Linda Franklin: “Pirate Treasure Solitaire”

Submission One to our Talking Camel Writing Challenge “Kaboom”:

This is based on a classic law school tort case, Palsgraf v. Long Island Railroad Co., 248 N.Y. 339, 162 N.E. 99 (N.Y. 1928)…

“Write a 300-500-word story why someone in 1929 might be carrying a newspaper-wrapped bundle of percussion-activated explosives onto a passenger train in Long Island.”

by Linda Franklin

Floyd had one more trip: out to Orient, at the east end of Long Island. Not for vaction; he didn’t have anything better to do now. He’d read in the newspaper – a Believe It or Not column actually – about how a San Quentin prisoner in solitary confinement, just before WWI, had made a small bomb by scraping the red hearts and diamonds off a few packs of playing cards. He was caught, but only after his bomb had worked to blow open the cell door. Floyd figured cards were still printed with the same ink.

Floyd took all the cards from playing solitaire – Three Shuffles and a Draw had become his favorite game — during the few months spent going through his savings like a hot spoon through Jell-O. He scraped the red off onto a sheet of newspaper. He funneled the powder carefully into a big flat whiskey bottle and wrapped it all in so much newspaper it wouldn’t explode by accident on the train. His last half-dollar guaranteed him a seat, the last he might ever enjoy as a commuter. Floyd was headed for his cousin’s little potato farm in Orient – hoping to blow open a rocky cave-like place on the shore, which his cousin was sure held pirate treasure.

“See, Floyd? See those marks? Pirate signs. I even got a map!”

Floyd wasn’t convinced – looked more like the old tracks of barnacles to him, or maybe a hobo sign for “A meal here” or maybe just something some kid had scratched with his sand shovel during better times. Nothing to lose by trying – the Stock Market was crashed, and everything he had in NYC was gone forever, even his solitaire.

~ Linda Franklin  August 3, 2011