The Devil and the Supernova Pussy

            On Tuesday I did a touch of editing on the poem that I planned to read at Shab-e She’r that night.

            Since the night before I hadn’t been able to get into my gmail account. This was a problem that I’d had last month as well but I had tried so many things that when the problem was resolved I didn’t know which one, if any, did the trick. This time I didn’t bother trying to find a solution the night before because I’d been hoping it would just be a matter of time before it resolved itself or maybe simply a matter of starting my computer the next day. The problem was still there when I logged in on Tuesday and so I did a search of “gmail won’t load”. The first solution I tried was deleting my browser history and cookies, but that didn’t help. I tried going incognito and that worked for accessing my gmail but only incognito and it didn’t fix the problem. If I’d stayed in incognito I would have had to receive a code from google on my phone every time I logged on. Finally I followed a link for logging into gmail that actually fixed the issue: https://mail.google.com/mail/?labs=0. I don’t understand why it worked but it did.

            I picked up a hint of distant wood smoke as I rode up Brock Avenue and got caught in a traffic jam at each major intersection on my way up to Bloor. Riding west on Bloor I had to pull over twice for sirens. The delays though were inconsequential because when I arrived at the Main Hall of the Tranzac only Bänoo Zan and the reception volunteer, Marta Ziemele were there.      

            I inquired of Bänoo why we were suddenly at the Tranzac rather than St Stephen in the Fields Anglican church  and asked if she’d been excommunicated or been bumped by bingo. She explained that it had more to do with the trouble caused by the troubled people that would sometimes slip into the church during and after the readings. I asked her if she didn’t expect to experience troublemakers in a bar. She said that was a good question but it was a choice for her between bad and worse. I reassured her that I’d seen very few troublemakers in my years of coming to the Tranzac.

            The Main Hall is the only room at the Tranzac that I hadn’t been in. Shab-e She’r has gone from having no stage in the gallery to the half-meter stage in the church, but the stage in the Main Hall is a full meter high.

            Since I planned on reading my first ghazal I asked Bänoo for help pronouncing the word. Rula had told me I have to make a gargling sound when I sound the “gh”. Bänoo said that’s true but I have to roll it more the way francophones roll their “r”s.

            Giovanna Riccio came to sit and chat with me for a while. I told her about the Romantic Literature course I’m taking. Rula arrived with a friend or relative from Lebanon and sat behind us. Giovanna said she and George Eliot Clarke went to Italy in June and that the Canadian embassy in Italy has commissioned George to write a poem about the Canadian soldiers that liberated Italy. Giovanna said that the Italians have bittersweet memories of the liberation but that the Canadian soldiers behaved much better than those from the United States. Giovanna says that she is almost ready to publish her manuscript of poetry about dolls. I told her that I’d first learned about Lilli from her when I’d heard her read from that manuscript at Shab-e She’r. Lilli is a German comic strip character of which they’d made a doll that became the model for Barbie. I said that I’d looked Lili up and found that those strips were really quite funny. I described one in which Lili is wearing a bikini on the beach and a policeman tells her that two piece bathing suits are not allowed on that beach. Lilli responds, “Which piece would you like me to remove?” Giovanna said that Lilli was a post-world War II gold-digger and that the Barbie Doll in the beginning was an exact copy including an averted gaze, which she said is symbolic of sexual shame. In 1971 they stopped having Barbie look away and to the side.

            Giovanna went back to help at the reception table and we started the event at 19:04 with Bänoo announcing that this was the 66^th Shab-e She’r. Bänoo’s new volunteer and co-host, Terese Pierre did the land acknowledgment, and I noticed that it had slightly different wording than the one that had been previously read and recited.

            Bänoo reminded the audience of her non-censorship policy. She said that performers are responsible for the content of their work and if one disagrees one shouldn’t shout them down. The answer to a poem is another poem.

