Correspondent v. Costermonger

She makes it up the oak, climbing to the top most branch. There, one hand looped around a branch, one foot in a fork, she reaches into her pocket, takes out her cell phone, and checks the reception. On the ground she got nothing. Up top, she draws one thin bar. Her heart thunders as she dials the number to her Editor in the city. There's a long pause before, past horrible static, she hears a pulse. The phone rings. Her Editor answers. She can hardly make out a word.

Listen, she shouts, I know you can't hear me but I think I've hit on something big!

Pause. She strains to hear.

Big! Like front page big! Secret dueling grounds upstate! Like in the movie! Like in SWINGO!

More static - but someone's talking behind the surf. Her editor is listening, or she thinks he's listening. She goes on.

Listen, everything's played out by some weird system of unspoken rule! Burial of the dead... a caretaker...! You need a photographer up here pronto!

Static. She holds the phone out, away from her face, to shout --

Get a pen and write down these directions.... First, get a flight from the city to --

She hears a loud crack from below. The cell shoots from her hand, looping in an arc, falling to the grass. Her hand's left undamaged, yet the shock of it all is overwhelming. She stares in disbelief. She's angry - so angry and disappointed that tears begin to well in her eyes. Looking down, she sees the caretaker standing next to the Costermonger.

Whoo-wee! shouts the Costermonger, excited. Pepple lowers his Mauser.

Thus begins a long string of curses from the top of the oak down to the two men below. More curses as she slowly climbs down - aided by experience from a childhood spent playing with her three brothers - and finally to the ground, where she (all of 5'3", 115 lbs.), marches up to Pepple and attempts to wrench the Mauser from his grip. He pulls it away, slings it over his shoulder, apologizes, and walks back to the shack.

You! she points her finger at the Costermonger's gin-kissed nose, why did you stand by as he shot at me?

The Costermonger shrugs. He said he wasn't going to kill you, but just knock the phone out of your hand.

How does that make it any better? she shrieks. What if he was a poor shot?

The Costermonger large, bovine eyes wander the landscape, searching for a rational answer that can't possibly exist. I don't know, he says finally. I guess that'd been bad.

She turns and stalks over to the tall grass to find her phone. After almost an hour, by small miracle, she finds it cracked in half, a grizzly tangle of chipped LED and fried circuitry. She curses again and hurls the phone toward the base of the oak, where off which it harmlessly bounces.

Career-making story - right down the toilet! she shouts to no one particular.

The Costermonger walks over and offers her an apple. Because I feel bad, this one's half-price, he says.

She knocks it out of his soiled hand.

They raise their guns, their guns go off.