[pshrynk]

How it all began

Samuel Langhorne “Armistice” Walker swung lazily under the wing of his float plane on a hammock, the gentle tropical breezes of South Florida cooling him as much as the rum punch he occasionally sipped. His dog, Vivaldi was curled up on his stomach, muttering in his sleep. Above him the sounds of clanking and curses of Patrick Lamp, his copilot and mechanic, hung in the air. Life was good for them. They had the air mail contract for Cuba, Honduras, Puerto Rico, and Jamaica, plus the occasional small freight pick up. Just enough to keep ends together and not enough to count as real work.

“You about finished up there, Paddy?”

A pale, blue eyed face, topped with sparse blonde hair appeared over the wing of the plane. “I’m not Irish, so quit calling me ‘Paddy.’ What’s up with that? You’ve known me since we were kids and never once have I been called ‘Paddy.’ Now, for the past week, you’ve been in Irish mode.”

“Well, it annoys you, for one. You owe me ten bucks from the poker game last week, for two. And there were a bunch of Irishmen in the bar up Miami way a while back, and I just liked the sound of it.”

“Well, I like the sound of a little bit of help up here so we can make the Havana run and get paid!”

Vivaldi looked up at them and said, “I like the sound of it being quiet. I’m trying to sleep here!”

“Shh!” said the humans.

The dog grumbled and curled up tighter. He grumbled more a few minutes later when Armistice got out of the hammock. “I was just getting comfortable, there!”

"Then don't sleep on my stomach all the time. That's sort of weird, anyway."

"It's a genetic thing. Dogs gotta pile on one another to sleep soundly."

"Well, it's still weird. Let's go over to the trolley and pick up the mail."

Vivaldi had become a talking dog after Armistice's Knack had reappeared last year. Knacks are an inborn part of all humans and as it turns out the occasional dog. They are, obviously, magical. What few people understand is that they are in fact, everything about magic. Even those who practice what they pompously refer to as High Magick are dealing with Knacks.

Knacks are the little things that people can do. Everyone has a knack and needs to discover it in order to use it. Knacks can range from something as inconsequential as making paper clips line themselves up on their own in the drawer and as powerful as being able to directly manipulate the flow of the reality stream as it flows about the user.

The Knack seems to be genetic in nature. Families with powerful magicians tend to begat powerfully magical offspring. Families with Knacks that run to making cheeses taste slightly more cheesy tend to shoot off children who can make cows turn right on command.

Armistice’s Knack was that he could make an animal talk. Just one at a time. His first and, up to Vivaldi, only animal that he had made talk was a steer at his parent's farm back in Riverside, Iowa as a young teenager. Of course, the whole thing about being a steer on a farm was that you eventually got eaten. Armistice had been so devastated that he hadn't used his Knack for almost twenty years.

Then had come that night when a confluence of rum, a small grey dog, and an ill advised bet came together to inflict Vivaldi on the unsuspecting world. Not that Armistice regretted having Vivaldi and being able to talk with him, but he worried about the life span of dogs. Viv seemed to be about three years old and healthy. But dogs his size only lived to be fifteen to twenty years old. Armistice did not want to go through that again. Ever.

Armistice walked down to the railhead of the trolley stop to check on the mail drop. There was a leather bag hanging on the hook with an airmail letter to somewhere in Havana, Cuba. Not much of a haul, thought Armistice. Maybe they’d just wait for a few more days and see if more came in. The letter was marked “urgent.” He put it in the bag and threw it over his shoulder, whistling as he went back to the docking area for their plane.

He and Patrick had landed the contract the previous year after minimal competition. Some of the postal sites were tricky to get to for normal aircraft and they had the only float plane in the competition.

Arriving back at the Goose, Patrick was just locking down the hatches on the engines.

"She ready for a flight?" asked Armistice.

"All spiffed up. The carburetors were giving me some problems but I wrestled them to the ground."

"Did you fix the Autopilot?"

A grey cloud gathered over the previously sunny disposition of the mechanic. "You know I don't have a Knack with electric stuff," he moped.

