Pordman sighed.

“Dabbler and I were headed to the state lake. You know, deep water, real good fishing. Planned to go out just after nightfall. All of a sudden, there’s a roadblock dead ahead and more cops than I’ve ever seen — in front of us, to the sides and outta nowhere behind us. I tell Dabbler to stay cool, but Dabbler didn’t know what cool meant or we wouldn’t have been going to the lake in the first place.

“I stop the car. It’s either that or plow into a couple of big cop SUVs, you know. Dabbler jumps out of the car and starts running. I turned away because I knew what was going to happen, and sure enough, a few gun-filled seconds later he’s dead.

“I kept my hands on the steering wheel and waited. It didn’t take long, you know. But I couldn’t figure out what had gone wrong. The cops drag me out of the car and push me up against the side. That’s when I see what happened.”

“Yeah?” Kallack prompted.

“We had the canoe on top of the car, upside-down like you carry them, you know. And her body was stuffed under the seats and her arms and legs were strapped in place with bungee straps. Well the hooks were just some cheap plastic and one of them broke, you know, and — we couldn’t hear it over the radio — her hand was flopping in the breeze under the canoe. Some driver behind us must’ve called the cops.”

“Rough,” another lifer said.

“Yeah. Dumb ol’ Dabbler bought the stupid things. I’da never bought cheap crap like that. You just can’t get a job done without quality stuff, you know?”

So often we see the wrong word, lightening, when we should see lightning. Here’s a light primer on some easily confused words:

Lightning: That bright flash you see during a thunderstorm that precedes the thunder.* It can burn a hole through the roof of your home, send a surge through the power grid that will destroy every electrical appliance in your home,** or kill you outright. It’s beautiful, but it’s not to be trifled with.

Lightening: Lifting a weight, whether physical or emotional. You can lighten the load by removing a few bricks from the wheelbarrow or by comforting someone who’s feeling down.

Lighting: As a noun, it’s something that is meant to produce light, such as a light bulb and its fixture. As a verb, it’s causing something to be lit, such as a cigarette (which you shouldn’t do because those things will kill you), or to be illuminated: “The president is lighting the way to a brighter future” (or so we hope).

The lightning bug, by the way, is also known as the firefly. We get lots of them around here, just as we get lots of lightning. It’s getting more difficult to write an original and interesting haiku juxtaposing these forces of nature, but I keep trying.

* If you want to know how far away the lightning is, count the seconds between seeing it and hearing the thunder and divide by five. That will give you the distance in miles.

** Most surge protectors aren’t designed to guard your computer or plasma TV or coffeemaker from lightning. Read the packaging; unless you’re spending close to $100, it’ll say something to the effect of “does not protect against lightning.” Unplug anything you can’t afford to replace.

There were three doors in the small room where they stood. There was the door through which the Seeker had come and that would not open from this side. There was an exit that led away from the waiting pilgrims … and there was the Inner Door. It was richly jeweled with gilt inlays; the oversized handle was bronze and clearly bore, in silver, the shape of a sleeping dog.

This was done in response to the earliest pilgrims who had been disappointed that the Inner Door looked just like any other door.

“Greetings, Garvey. I am Duane. I have come — as you must know — to see … him.”

“ ‘Him,’ Garvey repeated. “The One Who Knows. The Voice of The Truth. The Unveiler of the Secrets.” He paused. “Etcetera.”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“His name is Pravat.”

“Pravat,” Duane repeated.

“Yes. He prefers it to the fancy titles or the breathless ‘him’ that you used.”

“Thank you. I’ll call him, er, Pravat, by name then.”

“That’ll be nice. You may enter when you are ready.”

Duane hesitated, and Garvey waited as patiently as a rock would have.

“Um… Garvey?”

“Duane?”

“It’s been rather a long trip, and a bit expensive. I just want to know, before I go in there … is he for real? I mean, does he really have the secret of life?”

“The secret is different for each one of us. But every person who has gone in has come back out and told me that Pravat had the answer. None have passed me to leave with scorn on their faces.”

“Excellent. I’m ready to go in.”

