF Changi’s personnel. But Chiefy Ellison, charged with organising Tech Wing’s reluctant participants, goes sick. Only the overworked Adjutant can rescue the wing’s poor reputation. Newton, anticipating disaster, keeps his head down.

Mr Pocket’s Parade Ground Blues

The hatch at my shoulder slid open. Technical Wing’s Adjutant, Warrant Officer Pocket, peered into my office. ‘Morning, SAC Newton,’ he said. ‘Is the Flight Sergeant not in yet?’

‘He phoned to say he’s going sick, sir.’

Mr Pocket’s face dropped. ‘Oh, no – not today of all days.’

My Chief, Flight Sergeant Don Ellison, had picked a very good day to go sick. Tech Wing’s CO, Wing Commander Laurence Gilpin, had called a meeting to discuss RAF Changi’s upcoming inspection by the Air Officer Commanding Far Eastern Command.

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Unwittingly employed as a carrier of stolen money, RAF airman John Newton, of RAF Changi, Singapore, sets out to return the money to its rightful owner and to bring an errant fellow airman to book. His quest acquaints him with the highest and lowest strata of Singapore society.

Out of Bounds

I stared up at the high brick wall. Only windows; no doors or gates. I’d have to return the way I’d come. Except that I couldn’t remember the way I had come – I was lost. Lost late at night in a strange city, on a tropical island that, for me, had lived only in pictures until a short month ago. I’d have asked for directions – if I’d dared. The only people I’d seen during the past half hour were Chinese, all looking ready to cut my throat – I’d clearly strayed into one of Singapore City’s less wholesome districts.

A window slid up in the wall that had baulked me. A man poked his head into the alley. Flame coloured hair, pugnacious jaw.

His eyes met mine. ‘Anyone about?’

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Believing he is being unfairly victimised by Pahkar, his 48-bed billet room’s bearer, Royal Air Force Aircraftsman John Newton calls on a streetwise airman, Red Halliday, to help him get his own back. Unfortunately, Halliday’s ploy brings about frightening consequences.

Pahkar’s Revenge

‘A very good morning to you, sahib.’

I looked up. A round-faced Indian stood in front of the desk. Eyebrows raised, I returned his greeting. ‘Morning, Pahkar. What brings you to Tech Wing Disciplinary?’

My surprise at seeing my barrack room’s bearer in my office was increased a hundredfold when Pahkar placed a small bottle on the desk. He waved away my frown. ‘Just an unworthy token to show my appreciation, sahib.’

‘Appreciation? What for?’

‘Ah…’ Pahkar touched the side of his nose with a forefinger. ‘For perceiving what a difference a full billet has on our comfort, Senior Aircraftsman Newton.’

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A professional assassin looks at his life; the men he has killed and the women he has loved.

The Dead of Night

I had a wretched childhood and I have become a wretched man.  I survived a violent upbringing in foster homes where I was nothing more than an unpaid slave.  My life on the streets started at fourteen and meant taking to crime.  I learned the power of superiority gained through cold, calculated forcefulness.  At seventeen, a magistrate offered me the military as a final option.  “Join up and grow up, or be sentenced as an adult,” she said.

During recruit training, I used violence judiciously.  Not wanting to cross instructors, I did just enough to earn their praise during killing games until one of them, a sergeant, realised I was holding back.

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Have you ever read the fortune in a fortune cookie and believed it was real?

When an American tourist visits London for the first time, he has an experience in a Chinese restaurant where a seemingly innocent fortune cookie at the end of a meal sends his life spinning out of control.  Then just as he thinks he’s got things back under control…

The Fortune Cookie

Westminster Abbey, Churchill’s War bunker, Buckingham Palace, the Globe Theater. So far, Jack Harper was taking in all the sights and sounds of London, England. He had planned this trip for so long. He had seen all these sights on his first day and still had three weeks to go. As he rode the Tube from Saint Paul’s Cathedral, he smiled to himself as he thought about where he was going to eat dinner tonight.

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The migration of human souls legally or not is age-old and one easily exploited when only an imaginary line separates countries such as Canada and the USA.

Ivan attempts to cross that border three times on the ice bound River Road, but luck was not his on that fatal night.

The River Road

Ivan Ivanco laced up his construction boots and ploughed through foot-high snow drifts on River Road. The crisp, cold air invigorated him. There was purpose in his stride when he headed towards the Niagara River that December morning.

He focused on the second half of his journey. He knew the river was his ticket out of Canada into the U.S.A. but how he crossed that waterway was still to be determined. He had no identification papers.

In 1946 Ivan, like many other restless Europeans, had set his heart on sharing in the American dream. To achieve that prosperity he came to Canada. He’d find his way down south, somehow.

