Hispanic Women Essay - 601 Words

I was once told I had the world in my hands by my vice principal. The reason for his statement was because I was a Hispanic young woman with above average grades, and my involvement in extracurricular activities. Why was being a Hispanic young woman so much more special? This is where the harsh reality set in; Hispanic women have the tendency to not achieve their goals. Unfortunately, when you evaluate Hispanic women most likely they did not go to college, or even graduate high school. There may be many factors that determine their circumstance. For instance, they get pregnant and drop out. There may be a lack of motivation to go to school. They might get married at an early age. Even the nature of the culture may play a role, like†¦show more content†¦What does this say about Hispanics? What kind of destiny do we face in the future? Clearly we aren’t going towards a very bright one. Why would these girls want this kind of future for themselves? Where they go off a t a young age, with no education, get pregnant, and become a housewife for the rest of their lives. I have the most adorable little nephew ever. He is just like his father; my brother. Several years ago, my brother was always determined to create this great future for himself. He wanted to go to college and major in music, his passion. Until, in the tenth grade he met this girl, she was an eighth grader. They began dating and it became serious. Everything fell apart when she found out she was pregnant. Consequently, they both decided they had to drop out of school. He did not get to accomplish any of his dreams, and worst of all she didn’t even get to enter high school. Now, here they are five years later, struggling because two working parents without an education is not enough anymore. This has not been the only time this has happened in my family. I could name many of my cousins that have not completed their education. Even plenty of aunts and generations before have been through the same situation. Out of my whole family about five have gone to college, but none have ever completed. If given the opportunity I will be the first one to achieve going to college, and fulfilling my dreams. What my viceShow MoreRelatedWomen During The Hispanic Culture Essay995 Words   |  4 PagesWomen in the Hispanic culture grow up with strong ties to their values, norms and how they were raised by their families. Parents instill a â€Å"machismo† and familism ideology into the upbringing of these women (Fuchsel, 2012). â€Å"Machismo† is a term to describe what is acceptable and expected of men (Fuschel,2012). Familism is, â€Å"the subordination of the personal interests and prerogatives of an individual to the values and demands of the family† (dictionary.com). An example of â€Å"machismo† is that it isRead MoreLegal And Social Justice For Hispanics And Women1635 Words   |  7 Pagesand Women America is most known for its diversity, with immigrants from almost everywhere on Earth. The American Dream has lured many minorities to the land of the free and home of the brave, in search of opportunity. Though the U.S. is known for its â€Å"American Dream,† America does not have equal opportunity for all of its people. Women and Latinos, specifically, have been denied social and legal equality, with both movements starting in the 1960`s. Latinos had the Chicano movement while women hadRead MoreUS Hispanic Women and Fertility Rates1844 Words   |  7 Pages Of all the racial groups in the U.S., Hispanic women have the greatest fertility rate. The health care system in the U.S. is used less than its full capacity by Hispanic women, especially after recent migration to the U.S. Among recent immigrants, protective factors such as traditions, health values and behaviors are shown to guard and strengthen health. Safeguards to health deteriorate sharply as they acculturate to U.S. society ((Sanchez-Birkhead, 2010). Acculturation is the extent to whichRead MoreDevelopmental Trajectory And Impact On Hispanic Women851 Words   |  4 PagesDevelopmental trajectory and impact Hispanic women who are able to escape their perpetrator may be faced with barriers that impact their ability to rise above a lower socioeconomic status. Community resources may provide some aid but are not suffice to sustain a family with a single parent. Hispanic women who are entrapped in an abusive relationship may feel financially obligated to remain with their perpetrator. Some barriers identified by Shah and Shah (2010) include low educational attainmentRead MoreEssay on Stereotypes of Hispanic Women in Cinema2507 Words   |  11 Pages The Latina women, even throughout the era resistance cinema, have not been able to make much progress in overcoming the degrading stereotypes that Hollywood has created for them. Despite the many advances that minorities have made in the cinema in recent years, Latina actresses still take on the roles of the dark skinned lady and other such stereotypes with strong sexual connotations. It is often debatable whether or not the role of the Latina has undergone dramatic changes since the daysRead MoreThe Effects Of Violence On Hispanic Women Essay1407 Words   |  6 PagesThe topic that will be analyzed in this literature review is relationship violence in Hispanics. Specifically, it will be physical and sexual abuse in intimate partners. It is mentioned that Hispanic women are less likely to report or use services available to anybody. The services that are available to them are healthcare and housing. As well as, therapy of any type. Also, Hispanic women are less likely to report abuse (Cho 2012). The reasons for not reporting abuse can vary depending on the legalRead MoreAfrican American And Hispanic Women893 Words   |  4 Pageseven free recreation centers to participate even if the desire was there. A prevalent argument that both African American and Hispanic women use as to their inability to obtain a healthy exercise routine is that the additional money needed to provide for childcare while exercising d oes not suffice a cost to benefit (Reichert et al., 2007). A study done in regards to the Hispanic population found that in the case of parents, money would be spent on a child’s participation in sports or exercise beforeRead MoreThe Changing Roles Of Men And Women In Hispanic Cultures1014 Words   |  5 PagesMen and women are treated very differently in other parts of the world; especially in a Hispanic household. In many Hispanic households, females and males are treated very differently, not only in this generation but in the previous generations. Each gender has their own role in the household, but each role that the male or female have are very dissimilar in their own ways. The roles that these people have are unfair and they are not equal. This situation has gotten better over the years, but itRead MoreCervical Cancer in Hispanic or Latina Women Essays2340 Words   |  10 PagesCERVICAL CANCER Cervical Cancer and Hispanic/Latina Women Melissa Gavidia ITRODUCTION: Cervical cancer is when there are malignant cells present in the cervix; it is developed in the lining of the cervix. A cervix is a narrow opening located at the bottom of the uterus that leads into the vagina. Cervical cancer mostly affects women between the ages of 40 and 55. This cancer can be prevented by screening for precancerous cellsRead MoreSong of the Hummingbird1325 Words   |  6 Pagesabout the terrain and location of the various cities he traveled to through the duration of his childhood. Although this story is designed to portray the early life of Ernesto Galarza, it also does a tremendous job of capturing the essence of Hispanic culture during his time. Galarza is quite vivid and detailed when describing his hometown of Jalco and its inhabitants. This assisted in conveying some strong imagery of the small town. For example, Galarza elaborates in great detail about

Bill Gates - 2333 Words

Bill Gates is known as one of the richest entrepreneurs in the world. He is responsible for creating the largest computer and technology business in the world, Microsoft. In the companys early days, no one would have thought that it would change both America and the world from that point on. Gates and his company have created both computers and software that has revolutionized everything in America and the world. What is more amazing is the company continues to grow and revolutionize the ways in which Americans live out their lives. Most importantly, Gates makes people comfortable with his software by making it operate easier and more enjoyable. Bill Gates is living the American dream. When Gates first created Microsoft, selling†¦show more content†¦When the Internet was first introduced, it was strictly meant for the use of the Federal Bureau of Investigations (F.B.I) for means of communication over long distances, and a faster form of sending and receiving documents. When the Internet finally went public, Gates created a computer interface that revolves completely around the Internet. Why did gates make this decision? Because he knew that in time the Internet was going to expand. Gates quotes, The Internet is the precursor of the ultimate global network. There is little doubt that when the goal interactive network has finally evolved into the highway, it will still be called the Internet. But as quaint as the term information highway is beginning to sound, using it appropriately helps to draw the distinction between todays primarily narrowband interactive network (the current Internet) and tomorrows broadband interactive network (the highway). (The Roa d Ahead, Pg 103) Gates knew that just like the highway system in America, the Internet would grow in a way that would connect everyone. The highway system is a series of roads that intersect with each other throughout the United States, creating a traveling system that is limitless. The Internet works in the same way, computers are now connected though either telephone or cable lines which allow them to access information from each other. This simple idea hasShow MoreRelatedBill Gates1393 Words   |  6 PagesBill Gates and His Computer Empire Just past 9 PM on October 28, 1955, the man who would revolutionize the computer industry as we know it, was born. The son of Bill Jr. and Mary Gates was named William Henry Gates III. The computer super-genius was soon to take his place in history. Within the last fifteen years the company that he and Paul Allan started, Microsoft, has become the largest software corporation in the computer industry. What is Bill Gates background, and how did he preserve hisRead MoreBill Gates998 Words   |  4 PagesBill Gates When one thinks of computer software, one must think of Microsoft. In fact if you use a computer, chances are that you will have some type of program on there that is developed by Microsoft. The CEO, chairman, cofounder, and owner of 147 billion shares of Microsoft is Bill Gates. William Henry Gates III was born in the midst of a scenic Seattle on Thursday, October 28, 1995 to his parents Mary and William Henry Gates Jr. His childhood was uneventful and was well raised. He wentRead MoreBill Gates : A Leader1284 Words   |  6 PagesLeadership Identify a leader and justify why you selected that particular leader Bill Gates Not everyone is a leader or even want the attention or time it takes to be a leader. Leaders must be available for everyone that means sharing who they are with the world. This leader took his business and made a name for himself. Leaders are fantastic speakers, yet talking honorably isn t excessively required of a leader. As we all in all know, there are many people who talk and are overwhelming. ThisRead More BILL GATES Essay1224 Words   |  5 Pages Microsoft’s Bill Gates, though a transactional leader, he is by far a charismatic leader. He really fits the mold of a computer â€Å"geek†. He motivates his employees because his personality fits theirs. Thus, as a champion in the computer industry, he is the champion of the computer geeks. The more his company grows and wins in the marketplace, the harder people work for him. He continues to have good vision, vision that gets good results. Good vision, good workers and a good history of success willRead More Bill Gate s Essay1359 Words   |  6 PagesBill Gates William Henry Gates, III was born October 28, 1955 in Seattle, Washington. He was the middle child of three born to William and Mary Gates. ATrey,@ as he was called because of the III, was sent to a private school by his father, a lawyer, and mother, a former teacher now on several prestigous boards (Moritz, 238). At age 13, Bill had completely taught himself programming after taking a computer studies class. After scoring a perfect 800 on the mathematics half of the SAT, he graduatedRead More Bill Gates Essay627 Words   |  3 Pages Bill Gates William H. Gates Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Microsoft Corporation William (Bill) H. Gates is chairman and chief executive officer of Microsoft Corporation, the leading provider, worldwide, of software for the personal computer. and employs more than 20,000 people in 48 countries. Born on October 28, 1955, Gates and his two sisters grew up in Seattle. Their father, William H. Gates II, is a Seattle attorney. Their late mother, Mary Gates, was a schoolteacher, University of WashingtonRead MoreEssay On Bill Gates1756 Words   |  8 Pagesknown as Bill Gates but was born as William Henry Gates III on October 28 1955 to Mr William Henry Gates II and Mrs. Mary Maxwell Gates (Becraft, 2014. p. 1-5). Mr William Henry Gates Sr. was somewhat a shy fellow but very athletic, outgoing student and actively involved at the University of Washington where he was a law student. Mrs. Mary Maxwell Gates had a very close relationship with her children, although she was a devoted teacher, she l ater gave that up to help in raising the children. Bill closenessRead MoreThe Legacy Of Bill Gates1304 Words   |  6 PagesHistory of Bill Gates Bill Gates made a lot of changes to the way the world operates through technology and made life at lot easier for other people around the world. Bill Gates (also known as William Henry III or Trey) is an American entrepreneur, business mogul, investor, philanthropist, and one of the most richest and influential people in the world. He was also known as the best businessman in the 20th century. In his years as a child, he had the attitude for math and science as well as showingRead MoreBill Gates Biography1171 Words   |  5 PagesBill Gates was born  October 28, 1955, in Seattle, Washington. He is famous for building through technological innovation, great business strategies and aggressive business tactics, the worlds largest software business, Microsoft. He is also well known for becoming the wealthiest person in the world in the process of building his company. Gates came from an upper middle-class family. His  family atmosphere was warm and close, and he and his two sisters were always encouraged to be competitive andRead MoreBill Gates : An Accomplishment1243 Words   |  5 Pagesdollars. Bill Gates became one of the most wealthy, successful men in the world through his determination, his outstanding ideas, and being an consistent entrepreneur. He developed those qualities from his childhood and background, his present projects, and future plans he has with his fortune. Bill Gates has become co-founder of microsoft and has built the largest privately owned foundation in the world. Not many people in this world can say that they have accomplished what Bill Gates has in 60

