[ A Second Interruption ]

It should be clear to anyone actually reading this story, that it has by now quite its own life
and doesn't need much help from found words and the like as laid out initially.

This is hardly the first time that one of these projects turned out other than i'd originally
expected. It's always in the back of my mind that it may 'get out of hand', becoming too
long and seemingly unmanageable.


In fact, I'm learning a lot from doing this one, it's the first time I've been able to work with
one as it forms from my mind almost directly into type.

I kept further ideas for this story riding tucked in my head for a good spell, but ultimately
enough material has accumulated that I have had to make some notes on paper. Chiefly
to keep some of the contradictory elements in view. The variations and options.

This 'book', (which i truly hope it will be one day), has already generated, for me, the bulk of its forthcoming content. There really isn't much room for more. The details of actual execution remain another thing to see.

(If it seems at times that my 'characters' are straying too far into the trite, threatening to
tell another cliche' tale, rest reassured that deteriorations are in store).


It should also be said here, to anyone not 'getting it', that I am well aware of not making ordinary sense in all of these chapters. Ultimately, if done well enough, it's to all make a sort of collective
unsense, (rather than nonsense)---a display of images strewn throo with some of their human possibilities.

And if anyone thinks that such verbal trompling about is off putting and therefore somehow
untrue, how many times today have you encountered an overabundance of choices? And to
the point of near neurosis??

There's certainly plenty of the other ordinary reading about if that's your preference. I have
my own favorites, too.
I just don't wanna write like that! And would rather do a merely passable job trying something i love, than waste my time laboring over the usual.
________________________________________________


I am again taking this Section break as my only opportunity to add a few other nagging points.
Points nascent in the first break and waiting for me to catch up:


I did manage the start up of the 2nd blog mentioned. It is going well, too, (to my mind) and has
become my midweek relief from this "Frog blog"'s more elaborate weekend mentations.
I kicked it off with the dictionary words listed here about two months ago---I found they just
weren't going to be needed to 'spice up Frog', and would become unduly digressive if dropped
into all of its other contrived material.

My second blog, "The Twelfth Toe", is remaining somewhat closer to my pronounced goal
of writing and displaying a so-dubbed 'series form'. Tho it too has strayed some from simple
recitation of objects. Maybe I'll have to make a blog one day out of some older projects just
to show, once, what i mean.

Had intended to call it "The Eleventh Toe", but on point of doing found that not only is there
already a novel out by that name, it is also, apparently, a fairly common physical condition.
A twelfth toe much less so!?!


Lastly, want to acknowledge that i have more or less abandoned using the labels for referring
to some backstage machination of writing this. There really isn't much to describe about
process, after a certain fictive potential is reached---in this sort of work, once its generating its
own material for its own world, that's pretty much it. That was the goal, to have something
to write!

And, besides, the labels make a much better index-in-the-making.

Chapter 15 -- A Man In Overalls

had stayed away long enough...?? held back from turning the corner too soon...
yes, the black van was still there...

hold back at just the right angle so the blind horse and its carriage would block him from view
he did not want to be seen too soon and yes they were coming out with the body, arguing
as usual...

he did not want to be seen at all as they loaded the body, their proximity to him at the rear end
of the van possibly too near to seem casual they would soon be through...

the horse with carriage, clomping along slowly onto Broadbridge, still betwixt and at a 'natural'
angle...to their preoccupied eyes there would be no doubt that he was merely tending to the horse in the typical and expected manner...

the overalls felt natural enough, too, and why shouldn't they?


everything was as it should be...where it should be...

was he speaking out loud? the two men were already climbing into the doorless van had they
even glanced at him?? he did not know...

he began to panic as they started the engine, half sensing another vehicle pulling up behind
the carriage, on the cross street but blocked from his peripheral view, he dared not turn...

he felt penned in, did not want to be seen except as 'normal', as anyone would...


as the van pulled away, two more shocks: he spotted the man in the red shirt--still here,
there, across the street,what could possibly keep him here, had he overlooked something
himself?? But he was turning away...heading toward the fence...the vacant lot...


then, back in the street, where the van had pulled away, a yellow book glaring in the sunlight...
could scarcely take it in before the second shock of the black dog sitting on the curb...

but, yes, only 'Flagg', the island's mascot...

apparently finished with his cigar of the day...

and as man stood stock-still, unwilling to stride forth and claim the book for himself,
most aware of the limo (he could feel with the back of his neck) looming behind,

the dog, its mouth open to new games, plumped quickly into the street, nipped the paper
book and ran off with it in the general direction of the courthouse ruins.

Chapter 14 -- Removals

Inspector Winsteeple finally moved aside and let the two men in

the hallway come in to move Jampers' dead body.
Apparently, they had been arguing about the wooden board the
shorter of the two had brought upstairs from somewhere.

"What is that?" , and surprising them, before one could answer,
adding, "A piano top?"