            We began the open stage with Paul Edward Costa –

            “I’ve never felt the touch of god … By now I’ve long since abandoned the ritual of checking closets before bed … A voice once called me to a childhood place … I’ve seen Dr Jekyll transform into Hyde before my very eyes … but no one loses their mind …”

            From Paul’s second poem – “The second of my two daily pills fell to the floor … setting fire to the apartment … Narcissism simply becomes art appreciation.”

            Merle Nudelman read three poems. From “Tea Party Twist” –

            “Afternoon tea beneath our ruffled parasol … French braids and bows … A line of primped Barbies lounge … study that drink deeply behind that tiara … Distilled in a far away enchanted kingdom … words hiss down the neck to collarbone’s pale shelf … Tea anyone?”

            From “Life Dream” –

            “When soft film wafts over everything … you blink twice … All the world’s a stage … shivering in thought’s cellar … Textures of observing this reckless rendition … You stutter through your lines … You’re now strangely atingle … That parallel play … One man in his time plays many parts.”

            From “Verisimilitude” –

            “ … incense and myrrh … sheltered by a pious congregation … blunt the clarity of leaves … a disappointed fairy tale … mine no more … At once fragile breath … the rain dances and cardinals chant our story.”

            Sargon read four poems.

            From “Identity Laws” –

            “The residence on my Italian passport is a Canadian city … where I will be able to live … I can’t vote in Canada yet … I’m Italian … half Iranian.”

            From “XXY” –

            “Am I enough sexually active for my age?”

            “No, you don’t get to complain about the expensive rent with your “1500 handbag!”

            “I have always tried to be divided between Iranian and Canadian … My answer will always be Anarchy!”

            Bänoo announced that she wrote the libretto for an opera called “The Journey” about exile.

            Yavar Khan Qadri read two poems.

            “This morning is sunny, crisp and cold winds blow … lovers … I’ll finally see what the night is wearing.”

            From “Of Solitary Isles” –

            “Once upon a moonlit night … the solitary owl … a predator in the moonlight beside a glimmering sea.”

            Sydney White announced that she recently quit her Studies in Propaganda lectures that she’s been doing at U of T for several years but that many of the videos are available online. She read two poems.

            From “Truth Decay” –

            “The eleventh commandment is ‘Thou shalt not know’ … There is no ‘my truth’ or ‘your truth’ … Only opinions can be owned … Facts are feared by dictators and hunted by the young.”

            From “The Slick and the Dead” –

            “Kissinger said that soldiers are stupid animals for foreign policy … Kissinger proclaimed the fate of young men and lived past their deaths …”

            I wonder if Sydney really quit her lecture series or if she was asked by U of T to quietly end them. Last year Bnai Brith complained about her being interviewed by a University of Winnipeg radio station because they consider many of her conspiracy theories to be anti-Semitic, including her claim that Zionists caused the Russian Revolution.

            It was time for the first feature, John Nyman. When he stepped up to the mic someone at the back called out, “Love you John!” John told us that he would be reading poems of two subjects: poems about his houseplants and the devil. He informed us that because of this he was wearing two pins, one representing plants and the other the devil.

            From “The Devil’s Song” –

            “The devil says his song is his business … The devil shits on life … The devil isn’t fake … he’s naked … Otherwise I’m only clothes.”

            From “ID: Becoming Plant” –

            “I might write the dynamic turbulent form between chaos and order … My poetry might articulate itself through a body … My ideas might enter into composition with something else … but I might still be an idiot if at first I idiom with you.”

            From “My Houseplants” –

            “Leaves look like banana peels … There is no question that I also wither … making mind a martyr.”

            “The devil’s always smoking on the regular … When he speaks he spits … money poor but rich in scalps … My head is somewhere else.”

            From "How to Hustle" –

            He began with a quote from JZ: “I’ll sell water to a well”.

            “Stones … Remain stony … unrelenting until the point you’re spent.

            Signals … Externalize … Always flee … but never fail to enter the slipstream of erasure.

            … clear those currents routed against traffic.

