Chief Mate v. Chimney Sweep

The Chief of Police lays sprawled in the grass, lifeless eyes open to the morning sun.

The Chimney Sweep paces. The Chief Mate sits with his back to the trunk of the oak.

The Farmer sows his field, up and down the field in the diesel tractor. The murder of crows, once fat on the bodies of the dead, alight in the freshly turned soil, pecking for seeds and worms.

The Chimney Sweep brushes his long, shaggy hair. He's in his mid-30s, medium build, fit. He wears a green shirt-sleeved polo, beige slacks, white sneakers.

A professional friend of mind had a dream, he says abruptly. He stops pacing. He looks over nervously, and speaks.

He dreamt that a riot of men were chained into service, all working together as a road gang. And a fat man in a suit came and set them free - all of them - by unlocking one lock in the middle. They leapt up and threw down their hammers and ran home to their families. Then the fat man went up to my friend and said, put all trust in the Unspoken Union. He said, if all do their duty, they need not fear harm.

They raise their guns. Their guns go off.

Chief of Police v. Chief Mate

We were running a load of coffee and cocoa from out of Abidjane. An man paid passage in gold - gold ingots molded in the shape of a woman's finger - and another to buy the papers of our boatswain, who died of dengue fever off the coast of Padang. Where or what he did before he wouldn't say. But he had totems with him - a Nippon bronze, an inlaid mask, a nail fetish, a dog with iron hammered into its neck, face, and more. A strange collection, picked purposefully the world over, held in a mahoganny trunk. At night he threw yarrow sticks; with them and a book of Chinese symbols he said he could trace the future. After he threw the yarrows in a way that predicted we'd be hit with a storm in open water crossing the Atlantic (right to the date and time) the crew believed him.

The Chief of Police nods.

He told me, continues the Chief Mate, that I'd find myself in a field with a tree and that's the place I'd die. He said he'd be close by when it happened, and he'd see me but I wouldn't see him.

The Chief thinks that the man described may be the murderer. The Chief Mate is certain its not.

They raise their guns. Their guns go off.