"It was all 'we' could find." replied the taller, as they lumbered it
along the east wall of the office on the way to the oversized desk.

"It'll make the body heavier." stated their superior.


Indeed, they would require some help even to move the overweight
body from its seated position in the heavy wooden chair.

As the two men carefully aligned the board onto the floor, Winsteeple
said, "Wait." And moved in for one last closer look at the tweezers in
the dead man's hand.
They had seemingly clenched tighter only since he had last examined
them here, the gap between their tips narrower by a few micrometers.
(He would have to ask the coroner if this were possible).
And, sure enough, there was a tiny perforation of paper from the edge
of a stamp, doubtlessly the one last held by the collector.
A stamp nowhere visible now. Removed by the killer?

After moving around the desk for another last check of the carpeting
around the various legs and the positioning of the body, the Inspector
stood back, and getting the men started by pulling the heavy chair out
said gently, "Be careful not to disturb anything or I'll hang you both
from the courtyard flagpole."

But, as they struggled to move the body out of the chair, and onto the
piano top on the floor, he did whatever he could to physically help.
As officer Glidden kept an eye on the critical objects and breakables.

Arguing again, somewhat more, in the narrow canehead turn of the hall
about which end of the body should go out first, they settled on the feet,
and except for too-frequent scraped fingers and corners and nearly
dropping the waterlogged corpse down the stairs the two managed to
get the man to the street door without any further assists.


Inspector Winsteeple remained in the office to consider something.

Chapter 13 -- The Tourist

Could you direct me to St. Millicent's Cathedral?...that wouldn't sound too
bad...if someone was actually around to ask the streets still empty...

recollection of a fragment from the cheap tour guide--'one of the island's more
famous landmarks'...(of course, these things are always relative)... a moving one
apparently, as the guide also over-indicated...and quite free to wander in 'roam to
one's heart's desire...'.

That is, if this is even Tonnalo.
This is the island of Tonnalo...isn't it??

[panic]...(breath)...
I forgot its name from the tour guide...since lost...(of course).


Maybe the view from the hump(ed...arch)...of the Bridge
could see the spire perhaps the blow on the head did do some damage
after all..??
the luggage racks on those caravans all but nonexistent...

clingclang of a flagpole hoisting chain turn to see
down the very south end of street
but the flag is limp blue no air no help to see where am

and midway on the pole the air is so still is someone dead
and important?

of course these things are always relative.


slowness of really becoming a disturbing thing.

surely some vehicle
or other, frequenting this area, likely returning at any moment
and unable to proceed can't just keep standing here in the way

could should walk right up there...to the Bridge...it's 'top'
might see better might be seen

but, in fact, it was none of their business.

Chapter 12 -- The Man in the Red Shirt

He had been waiting on the west side of the street all afternoon for Cleo to show up. The sun was
beating down on the back of his neck.
Seated on the stone bench, he played with alternating his fingers' shadows on the pavement.
Dropped his hands alongside his knees.
He was so bored he could pull his own head off and kick it off the Bridge.

He had stopped counting the pores in the bench long ago.
Run out of sidewalk to slide can lids or kick gravel down with the toe of his shoe.
Was no longer consoled by the sound of paper lanterns. No breezes now!

He had already made so many orbits standing 'round about the area, over so many hours, he
barely knew anymore what he had seen and in what order.


There was the tall man in the grey suit who had gotten out of the limo in front of the old
theatre. He had leaned in toward the driver briefly, stood a bit, then walked briskly into
the narrow door by the restaurant.
He had also seen him emerge again, his face strangely distorted by theatrical makeup,
lightly touching his chest pocket with two fingers of his right hand.

He had watched the man that tended that blind horse leave it to go up the same stairs
that the tall man had just left. Watched and heard the carriage, untended, pulled away
up the block and out of view.

Sat, stood, and sat again, long overly aware of the black police van parked across from him.
The one man sitting inside it, silhouetted with his head down as if asleep or
mourning the dead they had obviously come to remove.

He especially recalled the heavyset, bald man glowing in the sunlight like a mound of butter
deposited on the street by a dark green, squared-off vehicle...(one of those cheaper imports
from the continent). And wondered at his ridiculously worn spectacles.


Other than all of that, between his own multiple, restless rotations and 'fascinating',
minute fixations, he had surely only half-heard and half-seen at least fifty other things.
And as sure as the glaring red of his shirt, someone else will have spotted him as well and
let on to the police.

He gave up on it all, no longer caring to gear himself to trying to please them with some
recitation they hadn't even asked for yet.
He stalked into the brushy growth of the vacant lot, determined to divert himself, (and
perhaps cool off), by finally checking back of that billboard to see how it worked.

As he turned, he barely glimpsed the return of the horse drawn carriage around the
sunbright south corner of the theatre. And, turning away on his 'mission' did not care a whit
to prove to himself that he'd also half-heard the limo, as well, turning the corner slowly
behind it.