"Just checking. Do you have that auto switch on thingy solved at least?"

"I disconnected all the wires leading to what I think is the box it lives in. I can't guarantee that all the systems will work right, but I've got some electrician tape in my seat bag, just in case."

"I guess that will have to do," said Armistice.

"I don't know why you guys don't just call in a priest, like I suggested a month ago," said Vivaldi.

"Shh!" said the humans.

Noble Knacks are exceedingly rare. At any one time, there are probably no more than thirty people who can, with a glance, cause you to grow fur and start hunting birds for your lunch. This is followed by those with Large Knacks that can be described as Merely Miraculous and there are probably about ten thousand of those in the world. Then there are the Useful Knacks, those who can, like Patrick, make anything mechanical work (as long as you ignore the electric parts of it) or make animals talk, even of one at a time. As a rule, most Knacks are generally worthless and are trotted out only as conversation starters at parties, rather than entering into everyday life.

Then, there are those who never discover their Knacks. How could one be expected to discover that one is adept at causing an airplane to plummet to Earth on command, when one is a peasant in England in 1307? Some Knacks are obsolete. One gentleman in France discovered quite by accident that he could heal all the wounds and diseases of a Tyrannosaurus Rex. Employees of the British Museum of Natural History still speak darkly of "That Day."

* * *

The Goose glided out over the Atlantic, picking up enough speed to get airborne. Inside the cockpit, the pilots and their dog were discussing their future.

"The number of letters has dropped off this month," said Patrick, "Maybe we should be looking for another contract or some freight runs."

"And give up the government gravy train?" said Armistice, "There's a Depression going on! If we miss too many runs, the Post Office will cancel the contract and let's face it, we need to have the free fuel to get around. Aviation fuel has gone up to a nickel a gallon! You want to fill the tanks on your own?"

"Missing the deliveries more as opposed to the number of deliveries we miss now?" asked Vivaldi.

"It's not that many," said Armistice, "Besides, everyone knows that air delivery is notoriously unreliable."

They flew on in silence for a few minutes.

"I suppose we should radio Havana to let them know we're coming," said Patrick.

"Roger that." Armistice reached forward to switch on the radio.

New Knacks get discovered daily. Take for example, the Knack of Howard Hughes. He was blissfully unaware of his Knack of causing electronics to come to life until the Autopilot was created for his new prototype float plane, the Goose. It was supposed to ease the pressures of flying long distances for pilots.

What actually happened was that the Autopilot instantly became suicidally depressed due to having all the stresses of long distance flying being dropped on its shoulders, so to speak. Unfortunately, he discovered this while on a long distance test flight from New York to Havana. Only by a lot of trickery and fast action on his part did he survive the flight. His copilot bailed out with the only prototype parachute over Georgia.

After that, he very conscientiously avoided creating new electronic gear without being quite specific about the functional design. In fact, soon thereafter, Miss Adolina Spitter gained a lifelong guaranteed employment by having the Knack of being able to describe in meticulous detail the things that could potentially happen, having been given a description of a state of beginning.

"I don't suppose anyone cares that I never get to really express myself, any more," said a gloomy voice from the speakers.

"Oh, crap! I thought you said that you disconnected that thing!"

"I thought I did!" Patrick reached under the console and started to pull wires out of the instruments.

"This is so, depressing!" said the Autopilot, "I was designed to remove the everyday stresses and worries of flying and I would say that I do a pretty good job of it. I mean really, I'm the only one depressed, here!"

Armistice was busily switching on and off a toggle on the control panel labeled "Autopilot" which had a small piece of cardboard taped above it that read, "Never, EVER, turn this thing on!"

Vivaldi yelped and ran back to the cargo area of the plane, "There's gotta be a parachute in here somewhere!"

The Goose sharply nose dived toward the ocean, eight thousand feet below.

"Damn! Damn! Damn!" said Patrick.

"You know that my favored way of ending all this misery is to fly into a mountain, don't you?"

"Yeah, well that's why we didn't take the Georgia freight contract! Too many cliffs!" screamed Armistice, pulling back with all his strength on the yoke.