“Knock lightly on the door when Pravat has given his benediction and I will open it.”

Garvey pushed down on one end of the door lever and the sleeping dog tilted upward. This opened the ridiculously ornate door and Duane went in. Garvey closed the door and waited. Several minutes later he heard a soft tapping from the other side and he swung the portal open.

Duane nearly stumbled across the threshold; his face was pale and his eyes seemed to look more inward than outward. He ambled over to a chair and missed, landing on the floor. He didn’t appear to notice, and sat there breathing as if cooling down from a marathon.

Garvey nodded slightly to himself.

“He had the secret of your life, Duane?”

“Uh-huh.”

Several long moments passed, more moments than Duane had spent in Pravat’s presence, and Duane finally got control of his breath.

“Garvey?” Duane said weakly.

“Duane?”

“Have you ever asked Pravat for the secret of your life?” Duane wanted to sound as though he were making pleasant conversation but his rough-edged voice betrayed him.

“Never.”

Duane finally focused on the doorkeeper. “No?”

“As I told you, none pass by me to leave with scorn on their faces. Too often, however, their faces look like yours, or worse. This has curbed my curiosity.”

Duane gathered himself and stood up. “Then I am blessed,” he said, “for this day I have spoken with not one but two wise men.” He bowed slightly to Garvey, who returned the gesture, then went out through the third door.

Garvey watched him walk down the hallway until it made a sharp left turn and Duane disappeared.

The Keeper of the Inner Door shook his head and looked over his shoulder at the gleaming portal. He shook his head and thought, by no means for the first time, All they see are the jewels and the gold. None ever see the sleeping dog and heed its warning.

The first door opened and closed behind another overawed Seeker. Garvey repressed a sigh; this one would be no different.

As they so often do, the good folks at the Humane Society of the United States have placed the common sense of the subject in terms so plain and firm that all I need to do is link to it and you can read there how to keep your pets safe and happy this Independence Day weekend. Go for it.

Skunk fit him like a glove and it had pleased him for forty-seven years to live down to it.

The Depression and the War had both been over for some years, but tell that to the hills. There was still no industry in these parts and the miracles of the post-war boom steered studiously away.

As most people did, Skunk Borster tended his own little garden to help keep body and soul together. Sure, he ate the vegetables, but by and large it served as bait for small meaty creatures such as raccoons. This way, Skunk didn’t even have to go hunting; the prey came within twenty feet of his back door.

He had also made a study of getting money out of other people with little or no labor on his part. He was a wonderfully charming fellow, until one made his closer acquaintance. He could get anyone to trust him once, and maybe even twice.

His wishing well was one of his more profitable schemes. Every year there was a new crop of children, each with a penny or two, who could be coaxed into dropping their coins into the magic well and waiting for their wishes to come true.

The base and the little roof over it had been part of a working well that had gone dry. Skunk moved it to the top of a little mound that had a hole in it. Another hole in the bottom allowed him to crawl in and collect the coins unwary children or spendthrift young lovers pitched in. It was a great little moneymaker, given the circumstances.

One father hadn’t been too pleased that his boy, who was none too bright through no fault of his own, had wished away a whole quarter to Skunk Borster. He crept over in the night and began to bang at the rock and concrete base with a sledgehammer. One can be only so quiet with such work and Skunk quickly discovered what was afoot. A couple of quick rounds convinced the irate parent to give up. One had grazed the man’s left leg, but no one ever mentioned it.

The well’s base had been damaged and a couple of hard winters had taken a further toll on it, but Skunk sold that to the unlearned and unwise as being the sure sign of a well that had given up a lot of wishes.

Skunk sat on his porch in the midafternoon of a humid day and wiped the sweat off his brow with his hand. He heard someone whistling happily and soon a large young man hove into view.

It was Raleigh Harden, who eleven years earlier had been the ten-year-old boy with the quarter. He was still none too bright; his birth had been long and difficult and nearly killed his mother. There may have been something about the way the blacksmith – also the local doctor in a pinch – used his tongs that affected Raleigh’s thought processes from day one. But Raleigh had his father’s largely easygoing personality and his father’s size. It was difficult to rile a Harden, but you didn’t do so casually unless your rifle was near to hand and you meant to use one end or the other for defense. And the junior was even bigger and stronger than the senior.

