A THOUSAND WORDS

By Michael Ledwith

June 30, 2023

He had learned how to walk quietly in the Army.

And to always maintain situational awareness. The deep snow muffled everything anyway, but he still stepped carefully and ducked under branches making sure he didn’t break anything or snap a twig. The woods were still, no birds, some animal tracks, beautiful in the new snow.

The cabin would be just over the rise and he could walk in the trees almost to the back door. She said she would unlock the door and would leave long before he got there.

The heavy 1911 in Ted’s shoulder holster tugged and dug into the skin underneath his Levi jacket.

It had been summer when they met. She was hiking down Niwot Ridge as he and his brother hiked up. Strong tan brown legs, thick socks accenting her muscular calves, well-worn boots, Kinks t-shirt covered by a patched snap button faded blue denim shirt. Calico scarf around her neck, aviators, and blond hair tucked under a Grateful Dead baseball cap. She didn’t even glance at them as they passed.

Two weeks later, they sat naked, across from each other, sweaty, spent, after making love on the front seat of her pickup truck. He said: I’d say fuck’s sake, but you might take it wrong. It works on many levels she replied, and smiled a smile that even more than the lovemaking made him fall utterly and completely in love with her.

She, and her sometime boyfriend, lived in a cabin up in the woods near Boulder. With two cats and a dog, like in the song.

Off and on, all summer, when he was in Boulder he would see her around, sometimes with her boyfriend. An older guy, big through the shoulders, long haired, with a gold tooth and always with his hands on her. He asked about that once, and she said he used to be just possessive, but since he hit fifty he was getting to be too much. Where did he get the gold tooth? The story changes. Why are you with him? See anybody else around? And, I needed protection.

Protection…protection from what? The last possessive boyfriend.

Three times they had wound up making love. The truck again, but then once in the woods when they hiked way up into the Flatirons. Lying on a blanket she had brought afterwards, drinking beer they had cooled in a freezing stream that came down from much higher up. Eating cheese, little sausages, and slices of blueberry pie she had baked that morning.

You bake? I bake and cook. I was a chef once in Sausalito. You lived in San Francisco? No, Tiburon, but spent lots of time there. Loved going to old movies and hanging out at the Vesuvius.

Fuck’s sake, I said again. Why not she answered…and took off her t-shirt.

She was 26, I was 25. I had just missed Vietnam, and law school, and making any serious decision about my life once I realized I was going to have a life and not be killed in some rice paddy or taking some idiotic hill or by my own troops because I was both hard core and idealistic. Come on men, let’s not just bomb the shit of that village but send in a squad to see if there are any VC there. A click and boom as a hand grenade is rolled into my tent.

She didn’t seem curious about my life, I was intensely curious about hers. We shared coffee a couple of times, and beers and burgers at Ted’s, the legendary bar on the Hill.

Ted was a former Marine who had been wounded at Guadalcanal, and then again at Okinawa.

He’d come back, bounced around, and wound up opening Ted’s so he could play guitar and sing to a captive audience. He and the restaurant became locally famous and every now and then famous musicians came down out of their mountain ranches and sat in with Ted on weekend nights.

I had a nodding relationship with him. He knew her well.

How’s the dick he asked the first time I was there with her.

Which dick, she answered?

The latest one.

Gold tooth?

Yeah, Ted answered. Watch out darlin’ he might not like the boy wonder here.

He doesn’t own me, she cried angrily.

He don’t? Har-de-har-har!

Ted walked back behind the bar.

I felt a cold anger and, for the first time, realized, beyond combat training and combat fantasies from the Army, I might indeed be capable of killing.

What’s that all about?

Oh, Ted’s a dramatist.

What’s your boyfriend’s name?

Here it’s Wyatt, but he was born Gerald.

I laughed. Hey, she said, what’s my name? Eva, I answered, you said Eva was your name.

And, you believed me?

A week later I had to go back to Florida. To take the LSAT, and do two job interviews friends had set up. One of the jobs would let me surf almost every day.

