About the Author Tom Sheehan's fourth book of poetry, "This Rare Earth & Other Flights, " has just been issued by Lit Pot Press in Fallbrook, CA. His third novel, "Death for the Phantom Receiver," is due out later this year from Publish America. Another, "Vigilantes East," is now available, and "An Accountable Death" is serialized on 3amMagazine.com . He has been cited with a Silver Rose Award from ART for short story excellence, has three Pushcart nominations and won Eastoftheweb's 2002 nonfiction competition. He has been Featured Writer on Tryst, Spotlight Poet on Eclectica, and has multiple appearance on Literary Potpourri, The Paumanok Review, Small Spiral Notebook, 3am Magazine, Electric Acorn, storySouth, Stirring, Samsara, Muse Apprentice Guild, Fiction Warehouse, Three Candles, Eleven Bulls, Fandango and Cyber/Oasis, etc.

Judge Anders Cordoness on his 52nd birthday, with a remarkable winning lottery ticket stashed securely in his wallet yet helplessly alone in the world, listening to the last of a Puccini aria on his car radio, was about to garner a little solace from trout fishing off the Thunder Bridge not far from the Topsfield Fairgrounds. From his van he saw a man in a bulky overcoat pull a hand line from the Ipswich River, haul in a fish, gut the fish and drop what looked like a small brook trout into a pan on an open fire at the riverbank. Precisely at the same moment he saw a local policeman, not a nice guy to begin with, one he’d seen in his court a number of times, blustery and toady, too much of self in every movement, come out of his private car and hassle the man in the bulky overcoat. The policeman had been parked inconspicuously against the tree line at the edge of the road. The judge, he said to himself as the aria’s last note was putting itself away, is now a credible witness.

Inside his Plymouth Voyager, aloud, he said, “My day, most likely, starts to get spoiled right about here.” He turned the radio off, moving Andrea Bocelli back to silence and perpetual darkness. All these extremes weighed on him heavy as a grate; loneliness, a pitiful member of the species obviously hungry, an obnoxious policeman at work, silence, and the blind singer somewhere in a room wondering who might be breathing near him. The weight of all those dictates grew amass in the grate work. Gathering his rod, tackle box, a can of worms, a thermos of hot coffee, two bacon and cheese sandwiches he’d put up earlier, the judge, now more witness than adjudicator, stepped away from his van and heard the policeman speak.

That loud voice came purple with authority of the kind Judge Cordoness detested: “I said show me your goddamn fishing license or I’m going to run your ass into jail.” In a dark blue uniform severely pressed, the policeman had an oversize head, wide shoulders, and a good-sized gut hanging over his belt. He’d been abrupt and abrasive in the court corridor on more than one occasion. An obscene aura of authority played around him, with a devilishly shiny holster tight as a glove where it was trussed on one hip, and handcuffs on his back belt coiling their silver and official vertebrae. One hand had developed a fist in case it was needed. “On my stream you’ve got to have a license to fish. It’s the law.” With the other hand splayed on a stout hip, head cocked like a cocky toreador, morning sunlight bouncing lustily off his badge, he added, “And I’m going to get you for lighting an open fire. Any dumb ass knows you can’t light an open fire within the town limits without a permit.” That other hand was now waving its imperial dictate.

A brisk snap still held sway in the air from the cool depths of night, reason enough the judge thought for the man’s bulky coat. Now the man put one hand out, holding a small frying pan in it. From that supplication steam curled in the air and Judge Cordoness thought of the box of corn meal sitting on the kitchen

counter at home, waiting for perhaps the same brook trout, now gone without. In his imploring state the man was a reject from life. A dark shirt showed under the coat, a woolen clutch of a sweater ringed his neck like a tattoo, and the cuffs of the dark shirt showed at his wrists prominent as bracelets. Life has worn him down to size, the judge thought.

“I was just trying to get some breakfast. I’m hungry.” The man’s voice was part soft, part entreaty, part definitive in its aim. “Is that against the law?” Under a gray stocking cap pulled down over his ears, his face was pale and pockmarked, and the greatcoat had some kind of night residue clinging to it. The book was open on him.

Even at thirty or forty paces Judge Cordoness saw the depth of pain and loss in the man’s eyes, on the slack set of his jaw, the way a barn door might hang open on a tired old farm. Jeezus, he thought, he’s nothing but a loner just like me. Likes to fish, wants to eat, isn’t out begging really or trying to steal a meal. I wonder if he likes Puccini. If Moll were here now she’d have a half dozen over light for him, a pound of bacon and a loaf of dark rye. As an afterthought, he could hear himself half pronounce Pumpernickel. That would have been Moll’s determination. The hollowness hit him with its hammer, how much he missed her and their son Kenneth,
And here he was looking at the personification of loneliness itself.

