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.

This is what could have been said of Llahvee Devlin, 17-year old daughter of major building contractor Marcus Devlin and his wife PortiaAnne; she was hungry for the right boy and did a bit of subtle gambling in that direction, with her long legs and innate drive excelled in a number of girl team sports, and without a single doubt loved the darkness and magic floating in The Beggars, a range of six heavily forested hills ringing her home town of Rallston. Her father’s plan to crown those hills with a host of elaborate homes drove a wedge into the family, leaving a sore spot at full festering.

“What the hell’s so important about a bunch of stupid hills, Lovey?” her friend MaryGrace said as they stared at First Hill Crying, from MaryGrace’s top-down convertible parked at a secluded turn-off on the main road out of town. MaryGrace was athletic in her own right, perhaps a few steps from plain, and needed all the right touches to take herself up a step or two on the attraction ladder. MaryGrace was a staunch companion to Lovey, and she loved Lovey’s red hair, hazel green eyes, the sweet perfection of her skin and the lovely pouting breasts that she herself wanted so badly, the way they could set a sweater for a boy or the right blouse at the right moment. Friends since grade school, often teammates, one of their rituals had become fries and cheeseburgers a couple of times a week, and now and then a beer swiped from one cooler or other, since the day MaryGrace got the car from her brother Charlie, off to the army. With ease they could find hidden parking spots or seldom used paths or lanes that fishermen or hunters had beaten paths in, with views of Second Hill Begging, Third Hill Palms-up or Fourth Hill Bowing. Their world about and around The Beggars was open and closed at the same time, reveled in and secretive. Only fifty feet from the edge of the road, the overhead canopy cast a dark sweetness on the forest floor where scurry was a permanent sound, and slight movements always eye-catching. The girls had shared many deep secrets, but as yet beer and other people had not come together under that cover.

Llahvee, a name bestowed on her by her mother, out to make sure her only girl out of five children would be a stick-out from the word go, had in time become “Lovey” to all her friends. “I’ve gone over that a hundred times, MayG, “ Lovey said. “It’s special up there, in there, dark, cool, life on every twist of the trail. I’ve felt it ever since I was a kid, a Magic Kingdom of my own. And, I swear to Hell, a strange hum in there coming at my ears like a tuning fork. Got my first trout in there, too, and pissed my pants, I was so excited, a dinky little telescopic rod jumping in my fingers like a live wire. Mom says it was running right down into my socks and sandals.”

Her eyes paled, her cheeks puckered and MaryGrace knew that her friend was mulling over a special intrigue. “There’s a sweet old cabin in there, like it’s leftover from a fable or a fairy tale.” Lovey’s smile was one of complete acceptance, even if it was otherworldish. “Almost one of those gingerbread places. It’s got a porch, a loft, a stone fireplace with a huge mantel on one whole wall, a cool well out near a small barn. Must be full of memories for hunters and fishermen as well as for the good honeymoon stuff, the way I picture it.” She nodded, as if to herself, but MaryGrace understood she was in on that nod, enjoying the sense of sharing anything even on the back burner of their lives.

“It’s way over on Sixth Hill Praying,” Lovey gestured. “The whole range of the hills is full of survivors, the animal kind. My god, on Fifth Hill Kneeling alone, I’ve seen a thousand birds in there, on top of the mount and in the dells and dales. Uncle Ray calls them cirques, says it’s from cwm, a Welsh word and one of the special ones he uses in Scrabble, or ghyll from the Scottish. Everybody thinks he cheats but I checked those words out and they’re good ones. Anyway, all kinds of birds in there. Deer you could hug. Bambi stuff, I swear. One time Harvey Consentine pointed out a boar rushing across the path in front of us, like a flash he went, little greased lightning porker. He’s funny, Harvey is. He called it Bacon Beating It.” She laughed easily and flipped a burnt fry out of the car; watched it land in among the leaves.

MaryGrace fidgeted in her seat. “What the hell were you doing out there with that geek Harvey. He doesn’t even know what time it is, for God’s sake.” Realization hit her, as if she had been whipped into sudden understanding. In a fraction of a second she was upright in her seat, detecting, eyes wide, mouth open, staring at Lovey. “Does he?” Her eyes were leaping with conjecture as she reached into a bag for more fries.

Lovey was thinking that if MayG paid that much attention in school she’d be a cinch for a scholarship to the state college. She was not thinking hard about Harvey Consentine. “Oh, we just walked and talked. He held my hand and was so cute about it. He’s got dimples you know. When I let him put his hand down underneath I thought he was going to die.”