            Investments … Hold on … Persist as liquid until pressed … with nothing extra except interest.

            Plants … require sun … wither at bad fortune … May your roots never shorten.

            Hustlers … keep hustling … Come through with the utilities called for ... add only a little more."

            From “Friendly Devil” –

            “The devil doesn't want what you want ... He's already been your friend ... leaves his baggage on your doorstep ... He's not made of stone ... so throw me a bone."

            John seemed to feel the need, because of all the talk about Shab-e She'r being about diversity, to try to fit in with the diversity that he is mostly diverse from, and to inform us, “Despite being white, I’m also part Jewish.”

            From “New Middles” –

            “Confessional poetry ... They say the only lessons learned are learned alone ... while I wait in the darkness at the threshold of the temple … mid-lifers riding the timelines … A half-woven love for a friend who’s 19 tomorrow … catches the light like a ribbon in the middle of a book …”

            From “Sunlight” –

            “ ... drove the steel hot carriage … blindside brightness … cobble a different labour … You command a demigod’s annoyance … No longer are the blind found in darkness.”

            From “The Devil" –

            “The devil doesn't care about reality ... seems innocent ... He isn't.”

            From “White Mood” –

            “Sometimes I show up white as sunlight ... sticky as bird shit ... Sometimes my white mood flies like a white flag ... slips straight through my doubleness … splitting the fruit from the flower … admits it’s ridiculous.”

            From “I” –

            “When he spoke of action he must have had a tree growing in his brain ... Vegetable ethics tend to draw a line ...”

            From “The Devil Writing” –

            “The devil is not exactly an author ... doesn't hesitate to falsify ... fluent but obtusely ... His evil is just banality ... His ethics is doing it my way.”

            From “A Plant is not a Nation” –

            “Unlike a nation a plant ... knows that dirt lands first on the deaths of the undeserving ... I can cut open its leaves and it doesn’t even mind … Unlike a plant a nation is strong and free … A plant is here in my apartment.”

            From “The Devil in Person” –

“The devil's clothed in nothing coloured skin ... not a monster all the time ... finds that I'm completely justified."

From “Praise God” –

“What I almost do is irony ... I praise god without irony … What else would I have learned from Kanye? I praise the right to live life falsely … I praise god for letting me disbelieve.”

John’s final poem was “An Angel” –

“An angel is stone … He is himself … His speech is faultless … There are no promises … He isn’t a friend … He listens.”

John Nyman is obviously the devil in his poems. His little fun-poking vignettes that hit the air dry are not always poetry on the whole but often carry poetic turns of phrase and are undeniably creative.

We took a break and I chatted with Cy Strom and he told me he was quitting running the Thursday night costume drawing session at Artists 25. He’s been coordinating it since the mid-80s, which is almost as long as I’ve been modeling. The good news he had was that the studio is finally going to get a substantial sum of money from the will of Tom Philips, which might help it survive for a few more years.

I went to the washroom. In the hallway, Chai Kalevar was handing out flyers advertising his candidacy for mayor on an environmental platform. I mentioned it to Cy and he suggested that Chai probably runs in every election. Most of the things Chai is calling for are not under municipal jurisdiction other than having more women’s washrooms and banning plastic straws. He could maybe successfully push for the latter but he can’t do anything without council support. I was hoping that the dominatrix, Carlie Ritch would be running for mayor again but I might go with Keesmaat in lieu of her.

While I was in a washroom I was surprised when Marta came out of a stall. I didn’t notice until I was leaving that what used to be the men’s washroom at the Tranzac now has a sign saying “All Gender”.

As usual, before the second feature Bänoo invited one open mic performer to warm things up. This time the slot fell to Dahveed Odelly Delisca -
            “No country owes me a status … I can never be alone … As an immigrant I’m always home … I never wanna feel lost … I know my heart is not a house but I call it home.”

“The first home I ever knew was my mama’s womb … Show me a different world instead of feelin blue … We used to share the same breath … and we were wha wha wha wha one.”

