From the Tales of Saint Anthony, the Johnny Holiday Mysteries
These short stories follow the lives of people who populate the fictional city of Saint Anthony (Minneapolis, Minnesota), and make their appearance in the first Johnny Holiday novel, The...
Captain Royce Bivens was preparing for his senior year at the University of Saint Thomas. He was from an up-and-coming family in the capital city, Pig's Eye, Minnesota.
His mother and father lived about a mile away from campus in a small home on Summit Avenue. His father owned a hardware store and his mother was a parish leader at Saint Thomas Moore Cathedral.
The Bivens were not a wealthy family, but they were squarely positioned in what was coming to be known as America's "middle class." They were teetotalers, with a moral and ethical view of the world that was practically Calvinist despite their deeply Catholic roots; they were puritanical.
Bivens took pride in his ROTC training. Prior to his admission to St. Thomas he had attended Cretin-Derham Hall and had participated in the Junior ROTC. He had dreamed of attending West Point, believing in his heart that he was better than his peers at everything they were called them to do; drills and marches, physical fitness...and most importantly, following orders.
He was the exemplification of duty, what he lacked in imagination he made up for in consistency.
He was like a dog with bone.
Bivens excelled at everything that took place in the martial sphere of his studies; at everything else he was a B student...at best.
He consistently failed to understand his academic limitations.
He could write an excellent report, but not an essay.
Bivens was disciplined, ardently disciplined; in his heart he believed that following procedures to the letter was the signal mark of a good soldier, and for his adherence to this principle he had been promoted to Captain, but he was wrong about one very important thing. The ROTC program at the university was not training him to be a soldier, it was grooming him for leadership, for a commission in the Army, and he had been counseled that command called for something more than the simple motivation to do as you are told.
In fact, Bivens had been told this many times. Such statements had appeared with regularity on his evaluations, and he consistently struggled to recognize their importance or how he could change himself in response to that criticism.
On this night however, he had been convinced by some of the fellows from his squad to take a trip down Lake Street. They wanted to drive down the strip, see the nightlife, have a drink in a bar. Bivens was reluctant at first, but he was loathe to set himself apart from the group.
He thought about the constant critique of his character that his superiors leveled at him, and he decided that he should have some fun, join his friends, experience something of the world, do the unexpected.
Once Bivens made up his mind he would not be deterred, and so when the rain began to fall in heavy sheets and some of the boys wanted to cancel their plans, he pushed them forward.
His mind was fixed and he would have gone alone that night if no-one would have joined him, but his boldness encouraged the squad to follow.
Earlier, their braggadocio had overwhelmed his reticence, now his overwhelmed theirs.
Together they crossed the Mississippi, going over the Lake Street bridge, driving west down its length. They were headed toward Nicollet Park where the Miller's played.
The bar was called the Round-Up, and the brother of one of the boys in the squad, Lieutenant Kaplan, worked there. This meant that when they arrived they were treated like family, and greeted warmly by the owner and his wife.
Royce liked that, it made him feel comfortable.
They were gathered at a table by the door, drinking beer and whiskey, laughing and talking about the working-girls they had seen on the corner. They were wondering out loud, and loudly about how much it would cost to spend an hour with one of them, blushing and guffawing at the thought of it, like young men without any real experience of women do, when there was a sudden commotion, and a fight ensued.
A group of men, including the owner of the bar and Kaplan's brother, were attempting to push a man of gargantuan stature out the door.
Bivens had not seen the altercation break-out, but he understood instinctively who was in the right...the owner of the establishment, and though it chilled him to the core to join the mayhem, he mastered his fear and mustered his squad.
They got up from their chairs and joined the fray and helped push the giant out the door, knowing that without his squad, the other men could not succeed.
Royce stood in the doorway and watched the huge-man stumble, he fell against a parked car, and appeared to cut his jaw, though after a second look Royce thought he must have imagined it.
He watched the giant recover his footing, and watched Tom Kaplan, his lieutenant's brother, go outside in his rubber apron to return the man's hat to him, and present him with his bill.
He watched as the gargantuan looked toward the sky and with a roar of maniacal laughter appeared to call down a bolt of lightning; and he watched as rainbows danced in the giant's glass eye, he watched as the bolt of white fire struck Tom Kaplan dead.
A wave of horror passed through the people on the street, a dwarf brushed past Royce's leg on his way out the door.
The gargantuan began to run down Lake Street in the heavy rain.
Two police who had been walking the beat, ran after him.
Then Bivens noticed something that surprised him.
He saw Johnny Holiday, a guy that he had personally drummed out of the ROTC, and subsequently from the University; he saw Johnny following behind the giant, running ahead of the police, giving chase like he had reason to.
He saw Lt. Kaplan run to his brother, sobbing and screaming. Bivens scratched his chin, he felt confused. The rest of the squad was standing around in shock, looking to him, their captain, for a signal as to what to do.
Bivens collected his wits and went out to his friend, he knelt with him beside the body of his fallen brother laying in a puddle of water.
He put his hand on the man's shoulder and said to him: "Let's go call your ma."
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
