The Amazing Allen

By Frank Kitchens

The Amazing Allen is a story about a boy that finds a stone when he is four years old in California fishing with his dad. He hangs the Stone on the wall in his room and finally starts wearing it when he is eleven.

Allen is given a box of magic tricks at a moving sale not far from his house. He brings it home and most of the tricks are easily preformed and easy to figure out how they are done.

While he is trying to work the magic tricks the stone already having changed him he is given the ability to read minds and make objects appear and disappear at will. He has total control over inanimate objects and over most but not all people. His small act at birthday parties turns into larger events and more money. Thus the billing the Amazing Allen.

Allen has a friend, Jim Henry, that lives next door and his mother and father both neglect him and Allen and his dad almost adopt him. Jim Henry is not a bright and shining star but Allen helps him with his home work and he gets by.

Jim Henry starts playing football in the ninth grade and is just a passable player. Allen makes him into the star player he wants to be and they both attend the University of Florida and Jim Henry continues to be a star player with Allen’s help.

Allen has entirely too much time on his hands and finally decides he can catch the rapist killer that is targeting the girls at the University. He eventually does but it was not as easy as he first anticipated. The Stone is a great help but it didn’t come with an instruction book and he is a while figuring it out.

Then he branches out and helps an FBI agent that is trying to find a bomber in New York and during his occupying his mind he has a déjà vu experience and sees the bomber planting the bombs. The agent sees the bomber also. He realizes someone or something is in his head and he asks for his help.

Allen agrees mostly because now he can let the agent know what he finds out and he can figure a way to use it. Allen has trouble with his first two cases in getting the authorities the information he has.

The stone does not make him invincible he is subject to being shot or stabbed just like anyone else. When he is in someone else’s mind if he is not in sight of his body his body is defenseless. He finds this out on one of his outings and then has to take special care of his body when he is away from it.

But he cannot stop using the stone’s power. He has become addicted to it and needs it just like food, water or air. It has become a part of who he is and what he is. He is also making way to much money on the stock market and doing his Illusions to become just another normal person.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Frank Kitchens
• Release date: Jul 14, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370942503

Frank Kitchens

I was born in Forester, Arkansas on July, 28th 1946. Forester was a logging town built by Caddo Lumber Company in 1930 and sold to Dierks Lumber and Coal Company in 1945. The town was closed down in 1952. I took early retirement on Social Security at 62 and have been driving lab samples 5 nights a week. I can never totally retire. I have been an avid reader all my life, when I was younger it was mostly for information, after I turned 26 it was mostly for entertainment. I had always wanted to write but, didn’t have the time. Then I started driving 6 hours a night my mind went into overdrive. I have now finished 9 books. The book I am putting on Smashwords is Inherited Fortunes. I found after I started writing I enjoyed it very much.

Book preview

The Amazing Allen

By Frank Kitchens

Chapter One

Allen James was four years old and he was fishing with his dad Wilbur on the Tuolumne River east of Riverbank California. Well, Wilbur was fishing Allen was finding all sorts of things to interest him along the bank of the Tuolumne River and none of them had to do with fishing.

Wilbur was smiling, Allen was very grown up for his age but he just couldn’t stay hooked up to that fishing pole. Allen liked to go fishing with him because he liked spending time with his dad but he didn’t fish a lot. There was no telling what was going on in that very active imagination he had. He might be walking on the moon right now. He wouldn’t be going to school for another year but he could already read and print and add and subtract. He was plenty smart.

What Allen was thinking about was the Indians and Mexicans that use to hunt and fish along this same river years ago. His dad had read to him about the history of the area they lived in. They went to the library a lot and Allen could read but not well enough to understand the history books about what happened around here in the seventeen and eighteen hundreds.

Then there was the gold rush and the bandit Joaquin Murrieta that killed all of the miners and took their gold if they had any. Allen would have liked to live back then except his dad said they didn’t have radios back then so he couldn’t listen to the Shadow and Amos and Andy.

After wilbur reading all those stories, Allen was always looking for gold he would like to find a big pile of gold then he could buy all the ice cream he wanted. Then he saw what looked like a piece of cloth in a washed area where rain had eroded the soil so Allen started pulling on it and moving it back and forth and then he stopped and dug around it with his fingers and start pulling again.

Allen was like a bull terrier when he started after something he just would not give up. He had a piece uncovered about twice as large as his hands and was thinking he needed to get the shovel behind the seat in the truck when the piece he was pulling on tore off and he went rolling backwards down the sloping bank of the river.