            The second feature was Jennifer Alicia, who is mixed (Mi’kmaq/Settler) from Newfoundland but her bio says she is living in Tkaronto.

Actually, though the name Toronto is probably derived from the Mohawk word “Tkaronto", that wasn't what the area that is now Toronto was called. That was the name for a narrows 150 km north of what is now called Toronto. The names of various bodies of water were changed to “Toronto” long before the name made its way south to become Fort Toronto. So even if we changed the name of the city to “Tkaronto” although it’s an indigenous name, it's a title relocated and misnamed by white people. If we wanted to honour the original inhabitants of what is now called Toronto we would rename the city “Teiaiagon”.

Jennifer warned us that her set would be awkward and very indigenous. She said she has two emotions in her poetry: sad and angry, but this time she only brought the ragey ones.

“I often find myself trapped … my white skin and white skin privilege … I’m tired of having these conversations … one of those cards … imposed by the federal government … If it was up to me everyone’s education would be free … I don’t want to see your dreamcatcher tattoo … I’m unapologetic with my mixednest.”

Jennifer encouraged the audience to make noise in response to her poems because, “I like when people give me some kind of energy.”

“I work in post-secondary indigenous studies ... We are allowed to smudge with sage but not in other parts of the institution ...”

“We are barbarians ... savages ... We have been punished ... generations of residential schools ... Scientific research says sage smoke is antiseptic … Turn back on millennial white guilt … If you are going to steal our culture you should at least get your supplies from a real Indian … 'the smudge is overbearing' ... Colonialism is hundreds of years old ... Give us our land back ... Try to cleanse the air ... It's like when farmers burn their fields … All that’s left is very us.”

            From “Another Indigenous Poem” –

            “I will not stay silent ... I promise to always honour my ancestors ... Colten Boushie ... The not guilty verdict was determined by all white jurors … You should probably talk less and listen more … There are no excuses … You can start by acknowledging this is indigenous land … We laugh still and it makes them angry … I will pray my great great grandchildren into existence …"

            Jennifer asked who in the audience knows Joseph Boyden. She explained that he's an author who writes about indigenous people but isn't indigenous. She said that some of his stories are stolen.

            From “Joe Boy” –

            “How convenient that for some my culture … savages with bows and arrows … Khloe Kardashian in a headdress … Johnny Depp as Tonto … What’s the difference between milk and Joseph Boyden? When left alone milk will develop its own culture … I wonder if Joseph Boyden could survive the stories he tells … Joe and Justin Trudeau treating Canada Day like Halloween … Stop playing dress-up.”

            Jennifer informed us that moose meat is a staple in Newfoundland. She said some say that there are more moose than people in Newfoundland (actually there are about seven people for every moose).

            From “Moose Meat” –

            “Simmered in the frying pan with onions ... Our diet consists of our environment … Moose hunting with my father … Skin used for drums … I come from generations of trappers … Hunting and trapping for us is life … Do our lives not have value to you? Do you not believe fruits and vegetables have spirits? Food has always been a tool of colonialism …"

            Jennifer ended with a new poem, which she said is different from what she usually writes.

            “An indigenous futurist journey beginning with my pussy … ceremony is commencing and you are about to be healed … fucked so good that it transcends time and space … We are the ancestors now … My pussy be the portal … returning to ourselves in the future … Here there is no settler … We are in the transformative stages … using love and rage to transform communities … Our medicines grow free from capitalism … Our dreams are the manifestation of reality … tangible through the supernova star that exists within my pussy … Welcome to the indigenous future.”

            Jennifer Alicia’s best poem and really the only piece she read that could be considered poetic was the last one. This is interesting because she said that it’s not the kind of writing she usually does. But creativity comes from breaking one’s own rules. She is too comfortable with her rants that simply communicate information without attempting to be creative. The subject matter of her writing is important and that ‘s why she should develop a more creative approach to delivering that message. Janet Rogers, who featured at Shab-e She’r last year, is a great example of a poet who can be creative with the topics of indigenous politics and culture, thereby conveying that message with power. Jennifer Alicia's last poem shows her potential and so she should step outside of her comfort zone more often.