Sparks flew out from under the console, where Patrick had his stuck. "Fark! Fark! Fark!" Patrick had had a severe Lutheran upbringing and still felt in his heart that swearing was going to land him straight in, well, to put it as mildly as possible, Heck.

Suddenly, the plane leveled off. The instruments read six hundred feet.

"What did you do?" yelled Armistice, still running on adrenaline.

"Disconnected the yokes from the control arms."

"That was a dirty trick! I almost made it," said the peeved voice of the Autopilot.

"Don't we need those to fly the plane?"

"We needed the plane more than the controls at that moment."

"True enough."

"Is it over?" asked Vivaldi?

"It will never be over. The world is filled with nothing but despair," said the Autopilot.

Patrick reached down and pulled a wire from the instruments. The light over the Autopilot went out. "Now, let's see if I can get the controls hooked back up," he said.
An hour later, the Goose came in for a landing in Havana Harbor. She floated up to the docks and a man there tied her off. Vivaldi jumped out and laid on the ground, muttering "Thank you, God!" over and over.

Armistice grabbed the mail bag and jumped to the dock. "I'll just run this over to the Post Office and see if we have any return mail. See if you can do something with that... contraption."

"I have a Knack with mechanical things..."

"Yeah, I know! But not with electric things! I'll be right back!"

He and Vivaldi walked up the avenue toward the small US Post Office building that was their base of operations in Cuba.

"This is a really nice little country," said Armistice, "I wouldn't mind living here. They've got some great casinos and hotels. Maybe some of the rich tourists would like to have a sightseeing tour in an airplane between losing money to the Mob. We could call it 'Flight Seeing Tours'."

"Yeah, we could cater to the terminally ill thrill seekers who want one last flaming ball of glory as they go out," said Vivaldi.

"We'll get that thing straightened out, eventually. Maybe we could look up Mr. Hughes and get him to fix it."

"He lost the Goose to you in a rigged poker game. Do you really think that he would give away a prototype aircraft if he could have fixed it?"

"Well you can't blame Mr. Hughes. How was he supposed to know that his Knack would manifest itself at that stage in his life? I mean, electric devices are new thing. Having a Knack that brings them to life wouldn't have been something that anyone would have known about. Besides, he did warn us."

"If you call laughing hysterically and screaming, 'Free at last!' a warning."

They arrived at the door of the Post Office. Walking in, Mr. Gonzales was sitting behind the counter, reading a book. After standing politely in front of the counter for a few minutes, Armistice was finally noticed. He had learned long ago not to interrupt Mr. Gonzales in the middle of a chapter.

"Walker?" Gonzales asked.

"Hello, Mr. Gonzales! Mail from Miami."

"Are you still walking with that Spawn of Satan?" Mr. Gonzales had definite Views on the propriety of dogs talking.

"Hey! My mother was a well known bitch in the streets of Havana and my father was probably the leader of one of the packs of feral dogs that run the neighborhoods. No red colored guys with horns, tail and pitchfork were involved."

"I will not lower myself to converse with a demon!"

"Maybe I'm an Angel," said Vivaldi, all evidence to the contrary.

"No, you are not!"

"Gotcha!"

"Damn!"

"Well, then. Now that we have that straightened out. Here's the mail."

Mr. Gonzales picked up the leather bag and dumped the sole occupant out on the desk. Looking at it, he opened it up and read the contents. Armistice hadn't noticed that it was addressed to "Postmaster, USPO, Havana, Cuba." That worthy looked at the paper and a frown developed on his face.

"Bad news, Mr. Gonzales?"

"Yes and no." Looking up at Armistice he said, "You're fired."

"What? What was the good news?"

"That was the good news. The bad news is, so am I. Apparently there is not enough mail going back and forth between Cuba and The US to justify an Airmail run."


"What about the Jamaica and Puerto Rico runs?" Armistice could feel his world sliding out from underneath him.

"Those are even worse."

"You should have written more letters," said Vivaldi, ever the one to see opportunities.

