A BIT OF TRUTH, A BIT OF FICTION – WEEK 24

Thank you for your willingness to support my dream of transitioning into full time writing. Before I pass from this life, I would like to share some of what I have learned. In each of these weekly posts, subscribers can expect to find the following:

· An excerpt from a novel in the ‘Game of Life’ series

· A short story from a long dead author, whose works should not be lost to time

· Another short story by myself, many intended as plots for short and full length films

· An essay focused more on God’s truths, for those who are interested in a better life

Let us continue what will hopefully be an enjoyable journey together.

THE GAME OF LIFE – BOOK 1- THE POWER OF A PAWN

These stories were initially imagined to be movies that would underscore deep truths about how we define life. In reality, they are too long to be adequately contained in individual films. They would though, still make for a powerful six-year series, using the episodes in each season to cover one novel.

POAP Week 24 - This sequential segment is excerpted from ‘The Power of a Pawn,’ copyright 2011 by Paul F Spite. It is the first book in a series entitled, ‘The Game of Life.’ Look for the next segment of “The Power of a Pawn’ in this same place, next week.

* * *

The next time Samuel visited the prison, he asked what Amanda thought about her new lawyer. She worked to keep her tone neutral. She expressed appreciation that Americans for Amnesty had been involved in several cases that led to abolishing the death penalty in those states. She leaned forward, alert and interested.

“Is there any chance that will happen here? Please be honest with me.”

Samuel stayed silent for a few seconds. “It’s not likely.”

He kept his eyes down, so he didn’t see it coming until she hugged him. “Thank you for your honesty. I don’t want to ever talk about it again. Tell me something about real life outside.”

“Like what?”

“Well, you fish don’t you? I never could stand doing that. Why do you fish?”

For the next half hour, Samuel tried to convert Amanda to the joy of fishing. He struck the pose and tone of a fervent evangelist. He spoke of the delight of outsmarting the little beasties, generating some concern on her part.

“My lawyer considers himself successful and is pleased with his intelligence if he manages to out think a fish?”

That analogy pretty well cost him his first convert to the new religion of fishology. But at least he got Amanda to laugh a few times.

Before he left, he had just one more bit of news for her. Her mother had returned to town and would come with him next time he came to visit. They would split the time and take turns with her.

She hugged him again, so touched by his thoughtfulness. “You’ve never given up on me, have you? You have no idea what that means to me.”

* * *

“Arthur Franz, defense attorney with the Americans for Amnesty organization.”

The man shook hand as he sat down across the desk from Samuel. He looked around the small room, with its wood floor, old but serviceable bookcases and battered desk. He brushed off the tops of his pants legs in an instinctive gesture. If he did it to impress Samuel, he failed as the younger man got straight to the point.

“Mr. Franz! You wanted to speak with me about Mrs. Delaney’s case. Have you reviewed the transcripts from the trial?”

“Yes I have, but I wanted to get your first hand impressions.”

“Certainly. I can summarize it in a few words. She was railroaded by an ambitious district attorney willing to trade her life for a chance to run for Governor someday. For whatever reason, she doesn’t remember anything about the night her children were killed, so we were unable to mount any real defense other than that. It was not enough. She was convicted by the fact that she had no way to prove her innocence. I have come to believe her to be incapable of such a crime, but that doesn’t matter. She will surely die unless God intervenes. What else do you want to know?”

Mr. Franz spoke in a mocking, condescending fashion. “Do you always get this involved in your cases?”

“Do you not?”

Receiving an amused negative, Samuel continued. ”Then in my opinion, you don’t represent your clients. You just take their money.”

Mr. Franz looked around again in contempt. “Imagine having you judging me. How is being a freelancer working out for you, counselor?”

Samuel stood up to signify the interview was over. “I like myself and others do as well. I doubt you can say the same. You know the real difference between you and me, Mr. Franz? Long after you are gone, I’ll still be here for Mrs. Delaney. I might not be as polished or experienced as you, but I have one attribute that has served me well.

I...never…ever…quit.”

* * *

“Don’t you ever quit, Woman?”