Just after Thanksgiving Ted called me at my Mom’s.

Hold on boy, he said, hold on now.

Why, what?

Well, that scumbag Wyatt nearly beat her to death. She’s in the Denver Trauma Center, and she didn’t want you to know. I found your number in her bag and she kept asking for you when she was all doped up and crazy.

Were the police called, did they arrest him?

Son, they don’t arrest people like Wyatt. Why not? Hell, boy, he supplies most of the Front Range with cocaine. He’s not somebody to screw with unless you’re a serious man.

I’ll be there tomorrow.

Nope, you won’t. We got a big storm moving in and it’ll be the weekend before flights will start.

Plus, she asked me to tell you not to come.

Why?

One, no woman wants the man she loves to see her the way she looks right now. And two, she don’t want you to get killed.

She said she loved me? My voice shook.

In her way, Fred answered…she’s had a tough life with men. I’ve known her since she was a girl, and I’ve never known her to be with a man she said anything personal about. They’re usually just a means to an end. You’re the first she ever showed affection for.

To what end?

A place to stay, a warm body, protection.

Fred, do you still have your 1911 from the war?

Yep.

Don’t sell it. I’ll be there Monday.

-30-

Frequent contributor Michael Ledwith is a former bag boy at Winn-Dixie, who worked on the Apollo Program one summer in college. A former U.S. Army officer, he ran with the bulls in Pamplona and saw Baryshnikov dance ’Giselle’ at the Auditorium Theater.  Surfer. Rock and roll radio in Chicago. Shareholder, Christopher’s American Grill, London. Father. Movie lover—favorite dialogue: “I say he never loved the emperor.”

Comments 62

    1. You and seem to be a minority on this score. I despise the use of four-letter words. They diminish the conversation. Many rely on them to avoid thinking about all the other options in our language. They mean nothing specific at this point.

    2. I understand Denise. Yes sometimes grownups us foul language. I was once a merchant sailor. I know this. But Michael Ledwith writes for grownups. I don’t dictate to writers. Some I agree with, some I don’t. I present these excellent writers to you undiluted, without a pc filter, to the readers of johnkassnews.com .
      I happen to think he’s an excellent writer, a storyteller, a weaver of fables for adults. thanks though, for letting me know what you think. Honesty is a good thing.

      1. I agree John. I dont think this author uses the expletive in a crass way, unlike how its used in many contemporary songs or in comedy. His writing reminds me of George Carlin, he uses expletive a lot, however it does not detract from his point and its the same here.

      2. Interesting comments from an interesting cross section of your readers John. Here we witness the First Amendment at work. Out of many, One. And the One believes in and supports to the death Freedom of Speech. And Freedom not to read or listen.

        FRCs boyhood buddy

      3. Another thought. My 2 favorite Chicago writers could slice and dice you with the written word: Mike Royko and Studs Terkel. I don’t recall either dropping the F bomb in their writing or in public speech. It takes talent NOT using foul language to communicate!

    3. At the completion of his first dictionary, a ladies guild thanked Daniel Webster for not including any dirty words in it. Daniel Webster thanked them for looking them all up.

    7. I understand and often agree.

      I recommend doing what the producers, writers of the great “Sanford and Son” authentic Red Foxx situation comedy show did.

      They censored Red Foxx’s X rated comedy club act and had the writers understand that wasn’t appropriate for this mainstream American TV audience.

      I never knew Red Foxx had an X rated act. But he did.

      I recommend you consider doing a copy and paste to your or blogs you know and do a letter word deleted on the curse word – present a PG rated version.

      Our country/my country didn’t allow hard core porn of anykind until ~ 1973. Even married couples on TV couldn’t be filmed in the same bed until ~ the Bob Newhart show. In the Dick Van Dyke Show – Rob and Laura had separate beds.

      IMO our country/my country was a better place than now.

    8. Denise writes:

      “I do not appreciate the foul language. This not the John Kass I signed up for.”