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Tailya breaks social and moral constraints in order to help the memory of her gypsy mother live on.

The Ruby Necklace

Tailya moves quickly, weaving through the forest with as much agility as a hawk. The aroma of pine needles assaults her, her breathing quickens to the pace her horse runs. The grand trunks of trees that loom before her, the wind whipping her face and the clarity she feels allow her to move expertly through the maze.

She doesn’t know why three men on three black horses have been pursuing her. It might have something to do with the jewels she stole recently, but how could she know? The king is not a very forgiving man, he welcomes new prisoners gladly, and his knights are eager to please.

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This sensitive heart-touching story is set in the 1960s. It is wound around a four-thousand mile trans-Saharan safari, which the doctor author was fortunate enough to experience, and includes a pioneering journey across the dreaded five-hundred square mile Ténéré Desert, between Algeria and Niger, in the middle of which is a single tree. Be prepared to be moved to tears.

The Tree

L’arbre du Ténéré is the only tree marked on the topographical maps of Africa

I was doing my final year anatomy and physiology when I met Mike Bullock. He was a final clinical year student and we both played for the hospital rugby side. He, as his name implies, was a big, solid, front row forward, while I fancied myself as a dashing wing three-quarter.

He was one of those gentle giants who, whatever the circumstances, could never be really provoked. A true ‘man’s man’ – smart, pipe-smoking, six foot one inch, and fifteen stone seven pounds in his socks.

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The wind is seldom still in the Mojave Desert. Stories about how strong the wind gets are legend, and some of the greatest tellers of those tales hang out in a joint called The Windy City Saloon located at a wide place in the road called Mojave.

The Winds of the Great Mojave

The wind doesn’t always blow in southern California’s Antelope Valley but it blows often enough that most of the trees lean, having been blown sideways since they were sprouts.  Very often the wind rolls in from the nearby Mojave Desert and when the hot dry Mojave wind blows it stirs speculation in romantic hearts as to where that wind comes from.  Of course there are all the scientific answers—uneven heating of the ground; rotation of the planet; seasonal considerations—but romantic hearts know that those are only facts not reasons.

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Tiburcio Vasquez, a storied bandito of old California, left a treasure behind when he suffered “the drop” at the end of his career. He also left many descendants and one of those is in possession of the treasure Grandpa Tiburcio left behind.

Tiburcio’s Treasure

The Hole in the Wall bar was misnamed because there was no “wall.”  It was just a dry-brown, ghost town-looking shack so far out in southern California’s Antelope valley—a desert valley where there have been no antelopes in living memory—that I was always amazed it even had running water and electric lights.  The shack sorta stuck up out of the creosote bushes in the bottom of this low place that might have been a volcanic crater a couple billion years ago.  You could see the lights of the place for miles if the night was moonless.  There was only one road (unpaved) leading to it, and it was made out of dust so gritty-fine it could blast the chrome off a truck bumper with just the slightest encouragement of a breeze.

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A young boy is forced, because of drought in his country and his ailing parents, to go out in search of food, in the form of game, to have any hope of keeping his family from starving.

Under the Baobab Tree

He paused by the scrubby stand of bush, its thorny leaves sharp against his leathery skin. Raising his hand to shield his eyes against the searing sun, he scanned the horizon. Nothing. Jabbing the crude spear into the baked earth he took a sip from the goatskin pouch slung around his neck. The water, warm and tasting of damp soil, slid easily down his parched throat.

How long had he been out there? Four days? Six? He thought of his parents back in the village, a random collection of mud huts set in a sweltering dust bowl. Their life had been one of increasing desperation since the drought and subsequent failure of their crops.

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A man is haunted by the 35-year institutionalization of his older brother.

A Brother’s Love

In the hodgepodge that passes for my life, there has been one constant: my love for my older brother, Barton. Through my marriage and divorce, through the death of my father and my mother’s hasty remarriage, through my numerous “career” changes, through the dissatisfaction and restlessness and loneliness that paint my life, there has been Barton. There’s no doubt in my boozed-up mind that I would have let go a long time ago, and not minded my drowning one bit, if it wasn’t for Barton. I stay in this city, live alone in a small apartment, because I couldn’t bear to be far from my brother.

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Floyd is a survivor. He wishes he weren’t. He is scarred by memories he cannot shake and tired from his daily battle with arthritis. What is a man supposed to do when all he has is pain?

A Walk in the Park

Spring in New York. From the eerie evening quiet of Downtown to the teeming streets north of Central Park, the city basked in unseasonal heat. Yesterday’s rain was forgotten and the storm forecast for tomorrow wasn’t worth worrying about. Tourists tussled with salarymen for seats outside cafés in the Village and kids hurled themselves round the Heckscher playground half-watched by their chattering nannies.