Allen went rolling by Wilber on his way to the River. Wilbur tried to grab him but missed then he laughed when Allen plunged into the river the fish were not biting today anyway. Allen had been swimming since he was two. The new house the Gallo brothers furnished for him as the head of maintenance at Gallo Winery had a swimming pool and Allen had been in it since he was four months old. Wilbur was sure Wilma would have been proud of him.

Allen swam to the bank and crawled out Sorry Dad guess I messed up your fishing. Wilbur was laughing harder now They didn’t seem to be biting anyway son. What happened did you just decide to go swimming?

Allen No sir I was pulling on a piece of material or something that was buried in the ground. I’m not sure what it was but it came free and I went rolling down the hill. Wilbur Good thing the river stopped you the way you were going you might have wound up in Ripon. Allen looked at his dad and grinned.

They both climbed the hill to see what the material was. All Allen had was a small piece which he handed to his dad but it was wet and Wilbur had no idea what it was. They arrived at the disturbed side of the hill and started digging in the loose sand and gravel. The material appeared to be a hide of some kind but it was old. It was a part of a larger piece and when they finally got more of it exposed it was wrapped around two other leather skins that were in somewhat better shape and were very heavy.

Wilbur was sure what they had here was gold in the skins it was too heavy to be anything else. He sent Allen to get his slicker jacket from the truck. Wilbur laid it down beside the two leather skins and moved the bags over to it one at a time. The second one split and spilled out on the slicker, it was gold alright. He would guess twenty to thirty pounds of gold he knew it was gold because he and Wilma had gone panning a few times and he had a couple of ounces they found in a bottle at home.

Once he got the slicker tied so the gold wouldn’t spill out he carried it back to the truck and put it behind the seat then got the folding shovel and they went back. Wilber wanted to see if there was anymore gold hidden in the bank of the river.

After the third shovel full of dirt, sand and small pebbles Wilbur hit something a little more solid than the sand. Wilbur figured it was a larger rock. He dug it out with his hand, it was a little larger rock in a rough circular shape and it had a small hole at the edge of it. Wilbur had never seen anything like it. It looked like there was a slight glow like a dim light coming off the rock but it must have been a reflection the rock was light green in color.

Wilbur handed it to Allen Everything we find belongs to you because you discovered it. He started digging some more and up came a bone and Wilbur did not think it was a cow bone. Allen You can have that one dad. Wilbur laughed.

Wilbur took the shovel and left the bone and the leather the gold was wrapped in then went to call the Sheriff of Stanislaus County. Wilber knew Jim Holland he didn’t know the Sheriff of San Joaquin County and he wasn’t sure which county they were in so he would rather talk to someone he knew first. Wilbur told Allen to not say anything about the gold or the stone. They put the stone in the glove box.

They drove to the little store and gas station where they bought fish bait that morning and called the sheriff’s office it was a couple of minutes before he was put through to Jim. Wilbur explained to him what had happened and what they had found he thought it might be a human bone. Jim told Wilbur to go back to where they had found the bone and make sure no one bothered the area.

It was about eleven when they found the gold, the stone and the bone. Wilbur had the lady at the little store and gas station, fix them a sandwich and he and Jim had a coke and potato chips with their sandwich while they waited for the sheriff. Then about thirty minutes later the sheriff and two other cars showed up.

The Coroner arrived a few minutes later and took one look and said it’s human but not recent. Three hours later they had a full collection of bones and nothing else, there was no more gold and Wilbur was sure by the way the coroner was talking the bones were thousands of years old. Jim laughed and said Guess I can’t arrest you two for murder then. They had determined the cause of death the skull was broken probably by a rock or stone axe.

They told no one about the gold and Wilbur bought a safe to put the gold and some other valuables he had in drawers throughout the house. He told Allen When you get older we will find the gold some summer when we go panning.

Allen kept the stone in his room and bought a chain and hung it from a hook on the wall. Sometimes it would glow really bright most of the time it was opaque and looked like it was giving off a dull glow.

The next day Allen and Jim Henry Jones the boy that lived next door were playing marbles. They played until dark and Wilbur called them in for dinner. Jim Henry had lunch with them that day and now he was having dinner with them that evening. He had lunch and dinner with them a lot. His father worked all the time and his mother was a drunk. Jim Henry spent a lot of time at Allen’s house.