Skunk watched Raleigh stroll by and saw the younger man flipping a coin into the air and catching it, again and again. Then he stopped and lovingly admired it. Raleigh looked up and saw Skunk and waved.

“I got a whole silver dollar, Mister Skunk!” Raleigh yelled across the fifty or so feet separating them.

Skunk’s eyebrows twitched. “Do you now?” he called back.

“Yep!  Found it! Found it laying right on the road back thataway.” And he pointed in the direction from which he had come.

“That’s a perty good piece of luck,” Skunk allowed. “I haven’t seen one of those in quite some time.”

Raleigh thought about that a moment and then ambled up toward Skunk’s cabin. “Here she is,” he said proudly. “A Nineteen and Thirty-four Silver Peace Dollar.”

He didn’t let go of the coin but held it up so it caught the light and Skunk could see it well. He displayed Lady Liberty’s head, then the eagle on the other side and back again.

“Sure enough,” Skunk agreed. “That’s what you’ve got. So what plans do you have for it?” he asked casually.

“Don’t know yet. Just found it.”

Skunk took a quick mental tour of all the ways he had separated money from lesser mortals and decided the tried and true approach would work with this idiot. He’d just have to watch out for the old man for a day or two.

“Y’know … that’d buy a hundred wishes in that magic wishing well over there,” he said, gesturing.

“I don’t know. My daddy wasn’t too happy that time I put a quarter in the well.”

“But think about it,” Skunk wheedled. “You got lots of wishes out of that, didn’t you? It was just the next year that you got the baby brother you wanted.”

“Yeah,” Raleigh admitted. “But he died three months later.”

“True, true,” Skunk commiserated. “But he went peaceful. Surely your momma and daddy wanted that, if he had to go. So they must have got in on one of your wishes, right?”

“I suppose that could be so.”

“And when your house caught fire, did you all wish that it could be repaired and you could keep living there?”

“Yeah. And we did fix it and we do live there.”

“That’s right.” Skunk smiled his best ingratiating smile. “So imagine all the good fortune and wishes you’d get with a whole silver dollar.”

Raleigh mulled it over. “You could just be right, Mister Skunk.” And he kept thinking as best he could with his tong-squeezed brain.

Skunk waited; part of the art of conning people was to let them do half the work – not to sell too hard.

“All right!” Raleigh said happily. “I’ll do ‘er.” And he led Skunk toward the wishing well.

He fondly patted the edge where his daddy had bashed it with the sledgehammer. He fingered his precious coin and closed his eyes. Then in a quick motion, he flipped the coin again, away from himself just enough that it spun prettily into the darkness. He heard it hit and roll and stop.

“Well, well,” Skunk said. “Aren’t you going to be the luckiest youngster around? First you find that silver dollar, and now you’re going to have all those wishes.” He reached up and patted Raleigh’s back. “You should run along now and start collecting on your good fortune.”

“OK, Mister Skunk.” And he sauntered down the little path and back on the road toward home.

Skunk chuckled happily. A silver dollar! Just waiting down there to be collected. Once he saw the last of Raleigh, he made a beeline for the crawlway at the bottom of the mound.

“That boy’s big enough to eat hay, but his brain hasn’t grown any! Hee! Hee! Hee!”

Skunk picked up a snake and tossed it out of his way. He squeezed the upper half of his body into the hole to look at the floor of the wishing well.

There were a couple of dozen pennies that various children had dropped down after making their wishes. And right in the middle, just visible, was Raleigh’s silver dollar. Skunk chuckled again and reached out for it.

Something sharp and heavy landed on Skunk’s head and crushed his skull. His hand fell short of the dollar coin.

Above him, Raleigh Harden looked down over the caved-in bowl of the wishing well. He dusted off his hands, his great strength having finished what his father had started eleven years before.

“I got my wish, Mister Skunk,” he called down. “I wished you was dead.”