Bag of Bones CHAPTER TEN Free Essays

string(39) " need to tell me that,’ he said\." Around nine o’clock, a pickup came down the driveway and parked behind my Chevrolet. The truck was new a Dodge Ram so clean and chrome-shiny it looked as if the ten-day plates had just come off that morning but it was the same shade of off-white as the last one and the sign on the driver’s door was the one I remembered: WILLIAM ‘BILL’ DEAN CAMP CHECKING CARETAKING LIGHT CARPENTRY, plus his telephone number. I went out on the back stoop to meet him, coffee cup in my hand. We will write a custom essay sample on Bag of Bones CHAPTER TEN or any similar topic only for you Order Now ‘Mike!’ Bill cried, climbing down from behind the wheel. Yankee men don’t hug that’s a truism you can put right up there with tough guys don’t dance and real men don’t eat quiche but Bill pumped my hand almost hard enough to slop coffee from a cup that was three-quarters empty, and gave me a hearty clap on the back. His grin revealed a splendidly blatant set of false teeth the kind which used to be called Roebuckers, because you got them from the catalogue. It occurred to me in passing that my ancient interlocutor from the Lakeview General Store could have used a pair. It certainly would have improved mealtimes for the nosy old fuck. ‘Mike, you’re a sight for sore eyes!’ ‘Good to see you, too,’ I said, grinning. Nor was it a false grin; I felt all right. Things with the power to scare the living shit out of you on a thundery midnight in most cases seem only interesting in the bright light of a summer morning. ‘You’re looking well, my friend.’ It was true. Bill was four years older and a little grayer around the edges, but otherwise the same. Sixty-five? Seventy? It didn’t matter. There was no waxy look of ill health about him, and none of the falling-away in the face, principally around the eyes and in the cheeks, that I associate with encroaching infirmity. ‘So’re you,’ he said, letting go of my hand. ‘We was all so sorry about Jo, Mike. Folks in town thought the world of her. It was a shock, with her so young. My wife asked if I’d give you her condolences special. Jo made her an afghan the year she had the pneumonia, and Yvette ain’t never forgot it.’ ‘Thanks,’ I said, and my voice wasn’t quite my own for a moment or two. It seemed that on the TR my wife was hardly dead at all. ‘And thank Yvette, too.’ ‘Yuh. Everythin okay with the house? Other’n the air conditioner, I mean. Buggardly thing! Them at the Western Auto promised me that part last week, and now they’re saying maybe not until August first.’ ‘It’s okay. I’ve got my Powerbook. If I want to use it, the kitchen table will do fine for a desk.’ And I would want to use it so many crosswords, so little time. ‘Got your hot water okay?’ ‘All that’s fine, but there is one problem.’ I stopped. How did you tell your caretaker you thought your house was haunted? Probably there was no good way; probably the best thing to do was to go at it head-on. I had questions, but I didn’t want just to nibble around the edges of the subject and be coy. For one thing, Bill would sense it. He might have bought his false teeth out of a catalogue, but he wasn’t stupid. ‘What’s on your mind, Mike? Shoot.’ ‘I don’t know how you’re going to take this, but ‘ He smiled in the way of a man who suddenly understands and held up his hand. ‘Guess maybe I know already.’ ‘You do?’ I felt an enormous sense of relief and I could hardly wait to find out what he had experienced in Sara, perhaps while checking for dead lightbulbs or making sure the roof was holding the snow all right. ‘What did you hear?’ ‘Mostly what Royce Merrill and Dickie Brooks have been telling,’ he said. ‘Beyond that, I don’t know much. Me and mother’s been in Virginia, remember. Only got back last night around eight o’clock. Still, it’s the big topic down to the store.’ For a moment I remained so fixed on Sara Laughs that I had no idea what he was talking about. All I could think was that folks were gossiping about the strange noises in my house. Then the name Royce Merrill clicked and everything else clicked with it. Merrill was the elderly possum with the gold-headed cane and the salacious wink. Old Four-Teeth. My caretaker wasn’t talking about ghostly noises; he was talking about Mattie Devore. ‘Let’s get you a cup of coffee,’ I said. ‘I need you to tell me what I’m stepping in here.’ When we were seated on the deck, me with fresh coffee and Bill with a cup of tea (‘Coffee burns me at both ends these days,’ he said), I asked him first to tell me the Royce Merrill-Dickie Brooks version of my encounter with Mattie and Kyra. It turned out to be better than I had expected. Both old men had seen me standing at the side of the road with the little girl in my arms, and they had observed my Chevy parked halfway into the ditch with the driver’s-side door open, but apparently neither of them had seen Kyra using the white line of Route 68 as a tightrope. As if to compensate for this, however, Royce claimed that Mattie had given me a big my hero hug and a kiss on the mouth. ‘Did he get the part about how I grabbed her by the ass and slipped her some tongue?’ I asked. Bill grinned. ‘Royce’s imagination ain’t stretched that far since he was fifty or so, and that was forty or more year ago.’ ‘I never touched her.’ Well . . . there had been that moment when the back of my hand went sliding along the curve of her breast, but that had been inadvertent, whatever the young lady herself might think about it. ‘Shite, you don’t need to tell me that,’ he said. You read "Bag of Bones CHAPTER TEN" in category "Essay examples" ‘But . . . ‘ He said that but the way my mother always had, letting it trail off on its own, like the tail of some ill-omened kite. ‘But what?’ ‘You’d do well to keep your distance from her,’ he said. ‘She’s nice enough almost a town girl, don’t you know but she’s trouble.’ He paused. ‘No, that ain’t quite fair to her. She’s in trouble.’ ‘The old man wants custody of the baby, doesn’t he?’ Bill set his teacup down on the deck rail and looked at me with his eyebrows raised. Reflections from the lake ran up his cheek in ripples, giving him an exotic look. ‘How’d you know?’ ‘Guesswork, but of the educated variety. Her father-in-law called me Saturday night during the fireworks. And while he never came right out and stated his purpose, I doubt if Max Devore came all the way back to TR-90 in western Maine to repo his daughter-in-law’s Jeep and trailer. So what’s the story, Bill?’ For several moments he only looked at me. It was almost the look of a man who knows you have contracted a serious disease and isn’t sure how much he ought to tell you. Being looked at that way made me profoundly uneasy. It also made me feel that I might be putting Bill Dean on the spot. Devore had roots here, after all. And, as much as Bill might like me, I didn’t. Jo and I were from away. It could have been worse it could have been Massachusetts or New York but Derry, although in Maine, was still away. ‘Bill? I could use a little navigational help if you ‘ ‘You want to stay out of his way,’ he said. His easy smile was gone. ‘The man’s mad.’ For a moment I thought Bill only meant Devore was pissed off at me, and then I took another look at his face. No, I decided, he didn’t mean pissed off; he had used the word ‘mad’ in the most literal way. ‘Mad how?’ I asked. ‘Mad like Charles Manson? Like Hannibal Lecter? How?’ ‘Say like Howard Hughes,’ he said. ‘Ever read any of the stories about him? The lengths he’d go to to get the things he wanted? It didn’t matter if it was a special kind of hot dog they only sold in L.A. or an airplane designer he wanted to steal from Lockheed or Mcdonnell-Douglas, he had to have what he wanted, and he wouldn’t rest until it was under his hand. Devore is the same way. He always was even as a boy he was willful, according to the stories you hear in town. ‘My own dad had one he used to tell. He said little Max Devore broke into Scant Larribee’s tack-shed one winter because he wanted the Flexible Flyer Scant give his boy Scooter for Christmas. Back around 1923, this would have been. Devore cut both his hands on broken glass, Dad said, but he got the sled. They found him near midnight, sliding down Sugar Maple Hill, holding his hands up to his chest when he went down. He’d bled all over his mittens and his snowsuit. There’s other stories you’ll hear about Maxie Devore as a kid if you ask you’ll hear fifty different ones and some may even be true. That one about the sled is true, though. I’d bet the farm on it. Because my father didn’t lie. It was against his religion.’ ‘Baptist?’ ‘Nosir, Yankee.’ ‘1923 was many moons ago, Bill. Sometimes people change.’ ‘Ayuh, but mostly they don’t. I haven’t seen Devore since he come back and moved into Warrington’s, so I can’t say for sure, but I’ve heard things that make me think that if he has changed, it’s for the worse. He didn’t come all the way across the country ’cause he wanted a vacation. He wants the kid. To him she’s just another version of Scooter Larribee’s Flexible Flyer. And my strong advice to you is that you don’t want to be the window-glass between him and her.’ I sipped my coffee and looked out at the lake. Bill gave me time to think, scraping one of his workboots across a splatter of birdshit on the boards while I did it. Crowshit, I reckoned; only crows crap in such long and exuberant splatters. One thing seemed absolutely sure: Mattie Devore was roughly nine miles up Shit Creek with no paddle. I’m not the cynic I was at twenty is anyone? but I wasn’t naive enough or idealistic enough to believe the law would protect Ms. Doublewide against Mr. Computer . . . not if Mr. Computer decided to play dirty. As a boy he’d taken the sled he wanted and gone sliding by himself at midnight, bleeding hands not a concern. And as a man? An old man who had been getting every sled he wanted for the last forty years or so? ‘What’s the story with Mattie, Bill? Tell me.’ It didn’t take him long. Country stories are, by and large, simple stories. Which isn’t to say they’re not often interesting. Mattie Devore had started life as Mattie Stanchfield, not quite from the TR but from just over the line in Motton. Her father had been a logger, her mother a home beautician (which made it, in a ghastly way, the perfect country marriage). There were three kids. When Dave Stanch-field missed a curve over in Lovell and drove a fully loaded pulptruck into Kewadin Pond, his widow ‘kinda lost heart,’ as they say. She died soon after. There had been no insurance, other than what Stanchfield had been obliged to carry on his Jimmy and his skidder. Talk about your Brothers Grimm, huh? Subtract the Fisher-Price toys behind the house, the two pole hairdryers in the basement beauty salon, the old rustbucket Toyota in the driveway, and you were right there: Once upon a time there lived a poor widow and her three children. Mattie is the princess of the piece poor but beautiful (that she was beautiful I could personally testify). Now enter the prince. In this case he’s a gangly stuttering redhead named Lance Devore. The child of Max Devore’s sunset years. When Lance met Mattie, he was twenty-one. She had just turned seventeen. The meeting took place at Warrington’s, where Mattie had landed a summer job as a waitress. Lance Devore was staying across the lake on the Upper Bay, but on Tuesday nights there were pickup softball games at Warrington’s, the townies against the summer folks, and he usually canoed across to play. Softball is a great thing for the Lance Devores of the world; when you’re standing at the plate with a bat in your hands, it doesn’t matter if you’re gangly. And it sure doesn’t matter if you stutter. ‘He confused em quite considerable over to Warrington’s,’ Bill said. ‘They didn’t know which team he belonged on the Locals or the Aways. Lance didn’t care; either side was fine with him. Some weeks he’d play for one, some weeks t’other. Either one was more than happy to have him, too, as he could hit a ton and field like an angel. They’d put him at first base a lot because he was tall, but he was really wasted there. At second or shortstop . . . my! He’d jump and twirl around like that guy Noriega.’ ‘You might mean Nureyev,’ I said. He shrugged. ‘Point is, he was somethin to see. And folks liked him. He fit in. It’s mostly young folks that play, you know, and to them it’s how you do, not who you are. Besides, a lot of em don’t know Max Devore from a hole in the ground.’ ‘Unless they read The Wall Street Journal and the computer magazines,† I said. ‘In those, you run across the name Devore about as often as you run across the name of God in the Bible.’ ‘No foolin?’ ‘Well, I guess that in the computer magazines God is more often spelled Gates, but you know what I mean.’ ‘I s’pose. But even so, it’s been sixty-five years since Max Devore spent any real time on the TR. You know what happened when he left, don’t you?’ ‘No, why would I?’ He looked at me, surprised. Then a kind of veil seemed to fall over his eyes. He blinked and it cleared. ‘Tell you another time it ain’t no secret but I need to be over to the Harrimans’ by eleven to check their sump-pump. Don’t want to get sidetracked. Point I was tryin to make is just this: Lance Devore was accepted as a nice young fella who could hit a softball three hundred and fifty feet into the trees if he struck it just right. There was no one old enough to hold his old man against him not at Warrington’s on Tuesday nights, there wasn’t and no one held it against him that his family had dough, either. Hell, there are lots of wealthy people here in the summer. You know that. None worth as much as Max Devore, but being rich is only a matter of degree.’ That wasn’t true, and I had just enough money to know it. Wealth is like the Richter scale-once you pass a certain point, the jumps from one level to the next aren’t double or triple but some amazing and ruinous multiple you don’t even want to think about. Fitzgerald had it straight, although I guess he didn’t believe his own insight: the very rich are different from you and me. I thought of telling Bill that, and decided to keep my mouth shut. He had a sump-pump to fix. Kyra’s parents met over a keg of beer stuck in a mudhole. Mattie was running the usual Tuesday-night keg out to the softball field from the main building on a handcart. She’d gotten it most of the way from the restaurant wing with no trouble, but there had been heavy rain earlier in the week, and the cart finally bogged down in a soft spot. Lance’s team was up, and Lance was sitting at the end of the bench, waiting his turn to hit. He saw the girl in the white shorts and blue Warrington’s polo shirt struggling with the bogged handcart, and got up to help her. Three weeks later they were inseparable and Mattie was pregnant; ten weeks later they were married; thirty-seven months later, Lance Devore was in a coffin, done with softball and cold beer on a summer evening, done with what he called ‘woodsing,’ done with fatherhood, done with love for the beautiful princess. Just another early finish, hold the happily-ever-after. Bill Dean didn’t describe their meeting in any detail; he only said, ‘They met at the field she was runnin out the beer and he helped her out of a boghole when she got her handcart stuck.’ Mattie never said much about that part of it, so I don’t know much. Except I do . . . and although some of the details might be wrong, I’d bet you a dollar to a hundred 1 got most of them right. That was my summer for knowing things I had no business knowing. It’s hot, for one thing ’94 is the hottest summer of the decade and July is the hottest month of the summer. President Clinton is being upstaged by Newt and the Republicans. Folks are saying old Slick Willie may not even run for a second term. Boris Yeltsin is reputed to be either dying of heart disease or in a dry-out clinic. The Red Sox are looking better than they have any right to. In Derry, Johanna Arlen Noonan is maybe starting to feel a little whoopsy in the morning. If so, she does not speak of it to her husband. I see Mattie in her blue polo shirt with her name sewn in white script above her left breast. Her white shorts make a pleasing contrast to her tanned legs. I also see her wearing a blue gimme cap with the red W for Warrington’s above the long bill. Her pretty dark-blonde hair is pulled through the hole at the back of the cap and falls to the collar of her shirt. I see her trying to yank the handcart out of the mud without upsetting the keg of beer. Her head is down; the shadow thrown by the bill of the cap obscures all of her face but her mouth and small set chin. ‘Luh-let m-me h-h-help,’ Lance says, and she looks up. The shadow cast by the cap’s bill falls away, he sees her big blue eyes the ones she’ll pass on to their daughter. One look into those eyes and the war is over without a single shot fired; he belongs to her as surely as any young man ever belonged to any young woman. The rest, as they say around here, was just courtin. The old man had three children, but Lance was the only one he seemed to care about. (‘Daughter’s crazier’n a shithouse mouse,’ Bill said matter-of-factly. ‘In some laughin academy in California. Think I heard she caught her a cancer, too.’) The fact that Lance had no interest in computers and software actually seemed to please his father. He had another son who was capable of running the business. In another way, however, Lance Devore’s older half-brother wasn’t capable at all: there would be no grandchildren from that one. ‘Rump-wrangler,’ Bill said. ‘Understand there’s a lot of that going around out there in California.’ There was a fair amount of it going around on the TR, too, I imagined, but thought it not my place to offer sexual instruction to my caretaker. Lance Devore had been attending Reed College in Oregon, majoring in forestry the kind of guy who falls in love with green flannel pants, red suspenders, and the sight of condors at dawn. A Brothers Grimm woodcutter, in fact, once you got past the academic jargon. In the summer between his junior and senior years, his father had summoned him to the family compound in Palm Springs, and had presented him with a boxy lawyer’s suitcase crammed with maps, aerial photos, and legal papers. These had little order that Lance could see, but I doubt that he cared. Imagine a comic-book collector given a crate crammed with rare old copies of Donald Duck. Imagine a movie collector given the rough cut of a never-released film starring Humphrey Bogart and Marilyn Monroe. Then imagine this avid young forester realizing that his father owned not just acres or square miles in the vast unincorporated forests of western Maine, but entire realms. Although Max Devore had left the TR in 1933, he’d kept a lively interest in the area where he’d grown up, subscribing to area newspapers and getting magazines such as Down East and the Maine Times. In the early eighties, he had begun to buy long columns of land just east of the Maine-New Hampshire border. God knew there had been plenty for sale; the paper companies which owned most of it had fallen into a recessionary pit, and many had become convinced that their New England holdings and operations would be the best place to begin retrenching. So this land, stolen from the Indians and clear-cut ruthlessly in the twenties and fifties, came into Max Devore’s hands. He might have bought it just because it was there, a good bargain he could afford to take advantage of. He might have bought it as a way of demonstrating to himself that he had really survived his childhood; had, in point of fact, triumphed over it. Or he might have bought it as a toy for his beloved younger son. In the years when Devore was making his major land purchases in western Maine, Lance would have been just a kid . . . but old enough for a perceptive father to see where his interests were tending. Devore asked Lance to spend the summer of 1994 surveying purchases which were, for the most part, already ten years old. He wanted the boy to put the paperwork in order, but he wanted more than that he wanted Lance to make sense of it. It wasn’t a land-use recommendation he was looking for, exactly, although I guess he would have listened if Lance had wanted to make one; he simply wanted a sense of what he had purchased. Would Lance take a summer in western Maine trying to find out what his sense of it was? At a salary of two or three thousand dollars a month? I imagine Lance’s reply was a more polite version of Buddy Jellison’s ‘Does a crow shit in the pine tops?’ The kid arrived in June of 1994 and set up shop in a tent on the far side of Dark Score Lake. He was due back at Reed in late August. Instead, though, he decided to take a year’s leave of absence. His father wasn’t pleased. His father smelled what he called ‘girl trouble.’ ‘Yeah, but it’s a damned long sniff from California to Maine,’ Bill Dean said, leaning against the driver’s door of his truck with his sunburned arms folded. ‘He had someone a lot closer than Palm Springs doin his sniffin for him.’ ‘What are you talking about?’ I asked. †Bout talk. People do it for free, and most are willing to do even more if they’re paid.’ ‘People like Royce Merrill?’ ‘Royce might be one,’ he agreed, ‘but he wouldn’t be the only one. Times around here don’t go between bad and good; if you’re a local, they mostly go between bad and worse. So when a guy like Max Devore sends a guy out with a supply of fifty- and hundred-dollar bills . . . ‘ ‘Was it someone local? A lawyer?’ Not a lawyer; a real-estate broker named Richard Osgood (‘a greasy kind of fella’ was Bill Dean’s judgment of him) who denned and did business in Motton. Eventually Osgood had hired a lawyer from Castle Rock. The greasy fella’s initial job, when the summer of ’94 ended and Lance Devore remained on the TR, was to find out what the hell was going on and put a stop to it. ‘And then?’ I asked. Bill glanced at his watch, glanced at the sky, then centered his gaze on me. He gave a funny little shrug, as if to say, ‘We’re both men of the world, in a quiet and settled sort of way you don’t need to ask a silly question like that.’ ‘Then Lance Devore and Mattie Stanchfield got married in the Grace Baptist Church right up there on Highway 68. There were tales made the rounds about what Osgood might’ve done to keep it from comin off I heard he even tried to bribe Reverend Gooch into refusin to hitch em, but I think that’s stupid, they just would have gone someplace else. ‘Sides, I don’t see much sense in repeating what I don’t know for sure.’ Bill unfolded an arm and began to tick items off on the leathery fingers of his right hand. ‘They got married in the middle of September, 1994, I know that.’ Out popped the thumb. ‘People looked around with some curiosity to see if the groom’s father would put in an appearance, but he never did.’ Out popped the forefinger. Added to the thumb, it made a pistol. ‘Mattie had a baby in April of ’95, making the kiddie a dight premature . . . but not enough to matter. I seen it in the store with my own eyes when it wasn’t a week old, and it was just the right size.’ Out with the second finger. ‘I don’t know that Lance Devore’s old man absolutely refused to help em financially, but I do know they were living in that trailer down below Dickie’s Garage, and that makes me think they were havin a pretty hard skate.’ ‘Devore put on the choke-chain,’ I said. ‘It’s what a guy used to getting his own way would do . . . but if he loved the boy the way you seem to think, he might have come around.’ ‘Maybe, maybe not.’ He glanced at his watch again. ‘Let me finish up quick and get out of your sunshine . . . but you ought to hear one more little story, because it really shows how the land lies. ‘In July of last year, less’n a month before he died, Lance Devore shows up at the post-office counter in the Lakeview General. He’s got a manila envelope he wants to send, but first he needs to show Carla DeCinces what’s inside. She said he was all fluffed out, like daddies sometimes get over their kids when they’re small.’ I nodded, amused at the idea of skinny, stuttery Lance Devore all fluffed out. But I could see it in my mind’s eye, and the image was also sort of sweet. ‘It was a studio pitcher they’d gotten taken over in the Rock. Showed the kid . . . what’s her name? Kayla?’ ‘Kyra.’ ‘Ayuh, they call em anything these days, don’t they? It showed Kyra sittin in a big leather chair, with a pair of joke spectacles on her little snub of a nose, lookin at one of the aerial photos of the woods over across the lake in TR-100 or TR-110 part of what the old man had picked up, anyway. Carla said the baby had a surprised look on her face, as if she hadn’t suspected there could be so much woods in the whole world. Said it was awful cunnin, she did.’ ‘Cunnin as a cat a-runnin,’ I murmured. ‘And the envelope Registered, Express Mail was addressed to Maxwell Devore, in Palm Springs, California.’ ‘Leading you to deduce that the old man either thawed enough to ask for a picture of his only grandchild, or that Lance Devore thought a picture might thaw him.’ Bill nodded, looking as pleased as a parent whose child has managed a difficult sum. ‘Don’t know if it did,’ he said. ‘Wasn’t enough time to tell, one way or the other. Lance had bought one of those little satellite dishes, like what you’ve got here. There was a bad storm the day he put it up hail, high wind, blowdowns along the lakeshore, lots of lightnin. That was along toward evening. Lance put his dish up in the afternoon, all done and safe, except around the time the storm commenced he remembered he’d left his socket wrench on the trailer roof. He went up to get it so it wouldn’t get all wet n rusty ‘ ‘He was struck by lightning? Jesus, Bill!’ ‘Lightnin struck, all right, but it hit across the way. You go past the place where Wasp Hill Road runs into 68 and you’ll see the stump of the tree that stroke knocked over. Lance was comin down the ladder with his socket wrench when it hit. If you’ve never had a lightnin bolt tear right over your head, you don’t know how scary it is it’s like havin a drunk driver veer across into your lane, headed right for you, and then swing back onto his own side just in time. Close lightnin makes your hair stand up makes your damned prick stand up. It’s apt to play the radio on your steel fillins, it makes your ears hum, and it makes the air taste roasted. Lance fell off the ladder. If he had time to think anything before he hit the ground, I bet he thought he was electrocuted. Poor boy. He loved the TR, but it wasn’t lucky for him.’ ‘Broke his neck?’ ‘Ayuh. With all the thunder, Mattie never heard him fall or yell or anything. She looked out a minute or two later when it started to hail and he still wasn’t in. And there he was, layin on the ground and lookin up into the friggin hail with his eyes open.’ Bill looked at his watch one final time, then swung open the door to his truck. ‘The old man wouldn’t come for their weddin, but he came for his son’s funeral and he’s been here ever since. He didn’t want nawthin to do with the young woman ‘ ‘But he wants the kid,’ I said. It was no more than what I already knew, but I felt a sinking in the pit of my stomach just the same. Don’t talk about this, Mattie had asked me on the morning of the Fourth. It’s not a good time for Ki and me. ‘How far along in the process has he gotten?’ ‘On the third turn and headin into the home stretch, I sh’d say. There’ll be a hearin in Castle County Superior Court, maybe later this month, maybe next. The judge could rule then to hand the girl over, or put it off until fall. I don’t think it matters which, because the one thing that’s never going to happen on God’s green earth is a rulin in favor of the mother. One way or another, that little girl is going to grow up in California.† Put that way, it gave me a very nasty little chill. Bill slid behind the wheel of his truck. ‘Stay out of it, Mike,’ he said. ‘Stay away from Mattie Devore and her daughter. And if you get called to court on account of seem the two of em on Saturday, smile a lot and say as little as you can.’ ‘Max Devore’s charging that she’s unfit to raise the child.’ ‘Ayuh.’ ‘Bill, I saw the child, and she’s fine.’ He grinned again, but this time there was no amusement in it. †Magine she is. But that’s not the point. Stay clear of their business, old boy. It’s my job to tell you that; with Jo gone, I guess I’m the only caretaker you got.’ He slammed the door of his Ram, started the engine, reached for the gearshift, then dropped his hand again as something else occurred to him. ‘If you get a chance, you ought to look for the owls.’ ‘What owls?’ ‘There’s a couple of plastic owls around here someplace. They might be in y’basement or out in Jo’s studio. They come in by mail-order the fall before she passed on.’ ‘The fall of 1993?’ ‘Ayuh.’ ‘That can’t be right.’ We hadn’t used Sara in the fall of 1993. †Tis, though. I was down here puttin on the storm doors when Jo showed up. We had us a natter, and then the UPS truck come. I lugged the box into the entry and had a coffee I was still drinkin it then while she took the owls out of the carton and showed em off to me. Gorry, but they looked real! She left not ten minutes after. It was like she’d come down to do that errand special, although why anyone’d drive all the way from Derry to take delivery of a couple of plastic owls I don’t know.’ ‘When in the fall was it, Bill? Do you remember?’ ‘Second week of November,’ he said promptly. ‘Me n the wife went up to Lewiston later that afternoon, to ‘Vette’s sister’s. It was her birthday. On our way back we stopped at the Castle Rock Agway so ‘Vette could get her Thanksgiving turkey.’ He looked at me curiously. ‘You really didn’t know about them owls?’ ‘No.’ ‘That’s a touch peculiar, wouldn’t you say?’ ‘Maybe she told me and I forgot,’ I said. ‘I guess it doesn’t matter much now in any case.’ Yet it seemed to matter. It was a small thing, but it seemed to matter. ‘Why would Jo want a couple of plastic owls to begin with?’ ‘To keep the crows from shittin up the woodwork, like they’re doing out on your deck. Crows see those plastic owls, they veer off.’ I burst out laughing in spite of my puzzlement . . . or perhaps because of it. ‘Yeah? That really works?’ ‘Ayuh, long’s you move em every now and then so the crows don’t get suspicious. Crows are just about the smartest birds going, you know. You look for those owls, save yourself a lot of mess.’ ‘I will,’ I said. Plastic owls to scare the crows away it was exactly the sort of knowledge Jo would come by (she was like a crow herself in that way, picking up glittery pieces of information that happened to catch her interest) and act upon without bothering to tell me. All at once I was lonely for her again missing her like hell. ‘Good. Some day when I’ve got more time, we’ll walk the place all the way around. Woods too, if you want. I think you’ll be satisfied.’ ‘I’m sure I will. Where’s Devore staying?’ The bushy eyebrows went up. ‘Warrington’s. Him and you’s practically neighbors. I thought you must know.’ I remembered the woman I’d seen black bathing-suit and black shorts somehow combining to give her an exotic cocktail-party look and nodded. ‘I met his wife.’ Bill laughed heartily enough at that to feel in need of his handkerchief. He fished it off the dashboard (a blue paisley thing the size of a football pennant) and wiped his eyes. ‘What’s so funny?’ I asked. ‘Skinny woman? White hair? Face sort of like a kid’s Halloween mask?’ It was my turn to laugh. ‘That’s her.’ ‘She ain’t his wife, she’s his whatdoyoucallit, personal assistant. Rogette Whitmore is her name.’ He pronounced it ro-GET, with a hard G. ‘Devore’s wives’re all dead. The last one twenty years.’ ‘What kind of name is Rogette? French?’ ‘California,’ he said, and shrugged as if that one word explained everything. ‘There’s people in town scared of her.’ ‘Is that so?’ ‘Ayuh.’ Bill hesitated, then added with one of those smiles we put on when we want others to know that we know we’re saying something silly: ‘Brenda Meserve says she’s a witch.’ ‘And the two of them have been staying at Warrington’s almost a year?’ ‘Ayuh. The Whitmore woman comes n goes, but mostly she’s been here. Thinkin in town is that they’ll stay until the custody case is finished off, then all go back to California on Devore’s private jet. Leave Osgood to sell Warrington’s, and ‘ ‘Sell it? What do you mean, sell it?’ ‘I thought you must know,’ Bill said, dropping his gearshift into drive. ‘When old Hugh Emerson told Devore they closed the lodge after Thanksgiving, Devore told him he had no intention of moving. Said he was comfortable right where he was and meant to stay put.’ ‘He bought the place.’ I had been by turns surprised, amused, and angered over the last twenty minutes, but never exactly dumbfounded. Now I was. ‘He bought Warrington’s Lodge so he wouldn’t have to move to Lookout Rock Hotel over in Castle View, or rent a house.’ ‘Ayuh, so he did. Nine buildins, includin the main lodge and The Sunset Bar; twelve acres of woods, a six-hole golf course, and five hundred feet of shorefront on The Street. Plus a two-lane bowlin alley and a softball field. Four and a quarter million. His friend Osgood did the deal and Devore paid with a personal check. I wonder how he found room for all those zeros. See you, Mike.’ With that he backed up the driveway, leaving me to stand on the stoop, looking after him with my mouth open. Plastic owls. Bill had told me roughly two dozen interesting things in between peeks at his watch, but the one which stayed on top of the pile was the fact (and I did accept it as a fact; he had been too positive for me not to) that Jo had come down here to take delivery on a couple of plastic goddam owls. Had she told me? She might have. I didn’t remember her doing so, and it seemed to me that I would have, but Jo used to claim that when I got in the zone it was no good to tell me anything; stuff went in one ear and out the other. Sometimes she’d pin little notes errands to run, calls to make to my shirt, as if I were a first-grader. But wouldn’t I recall if she’d said ‘I’m going down to Sara, hon, UPS is delivering something I want to receive personally, interested in keeping a lady company?’ Hell wouldn’t I have gone? I always liked an excuse to go to the TR. Except I’d been working on that screenplay . . . and maybe pushing it a little . . . notes pinned to the sleeve of my shirt . . . If you go out when you’re finished, we need milk and orange juice . . . I inspected what little was left of Jo’s vegetable garden with the July sun beating down on my neck and thought about owls, the plastic god-dam owls. Suppose Jo had told me she was coming down here to Sara Laughs? Suppose I had declined almost without hearing the offer because I was in the writing zone? Even if you granted those things, there was another question: why had she felt the need to come down here personally when she could have just called someone and asked them to meet the delivery truck? Kenny Auster would have been happy to do it, ditto Mrs. M. And Bill Dean, our caretaker, had actually been here. This led to other questions one was why she hadn’t just had UPS deliver the damned things to Derry and finally I decided I couldn’t live without actually seeing a bona fide plastic owl for myself. Maybe, I thought, going back to the house, I’d put one on the roof of my Chew when it was parked in the driveway. Forestall future bombing runs. I paused in the entry, struck by a sudden idea, and called Ward Hankins, the guy in Waterville who handles my taxes and my few non-writing-related business affairs. ‘Mike,’ he said heartily. ‘How’s the lake?’ ‘The lake’s cool and the weather’s hot, just the way we like it,’ I said. ‘Ward, you keep all the records we send you for five years, don’t you? Just in case IRS decides to give us some grief?’ ‘Five is accepted practice,’ he said, ‘but I hold your stuff for seven in the eyes of the tax boys, you’re a mighty fat pigeon.’ Better a fat pigeon than a plastic owl, I thought but didn’t say. What I said was ‘That includes desk calendars, right? Mine and. Jo’s, up until she died?’ ‘You bet. Since neither of you kept diaries, it was the best way to cross-reference receipts and claimed expenses with ‘ ‘Could you find Jo’s desk calendar for 1993 and see what she had going in the second week of November?’ ‘Td be happy to. What in particular are you looking for?’ For a moment I saw myself sitting at my kitchen table in Derry on my first night as a widower, holding up a box with the words Norco Home Pregnancy Test printed on the side. Exactly what was I looking for at this late date? Considering that I had loved the lady and she was almost four years in her grave, what was I looking for? Besides trouble, that was? ‘I’m looking for two plastic owls,’ I said. Ward probably thought I was talking to him, but I’m not sure I was. ‘I know that sounds weird, but it’s what I’m doing. Can you call me back?’ ‘Within the hour.’ ‘Good man,’ I said, and hung up. Now for the actual owls themselves. Where was the most likely spot to store two such interesting artifacts? My eyes went to the cellar door. Elementary, my dear Watson. The cellar stairs were dark and mildly dank. As I stood on the landing groping for the lightswitch, the door banged shut behind me with such force that I cried out in surprise. There was no breeze, no draft, the day was perfectly still, but the door banged shut just the same. Or was sucked shut. I stood in the dark at the top of the stairs, feeling for the lightswitch, smelling that oozy smell that even good concrete foundations get after awhile if there is no proper airing-out. It was cold, much colder than it had been on the other side of the door. I wasn’t alone and I knew it. I was afraid, I’d be a liar to say I wasn’t . . . but I was also fascinated. Something was with me. Something was in here with me. I dropped my hand away from the wall where the switch was and just stood with my arms at my sides. Some time passed. I don’t know how much. My heart was beating furiously in my chest; I could feel it in my temples. It was cold. ‘Hello?’ I asked. Nothing in response. I could hear the faint, irregular drip of water as condensation fell from one of the pipes down below, I could hear my own breathing, and faintly far away, in another world where the sun was out I could hear the triumphant caw of a crow. Perhaps it had just dropped a load on the hood of my car. I really need an owl, I thought. In fact, I don’t know how I ever got along without one. ‘Hello?’ I asked again. ‘Can you talk?’ Nothing. I wet my lips. I should have felt silly, perhaps, standing there in the dark and calling to the ghosts. But I didn’t. Not a bit. The damp had been replaced by a coldness I could feel, and I had company. Oh, yes. ‘Can you tap, then? If you can shut the door, you must be able to tap.’ I stood there and listened to the soft, isolated drips from the pipes. There was nothing else. I was reaching out for the lightswitch again when there was a soft thud from not far below me. The cellar of Sara Laughs is high, and the upper three feet of the concrete the part which lies against the ground’s frost-belt had been insulated with big silver-backed panels of Insu-Gard. The sound that I heard was, I am quite sure, a fist striking against one of these. Just a fist hitting a square of insulation, but every gut and muscle of my body seemed to come unwound. My hair stood up. My eyesockets seemed to be expanding and my eyeballs contracting, as if my head were trying to turn into a skull. Every inch of my skin broke out in gooseflesh. Something was in here with me. Very likely something dead. I could no longer have turned on the light if I’d wanted to. I no longer had the strength to raise my arm. I tried to talk, and at last, in a husky whisper I hardly recognized, I said: ‘Are you really there?’ Thud. ‘Who are you?’ I could still do no better than that husky whisper, the voice of a man giving last instructions to his family as he lies on his deathbed. This time there was nothing from below. I tried to think, and what came to my struggling mind was Tony Curtis as Harry Houdini in some old movie. According to the film, Houdini had been the Diogenes of the Ouija board circuit, a guy who spent his spare time just looking for an honest medium. He’d attended one s? ¦ance where the dead communicated by ‘Tap once for yes, twice for no,’ I said. ‘Can you do that?’ Thud. It was on the stairs below me . . . but not too far below. Five steps down, six or seven at most. Not quite close enough to touch if I should reach out and wave my hand in the black basement air . . . a thing I could imagine, but not actually imagine doing. ‘Are you . . . ‘ My voice trailed off. There was simply no strength in my diaphragm. Chilly air lay on my chest like a flatiron. I gathered all my will and tried again. ‘Are you Jo?’ Thud. That soft fist on the insulation. A pause, and then: Thud-thud. Yes and no. Then, with no idea why I was asking such an inane question: ‘Are the owls down here?’ Thud-thud. ‘Do you know where they are?’ Thud. ‘Should I look for them?’ Thud! Very hard. Why did she want them? I could ask, but the thing on the stairs had no way to an Hot fingers touched my eyes and I almost screamed before realizing it was sweat. I raised my hands in the dark and wiped the heels of them up my face to the hairline. They skidded as if on oil. Cold or not, I was all but bathing in my own sweat. ‘Are you Lance Devore?’ Thud-thud, at once. ‘Is it safe for me at Sara? Am I safe?’ Thud. A pause. And I knew it was a pause, that the thing on the stairs wasn’t finished. Then: Thud-thud. Yes, I was safe. No, I wasn’t safe. I had regained marginal control of my arm. I reached out, felt along the wall, and found the lightswitch. I settled my fingers on it. Now the sweat on my face felt as if it were turning to ice. ‘Are you the person who cries in the night?’ I asked. Thud-thud from below me, and between the two thuds, I flicked the switch. The cellar globes came on. So did a brilliant hanging bulb at least a hundred and twenty-five watts over the landing. There was no time for anyone to hide, let alone get away, and no one there to try, either. Also, Mrs. Meserve admirable in so many ways had neglected to sweep the cellar stairs. When I went down to where I estimated the thudding sounds had been coming from, I left tracks in the light dust. But mine were the only ones. I blew out breath in front of me and could see it. So it had been cold, still was cold . . . but it was warming up fast. I blew out another breath and could see just a hint of fog. A third exhale and there was nothing. I ran my palm over one of the insulated squares. Smooth. I pushed a finger at it, and although I didn’t push with any real force, my finger left a dimple in the silvery surface. Easy as pie. If someone had been thumping a fist down here, this stuff should be pitted, the thin silver skin perhaps even broken to reveal the pink fill underneath. But all the squares were smooth. ‘Are you still there?’ I asked. No response, and yet I had a sense that my visitor was still there. Somewhere. ‘I hope I didn’t offend you by turning on the light,’ I said, and now I did feel slightly odd, standing on my cellar stairs and talking out loud, sermonizing to the spiders. ‘I wanted to see you if I could.’ I had no idea if that was true or not. Suddenly so suddenly I almost lost my balance and tumbled down the stairs I whirled around, convinced the shroud-creature was behind me, that it had been the thing knocking, it, no polite M. R. James ghost but a horror from around the rim of the universe. There was nothing. I turned around again, took two or three deep, steadying breaths, and then went the rest of the way down the cellar stairs. Beneath them was a perfectly serviceable canoe, complete with paddle. In the corner was the gas stove we’d replaced after buying the place; also the claw-foot tub Jo had wanted (over my objections) to turn into a planter. I found a trunk filled with vaguely recalled table-linen, a box of mildewy cassette tapes (groups like the Delfonics, Funkadelic, and. 38 Special), several cartons of old dishes. There was a life down here, but ultimately not a very interesting one. Unlike the life I’d sensed in Jo’s studio, this one hadn’t been cut short but evolved out of, shed like old skin, and that was all right. Was, in fact, the natural order of things. There was a photo album on a shelf of knickknacks and I took it down, both curious and wary. No bombshells this time, however; nearly all the pix were landscape shots of Sara Laughs as it had been when we bought it. I found a picture of Jo in bellbottoms, though (her hair parted in the middle and white lipstick on her mouth), and one of Michael Noonan wearing a flowered shirt and muttonchop sideburns that made me cringe (the bachelor Mike in the photo was a Barry White kind of guy I didn’t want to recognize and yet did). I found Jo’s old broken treadmill, a rake I’d want if I was still around here come fall, a snowblower I’d want even more if I was around come winter, and several cans of paint. What I didn’t find was any plastic owls. My insulation-thumping friend had been right. Upstairs the telephone started ringing. I hurried to answer it, going out through the cellar door and then reaching back in to flick off the lightswitch. This amused me and at the same time seemed like perfectly normal behavior . . . just as being careful not to step on sidewalk cracks had seemed like perfectly normal behavior to me when I was a kid. And even if it wasn’t normal, what did it matter? I’d only been back at Sara for three days, but already I’d postulated Noonan’s First Law of Eccentricity: when you’re on your own, strange behavior really doesn’t seem strange at all. I snagged the cordless. ‘Hello?’ ‘Hi, Mike. It’s Ward.’ ‘That was quick.’ ‘The file-room’s just a short walk down the hall,’ he said. ‘Easy as pie. There’s only one thing on Jo’s calendar for the second week of November in 1993. It says ‘S-Ks of Maine, Freep, 11 A.M.’ That’s on Tuesday the sixteenth. Does it help?’ ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Thank you, Ward. It helps a lot.’ I broke the connection and put the phone back in its cradle. Yes, it helped. S-Ks of Maine was Soup Kitchens of Maine. Jo had been on their board of directors from 1992 until her death. Freep was Freeport. It must have been a board meeting. They had probably discussed plans for feeding the homeless on Thanksgiving . . . and then Jo had driven the seventy or so miles to the TR in order to take delivery of two plastic owls. It didn’t answer all the questions, but aren’t there always questions in the wake of a loved one’s death? And no statute of limitations on when they come up. The UFO voice spoke up then. While you’re right here by the phone, it said, why not call Bonnie Amudson? Say hi, see how she’s doing? Jo had been on four different boards during the nineties, all of them doing charitable work. Her friend Bonnie had persuaded her onto the Soup Kitchens board when a seat fell vacant. They had gone to a lot of the meetings together. Not the one in November of 1993, presumably, and Bonnie could hardly be expected to remember that one particular meeting almost five years later . . . but if she’d saved her old minutes-of-the-meeting sheets . . . Exactly what the fuck was I thinking of? Calling Bonnie, making nice, then asking her to check her December 1993 minutes? Was I going to ask her if the attendance report had my wife absent from the November meeting? Was I going to ask if maybe Jo had seemed different that last year of her life? And when Bonnie asked me why I wanted to know, what would I say? Give me that, Jo had snarled in my dream of her. In the dream she hadn’t looked like Jo at all, she’d looked like some other woman, maybe like the one in the Book of Proverbs, the strange woman whose lips were as honey but whose heart was full of gall and wormwood. A strange woman with fingers as cold as twigs after a frost. Give me that, it’s my dust-catcher. I went to the cellar door and touched the knob. I turned it . . . then let it go. I didn’t want to look down there into the dark, didn’t want to risk the chance that something might start thumping again. It was better to leave that door shut. What I wanted was something cold to drink. I went into the kitchen, reached for the fridge door, then stopped. The magnets were back in a circle again, but this time four letters and one number had been pulled into the center and lined up there. They spelled a single lower-case word: hello There was something here. Even back in broad daylight I had no doubt of that. I’d asked if it was safe for me to be here and had received a mixed message . . . but that didn’t matter. If I left Sara now, there was nowhere to go. I had a key to the house in Derry, but matters had to be resolved here. I knew that, too. ‘Hello,’ I said, and opened the fridge to get a soda. ‘Whoever or whatever you are, hello.’ How to cite Bag of Bones CHAPTER TEN, Essay examples

Creative Critical Response To Sympathize †Myassignmenthelp.Com

Question: Discuss About The Creative Critical Response To Sympathize? Answer: Introducation I hope you are in good health of mind of body. While leaving your room, I saw that you were depressed. This made me concerned about you. In response to it, I am writing this letter to express my guilt and sympathize with you. Firstly, let me tell you that your depression is justified in terms of remembering the happy moments with your son. This depression is natural and obvious in terms of the circumstances, which we are compelled to encounter in our daily lives. Mention of the demise of our loved ones makes us sad and depressed, engulfing us within the sea of obstacles (Harris). This entrapment makes it difficult for us to perform our basic tasks. As far as your sons demise is concerned, it fills me with sadness. I know it is very pathetic and difficult for you to accept this harsh reality. However, I would like to say that if you think that your son has died for his motherland, you might feel proud about the sacrifice which he has given for his country. I am using might as this thinking is a little tough for you. However, once you think it in this way and convince your family members, I think it would be easy for you to accept the absence of your son (Kimber). I have also experienced the demise of my son. It was very difficult for me to accept the fact. However, I have convinced myself that in comparison to the harsh blows of fate, we are mere human beings, lacking the capability to alter what is destined for us. Therefore, we do not have any other option than to accept the events which occur in our life. In terms of this predicament of ours, our names are just useless. Instead we become members of a class full of foolish people, the puppets in the hands of the fate. Inability to alter our fate makes our existence meaningless, questioning our position within the society (Mounic). Here, our predicament equalizes with that of the fly, which is small in size but bigger in its capability. Its struggle to fight the blows of the ink resembles our futile efforts to fight the harsh blows inflicted upon us by fate. Upon the mention of your sons death, you cancelled all your meetings. This might be for half an hour but it made the freedom of your life into halves. For this entrapment, you refused to meet anybody. These actions reflect your fear about the taunts and mocks of the people regarding your inability to cope up with the events which occur in life. What they fail to understand is that sudden occurrences can happen in anybodys life and difficulty in accepting it is natural. However, when it comes to the others, they just search for opportunities to make fun of others in such a plight (Cross). Here, we should try to ignore these talks and do what is ethically and morally right. You are a boss, if you get weaker like this, what example will your subordinates get from you? But this does not mean that you should not have emotions. You are a man of flesh and blood, you have your emotion, but you need to regulate them when you are in public. This regulation would justify your designation as a b oss. Getting influenced by these suggestions and advice would distract us from the goals which we have set for our future. This does not means that you have to forget your son. Instead, if you move on in your life, your son would also be free in terms of taking rebirth as a good human being. Herein lies the appropriateness of the statement that we should not get emotionally attached with anybody, as this attachment would not remain forever. This is due to the difficulty in life after death (Kimber). I think at some point, I am responsible for this situation of yours. Had I not mentioned about the visit to your sons grave, you would not have become depressed and cancelled all your meetings. Rather you would have performed your office tasks as in the normal other days. Along with this, you would have conducted meetings with your clients, without getting distracted. This behavior of mine makes me weak and questions the things, which I told to console you. I think this dilemma is because of my aging. Now I forget most of the things which I say to the persons around me. I seriously need to consult a doctor. See, I have started narrating my problems, deviating from the aspect of empowering you in terms of the inevitability of the aspect of death. I know the things which I have said are very meager in terms of the intensity of your grief regarding your sons death. However, life goes on. So you also need to convince yourself and make yourself strong. I pray that that may the Almighty give you the strength to bear with all the harsh realities, which comes in our life. If you need any help, I am always there to help you. Yours Loving friend Katherine Mansfields The Fly is an inspiration for the people in terms of coping up with the sudden circumstances, which come in their life. The boss character is a live example, which conveys the message to the readers about the persistent struggles which they have to make in terms of adding meaning into their lives. Woodifield is an epitome of how to move on in life instead of being entrapped by old age and forgetfulness. Countering this, the protagonist of the short story is the fly which enhances the awareness of the people to confidently encounter the things which are stored for the people. Ink droppings on the fly resemble the impositions of harsh blows by fate. After going through the story, I express my pathos for the meaningless existence experience by the people nowadays. The main reason for this is the incapability to cope up with the harsh blows of the fate. In view of this perspective, I can state the plight of the boss to be like the ordinary people, struggling to make their lives meaningful. Here, the identities of boss and fly merge in terms of the incapability to adjust within the sudden circumstances. This perspective fades away the differentiation between man and animal, keeping the struggle for life consistent. The only difference is in the way of expression. Humans can express it in words, but the animals lack the freedom of speech, which aggravates their suffering. The letter written here is from a friend to another friend, consoling for sudden remembrance of the sons untimely death. I can say that writing letter to a friend is apt in terms of enhancing the stability in the relationship between them. On the other hand, I think writing a letter instead of having face-to-face conversation is a kind of hesitation and guilt, which Woodifield undergoes upon the discussion of his sons demise. I feel this kind of hesitation and guilt is quite obvious and natural in case of people who perform acts without thinking the after effects. The subject of the letter, cursed personality attains peak position in the letter. The adjective cursed is attached to the personality of individuals, when they do something wrong. In other times, this adjective is imposed upon the predicament of the individuals, which most of the times proves wrong. The incident, where the boss inflicts ink on the fly, its personality is worth mentioning in terms of its struggle. On the contrary, mere mention of sons demise makes the boss depressed. Here the boss personality is weak in terms of incapability to cope up with the sudden instances, which is quite natural. One of the other issues, which can be pointed out is the relationship between father and son. For the son, father is a source from where; they get power, strength and energy to struggle for his rights. Absence of son or father generates the feeling of loss, which means a loss of strength and power. In view of the boss perspective, sons absence makes the father weak. This connotation might be a distorted one; however, it makes the son, a protector of his parents and sisters. Concluding remarks Here, absence and presence are like two sides of the life; similar to the phases of happiness and sadness. The aspects of absence should not be an obstacle in the present life of the people. This does not mean that people should not express grief at the loss of their loved ones. Instead, they should try to cope up with the loss by engaging themselves in some other things. Capability to do this would assist the people to move on in their lives with new vigor and strength. The people in the earlier sentence generalizes the classification of the individuals into a class of foolish people, who lack the basic understanding towards the partial capability for coping up with the aspects of loss. Here, the curses, taunts and mocking attain a backseat, as the injury inflictor also falls within the group of foolish people, searching the ways and means to fight the blows of fate. References Cross, Ashley. "To buzz lamenting doings in the air: Romantic Flies, Insect Poets, and Authorial Sensibility."European Romantic Review25.3 (2014): 337-346. Harris, Diana R. "Milk, blood, ink: Mansfield's liquids and the abject."Journal of New Zealand Literature: JNZL32 (2014): 52-67. Kimber, Gerri. "Relationships."Katherine Mansfield and the Art of the Short Story. Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2015. 53-56. Mounic, Anne. "To tell and be told: war poetry as the transmission of sympathy."tudes anglaises68.1 (2015): 70-83.

