Never Use a Chicken and Other Stories

by Jim Newell

“Any idea how many hours Louise Sweetland had logged?” Charley asked.

  “About 8,500 hundred, I think,” answered the FAA man. Didn’t you guess when you were giving her lessons?”

  “Of course I did. That’s why I asked.” Charley repeated the story he had told his partner. “Any news on what caused the crash?”

  “Apparently she forgot the carb heat and the engine stalled.”

  How to Outwit an Inspector

  Arthur Howard was a second-year high school English teacher. He was still learning the job, but he had a natural bent for teaching and he basically liked the work, although the tedious marking of papers that every English teacher has to plow through sometimes got to him. The other thing that bugged him was the bureaucracy of the school. The Head of the Department, the Vice Principals and the Principal could make or break a young teacher. Worst of all was the Inspector, a government appointee who came each year to check out the first- and second-year teachers. His word was law, and if he disapproved of what he saw in the classroom, that teacher was gone after the second year.

  The Inspector always arrived unannounced. He walked into the office of the Vice Principal for administration and handed him the list of teachers he wanted to see that day, and collected their timetables. The Vice Principal then notified the teacher of the Inspector’s visit. Those fortunate young teachers whose class was chosen for late in the school day had some opportunity to make adjustments in the lesson they proposed to present, but they also had time to worry about the coming visit.

  Arthur had survived the first visit of the Inspector on a cold February day the year before, but not without some difficulty. That day, a cold winter’s day, the Inspector had come in and sat at the back of the room while Arthur attempted to teach a lesson on punctuation to a class of forty-two Grade 10 boys who liked English about as much as they enjoyed working, which was not much. The classroom was crowded and warm, and Arthur had removed his sport jacket and hung it carefully on the back of his chair. Fortunately, the lesson had gone well, the boys had answered questions and completed the exercise that followed the instruction, exchanged papers and gleefully marked the errors on the paper they had obtained from another student. Then the class had discussed the errors and by the time the bell rang to end the class, Arthur felt that he had taught a reasonably good lesson.

  The Inspector said nothing except, “Thank you Mr. Howard. I will go over your work with you at the end of the day. I will come to this room, if that is where you will be.”

  When the time came to meet for the debriefing, the Inspector came right to the point. “Mr. Howard, why did you take off your jacket?”

  “Well, sir, it was very hot in here and the room was crowded. I wanted to be comfortable. Why? Did that make a difference?”

  “It is not a very good example for a teacher to set. Being neatly dressed is important.”

  “My shirt was fresh, not wrinkled.”

  “Yes, and it matched your jacket and slacks,” the Inspector had nodded approval.

  “And my tie had no gravy stains.”

  “Yes, yes. A very nice tie. But if you found the room warm, why didn’t you just open the windows a few inches?”

  “Sir, did you know that this room is on the north side of the building and we had a cold north wind that day? Opening the windows would have been too much.”

  “No I didn’t realize that. Could you then not have turned off the radiators?”

  “No sir. The radiators in this room are not the kind that can be turned off. Keeps the students from doing it as pranks. But how about the lesson? Was it all right?”

  “Very good lesson. You handled that large class of boys very well and they seemed quite interested. On the whole, I will give you a passing grade, but I must caution you about removing your jacket in class.”

  End of visit.

  Almost exactly one year later, the Vice Principal came up to Arthur in the staff room where he was on his break and drinking a cup of not very good coffee.

  “Art, the Inspector wants to see you next period.”

  Arthur almost dropped the coffee cup. “What? I have a Grade 12 Business English class next period. We have three classes a week. The first two we discuss a type of communication and in the third class, we go to the computer room so the students can type out the assignment I give them, print it and hand it in at the end of the class for marking. This is a computer day. I don’t teach, just hand out the assignment and watch them type and print it.”

  “Not today. You go back to your regular classroom and teach a lesson. Good luck.” And the Vice Principal walked away.

  Arthur looked at his watch. He had twenty minutes. This was going to be a problem. He finished the coffee and left a few minutes early to go to the computer room. When the students arrived, he told the first few about the change of plans and stationed one girl he could trust to meet the others and direct them to the other classroom and to hurry.

  His luck was holding. All fifteen of the students arrived a minute or two early and looked with interest at their teacher. “Look guys, the Inspector is coming. I got twenty minutes notice. I haven’t had time to prepare a lesson so we are going to have the same lesson we had the other day. Please. Nobody mention that. Act as though it is brand new to you. Ask stupid questions; give some wrong answers. Please, help me out.”

  “Mr. Howard, how would it be if I do something that makes you throw me out?” That came from one youngster that Arthur never would have dreamed would help him. He was one of the students most likely to misbehave, even though he was 18 years old.

  “Fine by me, Mickey. But make it reasonable. Don’t get too carried away.”

  “Trust me, Mr. Howard. I won’t let you down.”

  And with that came a knock at the door and the Inspector walked in. “Good morning, all,” he said, and took a seat at the back of the room.

  “We are just about to begin discussing how to write a memorandum requesting the payment of a late invoice,” Arthur explained, and the Inspector nodded his head and opened his notebook.