      I respond:

      I understand your (Traditional Christian Lady?) point of view. Perhaps our John Kass and his editors can have two mailing lists one for more Christian ladies and gentlemen with most/all of the sex and cursing bleeped out, censored – something like the serialized versions of Charles Dickens or Mark Twain, HG Lovecraft would have done back in their days – there were certainly immoral, violent things going on in 1940s London England (that’s London not Londonstan) and Red Hook Brooklyn in the 1920s and 30s – I taught public school in Red Hook Brooklyn back in the mid 1980s.

      There were two words I would not let my (mixed Black, Hispanic, Italian and some immigrants) students say:

      The “F Word”

      and the “N word”

      I’ve held true to those standards my entire life.

      God bless your Miss Denise M

      And God help you and all of us left behind in our collapsing Christian Western Civilization.

      John E
      Left Behind in Chicago

  4. Thank you Michael.
    Seems like I know about a million people who talk just like you write.
    Any chance you can give this the full blown 3-400 pages it deserves?

    Semper Fidelis
    PS – my M1911-A1 is never far from reach.

    1. Must be a guy thing.

      I was in the Navy, back in the day when they issued pink foam rollers in the seabag. I know all sorts of words, profane, vulgar, and not. While it’s descriptive, this short story is not my cup of tea. It seems to want to strive for natural romanticism.

      2. “I was in the Navy, back in the day when they issued pink foam rollers in the seabag.”

        That must be a Navy thing.
        In the Marine Corps, they didn’t issue us pink curlers…they just cut all of our hair off.
        😉

    2. In today’s world,especially in big cities,it is essential.
      As I have gotten older I had to dial down to CZ 9mm 14 shot mag……..never leave home without it
      Great story……hope to read conclusion

  5. 36 years as a Cop and 20 years in the military exposed me to all types of “questionable” language. I was not offended by this writer’s language at all- it wasn’t there for the shock value, but merely used as part of a pretty darn good story.

    1. Sandra,
      How very sensible.
      I happened to enjoy it, but when I find myself reading something I DON’T enjoy, I go find something else to read.
      I like the way you think and wish a few others around here were more like you.
      HY

  7. This one crossed some sort of line for me. Johnkassnews.com, not Johnkassfiction.com. If it wasn’t fiction, then this one crossed another sort of line for me. But I’ve been a fan/follower of yours since the beginning and way back in the Tribune days when you took over the column from Royko. You were an improvement and I cancelled the Tribune subscription the day you left, because you were the last reason I kept it. I do miss reporting and journalism. I used to read the Tribune, the Chicago Daily News, the Sun-Times, Time, Newsweek, Saturday Evening Post, Life, Look, even National Geographic all at the same time. I was following the foot steps of my dad.

  10. Interesting. Now we have to see how the story ends! Appreciate it guys, but I would’ve thought Chicago’s Summer of Love and Nascar racing would provide some poignant commentary this weekend. Shutting down half of the city streets, speeding cars on Lake Shore Drive, fine Canadian forest fire smoke wafting in the air and rampant crime. What else could go wrong?

    1. Some of the people who love NASCAR are the same people who watch the right wing TV channels obsessed with the “gun problem” in Chicago. And they’re going to show up in their RVs on Sunday and enjoy the race? Will there be a staging area where they can circle the wagons to fend off the career criminals?” Sounds like you Enrique! HA!

  12. I was shocked when I read this. Now, I am no choir boy and I have been credited with the artful use of the English language, however, I never expected to read something like this on this site.

    John, I understand posting other authors to augment your posts while your health improves. Up til now: Good stuff. This, however, is not what I expected when I subscribed. I expected columns on local issues, the antics of J. B., Zeues the Wonderdog, cooking, etc., not something out of a literary magazine.

  14. Sorry, John, but I agree with those complaining about my least favorite word in our language! And some of the other words as well. There’s too much vulgarity in our world today and there are plenty of other words that can and should convey the writer’s sentiments. Their use makes me think he has a less-than-stellar vocabulary or is more attuned to shock value than good writing….