The Story of a Malaysian People Essay Example

The Story of a Malaysian People Essay As I sat on my bed tilting against a bare wall right across the room looking at how the steady beads of raindrops sluiced down my window-pane on a glooming rainy forenoon, I let my head roll off to visualise the chilly forenoon of 11 June 1981, right as the clock ticked 3.00 a.m.[ 1 ] the minute the cogwheel was pulled, the platform beneath his pess opened, the rope around his cervix sliting into his delicate tegument and within nanoseconds the tenseness intensified and in a split 2nd his life ended, Botak Chin hanged, dead, and gone. Oh how the adult female of Malaysia must hold teared and cried, as how sheets of rain started turn uping in doing my ear to be swelled with the sound of rain rain against my window. But allow s non bury the feeling of huge sorrow, torment and hurt that filled the Black Marias of all the donees of Botak Chin as the topic lived to rob the rich for the hapless ,[ 2 ]at least supplying the hapless and suppressed society a better opportunity to populate. And for those who were at the other side of the having terminal, purely talking those whom the topic offended merely to acquire his manner, good you can conceive of the suspirations of alleviation and load that was washed off now that their menace was out of head, out of sight. We will write a custom essay sample on The Story of a Malaysian People specifically for you for only $16.38 $13.9/page Order now We will write a custom essay sample on The Story of a Malaysian People specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer We will write a custom essay sample on The Story of a Malaysian People specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer Ah, what a contention. And hence, what a great subject to compose on. In instance you were inquiring who in the universe is Botak Chin, and why in the universe would anyone give themselves such a reasonable incognito, Botak Chin was non good, bald. His existent name is Wong Swee Chin and he is known as Botak Chin merely because he wanted to assist the hapless and helpless. Do nt acquire it? Well Lashkar-e-Taiba s expression at it in footings of the Malay linguistic communication Bantu Orang Tak Ada Kerja a.k.a BOTAK.[ 3 ]Enlightened? Well, yes I would trust so. Again, in instance you were inquiring, and you decidedly would, what did this adult male do to merit so much attending? And why am I raving so much about him as though he is my womb-to-tomb dream spouse? That you would happen out as you unravel the enigmas of his ephemeral life, with our aid of class. But first, allow me give you a brief debut of our topic of treatment. Merely seek googling Botak Chin and you ll happen that in any web site you click, he is dubbed as Malaysia s version of Robin Hood. Harmonizing to the Malayan high-profile felon records, he was known as Malaysia s most ill-famed mobster in the 1970 s, with a series of robberies, bloody inter-gang competitions and quarrels with the constabulary.[ 4 ] He was a mastermind in his ain manner. He was small-sized but if he set his head to make something, cipher could hold stopped him. He was ever one measure in front of you, was Abu Bakar Juah s remarks about Botak Chin.[ 5 ] Now you get the effect of Botak, an debut being an debut, I should allow the remainder of my squad enthrall you with Botak s life and his environing buddies. Till so, delight make bask our study. At The Beginning Written by ; Lee Boon Ho Family Background After looking at the image of Botak Chin it is truly amusing to see that a cat with a head full of locks being named botak, which in Bahasa Melayu stands for bald. Make non worry, his parents were non seeking to be amusing or anything, the account on how he got the rubric botak was explained in our debut. However, his parents did give him a proper name, which was Wong Swee Chin. This ill-famed mobster was born in 1951 and hails from Kuala Lumpur. Bing a mobster that brought much fright to the society life in Kuala Lumpur in the 1970ss, there was much inquiry and rumor about his household background and upbringing. Some thought he was an orphan and some even said his male parent was a Mafia Godhead. However, after making a thorough research, his household and upbringing was really much like any normal individual walking on the streets of Kuala Lumpur. Botak Chin came from a household of 12. He had nine siblings. As his male parent was a retired person who worked with the Malayan Railways, they lived at the Malayan Railway Quarters following to the Caltex station in Jalan Ipoh[ 6 ]. Although they were hapless, Botak Chin s male parent ever reminded his kids to ever make good workss and ever have a fastness onto their rules and values in life. His male parent was instead rigorous with the upbringing of his kids. However, after the decease of his female parent, Botak Chin felt disconnected from his household for he shared a really close relationship with his female parent. Furthermore, his household started to fall apart as a consequence of his female parent s passing for his pa could non get by with looking after 10 kids and supplying an income for the household. Hence, after losing his fastness, he found consolation in his close friends who became his close comrades and intimate. He stayed away from place and he preferred remaining with his friends[ 7 ]. He felt more comfy and a stronger sense of belonging when he was with the company of his close friends. He treated them like his really ain brothers. Sadly, passing excessively much clip off from place meant he had excessively much freedom and he did non hold anyone to look out for him or to demo him the right way in life. He did non hold a guardian matured plenty to rede him on what was right and what was incorrect. Away from his male parent s alert oculus[ 8 ], he easy was exposed to the dark underworld and how was it like to populate as a mobster. He was intrigued and drawn to the life style of a mobster for he felt they were powerful and they could transfuse a sense of fright in people. He wanted to cognize more, he wanted to be like them and he did. Early Education His parents placed a batch of importance on instruction. Therefore they made the attempt to give all of their 10 kids the proper instruction they needed to win in life. Botak Chin received his early primary instruction at a Chinese common school. He so went on to analyze at Methodist Boys Secondary School in Sentul. However, Botak Chin was non really interested in books and figures. So he lost involvement in his instruction and did non finish his secondary school surveies. Alternatively he quitted school when he merely completed Form 3, after sitting for his Lower Certificate of Education scrutiny[ 9 ]. Botak Chin became a school dropout at a immature age of 15[ 10 ]. It was a commiseration that Botak Chin did non finish his instruction, for by judging on how he thought and how he carried himself, he was of course intelligent and he was evidently gifted with encephalons and humor. Quoting Abu Bakar Juah, one of the prison guards that had the opportunity to guard the legendary Botak Chin ; He was a mastermind in his ain manner. He was small-sized but if he set his head to make something, cipher could hold stopped him .[ 11 ] He even had a instead sociable and sympathetic personality ; Abu Bakar says Wong could be friendly and he used to hold a game of draughtss with him[ 12 ]. A adult male with huge finding ; non burying humor and intelligence with a little touch of manner and personal appeal, Botak Chin had the natural stuffs of going person great, possibly even a leader. He did go a leader, a instead influential one that many spoke off and cognize, but for all the incorrect grounds. His Work Written by ; Eunice Agnes Sivasothey Although proclaiming himself as the Malaysia s Robin Hood , Botak Chin managed to transfuse such fright and anxiety in the heads of his fellow countrymen. Ill-famed for being a inhuman slayer which set the state amok with his uncountable offenses and serious violent disorder of slayings, left the constabulary force during the 1970 s puzzled and stumped on how they are of all time traveling to eventually convey justness to this adult male. Wong Swee Chin ( Botak Chin ) embarked into a life of offense in the early old ages of his life. After discontinuing school at the stamp age of 15, Botak Chin was exposed to the life of the underworld and got himself involved in a pack which called themselves Gang 360 in Kuala Lumpur .[ 13 ]Gang 360 ( Sak Pak Lok ) consisted of local goons which influenced him to perpetrate junior-grade and minor offenses.[ 14 ] In the twelvemonth 1969, when Botak Chin was merely 18 years-old he illicitly obtained his very foremost piece which was a 0.22 six-gun. Soon after, he created his really ain pack and became the originator of 8 robberies. However, he was caught finally and was thrown in gaol for seven old ages. Botak Chin was released from prison in November 1974.[ 15 ] As any inmate released from gaol, Botak Chin tried really difficult to turn over a new foliage and live a Reformed life. He turned away from offense and attempted to populate a respectable life by selling veggies to gain a life. However, he found populating an honorable life was difficult and palling for the income was small and scarce. Populating under such conditions, the thought of returning to his old life started organizing in his head once more.[ 16 ] Within less than a twelvemonth of his release from gaol, Botak Chin returned to a life of offense and in April 1975, he formed a new pack which comprised of a few of his friends, viz. ; Ng Cheng Wong ( Ah Wong ) , Beh Kok Chin ( Pangkor Chai ) dan Teh Bok Lay ( Seh Chai ) . Botak Chin and his buddies ( as portrayed in the biographical movie of himself )[ 17 ] The really following month, he went up to Thailand in hunt of a friend of his to buy guns which were needed for robberies.[ 18 ]Readily armed with guns, Botak Chin and his pack attacked an illegal chancing lair in Sentul on the 2nd of June 1975. They successfully escaped with RM5,800. Money obtained from that robbery was used by Botak Chin to heighten his pack s force. He went up to Thailand once more to get more pieces and ammunition. He purchased 8 more pieces and 100 slugs.[ 19 ] Items seized by Malayan constabulary after Botak Chin s apprehension ( now on show @ Malaysia Police Museum )[ 20 ] The pack s following act was to rob a bank in Jalan Imbi. From that robbery, they obtained RM95,000 in hard currency and RM25,00 of the entire amount was used to buy a Datsun auto. Not long after that, Botak Chin and his buddies robbed a Buddhist temple on Jalan Kolam Ayer.[ 21 ]They shot a few mah-jong participants and looted RM10,000 worth of goods including hard currency, gold and expensive points[ 22 ]. Botak Chin started a violent disorder of robberies and this violent disorder caught the attending of the so City s Criminal Investigation Department deputy caput, Deputy Superintendent S.Kulasingam and he was on the quest to capture Botak Chin. Due to legion robberies, pack battles and even gun conflicts with the constabulary, Botak Chin was running low on ammunition and pieces. Hence, to get the better of this defect, he attacked three police officers and took their handguns. He even stole pieces belonging to security guards during a robbery at a saloon in Sentul.[ 23 ]Botak Chin besides enjoyed demoing off his abilities and capablenesss in managing guns. He would dispute anyone at Sentul Railway Club to vie who was better at Cowboy Style shot.[ 24 ] However, of all the offenses he committed, the biggest and most unsafe robbery he executed was the robbing of a security guard transporting money to the Horse Racing Club. This monolithic robbery took topographic point on the 26th of October 1975. Botak Chin shot the security guard and managed to get away without being caught with RM218, 000 in hard currency. The hard currency obtained was one time once more used to purchase even more pieces from Thailand. He spent about RM40, 000 buying a immense aggregation of arms which included 19 pieces, 5 grenades and 1,000 slugs[ 25 ]. Apart from forming robberies, Botak Chin was besides involved in assorted pack wars. One outstanding pack war which he was involved in was the pack war between his ain pack and the ill-famed Five Finger Mountain pack. This peculiar war was plain bloody and dismaying. The pack war resulted in a few deceases viz. the decease of the Five Finger Mountain gang leader every bit good as the decease of Botak Chin s ain pack member, Ah Wong[ 26 ] The engagement of Botak Chin is a big figure of offenses and the his ability to defy gaining control from the constabulary force and flight life endangering state of affairss lead many to believe he had something more than fortune on his side. Something that made him powerful, fearless and even at times unbeatable. Hence, there were theories and rumors about him holding an talisman or a lucky appeal that gave him supernatural powers. It was said that Botak Chin wore a BE2480 ( Internet Explorer: 1937 AD ) batch Tok Raja ( a celebrated Buddhist monastic ) pidtta and takrut ( a type of encased enchantment coil made by the Tok Raja ) . Because of this pidtta, Botak Chin was able to ever all of a sudden disappear whenever the constabulary tried to collar him or he could merely hedge the sight of the constabulary trying to collar him. Harmonizing to the fable, pidttas provides strong protection and gives the wearer the ability to avoid danger. Many believe that the constabulary managed to eventually grok Botak Chin with the aid of Tok Raja.[ 27 ] Whatever the instance possibly, whether Botak Chin had an talisman giving him powers or he was merely one lucky individual, I believe that luck played a really minor function in his offenses and robberies. The success of his robberies and his astonishing ability of out-witting the constabulary force clip and clip once more most decidedly did non entirely depend on sheer fortune but more on his humor and fore-sight. And citing him, he said, I was ever one measure in front of you ( the constabulary ) .