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wooden chest where an ancient mattress was lying on top of some cardboard cartons.
    Pushing aside the mattress, Stewart saw yellow newspapers and
National Geographics
from the 1930s.
    And underneath the papers and magazines Stewart saw something else: the cartons contained hundreds of Depression-era comic books, all in seemingly fine condition.
    What clinched it for Stewart was the sight of Batman on the cover of
Detective Comics
and Superman on the cover of
Action Comics
. Stewart remembered the collector in Swanson’s shop shouting about “detectives” and “actions”—and he was undoubtedly referring to these comics. Swanson had said comic books were valued at very big bucks.
    The name of Swanson’s shop was One Person’s Clutter. Stewart recalled a TV show on which people brought in stuff like comic books from junk-filled basements and attics, and an expert had declared, “One person’s clutter is another’s bread and butter!”
    “The stuff here is worth a damned fortune!” Stewart announced.
    “You kiddin’ me?” Desmond said.
    Swanson had already concealed the comics, which Peg didn’t know were valuable, beneath the mattress. But after their breakup, Swanson was desperate. He’d killed Peg, thinking he could later break into the empty house and retrieve the rare comic books.
    By the next morning they had Swanson’s confession.

    After serving in the army overseas, Albert Ashforth worked for two newspapers. He is the author of three books and numerous stories and articles. His recently published espionage thriller,
The Rendition,
was described by one reviewer as “smoothly written, fast moving and suspenseful.” He is a professor at SUNY and lives in New York City.

FIGHTIN’ MAN
----
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    N.J. Ayres
    O rville Davis was a fightin’ man. He’d fight a bug off a bush, a crow from a tree, a shoeshine man for the finishing rag. He’d word-war with a woman pushing a stroller who merely wanted to cross the street in front of him.
    Men, now, he’d fight for real—with fists, tire irons, or, once, a Maori club embedded with abalone shell, which still carried the rusty sheen of someone’s long-ago blood. The man he clobbered did not die, but the poor thing could be seen months afterward in any of the three taverns in town hoisting drinks with a hand that trembled of its own heartless accord.
    Then one day when Orville Davis was holding a garage sale outside his home, the one with the roof fallen in on the back side, he had a vision. It came to him uninvited—cruelly, you might say—when a roof joist leapt out from its rightful place and aimed itself directly at a point behind Orville’s right ear while Orville was bent over, laying a flat of blue tarp on the muddy patch of lawn in order to display the boat gear he wanted to sell.
    At least that’s what the neighbor on his south side said when police came to interview him. Cal Wilton told how he and Orville had been having a discussion over the rightful ownership of the push-type lawn mower rusting between his and Orville’s shedand which on this day Orville had sought three dollars for from a passerby. The would-be buyer drove off without a thing after Cal caught a fist heaved by Orville, Orville being such a sour-tempered man. It was as if, Cal said, the heavens had enough of Orville’s antics and hurled a punch of hard wind through the neighborhood; just have a look at his own tree branches down and trash cans scattered. Cal believed Orville to be dead, the way his eyes showed fish-belly white in his head when he rolled his neighbor over.
    But then Orville rose up with a dopey grin, looked beyond as if into a land of golden poppies gently nodding in the breeze, and said, “Love is the only answer.”
    All this time his neighbor on the north side, Mrs. Miller, hastened around in her own yard, setting right articles rearranged by gusts. She observed Orville lift a hand to Cal for assistance in rising and saw Cal smack the hand away and then