  16. Thank you Mr. Ledwith. Good tale told well. That is, the language fit the style you chose for this story. I too am familiar with the 1911. During the VietNam war, I wound up in Korea. I am a lucky one. I remember vividly, at age 25, what it felt like to realize you would have a life in front of you. Now, after swearing off firearms upon my exit from the Oakland Army Depot, I am applying for a FOID card, of all things. I live alone now, in Chicagoland.

  18. HI JOHN ,
    HOPE YOUR DAY IS BLUE SKIES AND SUNSHINE ? FOR ME, NEVER HAD A FINER DAY,WE’RE UP IN MICHIGAN AT OUR SUMMER HOME WIT ME SISSTAR.READ WITH INTEREST LUDWITH’S SHORT STORY “ONE THOUSAND WORDS ” , SOME BEING A LITTLE ROUGH,BUT THAT’S WHAT MAKES IT INTERESTING. SO GRAB YOUR 1911,LET’S DO IT !
    AS MY 11 YEAR OLD GRANDSON SAID TO ME THE OTHER DAY “I’AM A MAN AND MY DAD SAID I COULD SAY BULLSHIT ALL DAY “I ALMOST PEE”D MY PANTS BUT HE SURE DID GRAB MY ATTENTION.A LITTLE SPICY LANGUAGE NEVER HURTS TO KEEP YOU INTERESTED IN THE CONVERSATION AND ON THIS DAY ME AND JOEY HAD A GREAT CONVERSATION ABOUT LIFE AS A ELEVEN YEAR OLD , NONE OF WHICH WAS BULLSHIT.
    KEEP THE GUEST WRITERS COMING,THEY ARE ALMOST AS INTERESTING AS YOU .
    WISHING YOU A STEADY RECOVERY,ONE DAY AT A TIME.

  19. Check out Charles Willeford. He doesn’t disappoint in the crime noir genre. Also fellow Greek, George Pelecanos, maybe my all time favorite.

    Many of your “fans” are prudish and don’t appreciate how real men talk and act sometimes.

    My brothers and sisters out there, shut off the Fox News and check out Brother Cornel West if you want to hear a philosopher with a Christian heart and true intellectual heft.

    Don’t take my word for it, Glen Loury interviewed him. Brother West is a true disciple of Christ. he’s the real deal and comes at social issues with love of all people.

    Christ didn’t come to age us rich. I’m sure he wouldn’t eat in Winnetka or Barrington either. He’d be down in the hood ministering and healing people’s souls.

    Billions for Ukraine, endless wars and tax breaks for the corporate duopoly that runs our government, and they cut food stamps?

  22. BAN MIKE LEDWITH!
    FOUL LANGUAGE REPLACES THE ABILITY TO THINK AND USE WORDS IN AN INTELLIGENT WAY. SOME OF THE BEST CRITIQUES, CRITICISMS, DIASAGREEMENTS, DISCUSSIONS ETC, USE PURE AND SIMPLE ENGLISH.
    IE, CALLING SOMEONE A CORPULENT INEBRIANT SOUNDS MUCH BETTER THAN A F…..G FAT DRUNK.
    THE BRITISH ARE EXCELLENT IN USING THE LANGUAGE TO PUT PEOPLE DOWN OR UP. WE SHOULD STUDY LANGUAGE USE MORE.

  23. Third thought.
    Has anyone read or listen to actors read the words of our founding fathers? I have on tape/cd actors reciting their words and thoughts. Not 1 MF, CS, SOB, AH, ETC. Just the pure majesty of the English language on the most important things in life: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Go to the library and bring them home and listen.
    If Civics were taught more we wouldn’t need to use foul language.
    I am not a prude either. I grew up in my grandparents bar for first 7 years of my life. I’ve seen what alcohol can do. If that language was used in the tavern my grandma would use a home made whip on you. (The whip was usually used to control their 4 dogs from attacking drunken customers. Took one of grandpas old belts, cut it into strips, put tacks on the end and nailed the base of belt to a shorten broom handle).
    I digress.