“No shit, you didn’t do it, did you? Not with him, Lovey? Did you?” Fry in the mouth, eyes heavy, stare direct.

“No, MayG, but he was cute and wasn’t really afraid of what he was doing. Not on the edges. But we saw that boar, some deer we scattered from sleep, tons of birds, and his real interest took over. He wants to study animal husbandry or something. He’s real interesting when he’s at that. Knows a lot. I was second interest, even alone with him. Counts one way and not the other, I guess. We just played a little game of tag. He almost choked when he found out I had shaved myself down there.” She leaped in her seat, pointing skyward. “See that, May! The eagle. Isn’t that beautiful the way he rides. He’s coasting on a thermal, the way Harvey says, just floating and looking for something to eat. He can see for miles from up there.”

MaryGrace pouted. “You shaved and he knew and I didn’t. What kind of friend are you? You never said a word to me. What’s it feel like?” Fry in the mouth, eyes heavy, stare direct.

“Smooth as silk, May. Smooth as silk. You ought to try it.”

“No, silly, I mean when he touched you. Is it very different?” She was up straight in her seat. “Lovey, I wouldn’t have guessed it in a hundred years.” She answered her own frown, “The shaving.”

Lovey made one of her all-knowing nods that MaryGrace read only too well. “I’m getting ready to plan all my moves. I don’t want a bunch of houses sitting up there on all those hills. It’s not right, no matter what argument they throw at you. It’s not right. There’ll be nothing left before you know it. Nothing but huge lawns and hot top connecting them. So I’m getting ready for the onslaught, the confrontation, the war.”

“Jeezus, Lovey, you get awful hot about this. Where the hell did this all come from? Harvey, shaving yourself, not telling me, your best friend. Your father really pisses you off about this, doesn’t he?”

“It’s all about money, May. Just plain money. He wouldn’t care if there were no trees left in the whole world except the ones to make lumber out of. Two by fours and planks to walk on and tons of shingles. And it’s hard arguing with him, him pointing out the roof over our heads and the pool out back and, for God’s sake, my new jeans. A stupid pair of jeans.”

“Those are all cheap shots, Lovey. He’s clutching at something when he uses weapons like that. My father does the same thing. Like he’s got a shovel out to unload himself and all the angry baggage he’s been carrying around for years. Tons of it. A whole lifetime of generally being pissed off at something, like life is out to get him from day one. Mom calls it gunny sacking, says it straight out to dad like she’s a top-kick, from what Charlie says now in his letters.”

“He do any scoring yet? I bet there’s no flies on Charlie when he’s away from the house. LindaSue says she writes to him all the time.”

“Might as well write to the man on the moon. Charlie’s got a married lady he’s seeing now, has a couple of kids, does all his ironing and stuff. I don’t show mom his letters. It’d drive her new bananas.”

“I bet.” Lovey stared at the eagle still coursing for game, and at the ridge of the last hill, the tree line dense, dark, encapsulating the whole crown. The range of The Supplicas, as they were named in the beginning because they looked like men at stages of prayer, moved in a semi-circular swing around Rallston and the village of Barque’s Elders, sitting at the end of the valley like a period at the end of the main road. Lovey knew every foot of the way through the valley and into the hills, had hunted and fished everywhere with her brothers. That included the village of Barque’s Elders. And she knew just about every person in the village. Which also included Josh Burkett, cross-country runner, tall and lean and handsome and who didn’t know yet how he was favored, him in his little running pants doing the roads of the town and the village. Or what plans a long-legged, redheaded girl had been making for him. Just in case.

“Jeezus, Lovey, you’re gone again. Every time we’re talking these days, you go off, like you’re in space some place and that place isn’t here. How are you going to save The Beggars? You haven’t got a chance in hell, you know. Your father’s a pusher and a driver. He doesn’t know how to slow down. Some guys are like that. Charlie’s like that. My father’s not, pissed off and all. Sure as hell Harvey’s not, even with his animals in the mix.”

MayG saw and read the instant change in her friend, how her eyes narrowed in their intensity and her chin squeezed soft red lips into thin lines. Her friend’s whole facial structure changed in that instant, broadcasting a hardened resolve, marking a newness for Lovey who to her was once merely great at shortstop or throwing three-pointers in from someplace downtown. There was alteration in the works, she knew. On one side of Lovey’s forehead a pale blue vein showed its faint resource, like a thin roadway on a faded map, off the main route. MayG knew the only time that little blue vein showed, Lovey was having her period or was really pissed off about something, a missed shot, a strikeout. Lovey, looking out over the range of hills, swigging the last of the beer from the can, nodding again as if in dark preface to her statement, said, “I’m going to tell him if he doesn’t stop what he wants to do up there, I’m going to get pregnant.”