  The lesson proceeded. The students did Arthur proud. They asked questions that indicated they had not been paying close attention, they gave wrong answers as well as right ones. About halfway through the class, Mickey, without raising his hand, blurted out, “Mr. Howard, I’m bored. This lesson doesn’t hold anything for me. I’ll never have a job where I have to write a stupid memo like this.”

  “Well now, Mickey. If that’s the way you feel, you can leave right now and tell me all about it at three thirty. Report to the library and ask Mrs. Johansen to give me a note later confirming that you were there.” Arthur waited while Mickey picked up his books and walked out the door, winking at one of the girls as he left. The Inspector must have noticed the wink.

  That afternoon, when the Inspector came for the discussion of the lesson, he was smiling as he walked in. “Well done, Mr. Howard. I liked the way you handled that class. Especially the effective discipline. That was quick, direct, and I trust you will have a serious discussion with that young man. I noticed him waiting outside as I came in.”

  “He can wait,” Arthur replied. “We’ll talk about his future and his attitude when he comes in. These are young adults, you know,” he used a sarcastic intonation. “They’re all eighteen, and some of them act more like fifteen.”

  “Don’t I know it,” replied the Inspector. “Well, I have no criticisms to make at all. You have improved greatly since last year and I will most certainly recommend you for a permanent teaching certificate.”

  Arthur thanked him and silently thanked his class. That would be the last time he would have to go through a performance like that. Next year, no visit from the Inspector.

  When Mickey came in, he too was smiling. Actually, he was grinning from ear to ear. “Well, how’d I do?”

  “Just fine, Mickey. Thank you very much. You may even have saved my job.”

  Mr. Howard,” and he had stopped grinning, but just smiling, “I’v
e never said this to a teacher before, but I enjoy your classes, and thank you for letting me be myself for once and not giving me any hassle.”

  When the class arrived the next time they met, Arthur began by thanking them for their helpful behaviour the last time. “I just wanted to tell you that you have all passed this course. Now that doesn’t mean that we are not going to carry on with the material on the syllabus, or that you can quit studying. If you are considering any kind of employment in the business world, you will need to know the material from the rest of the semester as well as that which we have already covered. There will be a final exam, but I owe each one of you, and I always pay my debts without a collection letter.

  Grandma’s Gone

  In a west coast city, a large west coast city, a trim and vivacious early middle-aged woman spends her days and nights in gracious living. For the past eight or ten months since she moved to that particular city she has occupied a comfortable apartment and cultivated a few friends. Those whom she calls friends are not aware of any more of her life history than the few morsels she has given them and thus could not be said to know her intimately, but they are always pleased to be in her company. Nobody seems to attach any significance to the fact that she always pays cash for her purchases. Even her rent is paid in cash each month, a fact which does not disturb the landlord one whit. The postman, if he were asked, could tell you that he never brings letters, only bills for her unlisted telephone and the cable television company. He wouldn’t know these bills are also paid in cash.

  Before she moved to the west coast, this woman, whose name is now Anne Fraser, lived in an east coast town. There she was known not as Anne Fraser but as Lena Tompkin. When Anne Fraser/Lena Tompkin first moved to the large west coast city, she visited the public library almost every day to read an east coast daily newspaper. Had anybody noted what she was reading, they might have been surprised to see that she looked only for stories about a bank robbery, actually three bank robberies, all of which took place within an hour and a half of each other on the same day in the east coast town where she lived before she moved to the large west coast city. Her visits to the library all but ceased when the stories about the bank robberies also ceased. The stories ceased because the police got nowhere in their investigation and the story was no longer a source of great public interest.

  Those three robberies took place almost exactly a week before Lena Tompkin arrived in the west coast city and became Anne Fraser. The details of the crime are intriguing, and the police wish they knew all of them. What the police know is that on a Thursday afternoon in the early fall, a payday for the one very large local industrial factory in the town, two men wearing Halloween fright masks that covered their faces and baseball caps that covered their hair, ran into a bank in a shopping mall where one slammed an attaché case on the counter in front of the tellers and demanded that the case be filled with large bills. The men also wore surgical gloves and were armed with handguns. The first one into the bank grabbed an elderly woman by the shoulders to shove her in front of him yelling that a hold-up was taking place and nobody should move or the woman would die. His accomplice took charge of the money while both kept a constant survey on the people in the bank. In less than five minutes they were gone, carrying the now filled attaché case, driven away in the back seat of a waiting car. Ten people who saw the car told police it was eight different colors and three different makes. None of them got the license number, but two of them thought the plate number began with either S or G. One said there were two other men in the front seat.

  While police were taking statements, they were notified that a second bank robbery had occurred at a bank on the other side of town. The same two men, by the accounts given, carried out both robberies, using the same methodology. This time, witnesses agreed that the car was either dark blue or dark green, a Toyota or a Pontiac, and that the license plate began with either SAS or SGA. The police investigation was stretching a bit thin by this time, but very shortly, it became thinner because the same two men appeared in a third bank at a third location and performed the same successful type of job. This time, the elderly person grabbed by the first man into the bank was a man, and he was slightly injured when the robber threw him down before making his escape to the waiting car. The man’s injuries prevented bystanders from getting a better look at the getaway car, but one or two were sure the car was a Honda and four of them said the driver was a woman, while only two said the driver was male. The license number, according to three people, was SAS.476, although two more thought it was SGS.648.