He was a year older than Allen and bigger but Jim Henry was in the first grade again next year he was not a bright burning bulb. He could function alright but Wilbur figured he was always going to have trouble learning in school. It was an upscale neighborhood and a newer one. Wilbur worked for Gallo winery he was the head mechanic and had been for two years before Allen was born.

Wilbur hired a lady to stay with Allen during the day Monday through Friday. If Wilbur had to work on Saturday or Sunday he took Allen with him. There were lots of kids in the neighborhood and Allen and Jim Henry took them all on in their rubber gun fights.

The guns were made of wood and at the back had a clothes pin tied to it so it could be opened and one end of the rubber strip that was doubled and tied so there were two ends sticking up one of which would be inserted in the clothes pin. The other end was looped over the barrel of the gun and when the clothes pin was pushed and opened the rubber would fly about twenty feet more or less. If they were lucky and the rubber hit one of the opposing forces he was dead and out of the game.

How far the rubber would go depended on how long the rubber was and how far it was stretched. One of the men at Gallo had told Allen if he could find some of that old Red Indian rubber it would shoot farther than the black kind. Allen was at Gallo one Saturday with his dad and he brought his rubber gun along to practice with while he waited on him to fix something.

Allen asked What is Indian Rubber and where can I buy it. Man Don’t know if you can buy the red inner tubes anymore all I have seen are the black ones like you have there. Probably find some at the junk yard in old car tires.

According to him they would shoot farther than the black rubber. That was Saturday and the next day Allen and Jim Henry were at the junkyard asking the man if he had any of the red rubber inner tubes for sale.

Solly probably got some boys but they probably wouldn’t be any good. What do you want with them? Allen Jim Burton at Gallo said they would shoot farther in our rubber guns than the black ones so we thought we would see if we could find any. Solly laughing Yeah, I know for a fact they will shoot farther. Go back on the left over near the fence and you might find some in one of the older car tires.

Allen thanked him and they headed off to look. Allen had five dollars he had been saving he hoped it was enough for the inner tube if they could find one. They finally found one in an old roadster tire and between the both of them wrestled it out of the tire.

The man gave it to them and said Hope that works for you boys. Man did it ever that rubber would shoot fifty feet. They were cutting the bands about one and a half inches thick and just stretching it over the barrel and back to the clothes pin and not tying it just using the circle of the tire. Man would that sucker fly.

The other boys told them that weren’t fair them having more range than they did so Allen started selling them for a nickel a band and almost every month they were back getting another tire. Selling the red rubber bands kept the two boys in candy, cokes and of course the ice cream truck for two summers word had spread and every kid in Modesto wanted a couple of the red one’s. Then they grew out of the rubber gun phase.

Three months after finding the bones Wilbur and Allen had a visitor from New York a lady anthropologist with the Museum of Natural History. She wanted to hear how they had found the bones and they drove her out to where they found them.

Turned out it wasn’t a Stone Age man but one between eight hundred and one thousand years old. What she couldn’t figure out was how he got there. It was a European skeleton not an Indian one. Wilbur asked Allen after she left how she could tell it was European, bones was bones. Allen shrugged and shook his head. He had no idea.

She marked the spot and a few months later returned and spent two months at the site digging and found nothing else. Wilbur was sure the man that belonged to the bones didn’t bury the gold the skins were probably from a deer or a cow and the skins would not have lasted that long. Wilbur figured it was buried by some prospector hiding it from thieves during the gold rush days. If he had dug deeper when burying the gold he would have found the bones.

The green Stone was between where they found the gold and the bones no idea where it came from probably washed in years after the man was killed. Allen had hung the stone in his room on the wall. Sometimes it would glow brighter than it would at other times but it was soothing and Allen felt fine with it being there. He also never told Jim Henry or anyone else about it or the gold they found everyone knew about the bones.

Chapter Two

Allen lost his mother Wilma when he was born. There had been no indication anything had been wrong. The pregnancy had gone very well but when the baby came they had not been able to stop the bleeding. Wilbur didn’t have long to grieve he had a son to raise and he was going to be doing it by himself.

Wilbur and Wilma married right out of high school. They were raised almost together since they were born. Their families had been neighbors forever and farmed two hundred acres apiece side by side all their lives. They both attended the Baptist Church in Gravelly Arkansas and their great grandparents had come to the valley in the same wagon train.