Mouth open, eyes wide, MaryGrace dropped the last fry in her lap.

***

“Lovey, for god’s sake, let it go!” Marcus Devlin walked away from the breakfast table gesturing to an unseen audience, supplicating at his own level. “If I don’t do something up there, someone else will. Let it go! I’m not going to argue about it anymore. I’m in the business of raising a family, and making money is part of that process. Building houses is part of that process. Like this house.” He gestured again, a global gesture, circular, domain-wise, his whole argument ascending logically like setting cement blocks or cinder blocks or granite stones in a wall, the wall rising, an apex coming to be.

Marcus was not a big man, but at 52 was still handsome and well kept in a lithe body, with early gray hair, eyes that brought a sharpness to every business discussion, and an energy always latent about him in some position, in some degree. Ready to mix with his crew, to put his shoulder to a tough task, he was never out of jeans. Even on the golf course he wore jeans. Three of his sons were still at his table, only Walter gone off with his bride. The three sons, half-smiling at the intensity of the only sister, watched the continuation of a long-standing conversation. If it had budded before on numerous occasions, it was now apparently at blossom, colors were coming, attraction. There’d be bees buzzing.

PortiaAnne stayed with her coffee, nodding at each facet of argument. Llahvee was never going to be outshone or outdone, she was positive of that. The red hair, the flashing lips, the orbital intensity she could bring to bear in a confrontation of any order, were marvelous to watch, even in a stand against her father.

“Dad, let’s face it,” Lovey said, making gestures of her own, ignoring her brothers for the moment. And her mother. “You have a choice of putting your lot in or not putting your lot in with those who want to kill the whole Earth before its time comes. That time is now. Don’t you think that means something? The Beggars are special, dad. They’re not just some old place on the face of the globe demanding to be changed. They should stay the way they are forever. There’s life and memories in there.” A pause entered the stream. “I know.” It was weighty and sensible.

She was upright between two of her brothers, still at eggs and toast and the morning in explosion. Chad, on her right, and the older of those still at home, kicked her under the table. She kicked him back. “Dammit, Chad, keep your feet to yourself. I am not shutting up about this. I’ll never shut up about this. There’re animals and birds in there that’ll just die off. There’ll be nothing left for them, and rich couples with three cars and no kids will live in houses with some goddamned rooms they might not go into in a month of Sundays.”

PortiaAnne, sipping the last of her coffee, something said really drawing her attention though it was still hidden in subtlety, knew her stick-out daughter was escalating the argument. She saw the green in her eyes, a curl wet on her forehead.

“You don’t build little houses anymore, dad. Look around at what you’ve been working at. You don’t build cottages for lovers starting out. You don’t build little Capes and bungalows for newlyweds anymore. Not by a longshot. They’re all mansions now. They’re all glitter and glow and sucking up space. Taking too many trees and too much brush. They’re all too big. Too big for the people who live in them. Too big for the towns around them. Too big for The Beggars, out there praying to be around as they are for the next hundred years. That’s not a fucking lot to ask for, is it?”

Down on the tops of the table her hands were pressed, knuckles white and caricatured, a boardroom statement if there was one, thought her mother while she still scurried to grasp a hidden message.

Chad stomped on her foot. Spinning in place her father stopped his gesturing to an unknown audience. He’d heard her swear before, of course, from under a basket where a shot didn’t fall through or from deep in the hole at shortstop when she couldn’t get enough mustard on the ball. This was different, her intensity now channeled into his life with a new energy. “Hold it, lady!” he said. “Do not swear in my house. I don’t know where you’re coming from right now. I don’t like it. I don’t like you swearing in front of your mother.” His jeans had creases in them, his shirt was a plaid starched for the moment, and neat as dawn, but his face was red and his lips trembled. This girl of his always had been able to do this. But now it was really coming home to him. On the horizon of his life he could feel new clouds coming up, new shapes taking place. Here was an edge he did not know, not one he could hammer at, change the shape of, alter configuration.

“Oh, dad, that’s so goddamn juvenile. You’re always swearing. Mom’s always swearing, even if it’s under her breath half the time. This is a swear house, admit it. Chad says fuck all the time. It’s like his middle name for God’s sake. You telling me I can’t say it. I can’t say it when I believe in something you don’t.” Her red hair and her red lips and the fire in her eyes were as bright as a sunrise. PortiaAnne, finished at coffee, measuring the pace and argument, saw that her daughter Llahvee would never be second place in anything, and accepted the qualification about her own cursing. Yet in the midst of this ongoing confrontation she could vividly remember the moment she first spelled out the name Llahvee and realized it was the one for the daughter on her stomach in the hospital, that one small curl still wet on her head.