Mrs. Edwards shook her finger again at Terrance. She had put up with a lot over the years from her scheming husband and was not happy. “Bad enough that you went and made a total fool of you and me in front of the city council. ‘Aw shucks?’ Give me a break Terry. Bad enough that you already paid the old man two thousand dollars out of our savings. I don’t even know how much you’re renting the old factory for. Now you’ve rented portable toilets and showers? Are you crazy?”

“Crazy like a fox, Darling.”

“Tell me then, my foxy husband. When will you get the overtime you’ll need to work to make up for all of our money going down the drain?”

“Who said it’s down the drain?”

“Really? Exactly how many people have rented space in this beautiful campground of yours, next to a prison and a factory?”

“Well, at last count there were around ninety-six paying campers. They give me an average of about thirty-five dollars a night, including parking fees. We’ll just count those, although more show up every day. That makes over thirty-five hundred per day we’re getting or about a hundred grand a month. I’m renting both parcels for two thousand and the portable facilities for twenty-six hundred a month. I think that means we’re making about ninety-four thousand dollars a month now. Our numbers should go up from here.”

His wife sat there with her mouth hanging open. “I thought you were crazy stupid when you told me about your idea.”

Terrance stood up and smiled a lazy grin. “So did the city council.”

He stepped forward and tripped over the coffee table in their crowded little living room. He caught his balance and winked at her. It was quite dramatic.

“Aw shucks!”

* * *

For a long time, the days Samuel or her mother came to visit were the only times Amanda came out from her shell. She had been isolated in reality and isolated herself in her mind. Her memories brought her the only other joy she could find. Hope for the future remained absent.

Samuel kept track of Amanda’s trials and hearings during the appeals process. He made the mistake of attending one in Raleigh as a spectator. Just a formality to satisfy the requirements of the law, it disturbed him so much he stayed away from the others. Amanda never even knew he was there and he never told her.

He slipped in late after having trouble finding a parking place nearby. He sat toward the back of the room, well hidden behind a large man. He could have predicted what would happen. As soon as the scene of the crime was described in detail, Amanda retreated again into her mind. Samuel warned the lawyer from the special interest group, but his warning went unheeded. The rest of the hearing proceeded as though the defendant wasn’t even present, an accurate assumption. Samuel felt disgust for Franz, but also knew any other group providing free representation would have their own agenda to push as well. It became the first and last appeals proceeding he attended.

The reporters at each mandatory hearing were very few in number, compared to Mrs. Delaney’s first trial. Their numbers though, began to increase again as her final appeals were expended. The bands prepared to play their particular marches. Show time drew near and the spectators began picking their seats.

* * *

SHORT WRITINGS BY LONG DEAD AUTHORS

I have always considered O Henry to be the maestro of the short story form. Here I present one of his masterpieces for your enjoyment.

A SACRIFICE HIT – O HENRY

The editor of the Hearthstone Magazine has his own ideas about the selection of manuscript for his publication. His theory is no secret; in fact, he will expound it to you willingly sitting at his mahogany desk, smiling benignantly and tapping his knee gently with his gold-rimmed eyeglasses.

“The Hearthstone,” he will say, “does not employ a staff of readers. We obtain opinions of the manuscripts submitted to us directly from types of the various classes of our readers.”

That is the editor’s theory; and this is the way he carries it out:

When a batch of MSS. is received the editor stuffs every one of his pockets full of them and distributes them as he goes about during the day. The office employees, the hall porter, the janitor, the elevator man, messenger boys, the waiters at the café where the editor has luncheon, the man at the newsstand where he buys his evening paper, the grocer and milkman, the guard on the 5:30 uptown elevated train, the ticket-chopper at Sixty ⸻th Street, the cook and maid at his home⁠—these are the readers who pass upon MSS. sent in to the Hearthstone Magazine. If his pockets are not entirely emptied by the time he reaches the bosom of his family the remaining ones are handed over to his wife to read after the baby goes to sleep. A few days later the editor gathers in the MSS. during his regular rounds and considers the verdict of his assorted readers. This system of making up a magazine has been very successful; and the circulation, paced by the advertising rates, is making a wonderful record of speed.