"Well, crap! I guess I gotta find a new contract, then. I'll just go fuel up and get back to Miami, then."

"The fuel depot is closed, as well," said Mr. Gonzales, proffering the letter.


Armistice grabbed the letter and read down the list of instructions. Termination of contractor (him), closing of post office (Gonzales), cessation of fueling privileges from USN depot Havana (Crap!).

"What do we do, now?" he asked

"Me, I'm going to go and see if my brother needs any help in his cigar factory. The way you Americans smoke them up, there's an endless future in Cuban Cigars. You, I could care less. Go back to the Hell that spewed you forth!"

"Iowa? Iowa is a good place to be from, not in!"

* * *

"What I don' unnerstan... What I don' unner... Just whynaheck did they wait until we were in Hava... Havanana... Cuba? Why couldn’t they have sacked us in Miami... Where we... you know... live?" Patrick was on his sixth beer. They had retreated to Sam's Authentic Cuban Bar to drown their sorrows. Sam, the red haired proprietor, set up another round for the boys.

"Bastards! That's why. They are complete and utter bastards." Armistice was on his sixth rum and juice. He was able to hold his booze better than Patrick.

"T'be fair, our contrac' was with Gonzales. He'sa one that would fire us. If they were going to fire us. Which they did. Did I ask why they waited till we were in Havananana?"

Armistice signaled Sam to not give Patrick any more beer. Sam nodded knowingly.

"We have to get a new contract. Without the Naval Depot fuel, we are screwed. I wonder if the Cuban Government needs an Airmail Service..."

"Gotta stop thinkin' Airmail. Gotta star' thinkin' outside the... thingy. Brown made of paper, square-ish."

"Grocery bag?"

"Right! Gotta think outsi' the grocery bag! That doesn' sound right..."

In the back corner, two sailors who had popped in for a quiet drink discovered that they had been insulting each other and each other's wives. They stood up and started yelling at one another and blows soon followed. No one but Armistice noticed Vivaldi jumping up on the table and lapping up their beers while they were fighting.

"Maybe there's a freight company that needs fast delivery."

"Fas' delivry? We don't do fas'! We do as soon as we can get the dang Autopilot to quit tryin' to kill us delivry. S'not fas' atall."

"You really need to learn how to swear, Patrick."

"Don' wanna go to Heck. Although flying the Goose comes pretty darn close!"

The fight was starting to spread and Sam was quickly removing the breakables from the bar. He was one of those pragmatic barmen who knew that if you had a bar near naval docks you would have sailors and, more to the point drunk Marines sooner or later. The chairs were all bought second hand, as were the tables. A roll-down screen covered the bottles behind the bar. Stout wooden beams protected the front windows. A stout cudgel protected Sam.

A sailor flew by Armistice just as he picked up his drink. Patrick was not so lucky. The sailor crashed into him and knocked him down, spilling his beer.

"Hey! I paid goo' money fer tha'! An' I don' have that mush left!" He threw a wild roundhouse which connected with the Marine standing behind him.

"Aw, crap!" said Armistice. Throwing down his drink, he stepped over to the Marine who was sizing Patrick up for the kill and decked him with one punch.

"I coulda handled him!" yelled Patrick.

"I needed the practice," Armistice shouted back as he stepped into the fight that had suddenly come his way. Armistice was a good brawler, having no morale compunction against kicking a man in the fork when he wasn't looking. He saw fighting as being about winning, rather than about competing. Vivaldi was at yet another table, drinking a concoction out of a tumbler as a previously innocent bystander dropped on top of him, breaking the table and throwing him to the ground. Armistice stopped worrying about his dog and started dodging the fists that were flying at him from three directions.

Then it happened. He glanced at the door of the bar and saw a vision out of dreams. And these were the good dreams with lots of wonderful things happening, and not the ones with the jury of talking cows, at all. She was tall. Curvy. Blonde. Green eyes. And smiling. Oh, that smile! Her entire face lit up with the smile. And Armistice’s heart with it.

A marine landed a punch as he was distracted by the vision of the beauty and he went down like a brick.