            Bänoo informed us that because the Tranzac had already booked the last Tuesday of October to another event beforehand, the next Shab-e She’r will this one time be on October 23.

            We returned to the open stage with Khashayar Mohammadi.

            Khashayar began with a quote from John Naiman –

            "The best poem is if I could write me singing ‘All Stars’ by Smashmouth as a poem”.

            Khashayar told us that four years ago he was a friend with a journalist in Malaysia. He told us the story of an indigenous Malaysian woman who refused to wear a headscarf and so she moved to a remote beach and lived with a lot of dogs for protection.

            From “Fractal” -
            “Stranded in a borrowed tent ... My lips imitate the silence primeval … If only I could remember how morning felt … Shoulder the burden … Our ride leaves … eight hours till electronics fade … Apocalyptic thunderstorms … embrace of a temple … Tonight I am the darkness behind the jungle.”

            Bänoo, in order to reassure us that she is not leading a cultural invasion, told us that in 67 installments of Shab-e She’r, Khashayar next month would only be the third Iranian feature she’s ever booked.

Marta Ziemele read her translation of a Latvian poet who writes about challenging

experiences. She first read the original Latvian and then her translation –

            “Going down Martin Street ... the sausage is sizzling and smelling good ... I remember the rotten smell of the wooden shack … why you chose his wicked hands.”

            It was my turn and I used the mic because I was afraid I wouldn’t be heard otherwise. I began by saying, "It’s just as well that Shab-e She’r moved from the church. I could never use the washroom there because there was a sign on the door saying ‘Washrooms For Everyone’ but I could never get everybody together”. It got a fair number of laughs.

            I said that I was going to read my first attempt at a ghazal and I called on Rula to correct my pronunciation. I was wrong again and both her and Bänoo called out the right way. I tried it a couple of times and just said I’d keep working on it.

            A ghazal has a specific structure and rhyme scheme from which I deviated somewhat, but the main thing is that the stanzas are not connected in a conceptual way but rather by the same mood.

            From “Her Star That Fell From Me” –

            “Drawn by distance. Our history / Her star that fell from me. I turn away. //

Laughter in the street outside / ring bells of a religion not mine // I’m afraid of your happiness / that doesn’t make you a terrorist // A tenemental low-rise in this / unsentimental suburb of Christmas // Exiled to an ache in the chest / is encrusted adolescent loneliness // Not unpleasantly up the river / I take a selfie in an angst-warm prison // The melancholy-satisfied blues / through a tune-less moment blows a bruise // I turn around."

            I don’t really like how it came across the mic and so I think I’ll try to go without it next time.

            Carol Ribner read three poems.

            From “One Bird” –

            “One bird swung down from a tree ... Every arch of singing nerve ... binding the nerve bridge against despair ..."

            From “Wild” –

            “I seldom think about it while always depending on it ... Trains contained by tunnels … But yesterday the wilderness reclaimed its territory … The power inside flicked off as the power outside grew … Monsters without lights staring … Anywhere could be wild.”

            From “Acupuncture at the Chiropractor" –

            “I flinch as the needles go in ... remind myself to relax ... let my muscles soften ... I imagine a whisper of information among the needles … Things move.”

            Samuel Guest announced that it was his birthday, got some applause and then read two poems.

            From “Coherence" –

            “Foot tapping ... I hate these thoughts ... breathe ... someone else is breathing for me ... head shaking ... I miss my family ... kill these thoughts … god isn’t ashamed of me … thoughts can kill me … get off the bus … on the subway not stopping … I have to pee … one more bus … miss the bus … walking … home … Charlie’s home … Charlie loves me …coffee … choking on spit … mother’s not at home … it got worse … snot on my hands … wash your hands … Charlie is gone … call mom first … calling mom … I live I die … mom is picking up … live.”

