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I directed corporate communications at Fortune 500 companies in New York for more than 30 years and contributed numerous articles to business-communication journals. Recent fiction credits include awards for short stories in Wordtrip.com’s contests (Winter 2006 and May 2005) and as a finalist in Lunch Hour Stories’ contest (August 2006), while Wild Child Publishing has carried two short stories (Sept. 2006 and Nov. 2005). Articles and commentary have appeared in The Copperfield Review (Jan. 2005); Military History Online (Sept. 2006, Jan. 2005 and May 2004), Good Old Days magazine (Oct. 2004), and a guest feature in Whim’s Place (July 1, 2004).

Fifty Ways To Leave Your Lover by Walter Giersbach

Lorraine Vanderzanden had the thankless task being chief of police of Lindstrom. Her husband didn't appreciate the risk she took of maybe never coming home. Her brother didn't thank her for using her degree from Iowa State for something useful instead of helping him on the family farm. Heck, she thought, cutting the siren and cruising to a stop on County Road 404, half of the townspeople got nervous around her and the rest sucked up to her authority. Campaigning for police chief had been her civic duty, but no appreciation came her way for winning the position.

The 911 call had been forwarded to her prowler while she was investigating some truant kids selling crystal meth. False alarm there, but this looked like a live one. Man dead. Found lying in his front yard. It was the McCrackens' yellow house. Alex and June, a young couple, had lived there for a number of years. She'd visited them before when the neighbors called to complain.

A small group of those neighbors stood aside respectfully now to let her through. A heavy-set man she knew as Carl pointed to Alex McCracken's body lying supine in a flower bed. It almost looked as if Carl was showing off a heifer at the county fair.

"What d'ya think, Chief?" Able Henry asked, walking up to her. Able was a veterinarian and knew pretty much everyone in a fifty-mile radius. What was Able doing in this neck of the woods, Lorraine wondered.

"You tell me, Able. I just got here."

"He looks dead to me. Like he had a heart attack in the petunia bed, but that's just my personal opinion. I ain't examined him."

"Looks pretty dead," she answered. "How'd it happen?"

Able pointed to June McCracken. "Ask Junie. She might know. I was passing by and saw the people standin' here."

"Junie?" Lorraine called. "C'mon over here."

A thin, ashen-faced woman in her twenties sidled up. There were no tears on her face, Lorraine noted, filing the fact away the way her deputy would have done if he had been there. Junie was wearing bluejeans and an Iowa Huskies tee-shirt.. Huskies weren't doing so good this year, Lorraine thought.

"Want to tell me what happened?"

"Alex was drinkin'. In the front yard. He beat on me again, just like the last time I called the cops. And the time before. Then he started drinkin' on the back porch."

"I remember all your calls of domestic violence, but I don't see any blood on you. Where'd he beat you?"

"He whacked me good in the ribs a few times. I bought him a bottle of Jim Beam at the IGA thinking it'd be a peace offering. Seemed to work."

Junie wasn't showing a great deal of wifely remorse, Lorraine thought. She was looking at her late husband as if he was a lawn ornament from the nursery store on Highway 6.

"So you gave him a bottle of whiskey. Then what happened?"

"Waaaal…" Junie drew that one out, as if she was set to tell a complicated, highly emotional story and needed to marshal the facts so they could march out in proper order. "We was settin' on the back porch and was pret' near finished with the bottle when he saw the gopher. I had a little bit, you see. Just a little." She held finger and thumb half an inch apart. "I told Alex I'd git him his gun. He hates gophers somethin' awful."

"But you both were drinking on the back porch and Alex is pitched out here in the front yard." She hoped Junie would get to the point.

"Yeah," she said, and went on with her platoon of thoughts. "I got his Smith & Wesson and a handful of shells. The gopher wandered into that there drainage pipe. Well, Alex fired a bunch of shells into the pipe, but he missed. He was pretty drunk and went to take a look. Seems he heard the gopher in there so he says to me to get a flashlight."

"Which you did," Lorraine offered. Able looked solicitous and the neighbors stood in a semi-circle a decent distance away.

"Nawp. Batteries was dead, and Alex said, ‘Well, I can't see the damned gopher in there,' so I says, ‘I'll git you some gas and you can burn him out'."

"Gasoline, Junie?"

"He keeps it in the shed. I fetched him a coffee can full and he poured it all in the pipe and then threw a match in, but the stuff didn't go off. So, I said, ‘Whyncha go further in,' and he did."

"Junie, that doesn't sound too smart," Able said. "Man could get hurt."

"Yeah." Lorraine saw a flicker of a smile, almost like a firefly glimpsed out of one eye before it was gone from Junie's face. "'Git me more gas,' he told me, so I fetched the whole can. He went down the pipe and I guess he poured it all in the hole."

"And lit it?" Lorraine offered.

"Guess so. I seen his butt sticking out a little way and then there was a whoosh and Alex came shooting out of that pipe like a rocket. He flew all the way over the house. Almost hit the TV antenna. Sure sounded funny as he passed overhead. Like a jet plane."

"Well, Junie, that is some story. And what exact time did this happen?"

"'Bout an hour ago."

"Junie, it's 5:30 p.m. now. You waited at least half an hour to report it to the police?"

"I was pretty shook up. I had to sit down for a while and catch my breath. Had a shot of the Jim Beam to quieten my nerves. So, is that all?" She looked once at her husband and then her gaze floated up to watch the setting sun. She shrugged once and turned to walk away.

Able scratched his head. "Damned if that isn't the craziest accident I ever heard."

"Naw, it was murder," Lorraine said, not caring who heard. The neighbors stood like an audience for a very small theater program at the town band shell. "Guess you gotta be a woman to understand. Junie managed to get Alex to kill himself. That means he won't beat on her anymore. And with him dead she gets the house and the pickup."

"Murder?" Able said. "That does seem an odd one. Aren't you gonna take her in and book her?"

"For what? Eliminating Alex's DNA from the gene pool?" Lorraine asked. "See, Alex wanted the gopher, and the gun and the gas, and he lit the matches. He was a knucklehead and Junie just gave him the things he wanted. No crime in that, I guess."

"But, how'd you call it murder?"

"I saw Junie in town last week. She was singin' that song, Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover. Remember it a few years back? Well, Junie found the fifty-first. Death by human cannonball."

THE END