The way some men check valuables, Anders C. Cordoness patted the slight bulge of his wallet sitting on one hip, making sure it was still there. At the same time he felt again one of the tiny tremors in his chest he’d been measuring lately. That tremor, that dictate, sly and subtle as it was supposed to be, was known branch-like, barely by a slight near-electric ping, in his chest. For the third time in as many days he tried to ignore that fleeting ping. It’s merely an echo, rolled lightly and unheard off his tongue, definitive as he could make it. Quickly he mulled over an option; if I had the choice of either of these men to leave my lucky ticket to, it wouldn’t land on the law’s side, that’s for sure.

Anders Cordoness had enough of the toady policeman. “Officer,” he said, with that courtroom voice pulled up out of his walking boots, and a little guesswork and psychology going along with it, “I’m sure that my friend here, who’s obviously hungry and who obviously is not stealing anything, might enjoy his small meal if we let him be. I’m sure that a veteran of the wars has the right to fish in his native land. If he caught seven fish today, this plain man before us might end up feeding the poor. We know there’s enough hungry mouths about us in this world, on the seaside or on the riverside.” In the policeman’s eyes he saw the momentary question, saw first the puzzle and then the biblical measurement of seven fishes, and finally the recognition of Judge Anders Cordoness putting his fishing gear down at the edge of an open fire tended by a poorly dressed beggar or street person.



The judge handed the man in the bulky coat one of his sandwiches. “My friend John, please have this with your brook trout. I think they’ll go well together.”

The policeman withdrew his animosity, shrugged his shoulders, and tried to shake off his minute authority. “Oh, hi, Your Honor. Didn’t recognize you for a minute. Just trying to keep the town’s and the Commonwealth’s laws in place, intact. You know how it is; give ‘em an inch and they’ll take a mile.”

“Give who an inch, Officer, and who a mile?”

“Just transgressors, Your Honor.”

“Hunger is not a transgression, Officer. It is an abominable sin. No man should be hungry. I don’t think I’d have to make that pronouncement twice on this day, do you?”

“Sure, Your Honor. No, sir. Well, I’ll be going. Thank you, sir.” The policeman spun on his heels, not able to get away fast enough.

“I saw you using a hand line,” the judge said. “What did you use for bait?”

“I rolled over a couple of rocks and found a few worms,” the bulky coated fisherman said, the voice having lost its perceived softness, its temerity. He was finishing off the sandwich in about three bites. A piece of brook trout, flaking, dropped on his tongue and his brown eyes rolled in mock joy. Two teeth were missing in his mouth, one upper and one lower and the white of the bread filled the breaches for a moment. “Thanks for the bacon and cheese. You really a judge?” Standing by the fire, he took off the greatcoat and rolled it and wrapped a piece of thick yellow twine around the roll. “Might need it again tonight, though the days are getting warmer. And the nights. It’s a mattress as well as cover. I took it from a pile of clothes a man was giving to a charity collection, maybe the Salvation Army. I figure I had to be salvable.” He chuckled, rolled his eyes again and the judge thought it might be at the display of vocabulary and showed he could chuckle at himself. “No kidding, sometimes I use buttons for bait. Buttons on a hunk of leader. Works once in a while. No big investment. Yellow buttons, though, like kernels of corn, what they might use for feed in the hatchery.”

The judge nodded and added a smile of understanding. It was a fisherman’s smile, an insider’s smile. “My name is Anders Cordoness. What’s yours?” The man’s beard was about a week’s growth and a haircut was much longer in the past for him, curling over his ears.

The man tucked the stocking cap inside the twist of rope around the greatcoat. “A few more days and I might be able to chuck this someplace,” he said, pointing at the greatcoat. “I remember burying blankets in the army when it got too goddamn hot to carry them around. How’d you know I was army? Name’s Harmon Perling. I sleep out. Don’t steal, but might beg some. I’ll take a handout when I’m hungry,

appreciate the hell out of the guy who gives it up. I been known to work for a meal or two. I’m alone and these days it’s my choice. I tell you, man, the sandwich is a treat, free chow after bunking on good old terra firma. Didn’t think I could get so shit lucky, Judge.” He laughed honestly when he said, “Does it get any better than this?”

