Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 41, No. 4, October 1977

“Well,” Jim replied, “he’s only five-six, and city police have to be at least five-eight.”

While the patrol car pulled away, Jim got into his own car.

Chains by Dana Lyon

A “Different” Story

Seeking to set in cold type what makes a “Different” story different is like trying to carry quicksilver in a sieve — somehow, the essence of explanation sifts through the openings to vanish in cracks of the floor. Take the last two such stories that have run — Sarah Randall’s TO MAMA WITH LOVE in last March’s issue, a study in rural. matricide with its eerie outcome, and George Chesbro’s THE FINEST OF FAMILIES, a horrifyingly updated vampire story — and compare them with this one, a paean to old fashioned education that somehow becomes fatally entangled with the primeval scream. But what the hell — if any two of them were alike, how could they be different?

* * *

Miss Clara Palmer was watering the petunias in front of the great old house where she lived alone, hoping that for once she might be left in peace. She liked to think of the past as she worked in her garden, since there was nothing in the present worth thinking about and no future in particular to look forward to.

She liked to remember the days when she had taught English in one of the junior high schools in town, and how lovely her dear children had been in those days — the quiet halls with just a few boys and girls wandering from class to class, giggling over their private affairs but always polite and amenable. There was no noise or confusion — or danger — in schools in those days.

If a child was naughty, he or she was ordered to the principal’s office — and went. The children dressed nicely and behaved nicely. They learned their lessons and minded their manners. She supposed she was lucky to have been retired all these years when young people had become rowdyish, sloppy, ill mannered and rough. Therefore, she could think about the past with quietude, untouched by the turmoil created by the young of today.

Or had been able to until recently, when the neighborhood had gone downhill to an alarming extent and the young people who passed her house on their way home from school had thrown incredible insults while doing so.

“Ha, old Pickle Nose, how’s your garden doin’ today?” and “I’ll bet you got some guy stashed away in there, may be in your bed, ha?”

Raucous laughter from the motley crew of young ruffians, children she was growing to hate and fear. They shouted obscenities at her, laughed at her, ridiculed her rather protuberant nose, cast reflections on her ancestry of which she was so proud (a governor, a Supreme Court justice, a hero of the Civil war, far back of course, but there, nonetheless) and always the obscenities, the coarseness, the wretched grammar that never failed to grate on her ears.

“I bet you ain’t got nothin’ that we want!” “Between you and I and the gatepost.” “Those kind of flowers make me sick at my stomach.” “Where’s all the cats old maids are sposed to got?”

Outraged, she would reflect that at least her own students in years past had not only been polite and well dressed, they had learned the grammar she had taught them, the English which was so vital to their future lives. They could write compositions and they could quote from Shakespeare. They learned to modulate their voices and do their elocution lessons — Whereas these young ruffians would turn out to be nothing but criminals or welfare recipients for the rest of their lives.

Five of them came along now and, rather than face them again, she laid down the hose and went to the faucet to turn off the water. As she bent over, one of the young voices bellowed, “Christ, what a butt! How about that — hey, Tony? How’d you like to—”

More obscenities. She turned around and recognized them. She had been subjected to their vulgarities more than once before. But this was the final time. Everyone, she reminded herself, has a breaking point beyond which he or she cannot endure. No one can be pushed beyond that point without disaster!

She stood up and turned to them and smiled. “Hello young people,” she said. “How about coming into the house for refreshments?”