The Hearthstone Company also publishes books, and its imprint is to be found on several successful works⁠—all recommended, says the editor, by the Hearthstone’s army of volunteer readers. Now and then (according to talkative members of the editorial staff) the Hearthstone has allowed manuscripts to slip through its fingers on the advice of its heterogeneous readers, that afterward proved to be famous sellers when brought out by other houses.

For instance (the gossips say), The Rise and Fall of Silas Latham was unfavourably passed upon by the elevator-man; the office-boy unanimously rejected The Boss; In the Bishop’s Carriage was contemptuously looked upon by the streetcar conductor; The Deliverance was turned down by a clerk in the subscription department whose wife’s mother had just begun a two-months’ visit at his home; The Queen’s Quair came back from the janitor with the comment: “So is the book.”

But nevertheless the Hearthstone adheres to its theory and system, and it will never lack volunteer readers; for each one of the widely scattered staff, from the young lady stenographer in the editorial office to the man who shovels in coal (whose adverse decision lost to the Hearthstone Company the manuscript of “The Under World”), has expectations of becoming editor of the magazine some day.

This method of the Hearthstone was well known to Allen Slayton when he wrote his novelette entitled Love Is All. Slayton had hung about the editorial offices of all the magazines so persistently that he was acquainted with the inner workings of everyone in Gotham. He knew not only that the editor of the Hearthstone handed his MSS. around among different types of people for reading, but that the stories of sentimental love-interest went to Miss Puffkin, the editor’s stenographer. Another of the editor’s peculiar customs was to conceal invariably the name of the writer from his readers of MSS. so that a glittering name might not influence the sincerity of their reports.

Slayton made Love Is All the effort of his life. He gave it six months of the best work of his heart and brain. It was a pure love-story, fine, elevated, romantic, passionate⁠—a prose poem that set the divine blessing of love (I am transposing from the manuscript) high above all earthly gifts and honours, and listed it in the catalogue of heaven’s choicest rewards. Slayton’s literary ambition was intense. He would have sacrificed all other worldly possessions to have gained fame in his chosen art. He would almost have cut off his right hand, or have offered himself to the knife of the appendicitis fancier to have realized his dream of seeing one of his efforts published in the Hearthstone.

Slayton finished Love Is All, and took it to the Hearthstone in person. The office of the magazine was in a large, conglomerate building, presided under by a janitor. As the writer stepped inside the door on his way to the elevator a potato masher flew through the hall, wrecking Slayton’s hat, and smashing the glass of the door. Closely following in the wake of the utensil flew the janitor, a bulky, unwholesome man, suspenderless and sordid, panic-stricken and breathless.

A frowsy, fat woman with flying hair followed the missile. The janitor’s foot slipped on the tiled floor, he fell in a heap with an exclamation of despair. The woman pounced upon him and seized his hair. The man bellowed lustily. Her vengeance wreaked, the virago rose and stalked triumphant as Minerva, back to some cryptic domestic retreat at the rear. The janitor got to his feet, blown and humiliated.

“This is married life,” he said to Slayton, with a certain bruised humour. “That’s the girl I used to lay awake of nights thinking about. Sorry about your hat, mister. Say, don’t snitch to the tenants about this, will yer? I don’t want to lose me job.”

Slayton took the elevator at the end of the hall and went up to the offices of the Hearthstone. He left the MS. of Love Is All with the editor, who agreed to give him an answer as to its availability at the end of a week. Slayton formulated his great winning scheme on his way down. It struck him with one brilliant flash, and he could not refrain from admiring his own genius in conceiving the idea. That very night he set about carrying it into execution.

Miss Puffkin, the Hearthstone stenographer, boarded in the same house with the author. She was an oldish, thin, exclusive, languishing, sentimental maid; and Slayton had been introduced to her some time before.

The writer’s daring and self-sacrificing project was this: He knew that the editor of the Hearthstone relied strongly upon Miss Puffkin’s judgment in the manuscript of romantic and sentimental fiction. Her taste represented the immense average of mediocre women who devour novels and stories of that type. The central idea and keynote of Love Is All was love at first sight⁠—the enrapturing, irresistible, soul-thrilling feeling that compels a man or a woman to recognize his or her spirit-mate as soon as heart speaks to heart. Suppose he should impress this divine truth upon Miss Puffkin personally!⁠—would she not surely endorse her new and rapturous sensations by recommending highly to the editor of the Hearthstone the novelette Love Is All?