    1. Thomas Rudd asks:

      “Has anyone read or listen to actors read the words of our founding fathers? I have on tape/cd actors reciting their words and thoughts. Not 1 MF, CS, SOB, AH, ETC. Just the pure majesty of the English language on the most important things in life: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. ”

      I respond:

      Are you referencing the likes of Tommy Jefferson penning “The Declaration of Independence” where he proclaimed THE TRUTH – “that all men are created equal”?

      Are you aware that TJ was a slave owner when he penned that nonsense?

      Just imagine you are some patriotic Englishman serving in his majesty’s government back in the day and someone told you the American British colonies were revolting and you asked the reporter what was going on?

      He tells you words to the effect:

      “Well some American Masonic slave owners like Thomas Jefferson are mouthing off about universal human equality and how these American nobleman slave owners are pissed that they don’t have as much rights and power as English Lords here in the United Kingdom.”

      What the f#$&#&@?

      No wonder our cities like Chicago are falling down in to criminal anarchy, Haitian style mob rule.

  24. Good grief!
    Who lit the whining lamp?
    News flash for the cry babies: different strokes for different folks.
    I get that this wasn’t meant for everyone so if you don’t like it, go read something else.
    It takes about 30 seconds of reading to realize the author ain’t Ann Landers and it’s time for the priss’es to move on.
    FFS, you people are the same ones who would light the match on a book burning.

  25. Maybe do what some sportswriters did back in the day when getting an interview from the likes of BoSox Reggie Smith.

    The reporter wrote this about Reggie Smith’s comments about dropping a line drive:

    “I had that motor faker right in my glove”

  27. I also didn’t sign up for this year’s JK News’ foul mouthed, sex and violence Raymond Chandler style fiction.

    In fact, I didn’t sign up for this year’s John Kass News at all.

    Instead my last year’s subscription was just automatically renewed on my credit card, sort of like the Nugenix Testosterone pills same promoted by ex Sox star “The Big Hurt” Frank Thomas and great short Quarterback Doug Flutie (I really liked DF and never got over selfish Jim McMahon sabotaging the rest of the ’87 Bears team against him”. The Nugenix testosterone scam offers free samples on TV, only the customer has to give his credit card for this “Free Sample” – should have been a tip off.

    In the fine print of this Nugenix scam, the customer supposedly agrees to a lifetime subscription of Nugenix for ~ $40 a month for the rest of his life, unless he sends in a signed legalized document notarized by the prior Catholic Pope Benedict (The Current “Catholic” Pope Francis is a Liberation Theology, pro homosexual, pro Muslim takeover of Christian Europe apostate!)

    But, I’m ok with the JohnKass News renewal – and like hard headed, reality fiction.

    I’d just like more JK News reader networking and participation.

    I’m left behind in a Lib University Chicago city neighborhood where I grew up. Locals fly both the BLM BlackLiesMatter flags and signs AND the Homosexual LGBT entire month of “Pride” rainbow flag. I’ll bet anyone signs are now going up all over Lib, BLM Chicago supporting the Muslim/narcotics BLM, Algerian terrorists riots, mass looting, molotov cocktail rebellion in France. Somehow Islamists, Black opioid, heroin crack cocaine car jackers in France, Minneapolis and our Chicago are on the same side as 9th Century Taliban, ISIS, 1950s Algerian FLN that throw Gay people off of roofs and make women theirs and ours wear Islamic Black Burkas!

    As Frank Sinatra once said:

    “That’s life, that’s what people say – riding high in April, down in the gutter in May”.

    OK, I’m rambling (Is John Kass News Interesting in publishing my “brilliant” observations here on John Kass News?

    I have a unique perspective and a ring side seat at our Chicago City going down BLM, Antifa, Homo LGBT, Zio Neo Con Zombie Apocalypse.

    Any takers?

    J Els
    Left Behind in Chicago

    1. “…riding high in April, down in the gutter in May”

      If memory serves (not well and not often), I believe it is “..riding high in April, SHOT DOWN in May
      N’est-ce pas?

      The Chairman could sure belt out a tune.

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