POTSHOT
April 3rd, 2001
Penguin Putnam
Spenser returns-heading west to the rich man's haven of Potshot, Arizona, a former mining town
reborn as a paradise for Los Angeles millionaires looking for a place to escape the pressures of
their high-flying lifestyles. Potshot overcame its rough reputation as a rendezvous for old-time
mountain men who lived off the land, thanks to a healthy infusion of new blood and even newer money.
But when this western idyll is threatened by a local gang-a twenty-first-century posse of desert rats,
misfits, drunks, and scavengers-the local police seem powerless. Led by a charismatic individual
known only as The Preacher, this motley band of thieves selectively exploits the town, nurturing it
as a source of wealth while systematically robbing the residents blind. Enter Spenser, called in to
put the group out of business and establish a police force who can protect the town. Calling on his
own cadre of cohorts, including Vinnie Morris, Bobby Horse, Chollo Bernard J. Fortunato, as well as
the redoubtable Hawk, Spenser must find a way to beat the gang at their own dangerous game.
To be released April 3rd, 2001.
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Spensarium's Aphorisms and Allusions
Dedication
For Joan:
"somewhere around the twelfth of never."
The Twelfth of Never
— Performed by Johnny Mathis
— Written by Paul Francis Webster, Jerry Livingston
— Peaked at # 9 in 1957
— Charted by The Chi-Lites at # 122 in 1969 as "B" side of their "Let Me Be the
Man My Daddy Was"
— Also charted by Donny Osmond at # 8 in 1973
— The melody of this song was taken from the 16th-century English folk song "I Gave
My Love a Cherry" ("The Riddle Song")
You ask me how much I need you
Must I explain
I need you oh my darling
Like roses need rain
You ask how long I'll love you
I'll tell you true
Until the Twelfth of Never
I'll still be loving you
Hold me close
Never let me go
Hold me close
Melt my heart like April snow
I'll love you 'til the bluebells
Forget to bloom
I'll love you 'til the clover
Has lost its perfume
And I'll love you 'til the poets
Run out of rhyme
Until the Twelfth of Never
And that's a long, long time
Hold me close
Never let me go
Hold me close
Melt my heart like April snow
I'll love you 'til the bluebells
Forget to bloom
I'll love you 'til the clover
Has lost its perfume
And I'll love you 'til the poets
Run out of rhyme
Until the Twelfth of Never
And that's a long, long time
Until the Twelfth of Never
And that's a long, long time
A long, long time
— To listen to Johnny Mathis sing "Twelfth of Never" click here.
Chapter 1
"Back out of all this now too much for us," I said.
"That's a poem or something," she said.
"Frost," I said.
Directive
by Robert Frost
Back out of all this now too much for us,
Back in a time made simple by the loss
Of detail, burned, dissolved, and broken off
Like graveyard marble sculpture in the weather,
There is a house that is no more a house
Upon a farm that is no more a farm
And in a town that is no more a town.
The road there, if you'll let a guide direct you
Who only has at heart your getting lost,
May seem as if it should have been a quarry--
Great monolithic knees the former town
Long since gave up pretence of keeping covered.
And there's a story in a book about it:
Besides the wear of iron wagon wheels
The ledges show lines ruled southeast-northwest,
The chisel work of an enormous Glacier
That braced his feet against the Arctic Pole.
You must not mind a certain coolness from him
Still said to haunt this side of Panther Mountain.
Nor need you mind the serial ordeal
Of being watched from forty cellar holes
As if by eye pairs out of forty firkins.
As for the wood's excitement over you
That sends light rustle rushes to their leaves,
Charge that to upstart inexperience.
Where were they all not twenty years ago?
They think too much of having shaded out
A few old pecker-fretted apple trees.
Make yourself up a cheering song of how
Someone's road home from work this once was
Who may be just ahead of you on foot
Or creaking with a buggy load of grain.
The height of the adventure is the height
Of country where two village cultures faded
Into each other. Both of them are lost.
And if you're lost enough to find yourself
By now, pull in your ladder road behind you
And put a sign up CLOSED to all but me.
Then make yourself at home. The only field
Now left's no bigger than a harness gall.
First there's the children's house of make believe,
Some shattered dishes underneath a pine,
The playthings in the playhouse of the children.
Weep for what little things could make them glad.
Then for the house that is no more a house,
But only a belilaced cellar hole,
Now slowly closing like a dent in dough.
This was no playhouse but a house in earnest.
Your destination and your destiny's
A brook that was the water of the house,
Cold as a spring as yet so near its source,
Too lofty and original to rage.
(We know the valley streams that when aroused
Will leave their tatters hung on barb and thorn.)
I have kept hidden in the instep arch
Of an old cedar at the waterside
A broken drinking goblet like the Grail
Under a spell so the wrong ones can't find it,
So can't get saved, as Saint Mark says they mustn't.
(I stole the goblet from the children's playhouse.)
Here are your waters and your watering place.
Drink and be whole again beyond confusion.
Chapter 1
No one was about in the implacable sunshine, except me. Mad dogs and Englishmen, I thought.
Noel Coward
Mad Dogs and Englishmen
Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the mid-day sun
The Japanese don't care to, the Chinese wouldn't dare to
Hindus and Argentines sleep firmly from twelve to one
But Englishmen
Detest a
Siesta
Chapter 16
"The grave's a fine and private place," I said, "but none I think do there embrace."
Andrew Marvell
1621‚1678
To His Coy Mistress
HAD we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, Lady, were no crime
We would sit down and think which way
Ý
To walk and pass our long love's day.
Thou by the Indian Ganges' side
Shouldst rubies find: I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the Flood,
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires, and more slow;
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes and on thy forehead gaze;
Ý
Two hundred to adore each breast,
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart.
Ý
For, Lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.
But at my back I always hear
Time's wingËd chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found,
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song: then worms shall try
That long preserved virginity,
And your quaint honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust:
The grave 's a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace.
Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may,
And now, like amorous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour
Than languish in his slow-chapt power.
Let us roll all our strength and all
Ý
Our sweetness up into one ball,
Ý
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Ý
Thorough the iron gates of life:
Ý
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.Ý
Spenser's Libations
Amstel Bier
Miller High Life
Labatt 50
Heineken
Harp
Wild Turkey
Remy Martin
Bourbon
Wine
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