AUTHOR’S NOTE
The title of this
novel is taken from a short story by Philip K. Dick. I felt it was
appropriate here.
I used John Madson’s
excellent Stories From Under the Sky (Iowa
State University Press) as background in two scenes. If you’re
interested in nature lore, you’ll like Madson’s book as much as I
do.
The newspaper account
told it this way:
On the sunny morning of June 27, 1898 a
thirteen-year-old girl named Clarice Ryan walked into the First
Trust Bank of Council Bluffs, Iowa.
Out of school for the summer, Clarice was helping her
father Septemus, one of the town’s leading merchants, by taking the
morning deposit to the bank.
Ordinarily, Clarice always stopped by the office of bank
president Charles Dolan. The banker is said to have kept a
drawerful of mints for the express purpose of giving one to his
“lady friend,” Clarice, each working morning.
On this particular morning, however, Clarice was unable
to visit her friend Dolan. As soon as she walked into the bank, she
saw immediately that a robbery was in progress.
Against the east wall, four customers stood with their
hands up as a man with a red bandana over his face held a shotgun
on them. His two companions, one wearing a blue bandana, the other
wearing a green one, stood near the safe while two clerks and Mr.
Charles Dolan himself emptied greenbacks into three sailcloth
bags.
The man in the blue bandana ordered Clarice to stand
over next to the other customers. Like them, she was told to put
her hands over her head. Witnesses said the young girl smiled when
she was told this. Scared as she was, she obviously found the order
to be a little silly.
When all the greenbacks had been taken from the safe,
the three thieves gathered in the middle of the bank. At this point
Dolan and the two clerks were moved over to join Clarice and the
other customers.
It was then that policeman Michael Walden, who had seen
what was going on from the window on the boardwalk outside, came
through the door with his own shotgun, ordering the men to lay down
their arms.
The rest of the story remains confused, Deputy Walden
insisting that he fired only because one of the thieves opened fire
on him. Two of the customers insisted that it was Walden who fired
first.
At some point in the minute-long exchange of gunfire,
one of the adult customers was shot in the shoulder. One of the
thieves was also wounded, though all three managed to escape.
Clarice Ryan, shot in the heart, was killed instantly.
Several rewards have been offered for the capture of the
thieves. “I guess I don’t need to say dead or alive,” Council
Bluffs Police Chief Dennis Foster told assembled reporters. “And a
lot of folks would just as soon as see them slung over horses and
brought in dead as otherwise.”
Investigation into the death of thirteen-year-old
Clarice Ryan continues.
E.G., 1990