Her cup settled with a small clink onto its saucer.

“So, what do you want me to do about it? Give up my company, my job, all my contracts? You think that’s reasonable?”

“Hold off. Cut back. Stand up. Do what you know is right.” Lovey’s voice, changing as if a signpost had been encountered, a wand waved, said, “ It’s a lot better than what it could be.”

“Is that some kind of threat, Lovey? ‘Better than what it could be?’”

Her hair was redder, her lips were redder, her eyes were greener, the knuckles of her hands were whiter against the top of the table. “If you don’t cut it way back, dad, I’m going to get myself pregnant. That’s my alternative. There are choices in this life. This is one of them. That’s about the most important of all. My virginity. My chastity. My name. And I’ve already picked the father. He’s a cross country runner.” She smiled almost secretly. “He wears those little running pants, not those big ugly things.”

PortiaAnne, at the other end of the table, still seeing the damp curl, knew in that instant she was going to be a grandmother. Brothers Chad and Al and Brandon almost choked. Marcus Devlin, neat in his jeans and starched plaid shirt, stood in the middle of the wide kitchen, feeling suspended, feeling the whole world looking at him, their many fingers pointing. This article of this war was a long time in coming. No longer could it be ignored.

He pointed his finger. “Lady, don’t you dare throw that threat at me. It won’t work. I have a business to run, a family to take care of. You of all people should understand that. Those are just a bunch of hills out there that happened to get tossed up around the place we chose to live in. It’s all accident. There’s no design to it.” Ineptness came over him and he was afraid it showed. His lips still trembled, but she’d always been able to do that, taking any kind of stand against him, against what he believed in.

“Dad,” she said, her voice leveled, moderate once again so that her mother was again measuring something, searching, “you’re afraid to admit it. You’re a romantic. An out and out romantic. You’re going to lose this argument and you know it. Down deep you know it.”

“What the hell are you talking about now, Lovey?” If he dared to he’d shake his head. What the hell, his lips had been trembling for five minutes almost. “Trees, hills, pregnancy? I don’t get it all. I have to be missing something here.” He looked at his wife. “What did I miss?”

PortiaAnne shook her head. A glimmer had come and gone and was looking for her again. It was in the mix somewhere, lurking like a thief, waiting to steal away with something, or bring back a quick loaner.

“The cabin, dad, the cabin. I know. I’ve known for years.” Lovey Devlin’s eyes had softened, her voice softened. Chad felt an arrow shoot through his entire body. He knew the place as well as Lovey. It was no trysting spot for his father. It couldn’t be! There was no way his father was a cheat. He pushed his chair back as if to get up, to get in a corner in this ongoing argument. His mother looked him in the eyes and shook her head so slightly. Now the beginning sincerity of a smile was marking her face. Oh, God, how she loved this girl of hers, this shortstop, this basketeer, this fiery redhead, this utterly romantic daughter.

“What cabin, Lovey? For God’s sake, what the hell are you talking about?” The shoulders had fallen, the starch might have gone out of his shirt.

“The little old cabin over at Sixth Hill Praying, the one with the big fireplace and the big mantel. The mantel almost as big as the one you’re leaning on now.”

Marcus Devlin was still hung out in space. But at the other end of the room, his wife, the mother of his brood, was thinking, when the thief came back with the hidden message: They say a man remembers his last love, and a woman her first. She thought that was a lot of crap.

“Oh, God, dad, you’re a romantic and you don’t even know it. I saw the mantel in there, on the underside so maybe nobody would ever see it. The initials carved and the date carved, put there forever. MAD & PAZ 6/20/69. Oh, dad, I’ve dreamed that over and over almost my whole life. That’s Marcus Aurelius Devlin and PortiaAnne Zignewski and that’s exactly nine months and a day before Wally was born. And I never told him once. Not once, dad. I never told him. I never let on. I just dreamed it would be me some day too. Now do me a favor, a couple of favors. Think over what you’re going to do with The Beggars, and when you want to show mom, take her by the hand and show her what’s under that mantel you’re leaning on. I saw you one night, just after we moved in here, carving the same thing. My father the mountain wrecker, my father the romantic, carving MAD & PAZ 6/20/69.

At the other end of the room, her heart once more melted by her own track man, runner nonpareil Marcus Aurelius Devlin, soon-to-be husband on that old June night blossoming all around her again in the cabin at Sixth Hill Praying, PortiaAnne saw once more the wet curl pasted on her baby girl’s forehead, and loved her all over again.