Anders Cordoness nodded his acceptance. “About the army? That was partly an educated guess. Your age, our recent history, etcetera. And partly a ploy. I’m alone also, which might have had something to do with treatment of the policeman. I lost my wife Moll and son Kenneth in a terribly needless car crash a few years ago. No day goes by without my remembering them. I come here for some peace and quiet. Generally there’s a silence here, a delicious silence. Some days I don’t even bait the damned hook.” He cocked his head, in appreciation of solitude about the river, only the faint hum of traffic coming from the turnpike less than a half mile away, the lost scenes coming back at him: dead in a horrid crash, a drunk driver at one wheel, Kenneth at the other, Moll teaching him how to drive. Jeezus, the judge thought again for the thousandth time, he wanted to drive so damned much, it’s like he just hurried off to die. With the two of them, all my warmth, all my promise, gone in one huge human error
“Aw, Jeezus, that’s horrible, losing your family. It sucks. I know what that’s like. Lost my wife and daughter in a twister. They were sitting at home waiting for me, maybe watching TV, and the next minute they’re gone. Just frigging gone. Never saw them again, not even a piece of them. I’m glad I wasn’t there to see it. Did you see the accident when your wife and son died?” When the judge refused the last piece of the brook trout, he peeled off a small thread of bone from it and ate the last piece.

“No, I didn’t see it either. That might have done it for me. What kind of work you do back then, Harmon?” He had put Harmon in his mid-forties.

“I was an attorney, not very successful, nothing big time. Did some conveyance and closing stuff. But I was happy. When the bottom goes out from under, it’s shit hard to get going again. I never got back up to speed. Not for a minute. Then, in a week it seems, it was all gone, all I had. The vultures came and ate it all up, every last dime, penny by penny. Like the ghouls came out after my family was gone. Truth is there’s times I don’t like to be around people.”

Anders Cordoness found a deep part of this man acceptable. “Do you want to go get something more to eat, on me, or do you want to fish some more?” The options, he thought, were agreeable and appropriate.

“I just had a sandwich and a brookie,” Harmon said. “I’d love to get some more brookies. I’d love to feel that flyline with a little electricity in my fingers for a while.” The fly rod wagged easily in his hand when he picked it up. The judge thought a man of small joys was an admirable man, not too full of himself, not like that cop bent on a kind of personal assault.


They spent two hours on the Ipswich River, pulling in a couple of rainbows, a nice brown and half a dozen brookies. The sun poured down on them, the breeze was gentle, and the lost families were hidden away at the edge of a small meadow or beyond the forest or down river behind a bend. Every five minutes or so, or each time after the rod tip wigwagged its message, the judge was tempted to say something about the lottery ticket in his pocket. He kept holding off.

In two hours they assessed each other, found comfort and ease, watched each other play the flyline, hold the rod tip up, and wait the minor twitch in the line. Finally the judge said, “Dammit, Harmon, but I’m getting hungry. No strings attached. Let’s go to my place. I’ve got a box of corn meal setting on the kitchen counter. It’d go great with our catch and a few eggs over light.” He held up the loaded creel, the wicker of it damp, wet frond leaves hanging out of the top. “The entrée,” he said, “is Ipswich tender and better than clams.”

“I’m all for that, Judge. The ball’s in your court.” The chuckle was easy on both sides.

They ate, they talked on the long porch behind screening, Anders Cordoness at length sending Harmon off to soak in the tub, get a change of clothes. The one-time lawyer, his act cleaned up, looked as if he had just come from court. Skin glistened red where he had shaved. His full head of hair was combed, though it fell comfortably over his ears. A brown sweater and a pair of chinos fit him well, casual for the evening after a day at the bar. The air did not get cluttered with please and thank you, nor any of the clumsy by-play. The comfort zone had been entered for both men, and both of them aware of it.

In the early evening, Anders Cordoness, content and at ease away from the river for the first time in a long while, poured two Jack Daniels onto ice. In tempered silence they sipped, felt and knew the breeze at slight odds, watched the sun close down behind a neighbor’s barn. Silence became them, as did early evening.

Finally Anders Cordoness said to his guest, “Harmon, I have a very difficult decision to make in the morning. It is of great importance to me, but does not concern an ongoing case. I would greatly appreciate your staying the night, or nearby if you’d prefer, but be here in the morning to help me out. It’s your call.” Soft eyes looked at his guest, once more measuring a good man, one down on his luck, but a good man. “There’s another issue which demands some attention. That’ll come later, the good Lord willing.”

“Well, if your invite’s under cover, I’ll take it. Makes up for some of the slow nights when I have to keep walking or else. Every now and then I bump into characters like the one we met at the river today. There’s a lot like him around. Sometimes you can smell them a mile off, stinking the place up.”

In the morning, the judge came down to the kitchen, drawn by coffee aroma and bacon with its toes curled up and dancing in a huge skillet. Harmon was

practically dancing too, toast on, juice poured, home fries draining on a napkin. “Never make decisions on an empty stomach, Judge. It’s the law of the land.”

They ate on the porch, the sun spilling its early rays, their losses still afield. Harmon Perling was a most amiable man, and a different man. Soon, directness showed itself. “What you spoke of last night, Judge. Do you want to go back at it again? I did my bit. I’m here, thankful for getting off the ground for a night.”