            From “Fly Butterfly Fly” –

            “ ... Do it like the others ... don't need to know why ... She really knows how to twirl up a breeze."

            David Sharma went to the stage and declared that the mic was too tall. People called for him to use the other one that was a meter from the other one but he said it was too far away. Instead he sat on the edge of the stage without a microphone.

            From "Like Honeycombs" –

            “A large cosmos orbiting a smaller cosmos ... marvelous grinning misery ... pitch black aurora ... My new eyes … silence … Everything’s snapping into place … behind the constellation … I love it all to hell … Everything deranged … a seizure between the waves … I’m happy now … Why does verse have to be tight? I can open the world's wheel again."

            Mehri Yalfani read two poems.

From “People" –

            “People are simple ... People are complicated ... People are fragile ... People are hard ... I feel sympathy with the fragile people … I have respect for hard people … I can’t trust complicated people … I like simple people who teach me to be simple like a tree … I’m just me … not knowing me.”

            From "I Am Safe and Sound" –

            “ ... The bombs falling from a cruel sky aren’t going to kill me in a far away land.”

            Norman Allan read two poems.

            From “Betsy’s Goddess” –

            “Betsy can see order … Matthew can see angels … Three-dimensional words … Matthew speaks the critical mass … All the goddesses have left ... Just need a whisper ... There are avatars everywhere."

            From “My Problem” –

            “Learning to cope with appetite … I don’t know where I’m going.”

            Rubab read “To a Colonizer I Speak English” –

            “You ripped apart nations … We have learned to live with that … If we pick your pocket today it’s because we’ve come to get our money back … In my bloodstream runs Urdu … Farsi … Big parts of western Europe travel on my tongue … I choke … Salaam … Good day … I choke.”

            William Hunt read –

            “I try to work and think with parameters … There’s a fundamental contingency … virtually the retroactive force … trade their own with the nearest box … Oh how nervous I am to become an indeterminate association with my surroundings … I want to simply imagine … Faulkner and Lady Marmalade … A fracking process … a secret nexus of nights … diamond studded … The illusory box … a malleable mechanism … push into adjacent murmurs … the earth and the foot … reproduction of themselves.”

            Jack Dempster read two poems –

            “Gazing at fireflies glittering over country fields … The spirit of love is a nightingale as the sky grows pale … Over shiraz the sun passes over desert oases … a peacock … Through the night the Persian lily sleeps … She will awaken and from each lone petal collect the dew water.”

            “Swimming in an ocean of blood and fire don’t lose sight of your Cohen …”

            Before leaving the stage Jack declared that he stands against racism and for the liberation of Quebec.

            Reza Eslami read three poems -
            From “The Sound of Silence” –

            “In the darkness of the shadow I walk / searching for a reason ... I would dance to the rhythm of dropping water in the sink ... All the rhythms around me would get into sync.”

            “As night fell over the pasture of hope ... the scream ... A naive attempt to stop time ... The night is ebbing into the void of the shadow … The clock keeps ticking and the soul fades away.”

            “All the measured steps and calculated risks / when the lunatic heart of mine knew no boundaries / falling for you.”

            Mira Shoshana read one poem –

            “Head under water ... They burned our witches … so we bring candles ... I am ethereal Jew … Where is the woman with the rose in her fist … Who were you born into? Are you tik tik broken? Breath … break skin … What does it mean / being underwater? Water gives me nothing but the billowing emergency of my own breath … thump against the inside of my eardrum … In the silence of my room I can almost hold the walls … Head under water … I am not supposed to be here … I am breaking up again for air.”

            Rula Kahil shared that she'd just come back from the Middle East where she'd spent a lot of time on the beach. She read two poems about it –

            “Majestically roaring ... you come and you go ... After you climax close to me … preparing for your next climax … you Mediterranean at my feet.”