Slayton thought so. And that night he took Miss Puffkin to the theatre. The next night he made vehement love to her in the dim parlour of the boardinghouse. He quoted freely from Love Is All; and he wound up with Miss Puffkin’s head on his shoulder, and visions of literary fame dancing in his head. But Slayton did not stop at lovemaking. This, he said to himself, was the turning point of his life; and, like a true sportsman, he “went the limit.” On Thursday night he and Miss Puffkin walked over to the Big Church in the Middle of the Block and were married.

Brave Slayton! Châteaubriand died in a garret, Byron courted a widow, Keats starved to death, Poe mixed his drinks, De Quincey hit the pipe, Ade lived in Chicago, James kept on doing it, Dickens wore white socks, De Maupassant wore a straitjacket, Tom Watson became a Populist, Jeremiah wept, all these authors did these things for the sake of literature, but thou didst cap them all; thou marriedst a wife for to carve for thyself a niche in the temple of fame!

On Friday morning Mrs. Slayton said she would go over to the Hearthstone office, hand in one or two manuscripts that the editor had given to her to read, and resign her position as stenographer.

“Was there anything⁠—er⁠—that⁠—er⁠—you particularly fancied in the stories you are going to turn in?” asked Slayton with a thumping heart.

“There was one⁠—a novelette, that I liked so much,” said his wife. “I haven’t read anything in years that I thought was half as nice and true to life.”

That afternoon Slayton hurried down to the Hearthstone office. He felt that his reward was close at hand. With a novelette in the Hearthstone, literary reputation would soon be his. The office boy met him at the railing in the outer office. It was not for unsuccessful authors to hold personal colloquy with the editor except at rare intervals. Slayton, hugging himself internally, was nursing in his heart the exquisite hope of being able to crush the office boy with his forthcoming success.

He inquired concerning his novelette. The office boy went into the sacred precincts and brought forth a large envelope, thick with more than the bulk of a thousand checks.

“The boss told me to tell you he’s sorry,” said the boy, “but your manuscript ain’t available for the magazine.”

Slayton stood, dazed. “Can you tell me,” he stammered, “whether or no Miss Puff⁠—that is my⁠—I mean Miss Puffkin⁠—handed in a novelette this morning that she had been asked to read?”

“Sure she did,” answered the office boy wisely. “I heard the old man say that Miss Puffkin said it was a daisy. The name of it was, ‘Married for the Mazuma, or a Working Girl’s Triumph.’ ”

“Say, you!” said the office boy confidentially, “your name’s Slayton, ain’t it? I guess I mixed cases on you without meanin’ to do it. The boss give me some manuscript to hand around the other day and I got the ones for Miss Puffkin and the janitor mixed. I guess it’s all right, though.”

And then Slayton looked closer and saw on the cover of his manuscript, under the title Love Is All, the janitor’s comment scribbled with a piece of charcoal:

“The ⸻ you say!”

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SHORT WRITINGS BY MYSELF

Here I present short stories, created for your enjoyment and for my own. I have always imagined these as the basis for family-friendly films. Perhaps that will become a reality someday.

HERE AND THERE - Copyright, Paul Spite

The old man who appeared had to have made a journey through time as well as space. He arrived out of thin air in Jerry’s cubicle. He insisted the frightened man listen to an incantation.

At the end of the recital, he looked directly at Jerry. Then he seemed to shrink as Jerry felt energy blossom in his body. The old man hit the carpet as a corpse. The only thing saving Jerry from a murder charge was the age of the corpse. When they determined the time of death, it had been over two hundred years earlier. Since he had no interest in a psychiatric evaluation, Jerry also had no idea how the body wound up in his cubicle.

Our baffled hero suddenly had the power to teleport himself. He could do so intact, or extend parts of himself through small portals he somehow opened in space. He could, for instance, simply reach into a locked bank vault or slug himself in the back of the head, should he so desire. He’d thus far resisted temptation to use his weird ability for crime. He actually had no idea what he’d become. The government laboratory, where he went to be tested, was aware of his potential. Had he thought more about the old man’s appearance, he might’ve understood what his examiner immediately grasped. The portals he opened in space had to also transcend time.