“Call me Andy, Harmon. Most everyone does. It’s not an insurmountable problem, this decision. In fact, it could be over and done with in about thirty seconds.”

“Go for it, Andy and call me Hap. I used to be called that.” There was a recollection in progress, floating behind his dark eyes, almost like pages turning, the book still open. “That was in the old days.”

The judge, detecting no scowl but a stoniness about his guest, put his cards on the table, face up. “I have a winning ticket in the lottery, Hap. It’s worth about eleven million dollars before taxes as near as I can figure. I don’t need it and I don’t want it. Couldn’t spend it anyway. It‘d be nothing but headaches and heartaches for me. None of my neighbors need it and I don’t want any of them to have it. I trust that’s not difficult for you to hear, not with our play on people, like the guy we met yesterday. And there’s nobody left in my family, not a soul. I don’t want the state to have it. I am going to give it away, to someone who can use it, do right by it. It has been raising my hackles for about a month now. I want to do it clean and without hoopla or fanfare. I trust that that’s a decent consideration.”

Harmon “Hap” Perling’s mouth had fallen open. His eyes went blank as if he had tried to count that high and couldn’t get anywhere near it. Then his eyes blinked, once, twice, then again. Like some repressive force the weight of that much money pushed at him. Finally he spoke. “It’s not me, Andy, that’s for sure. I wouldn’t do right by it. I’m snakebit all the way through, down to my goddamn socks. I’d be sad for the balance of whatever life I have left if I screwed up. And I would. Couldn’t get away from the vultures. They’re like tattoos on me now. No matter what I do, they’d be there, in a frigging feeding frenzy. I couldn’t do that again. Never again.” His voice was heavy with affirmation, and then it softened, tempered by ideas and options. “What we gotta do is find someone who fits your prospectus, Andy. A real decent sort, someone with kids, no real past to him but with a future.”

“Where would we find someone to fit that bill, Hap, provided we had all the time we need, which might not be ours for the taking? How would we know? How long a search would we have to undertake? I have to admit up front that you are elusive in this, declining the ticket even before it’s offered, but I did think about it.” Openly he nodded at the thought.



“I know you did, Andy, and I wanted to put that aside before it gathered any headway. As long as I live I don’t want to go back over what I’ve been through. I don’t want to find people that way again, not coming at me like they did. That’s a real horror show. I’d want to be free to know them otherwise, on the sunny side, the way you got me out of that scrape yesterday, and all this.” He looked around the porch and came right back to his host. “You said you had something else on your mind, Andy.

“Oh, that’ll hold for now. This is important. Any ideas?”

“A few weeks ago I met a guy a while I was walking along Narragansett Beach in Rhode Island, not far from Point Judith. He’d taken a look at me and I kind of figured he knew what the night had in store for me. No great hero, didn’t take me in his house, but made me comfortable in his garage. Had a good meal on him. His wife is a peach and they have a couple of kids. Seems like a good guy. I know he plays the lottery, hoping he can do something extra for his family. His wife is a hospice nurse, one of the classic kind. I bet you know the type, all heart and dirty hands, born with care working its way out of her bones, and bent on peace and a pain-free end for whoever’s at her hands. We see a lot of pretenders. These people are not phonies or pretenders. They’re the kind of people you want to help. And they’re not in this mix because they heard about it. They’re pure accidents.”

“That’s a whole lot better presentation than that cop gave for himself yesterday,” Anders Cordoness said, studying his companion with a new look in his eye. “And it’s a lot better than anyone could gin up for my neighbors. I could hunt for weeks, maybe months, and not get any closer to real deserving people than what you just gave me. We spend a lot of our lives measuring things, when we don’t have a good yardstick to do the job.” That absorption was working in him for a long while, and noon came. Day started toward its ending and they went fishing again, the strange pair of lawmen, for an evening on the river. The lottery ticket was not mentioned again, though the judge had taken down the name of the Narragansett Beach family.

In the morning, when the Anders Cordoness did not come down for breakfast, Harmon Perling, found him still in bed, the final ping unbeknownst to Harmon having taken place. The name of the family was on a tablet at the judge’s bedside. It was circled heavily with dark pencil lines, but from an unsteady hand.

Hap Perling, itinerant, occasional fisherman, house guest and confidant, took the ticket from the judge’s wallet, called the local police, hoping it wasn’t the toady officer he was talking to, and walked out of Judge Anders Cordoness’ house, on his way to Narragansett Beach. He wasn’t sure how he was going to handle it. But it would get done. Now he was in position to make things proper for the judge. The handout by the river had amounted to a kind of penance for him. Damned if he did and damned if he didn’t.



This new day had promise in it. He’d left his greatcoat behind, unrolled, hanging in a closet. Like in the army, like every day these days, he was moving on.