            “Sharp edged hollow figures ... Declaration of patriarchy ... women with a black tent ... swimming at his feet ... covered by the black tent … gazing at the half-naked bodies nearby.”

            Haamid Sharif told us that he was from Manchester where there are a lot of spoken work artists better than him, “but I’m not too bad!” He read one poem –

            “My name is often concealed as a reference number … telling me to be thankful for colonialism … Now they want to say terrorism is a symptom of my religion … The Daily Mail: the paper that celebrated the election of Adolph Hitler.”

            That’s an interesting piece of information and it turns out to be true. The Daily Mirror was apparently more fascist and even published Blackshirt membership forms.

            The final performer was Omar, who drew our attention to the fact that they’ve been singing Beatles songs all night next door in the Southern Cross room and confessed that it’s been making him feel nostalgic. He read two poems.

            From “The Ballad of Mr. S” –

            “You don’t need a passport to fall through a hole in this universe … You see, some of us are born with the good kind of pain …”

            From “Pillow Talks” –

            “Here lies the cradle of all my dreams … the tenderness I sought after a hard days night … Here lie the remains of tears … a softness pulling us to the centre … Here lies the sun from the depths of darkness rising into light.”

            Bänoo asked us to help put the folding chairs against the southern wall of the room. One thing I liked about the church was that we didn’t have to do any work when the night was over but now we were back to stacking chairs like we did at the gallery in the Annex. On top of that the Tranzac's folding chairs are more difficult to collapse because it’s not just a matter of pulling the back and the seat together. There’s an adjustment that has to be made on the bottom.

            Rula told me “Nice ghazal!” before she left and Cy said he liked it as well. I think Cy is deeply relieved that he no longer has to stand guard on the street at the end of the night like he did at the church to keep down and out and sometimes violent people from wandering in.

            Before I left home earlier I made sure I half cooked a potato and a cob of corn so all I had to do was heat some things up for a late dinner when I got home.

            I watched an episode of Perry Mason. In this story Perry is on vacation and roughing it in his cabin that only has three bathrooms. Things begin though with a man named Mark and his guest Carla in another cabin in the same neighbourhood. They've just finished watching a home movie and Mark gets fresh, tearing Carla's blouse. She slaps him and things fade to black. In the next scene a couple, Sam and Betsy are in bed and Sam sits up in bed, wakes Betsy up and says that he heard a shot. Then they both hear a woman scream. Betsy looks through her binoculars and sees Carla’s mother Belle in Mark’s cabin. Belle leaves and Sam calls the sheriff. The sheriff finds Mark’s dead body having been shot. Sam doesn’t tell him they saw Belle in the cabin. The next morning Belle knocks on Mason’s cabin. She tells him Carla had been at Mark’s cabin the night that he was shot and she wants to avoid a scandal for her daughter because Mark had disreputable reputation with girls and she doesn’t want the papers to know that she was there. She asks Mason to find the woman who screamed so that the focus would be on her. Mason calls Paul Drake and asks him to come there. When he gets there Mason wants the number of every license plate in the area. The reason is that whoever had screamed at Mark's cabin probably cares enough about him to go to his funeral in LA. and her identity could be found then. The sheriff comes to Mason's cabin to talk with Belle. He says there were footprints leading from her house to Mark’s house. He also found the murder weapon in some brush and it belongs to Carla's boyfriend and they've found blood on Belle's shoes. He arrests Belle for murder. Mason tracks down the woman whose license plate was in both Bear Valley and LA. Her name is Marion Keats. Belle is tried in the Bear Valley Court. Mason puts Marion on the stand and charges that she had been in communication with Mark’s housekeeper, Nora because Marion was in love with Mark and Nora was instructed to call her if ever a woman was at Mark’s place. She was the one that screamed on seeing Mark’s body. Mason discerns that it was actually Sam that killed Mark over a money dispute and then went to bed, only pretending later to have heard a shot.

            Carla was played by Barbara Eden, eight years before she became famous in I Dream of Jeannie.