  That’s what the police knew. Later on, they also knew how much money, however many robbers there were, had stolen: $928,954. They did not give that information to the press. In fact, they didn’t give very much information to the press. The only other information they gave out came two days later when they announced that the suspected get-away car had been located at a shopping plaza close to the first robbery. It was a dark brown Ford, license number SAS.984, which had been stolen about a half-hour before the first robbery. The thieves had driven it away from a downtown parking lot in front of a restaurant.

  There wasn’t any more information to give. Speculation was that a gang, or two or three gangs, had come from a city about fifty miles away to rob the three banks, knowing that a Thursday payday was a big money day at banks because traditional shopping patterns in that town brought people to the stores on Thursday evening and Friday, especially on a payday week.

  The police would have been interested to have known what went on late that afternoon inside a split-level detached house in a subdivision on the town’s east side. Four excited people, two men and two women all in their mid-twenties, three of them carrying attaché cases, got out of a minivan which had driven into the two-car garage that formed part of the house. Once inside, all talking at once with excitement, they stripped off their outer clothes and shoved them into heavy garbage bags, which one of the men took out to the minivan and stowed beside the spare tire under the floor at the rear of the vehicle. He also put two Halloween fright masks and two baseball caps, as well as two pairs of surgical gloves, into a smaller garbage bag before tying it shut.

  Back inside he joined the other three in several celebration drinks. The first drinks were poured by Lena Tompkin who had been in the house, acting as a babysitter for her stepdaughter’s six-month-old daughter. Mrs. Tompkin sat and watched while the two couples transferred the money to a large suitcase. There was too much of it to count just then, but they estimated as they transferred the bills. Joe, the husband of Lena Tompkin’s stepdaughter, had what turned out to be the closest estimate: about $750,000. Guessing that amount of money is difficult.

  The celebration was relatively subdued. The two couples, obviously good friends, were ecstatic with pleasure at the success of their first venture into major crime. The husbands were cousins. They had put a great deal of thought into the operation before carrying it out and were well-pleased with their success. Lena Tompkin sat at one end of the family room where the couples had carried the suitcase of money, all but ignored by the four happy young people. Finally, her stepdaughter turned to her and said, rather than asked, that they were going out for a victory dinner and that if she would stay on to look after the baby, she could probably find dinner in the freezer. “We’ll look after you after we get back, Grandma,” she said.

  Her expression and body language could have revealed to anyone interested that her relationship with a stepmother young enough to be her older sister was not particularly warm. Her attitude sometimes bothered her husband, but not enough for him to say anything about it.

  “That be ok, Grandma?” asked Joe. “We’ll probably be back before midnight.”

  Still highly elated and without waiting for an answer, the four left the house for a night on the town. Lena Tompkin fed the baby and after playing with her and bathing her, put her down for the night. She was thinking about other things, however, while she was looking after the baby. When she clos
ed the door to the baby’s room, she began to put her thoughts into action.

  First, she rummaged in the basement until she found her daughter’s luggage. She carried two medium suitcases to the family room where she transferred the cash into them, leaving the now empty large leather suitcase where it sat on the floor. She took a last look at the sleeping baby, then picked up what she began to refer to in her mind as the money bags and, locking the door, went into the garage and drove away in the other car that was parked there.

  Her first stop was at her apartment. In less than an hour she packed the things she wanted into two more bags, made a phone call to the airport at the city fifty miles away and another to a hotel at the city. An hour and a half later, leaving the car at the back of an almost deserted parking lot at the city bus terminal, she found a taxi and checked in at the hotel she had called from her apartment. She tried rather unsuccessfully to sleep, but finally dozed off before she was summoned by the five-thirty early morning call she had requested. Less than an hour later, she checked in at the airport departure desk for her reservation under the name of Anne Fraser. She paid cash for her ticket, a $300 flight to a mid-continent city. She checked the four bags and carried only an overnight bag with her through security and onboard the plane. On her arrival, she breathed a great sigh of relief when all her luggage turned up safely on the carrousel. She made the rest of her trip by train, her special luggage in the compartment with her.

  Shortly after Lena Tompkin/Anne Fraser checked in at the hotel, her stepdaughter and the others checked in at home. They had been celebrating and had had rather a lot to drink, but the sight of the empty suitcase and the realization that Grandma had gone was a considerably sobering influence. Joe quickly checked Lena’s apartment and realized she wasn’t there, either. The four spent a couple of hours in heated discussion considering where she might had fled. Finally figuring that the airport might be a possibility, Joe and his cousin headed for the city and drove around the airport parking lot at some length, looking for the missing car. About the time they decided she either was not there or had not yet arrived, the first early morning flight roared off the runway and disappeared toward the west. They spent the morning looking, walking around the departure area, telephoning home several times, and finally, exhausted from lack of sleep, tension and disappointment, drove home.