[ 28 ] In his ain particular and alone manner, he was a pure mastermind with an astonishing head. The Capture Written by ; Rachel Chong Suet Yeng Botak Chin brought in by the constabulary. This portion of the chapter is based on the existent life experience of Datuk Syed Meer Wahid Al-Hubshee Syed Ibrahim, 78, a dedicated, loyal and determined ex-police officer who served the constabulary force from 1951 to 1986, and who was penned down in history as being the unsung hero and engineer behind the concluding gaining control of Malaysia s most ill-famed felon, Botak Chin, a.k.a, Wong Swee Chin.[ 29 ] Unfortunately for Botak Chin, the dark of 16 February 1976 marks the terminal of term of his controversial behavior, protecting the public assistance of the hapless and incapacitated, albeit by ill-conceived ways as seen by some but his rules regarded by others as baronial and compassionate. Harmonizing to Datuk Syed Meer Wahid Al-Hubshee Syed Ibrahim, or more normally known as Syed Meor, he was the Campbell territory ( soon known as Dang Wangi ) caput officer who courageously took up the function of the late Deputy Superintendent ( DSP ) S Kulasingam, Head of section of Crime Investigation, Kuala Lumpur after the latter was injured by Botak Chin s buddies and was being treated in the infirmary. The foray which finally lead to the apprehension of Botak Chin took topographic point in a sawmill mill in Jalan Ipoh which was tipped off by an betrayer that there were heroin thrusters in the sawmill mill. Syed Meor ordered the betrayer to steal into the mill but to no help due to certain obstructions. Harmonizing to him, he had to take on the duty of measuring the state of affairs himself, and by which he wore a turban so as to non be recognised. Equally shortly as he saw the right manus adult male of Botak Chin, Pangkor Chai ( Beh Kok Chin ) , he instantly contacted the Kuala Lumpur main constabularies officer, Tan Sri Mohamed Amin Osman to name for 3 backup squads that would environ the sawmill mill. The fast one was to stop any phone calls made from within the mill to corroborate the presence of Botak Chin in the alleged hideaway. To their discouragement, no phone calls were made for four yearss directly, and therefore the constabulary force could non take action as fright of destroying their opportunities. The 4th dark was the last dark the constabulary force was traveling to put around and delay, aimlessly for a miracle to go on. And it was a jar of the blue that phone call was made on the last dark of the operation, and genuinely, it was without a uncertainty the voice of Botak Chin. The topic phoned his buddies in Ipoh and the program was to assail Genting Highlands. Equally shortly as the constabulary confirmed that Botak Chin was in the sawmill mill, they burst into the scene and started a gun-shooting stretch. Approximately 500 gun shootings and rupture gas were discharged which resulted in an extended helter-skelter state of affairs. Pangkor Chai and Ah Keong counter-attacked the constabulary force with more gunfires and threw a grenade towards the constabulary. In the thick of the brainsick state of affairs, Botak was shot at his leg and right manus. In obvious hurting, he crawled towards two of his best right manus adult male but fright and guilt enveloped him as he found both of them lying every bit still as a log, dead and gone.[ 30 ]As the ambiance cleared up, Sentul main officer ( which Syed Meor misplaced his name ) found Botak lying impotently beneath a tabular array.[ 31 ] Sir Please assist me. Was all that he could express. Botak was dragged out from beneath the tabular array. This marks the terminal of Botak s autonomy and invisibleness as he eventually fell into the long weaponries of jurisprudence. Finite Written by ; Choong Huayen Transporting Botak Chin s organic structure to be buried. Wong Swee Chin better known as Botak Chin was arrested for a twelvemonth after being caught by the constabulary force. To the constabulary force that was on Botak Chin s trail, the twenty-four hours of his gaining control was a twenty-four hours of jubilation and exultation for many thought it was virtually impossible to catch this ill-famed pack leader. However, the alleged unbeatable adult male was eventually brought in and was so handed over to the tribunals where justness was about to bechance on him. Botak Chin was so pleaded guilty by the Kuala Lumpur High Court and was given the much dreaded decease punishment after being convicted on three charges under the Internal Security Act ( ISA )[ 32 ]. For all the barbarous and inhuman offenses he had done, he was sentenced to decease by the rope, which many in the state thought that this was the lone penalty suited for such a heartless mobster that caused mayhem and released panic among the community in Klang Valley during the 1970ss. He did non desire to decease ; he did non desire to stop his life in such an unstylish manner neither did he desire to acknowledge licking for he felt his concern here was non complete yet. Therefore, he hired a attorney and appealed against his sentence to the Privy Council on the 1st of April 1980.[ 33 ]Botak Chin defended himself by naming himself the modern twenty-four hours Robin Hood [ 34 ]as he had robbed from the rich and gave some spoils to the hapless while he used the staying spoils to purchase more equipment for the following robbery. There was this one incident where Botak Chin showed compassion and commiseration towards an old ice-cream marketer. Botak Chin met this old adult male selling ice-cream on a bike. He told the old adult male to acquire off his bike, and he grabbed clasp of the old bike and threw it across the route. He so reached into his pocket and pulled out a few thousand ringgit. He gave the money to the old adult male and told the old adult male to trav el place and acquire some remainder[ 35 ]. However, the tribunal did non govern in his favor and Botak Chin was found guilty on the 16th of May 1980. The Board of Pardons and Supreme Court refused the entreaty Botak Chin has made ; he was non traveling to get away the rope.[ 36 ]To them, the sum of wrong-doing and the sum of panic caused by him was more than terrible adequate and they did non see fit to let person like him to get away the gallows of decease. After being denied a opportunity to appeal against the decease sentence, Botak Chin became despairing ; he did non desire to decease, this is non how he wanted to travel, he had to happen a manner out no affair what it took. He had to make something to acquire out of this quandary and he needed to move rapidly for clip was non on his side. Hence, on the 1st of January 1981, he made a despairing effort to get away the Pudu Prison from his decease row cell. Botak Chin used a crisp arm to get away ; he mercilessly stabbed three prison functionaries in his gruesome and despairing effort to get away the decease gallows. However, Botak Chin was unsuccessful and he sustained really serious hurts in his effort to get away[ 37 ]. After this failed effort at get awaying, Botak Chin did non hold the strength neither did he hold the will to seek to get away any longer ; he eventually surrendered and accepted his destiny. He merely waited patiently and softly for the twenty-four hours of the hang ing, for his finite terminal of his life as a condemnable feared by many. Botak Chin had a petition before he was hanged. A petition that surprised many and caused many to oppugn their perceptual experience of him as a heartless and barbarous felon. He wished to donate all his critical variety meats to the infirmary for medical intents. This act signifies the purposes of perchance a good adult male who was misjudged and likely went about making good in the incorrect manner. However, this petition was besides denied as Botak Chin did non travel through the proper processs and did non compose a written consent[ 38 ]. It was disrespectful in a manner to deny this petition as this was Botak Chin s deceasing wish before he was hanged from the rope. Botak Chin had a concluding petition before his hanging ; he requested to have on his Tok Raja Pidtta during his rope hanging. His petition was denied, nevertheless, the justice promised to return the Pidtta to Botak Chin when he is confirmed dead[ 39 ]. This is because the Pidtta is believed to confer and give power to the wearer which enables the wearer disappear from danger and Botak Chin has escaped countless dangers and even gaining controls when he was have oning this Pidtta. The Pidtta may look like a superstitious belief and does non hold any solid or concrete cogent evidence of its powers. However, the justice most decidedly did non desire to put on the line Botak Chin get awaying once more. Hence, he disallowed the Pidtta as a safety step. 11th of June, 1981, the twenty-four hours of the hanging of Botak Chin had eventually arrived. As the prison guards entered Botak Chin s prison cell to take him to the executing chamber, he said to them Sudah sampai ah? Saya rasa macam lari 100m, sudah sampai garisan penamat. ( Is it clip already? I felt like I ran 100m and I am near to making the coating line. ) Like standard process, the prison guard so wrapped his caput with a black fabric and Botak Chin was brought to the executing chamber blindfolded[ 40 ]. The silence that followed him was deafening and merely repeating footfalls were heard as Botak Chin easy climbed up the stairss of the executing platform, his concluding finish. He so stopped right under the rope hanger. The rope hanger was wrapped around his caput and Botak Chin was asked for his deceasing want, which was to donate his critical variety meats to the infirmary for medical intents. After his deceasing want was written down, there was pitch silent for a minute, as it was still 2.59am. Everyone held their breath as the hr of decease was upon them in merely a few minutes. When the clock turned 3.00 am, the cogwheel was pulled. The platform under Botak Chin s legs opened and his organic structure fell down and the rope violently broke his cervix and he was left hanging for a minute to guarantee he was decidedly dead. This was the terminal of the 28 twelvemonth old Botak Chin[ 41 ], the most ill-famed felon of that clip who lived dauntlessly and instilled the feeling of fright in everyone around him. People all over the state knew him ; even the small childs on the streets chanted his name during his reign. And now, eventually all around the state, everyone breathed a suspiration of understanding and alleviation, for the pursuit for Botak Chin had eventually ended. DSP S Kulasingam Written by ; Ng Sijie S. Kulasingam ( on the right ) recognizing other constabulary officers. S Kulasingam besides known as Kula by his couples was the former helper CID head of Kuala Lumpur and Johor CID head[ 42 ]. S Kulasingam was born on 12 August 1931 in Seremban, Negeri Sembilan. He is a tall and immense individual. Kula is about 6 pess 2 inches and weighs about 216 lbs[ 43 ]. He is good built and strong which is much needed in his field work as a police officer and CID head. His name, S Kulasingam means king of beasts of the community in Tamil[ 44 ]which really good depict his function in the society. At a immature age of merely 19, he decided to fall in the constabulary force[ 45 ]. Before that, he worked as a instructor for around 6 months[ 46 ]. He so chose to discontinue his occupation as a instructor due to him desiring to assist construct a safer state for the benefit of the society. Once he started his work as a police officer, he was really good respected. In July, 1951, he became a provisional inspector. At that clip he was simply 20 old ages old. With much accomplishment within him, he managed to mount up the rankings to achieve the station of adjunct overseer of constabulary in August 1957[ 47 ]. Soon, he became the constabulary officer most feared by felons around the 1970s. It s non easy to kill me. I wo nt travel before my figure is up, Kula had one time said in an interview, after holding survived several efforts on his life by despairing mobsters.[ 48 ]He was best known for capturing the ill-famed and ill-famed Botak Chin. Many robberies took topographic point under Botak Chin s name. Therefore, a particular force led by S Kulasingam was required to do Botak Chin s gaining control possible. This accomplishment made him one of the best constabulary officers in the Royal Malaysia Police ( PDRM ) .[ 49 ]He should be made as a function theoretical account for the young person of today and the hereafter. During his clip functioning the state as a constabulary officer, he led many operations and achieved new highs by decrypting and work outing rare and complicating instances. S Kulasingam besides came in close combat with many unsafe every bit good as barbarous felons and inmates. One of his close decease state of affairss was a surprise ambuscade by Botak Chin at the intersection of Davis route traffic visible radiation, Circulat Road on 22 November 1975.[ 50 ]This was an effort on Botak Chin s portion to assassinate him. 11 gunfires were fired at him that twenty-four hours. Fortunately, merely one shooting hit him right at his thorax. Amazingly, he was still able to maneuver out of the danger to safety at a nearby constabulary station which was the Cheras Police Station for backup and aid. Besides that, S Kulasingam besides operated in the instance which involved the psychopathologic raper Kepong Chai who raped adult females and scarred their faces after ravishing them.[ 51 ] On April 7 1976, he survived a shooting in the tummy when he was present to assist battle at a robbery that occurred at a jewelry store in Paramount Gardens, Petaling Jaya[ 52 ]. He was really fortunate that dark for he was able to make the infirmary in clip. Besides that, he besides survived with minimum hurts when a 44-pound jar of formic acid was thrown straight at his organic structure[ 53 ]. He is a really lucky adult male as he dealt with many life and decease state of affairss and someway managed to last each one of them. Outside his work, he is a amusing cat with a great and infective personality. He is a joy to be about. One of his avocations is listening and singing old Tamil vocals. He tends to sing them to entertain his friends and household. His nephew, S. Thirunavakarasu remembers S. Kulasingam as a friendly and loving uncle and besides treated him as his function theoretical account due to his leading and achievements as a well-known, righteous and baronial police officer.