Floyd Henson stood on the Bow Bridge in the centre of the park and watched the couples in their rowboats struggling and laughing.

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Understanding reality has a downside.  Humans are weak, we are needy, we are foolish, and we are temporary.  How do we dare live, love and call our endeavors art?  The author here offers a way.  Grab the rope and hang on for we need hope like we need… air.

Air

Fate can be a funny thing – and by that, I don’t mean humorous, not all the time, not at all.  Let me show you:

Once upon a time a young man, not yet in his teens, was sitting, watching a stream of bubbles break the surface of a small, dark backwater.  This bend in the river made a lake, which prior to that day, was known only for good fishing.  Young Ellis waited.  As dawn’s colors moved toward rain-cloud gray, the bubbles became fierce.

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An annoying little man strikes up an unwanted conversation on a bus. He seems to enjoy the attention. His needs are complicated and urgent.

All Change

‘Used to subscribe meself,’ the little man shared conspiratorially as I half-heartedly turn a page, bored with the formulaic plot and unimaginative use of language.

‘Mmm?’ I replied. It was ill-considered for a closed response. He judiciously leaned into an acute bend in the road without grasping either support rail or seat grip.

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How Alec Morton’s life is changed by the intensity of his dreams and the death of his cousin.  A taut, compelling narrative, dealing with the interweaving of dreams and reality.

Baggage

Alec Morton approaches the cashpoint machines outside the railway station.  He trundles his suitcase, on wheels, behind him; his other hand rests, lightly, on his shoulder bag.  There are queues at all three machines.  He tags onto the shortest one, sets the suitcase down and reaches into the shoulder bag for his wallet.  A glance at his watch tells him he has fifteen minutes before the train is due to arrive.  Should be ok, he thinks.  He still has to buy his ticket, but the queue ahead of him seems to be moving quickly.  He brushes away a few beads of sweat from his brow.  There is a clear blue sky, and the noonday sun is at its hottest.  He looks forward to relaxing, on the hour-long journey into London.

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Following a tragic childhood accident for which he feels partly responsible, Georgie is haunted by flashbacks of what happened that lead him to follow a life of trouble. Will Ugly Suzie provide him with the lifeline he needs or will Georgie be forced to make a terrible decision?

Counting by Numbers

In the days before Duchess and the Ugly Suzie, when Georgie was very small, the cupboard in the spare bedroom was his favourite hiding place. It was always the last place that Mama looked for him and it was warm and dark and soft in there. He would squeeze himself in at the bottom, and wait until she came to find him. While he was waiting, he would run his finger along the inside of the cupboard door where Mama had scratched how tall he was each year. He hoped he would grow big and strong like Mama always said.

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Vicky’s world falls apart when her husband tells her he wants a divorce. Picking herself up, she makes a decision that shakes not only her husband but her family and friends as well.  How a mother could abandon her children is incomprehensible to them, but Vicky’s made of more determined and sterner stuff than even she herself realised!

Crossing the Wasteland

The minute they walk into the restaurant, Vicky Barrett knows it’s wrong; the little black dress and pearls, confirmed by the Maitre D’s supercilious smile. As outdated, among designer outfits smart and casual, as the word frock in the new millennium. Ushered to their table by an underling, they’re seated away from the mainstream.

She turns her attention to the table.  Napkins starched, convoluted into swan shapes, silverware catching candlelight. It’s Valentine’s Day with heart-shaped chocolates on their side plates. .   She was one of three runners-up in a competition,.  Dinner for two at the exclusive La Premiere was the Consolation prize.

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Not all war injuries become evident on a soldier’s body, nor do they show themselves without delay.  Years after a stint in the service, one man treasures his experiences and boasts about them, yet suffers the real results silently.

Curtis, Alone and Aging

“C’mon, Curtis, make up your mind.  You’ve had all lunch hour to think.”

The young waitress, as lush and appetizing as her pies, bounces the eraser end of her pencil on the order pad.  Every part of her pliant body pushes a rounded curve against the thin white uniform.  Curtis wonders why he prefers to consider relishing the taste of pie to that of flesh.

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After being hit by an automobile, a man afraid of the dark is confined in the nightmare of a ‘conscious’ coma.

Deadly Nightshade

I smile inwardly when I think of my eldest brother, Ed.  He was a rock and was more responsible for my upbringing than our parents were.  He taught me how to play sports and fight my corner.  He taught me about girls and we even went on double dates sometimes.  On my twenty-first birthday, we swapped our dates in the middle of the night.  The next day, he took me to the pub and told our mates about it.  You should have seen the looks we got from them!

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