Too bad he didn’t understand about the time travel. If he had, he’d have gone back in time and skipped the exam. But he didn’t yet know what was coming.

Strange things began happening. He was asked to record an ad for his company. It contained two strange lines that had nothing to do with the rest of the ad. A recording played over and over while he slept the next night. He woke to find himself repeating a random line stuck in his head, trying to figure out where the CD player in his room had come from. In a progress report read aloud in a meeting, more bizarre lines had been inserted.

The second to the worst part was that the lines seemed vaguely familiar. The worst part was the lines should’ve been familiar. Jerry had been tricked into reciting all but the last line of the incantation used to transfer the teleportation power to someone else.

The first indication of trouble was his inability to transport anything more than a short distance. Before, that had been irrelevant. The second indication of trouble was the abduction of his daughter in the middle of the night. The last indication was the room around him fogging up, turning dark and going away. It happened right after his first cup of coffee.

Movement was necessary. When teleporting, he made the hole in space and stepped through it to a portal that opened elsewhere. So he was really irritated to wake and find every part of himself tightly strapped in place. On the gurney, he couldn’t get his head in the portal open by his face. So he couldn’t report the problem in person at the nearest police station.

Jerry could see his daughter, also strapped tightly in place across the room. Above her was a large, razor sharp pendulum, slowly swinging. It was also slowly descending with each swing. He finally tore his eyes from his daughter’s impending doom. That’s when he saw the man who had tested him, sitting by his gurney. The man was smiling kindly.

His proposition was simple. Jerry had power he really didn’t use well. He wanted that power. Jerry had a daughter he loved. The man had no real interest in killing her. All Jerry needed to do was look the man in the face and repeat the last line of the incantation. He’d already been kind enough to say the rest. If he wished, he could take time to think it over. His daughter wouldn’t be cut in half for another two minutes or so.

Desperation does wonders for thinking. Jerry had never put more thought into his power than he did in the next minute. He was sure he didn’t want it in the hands of the lunatic by him. He also didn’t want the pendulum touching his girl. In that desperation, a plan was hatched.

When he looked at his daughter, she gave him the clue. She was able to lift her head slightly from the table. He smiled as he began reciting the words his abductor longed to hear. As he neared the end, a small portal appeared above his daughters head. She raised her head and her face appeared directly before him. He gazed lovingly into her eyes as he said the last words. Then her face disappeared as his frustrated abductor screamed.

Jerry assumed his daughter would use her new power to free herself. But she too was strapped down, though not as securely. She did something he wouldn’t have tried. Of course, she was angrier than Jerry, were that possible. As the pendulum descended, she opened a portal in its path. Her kidnapper stood just in time for his head to meet the razor edge reappearing before him. It sliced neatly through him before crashing into the wall.

His daughter used her power to free him. She moved her hand through space to undo his straps. In another minute, both were free. Though he insisted she keep the power, she returned it to her Dad.

Before he took them back home, he transported the corpse to a nearby volcano. He’d been raised not to leave messes behind him.

As for where they went in between destinations, that’s not a story for either here or now.

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ESSAYS FOCUSED ON GOD’S TRUTHS

For those who are interested in a better life, because no other writer can really compare to God.

ALL THINGS ARE POSSIBLE – WITH GOD - Copyright, Paul Spite

There are some promises in the scriptures that sound like they place God in the role of a genie. For example, John 14:12-13 says those who believe on Jesus will do greater works than He did and, “whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do“ Most promises are conditional. With some it is easier to recognize. John 15:7 states, “If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.” It is only if we dwell in the Spirit, and God’s Word dwells inside of us, that the promise is ours. Another promise was made in Matthew 18:19 to His disciples. “If two of you shall agree on earth as touching any thing that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father.”

These disciples gave up everything else in this life to follow after God. God rewarded their commitment with power. In Luke 10:19, it was “power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy.” But this kind of power required two components. This begins to be apparent in the nineteenth chapter of Matthew, in the story of the rich young ruler who rejected God’s kingdom for earthly riches, Jesus ends the encounter with another powerful promise, “With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible.” Here is one component and it is simply this. “With God” We are required to combine our efforts with God’s or the scripture would have said “For God.”