[ 54 ] Over the old ages, he raided and captured many hideawaies of packs with eldritch and bizarre names such as the Mini-Cooper Gang and the Cowboys [ 55 ]. Every felon and criminal out at that place decidedly cognizant of his being and bequest. His passion, dedication and diligence in his field have earned him many awards and much congratulations from his higher-ups such as the Medal of the brave Kula ( PGB ) and Ahli Mangku Negara ( AMN ) . These are two really esteemed awards which help him derive much popularity and his position today. After many panics and slug evasion, S Kulasingam retired in 1985 when he was about 54 old ages old. For about 35 old ages as a bull, he flirted with danger twenty-four hours and dark and therefore he surely deserves his long anticipated retirement after working hard for the state. After retirement, he lives comfortably in a two floored flat in Johor Bahru[ 56 ]. He neer married and he continued to stay a unmarried man and lived entirely for the remainder of his unrecorded. All he wanted was a peaceable and low profile life after all that bosom whipping minutes he had to cover with as a constabulary officer. He was one time asked about why he would non desire to acquire married, he quoted Field of unsafe work such as this requires some forfeits, [ 57 ]. What he said was true as he was involved in many life endangering state of affairss and this would decidedly endanger his household s safety which would impede them from holding a normal life like the other households could. On the 29th of September 2007, S Kulasingam was hospitalized after he slipped and fell in his bathroom in his flat at Jalan Sultan Abdul Samad[ 58 ]. Fortunately, one of his nephews was at that place to assist him. He was brought to the infirmary shortly after. He fractured his hip bone during this incident and had to travel for an operation. He was able to walk once more shortly after the operation[ 59 ]. However, he was still hospitalized due to some complications. After 2 months of being in the infirmary, on the 29th of November 2007 ( Thursday ) , the top offense fellow in Malaysia, S Kulasingam passed off at Sultanah Aminah Hospital. With him present at that minute to listen to his last words were his younger sister S. Arthi, senior brother Dr S. Ratna, household members and close friends[ 60 ]. The 77 twelvemonth old ace bull left the universe he one time protected at 3.06am on that glooming Thursday forenoon. S. Kulasingam one time quoted: How could I decease of anything but old age? [ 61 ], that was good said as his decease was due to none other than old-age complications. S Kulasingam was much a well-thought-of constabulary officer. His work and attempt towards the state will neer be forgotten and his permanent bequest will populate on. Thankss to him we have a safer state today. We as the young person of today and the future coevals of leaders should take him as a function theoretical account and possibly accomplish merely every bit much or hopefully even more than what he had done in life. Tan Sri Dr. Mahadevan Written by ; Manoj From the left ; TunA Dr.A Mahathir bin Mohamad and Tan Sri Dr. Mahadevan In the Botak Chin s history, Dr Mahadevan plays a really important function as his head-shrinker. Dr Mahadevan who is the former manager of Tanjung Rambutan Mental Hospital in Perak[ 62 ]treated Botak Chin as he was asked to find whether or non Botak Chin was mentally strong or sane to stand for a test. From the find of Dr Mahadevan, it was found that Botak Chin is really a mastermind but a ill-conceived 1. Dr Mahadevan decided to take this rare chance to come in the head of this one-of-a sort felon with an bizarre outlook and seek to decode what was truly on his head and what were his existent purposes behind his actions. Botak Chin explained himself in item to Dr Mahadevan at the mental infirmary that his lone purpose was to assist the hapless since he was immature. He wanted to protect the down-trodden and deprived from the mobsters who extorted money and corrupt functionaries[ 63 ]. Botak Chin besides told Dr Mahadevan that he was one time severely bashed up by delinquents and mobsters who entered his vegetable stall at the market and tried up to extort money from him. Although they failed to make so, they viciously attacked him and caused his collar bone to fracture. That was decidedly an unforgettable incident to Botak Chin as he decided to take up soldierly humanistic disciplines for self-defense intent. Not merely did Botak Chin do that, he besides told Dr Mahadevan that he joined into a pack for protection[ 64 ]. And now he feels that it is his duty and responsibility to protect his sort from any injury and subjugation so that they would non hold to travel through what he when through in the y esteryear. Dr Mahadevan knew that peculiar incident had a terrible impact on Botak Chin s life. Dr Mahadevan besides came to cognize that Botak Chin encouraged the society to fall in his secret pack in order to avoid being harmed and exploited by the corrupt functionaries and the mobsters. Dr Mahadevan besides admired Botak Chin when he said that the members of his society had taken an curse to cut their hair abruptly, non to take the hapless for granted and decidedly non to take drugs[ 65 ]. Dr Mahadevan had a good feeling on Botak Chin because he knew that Botak Chin s ultimate purpose was merely to assist the hapless and non to do problem or pandemonium in this state. Dr Mahadevan besides managed to happen out from Botak Chin that he was called the Robin Hood by the villagers in his small town because of his act of robbing from the rich and giving considerable sums of spoils to the hapless. Botak Chin knew that by this manner he would be able to supply aid for the hapless. Although he gave merely small to the hapless, the remainder of the money that he robbed, he had given it to to his pack and portion of it to the household of those members who were killed by the constabulary. Through this attempt of his, the household members would hold fewer loads to transport. Dr Mahadevan knew that this act of his would do him to seek safety and spent the remainder of his life concealment when being spotted by the constabulary. It was obvious that with the aid provided by Botak Chin to the community, the community were decidedly seeking to assist him escape.Dr Mahadevan knew that Botak Chin had managed to capture the Black Marias and heads of the community through his courageous actions. Although what Botak Chin did was lawfully incorrect, nevertheless his purposes were really good. Dr Mahadevan besides managed to acquire Botak Chin to talk about the rules and guidelines that his secret society had. It seemed that Botak Chin s secret society had a really rigorous and strong guidelines and rules[ 66 ]. These rules were to be followed by each and every member of this secret society including Botak Chin himself. Botak Chin besides made it clear to Dr Mahadevan that he had appointed confederates to implement the subject among the members and his military personnels. Dr Mahadevan was besides surprised when Botak Chin told him that when he was admitted to the infirmary, patients of that infirmary were more than sword lily to rinse his apparels and do all jobs for him. It was a signifier of gratitude towards Botak Chin s actions[ 67 ]. Dr Mahadevan was told that Botak Chin neer tied the knot with any miss. Dr Mahadevan was told that many adult females would name to ask about Botak Chin s well being during Botak Chin s stay in the hospita[ 68 ]l. Dr Mahadevan knew really good that he was in the Black Marias of many adult females due to his good workss. He was besides told that Botak Chin was being rushed back to Kuala Lumpur when a slug was found in the cell of a high security infirmary. He farther explained it by stating that the slug was really shot by his members in their attempt to assist him get away. Dr Mahadevan besides found that Botak Chin sought consolation in assorted faiths. Botak Chin besides wished for his variety meats to be donated for medical intents[ 69 ]. He wanted his variety meats to profit the society in some signifier but it was rejected as he neer wrote a written consent sing his wants. Dr Mahadevan knew that Botak Chin was really a sort hearted individual but could non be helped as he is lawfully incorrect and can non be justified. Decision Written by ; Mohamed Mazlan A condemnable or a saint misunderstood? A local hero but a public nuisance at the same clip? Merely one adult male can trip such contradicting and dry statements. And that adult male is what this whole study is approximately. The adult male that branded himself as the local Robin Hood , the adult male that fought for the rights of the hapless and the laden ; but he was besides the adult male responsible for many robberies, slayings and pack battles, a adult male that set panic, confusion and terror among the community of Kuala Lumpur in the 1970ss, a adult male that everyone feared including the constabulary force, a adult male that many believed was unbeatable and unbeatable. Everyone knew him ; the aged, the working grownups and even the small childs running on the streets. Some hated his backbones ; some in secret respected him while many feared him. Amazing is nt it how one adult male who was merely a school dropout could make such an huge impact on society? He was neither flush nor did he hold any influential place in the province authorities but yet he was talked about everyplace from offices to even coffee stores. With a particular force created merely for his gaining control, he so was person to be reckoned with. Merely one adult male with likely one of the most alone name which itself is beliing to how this adult male really looks ; his name is Botak Chin. Hours of research, arguments and treatments made us, the squad, to really explicate our ain perceptual experience and ideas on this ill-famed felon in Malaysia. Wong Swee Chin, person from a comparatively normal upbringing, possibly he did endure merely a tad spot due to poverty. His male parent drilled the qualities of a good adult male into him. However, Botak Chin was no ordinary adult male. He was person with merely the right sum of endowment, fore-sight, ardor and craft. He was a natural born leader. He was fashioned to be person influential, person who would do headlines and grace the forepart pages of newspapers, spoken about through the wirelesss and appears often on telecasting screens. He had a vision, a end which he kept his focal point on and that end was to assist those in demand, to offer a manus to the hapless and the 1s enduring out at that place. Such a promising chap with good purposes. However, he fell abruptly in his executing of his purpose and vision. He went about making good workss in the incorrect manner. He was robbing, killing, interrupting Torahs, making pandemonium and mayhem. Many were injured and some even lost their lives at his disbursal. One of the most likely grounds to why he resorted to violence to acquire his propaganda and thought across is because of his old brush with force when he was younger. That triggered a sense of pitilessness within him to really utilize a more aggressive attack in making things. He was a adult male that was true to his rules and beliefs. No 1 in his pack was allowed to take drugs. A mark of a adult male with good will and self-respect. But, the constabulary were non excessively pleased with his work, they did non look at him as person seeking to do a alteration, alternatively they saw him as a plague, a societal scumbag which should be thrown into gaol or even worse hung by his cervix until he died. Time and clip once more Botak Chin was lucky and cunning plenty to withstand the constabulary. Until one twenty-four hours, the jurisprudence eventually caught up with him. He was eventually caught and it was because he was betrayed by his ain right-hand adult male and his close friend, about like his brother, Seh Chai. One would reason that for a originator of such adept offenses, Botak Chin was foolish plenty to put so much trust in his best friend. However, he was still human, and as worlds, we need to organize relationships and bonds with others in order to maintain us sane. It was really clear Botak Chin was a adult male which placed extreme precedence in his work for he denied holding any intimate relationships with any adult females although he had many supporters all desiring to capture his cherished attending. However, non even one lady did. He told his head-shrinker ; Tan Sri Dr. Mahadevan that any sexual desires that he had within him was channeled into his work. This fuelled his work with a certain sum of passion and devotedness. Something like how a hubby would impart and show his love towards his married woman. The dedication towards what he did and what he worked was faultless. Such a complex head with many fascinating ideas ; this is the head of a sheer mastermind. Planing robberies in which he got off unharmed with booty amounting to shut to half a million was no easy effort. He was even skilled with pieces. So when we take a expression at things from a logical and analytical position, his amulet the Pidtta from Tok Raja did non play a critical function in his ill-famed success of ever acquiring out of danger unhurt and defying apprehension. Botak Chin did non necessitate much fortune, for he was ever pre-planning and re-thinking his moves maintaining him in front of the constabulary clip and clip once more. Botak Chin seemed unbeatable non because of some talisman but because he made full usage of his humor and he was cunning plenty to outwit the jurisprudence. After all that has been said and done, we have come to a concluding finding of fact after weighing both the good and bad workss of Botak Chin and taking into consideration every factor necessary, we feel that Botak Chin was so a good adult male. He was a adult male of honor and rules. He was a adult male with a good bosom. His purposes were good but his ways and methods of put to deathing his rules were incorrect. It is decidedly non acceptable to kill others at the disbursal of assisting people for it is non for adult male to make up ones mind who should populate and who should non. Hence, Botak Chin was non merely any condemnable, he was a good adult male ; but a good adult male who made incorrect determinations in his pursuit to assist people. After all he has done, he so ran a race, and what a race that was.