The Short Stories of Charles Langley Charles Langley is an 82 (almost 83) year old retiree who returned to writing about ten months ago after a fifty-nine year hiatus.
Since then he has written over sixty short stories for E-zines and print magazines, a column "A Writer's Life" for a writer's magazine. and numerous humorous and reflective pieces.
In his youth he was a reporter and columnist for several newspapers and was assistant to the editor of "Furniture South" magazine. He covered the Hauptmann trial in Secretary for the IBEW. He retired as a Staff Officer from a military intelligence unit in the Army of the United States and as head of Statistical Quality Control for a subsidiary of AT&T. He has contributed to books of poetry and will have his story "The One For The Job" published in a collection of short stories in 2001.
Charles Langley moved to cold Rochester, NY, from sunny California two years ago to be near his three granddaughters. His hobbies are writing ( of course), reading, and working the stock market. He recently completed a story about a murder that took place 72 years ago where much of the dialogue is the actual words of the suspect, done from memory.
Little Joe
.....by Charles Langley
His name was Joseph Little, but the cowpokes with their strange sense of humor always called him Little Joe. He had been wrangler on the Seven D spread for nigh unto ten years, starting when he first got out of the State Penitentiary. Standing five foot nine in his size 12 boots and carrying 180 pounds of fat-free muscle he was hardly little in fact but in name he remained Little Joe.
Little Joe broke his mother's heart when he killed a man in a barroom gun brawl and was sent away. Bystanders said it was a fair fight, but how can a fight be fair when one man is a wealthy landowner and the other a penniless drifter? The landowner wound up in a marble mausoleum on cemetary hill and Little Joe was sent to a steel-barred mausoleum outside the state capitol.
Asked what he missed most during his imprisonment, Joe answered "The smell of sagebrush and the feel of a good mount under my saddle." Women, which most men would have missed most, had not yet become part of Joe's young life.
In his cell, Joe had learned to read and write and was proud that he could read a Young Wild West dime novel as well as any city slicker.
The burden that Little Joe carried was that he never returned home after his penitentiary stay. He felt his mother had never forgiven him. But he always planned to see her. So many times the cowpokes around him heard his plaint, "I'm going back to see my mother, when the work's all done this fall."
At summer's end when the chores of the season were all done, there was a period of a few weeks when the workload was light, before winter set in. This was when Little Joe planned his journey. But each year,summer chores lasted too long, or winter work came too early, or Joe had spent all his money on good liquor and bad poker hands, so the trip was postponed another year. Still he said, "I'm going back to see my mother, when the work's all done this fall."
Time for the trip was almost upon him again when the big storm hit. Every man on the ranch was called upon to herd the cattle the round-up had brought in and to turn the long-horns about and bring them into the waiting corrals. Little Joe was doing his part when his mount put a leg into a prairie dog hole and fell, crushing Little Joe beneath him. Joe lived long enough to whisper, "Guess I won't see my mother, when the work's all done this fall."
They put Joe away in a grave on Boot Hill, surrounded by gunfighters and drifters and cowboys without family ties.
It was two weeks later when a letter came addressed to Joseph Little. There was a thin band of black around the edges. It said that Joseph Little's mother had passed from this mortal coil on the very day Little Joe died.
Texas Jack Williams put it this way, "Guess he just might see his mother after all, when the work's all done this fall."
Double Take
.....by Charles Langley
The cashier glanced over at the customer in the corner booth. Something about the man seemed vaguely familiar, but he couldn't place him. Even when the man rose, straightened his jacket, and started toward the register his name didn't come to mind. At the register he reached for his hip pocket and a look of consternation spread over his distinguished visage.
"I'm terribly afraid I have a problem" he said. "I seem to have lost my wallet. It was probably the inebriated person who bumped against me after I paid off the taxi."
The cashier waited, not speaking.
"You probably don't recognize me. Most people remember the characters I play but pay no attention to my own face. I'm Alec Guiness, you know. I have a meeting with my producer in half an hour at the Bijou. And I'm completely stranded."
The cashier still said nothing.
"If you could let me have a tenner for a cab, I'll get money from the producer and stop on my way back to the hotel and return it to you. If you like, I'll bring an autographed photograph for you, as well."
The cashier was softening, until he saw a man at a window table gesticulating wildly to a uniformed police officer outside. The cop entered, spoke briefly to the man who had summonsed him, then approached the purported Alec Guinness.
"You promised me the last time you would give up this scam," he said to the man. "Now I'm going to have to book you."
"Sorry about this," he told the cashier. "I'm just going to have to teach him a lesson." He led the scam artist out the door.
Outside, a police car pulled up to the curb. The two who had just left the restaurant quickened their pace and disappeared around the corner.
"How did you know he wasn't Alec Guinness?" the cashier asked the man from the window table.
"That's simple" was the reply. "I'm Alec Guinness. And the coincidence is positively shattering. I seem to have left my wallet back at my hotel. Could you lend me tenner for a cab? I'll have it back to you in less than an hour."
"You must think I was born yesterday," the cashier roared. "Get the hell out of here and don't ever show your face again."
The man left, embarrassed and apparently sorry.
The cashier was satisfied with himself. He had outwitted not one, but two con men. And one was on his way to jail.Then he scanned the room and saw two just vacated tables, each with an unpaid check on it. His face fell.
Around the corner, three men were in heated discussion.
"I say we try O'Houlihans bar," the one in the police uniform said, "The help is all new there and no-one will know us."
"The hell with that," the first Alec Guiness said. "I've had two full course meals today and eating makes me sleepy. I'm heading back to the trailer to get some sleep."
"I don't miss the theatre a bit," the second Alec Guiness offered. "I didn't eat nearly as well when I was on the stage."