So what is required on our part? The twenty-first chapter of Matthew give the first account of Jesus disappointment with a non-bearing fig tree. This account ends with the promise. “If ye have faith, and doubt not, ye shall not only do this which is done to the fig tree, but also if ye shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; it shall be done. And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive. “ Apparently the ingredients we add to the power of God are faith and no doubt. This is illustrated again in the plight of the father who came to Jesus with his demon possessed child in Matthew 9:21-22. Jesus told him, “If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth.” The man’s response gives hope to all of us who struggle with faith. “Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.” Here, though some doubt was present, when the doubt was dealt with in answer to prayer, the miracle occurred.

Faith was prerequisite in many other miracles. Blind men needing their sight in Matthew 9:28-29 were told, “According to your faith be it unto you.” The extent of their miracle depended upon their ability to believe. Faith made the difference for the woman with the issue of blood who touched the hem of Jesus’ garment. When He turned around and saw her in Matthew 9:22, He said, “Daughter, be of good comfort; thy faith hath made thee whole.” We must even have faith to receive salvation and access grace. Romans 5:2 indicates faith is the gateway we use to access the grace of God made available at Calvary.

How do we know our faith and God’s power are both needed for miracles to occur? Ephesians 3:20 references the exceeding power of God that works “according to the power that worketh in us.” That power within is either the Spirit form of God called the Holy Ghost, or our faith God uses to make all things possible.

So with all these promises available, which require faith and no doubt, why do we not see or do more mighty miracles? Why do the promises of God seem elusive? The problem likely stems from doubt created by the difference between God’s timetable and ours. Romans 10:17 tells us, “faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” We hear the Word, we hear the promise, and initially we believe. Though we expect it, very few prayers are answered immediately. This delay opens a window of opportunity for Satan, the thief, to steal away the promises we should have seen fulfilled. Luke 8:12 tells us the devil comes and takes away the Word out of our hearts. Because we do not receive an immediate answer, we begin to doubt, and the faith that first accompanied the Word we heard leaves our hearts, ending God’s ability to work.

Look at a different account of the withering of the fig tree. In Mark 11:12-14, Jesus and His disciples pass the tree, Jesus finds no fruit, and curses the tree. The disciples hear His words. In Mark 11:20-22, they are returning the next day the same way they had come. Peter notices the withered tree and calls it to the attention of his master. Jesus response to Peter was, “Have faith in God. “ But notice in this version that nothing happened visibly when the tree was first cursed. It was not until the next day it became evident that God’s power had been at work in response to His Word. It had been at work for the entire time they had been gone.

Not all prayers are answered overnight or even within weeks. In the tenth chapter of the book of Daniel, the man of God had been praying for twenty-one days. An angel appeared in response to his prayers and told him. “Fear not, Daniel: for from the first day that thou didst set thine heart to understand and to chasten thyself before thy God, thy words were heard, and I am come for thy words. But the prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me one and twenty days: but, lo, Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me; and I remained there with the kings of Persia.” Things may come up in a realm we can not see, to hinder the answer, but all prayers are heard and answered one way or another. Isaiah 30:19 promises the people of God, ‘At the voice of thy cry; when he shall hear it, he will answer thee.”

Delay is not the same thing as denial. We must remain doubt free and refuse to let a difference in timetables create doubt and rob us of all that is possible – with God.

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My hope is that you have enjoyed these offerings enough, you will join me each week on this journey. If you believe what you read has value, please invite a friend to come along. Perhaps even begin a discussion group. Or, if you could find a moment to offer comments or words of encouragement, that would also be appreciated.

For those who prefer the feel of paper, most of the writings that will be referenced in these posts can be found in book form under the name of Paul Spite, under the Bookstore tab at Lulu.com - https://www.lulu.com/search?page=1&sortBy=RELEVANCE&q=%22Paul+Spite%22&pageSize=10&adult_audience_rating=00. They can also be directly ordered from the appropriate links on

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