Neither of them planned on staying in Arkansas when they graduated. They were headed to California to make their fortune and not in Hollywood. Wilbur’s uncle Bill Wilson his mother's brother worked in California, Oregon and Washington picking fruit they were going to join him in California after the wedding.

Bill had visited two years ago and told how much he made picking fruit every summer and then he would go to Reno and through the winter he worked as a janitor at one of the casinos. The pay wasn’t bad but he could make more picking fruit and he liked it better.

Wilbur shared the stories Bill told with Wilma and they both liked the idea of moving to California. Neither of their parents was in favor of that plan but that didn’t make any difference Wilbur nor Wilma either one wanted to be farmers and live in Arkansas. It was 1939 and the world they wanted to live in was waiting for them in California.

They bought a 1936 Ford with a blown engine and Wilbur rebuilt it he was a very good mechanic. The two of them set out for California right after the wedding and spent the night in Fort Smith. There were a couple of things they needed to get out of the way.

Four days later they arrived in Bakersfield about four in the morning and found the address Bill had sent them. They had five dollars left and were glad to be where they could start making money instead of spending it.

Bill owned a very small two bedroom house in the seedier part of town. Bill had bought the house along with a café that was two blocks away two months before and he was not going on the road picking fruit anymore.

They didn’t know this when they started out if they had they probably wouldn’t have left home. They would have gone back home now they had found out about it but that was out of the question they didn’t have enough money to get home. They were planning on Bill showing them the ropes. He said he still would they had to start in Bakersfield on the route he had taken every year on his way to Washington.

He handed Wilbur the keys to a truck parked in the back yard that had a trailer attached You take that when you leave here. They will let you park anywhere you want on their property and it is a lot better than the cabins in the camps and you will have a refrigerator and a stove. Might be a little tight for two but you won’t mind that the first year or two. They went to work the next morning picking apricots and neither one of them liked the first day.

The people they were picking with were not that friendly and the ones that were couldn’t speak English. They were definitely not in Gravelly Arkansas anymore. But they did have one another and although they didn’t make it rich the first day they got through it and made seven dollars each. Not a bad start in a week they would have enough to get home.

By the end of the month they had gotten to where they could tolerate it and the money was much better than at home. Uncle Bill wouldn’t let them pay him anything for staying with him. They stayed for almost a month and Bill gave them directions to a ranch in Visalia. He had called and made all the arrangements with the foreman of the ranch.

The following month they followed the map Bill had drew for them to Modesto then to Oregon and finally to Washington. In November they returned to Bakersfield and Wilbur went to work in a garage as a mechanic and Wilma was a waitress at Uncle Bill’s café.

They made good money on the trip and would make even more next year now they knew the ropes and how to do each job to make the picking easier and faster. They had averaged fifty dollars a day each and that included travel time. That was good money for 1939. They had the money to go home now but although they were not as happy as they thought they would be they were content with being here.

The only day they took off was Sunday except when they were driving. They had worked a lot of them if there were not enough pickers to keep up. They made a little over three thousand dollars the first year and had enjoyed their freedom except they were not free they were working all the time. Wilbur told Wilma If we had stayed on the farm we would have had to work almost as hard as we did here and would have been lucky to make one thousand dollars off both farms, our share would have been about a hundred dollars.

Wilma Then you want to keep doing this? Wilbur smiling Until we find something we like better. I figure two or three more years and then we should be able to buy a house and settle down somewhere and start a family. Wilma I want to be with you wherever that is Wilbur.

Wilbur What we’re making here is as good as we can do right now. It might be as good as we are ever going to do but I think something will turn up. If not we will make enough for a house somewhere we like and find us a job we can put up with.

Neither one of them liked the jobs they had now and Uncle Bill still wouldn’t take money for them living with him and they had their meals at the café so they were still saving money.

The first day she worked at the café Wilma found out Uncle Bill was running a poker game in the back and it usually took in more than the restaurant but Uncle Bill liked to gamble also. Wilma made about six dollars in tips each day and her pay was five dollars a week and Wilbur made ten dollars a day as a mechanic. Not a lot but by not having rent and food bills they did O.K.

They had been back for over a month and Wilma told Wilbur one evening Uncle Bill borrowed ten dollars from me again today that makes the second time he has done that this month. I don’t mind because he paid me back with a tip. Even if he hadn’t we owe him much more than that but some weeks we can hardly pay the bills. The café does a good business and the gambling in the back takes in lots of money. If he didn’t gamble he would make a good living.

Wilbur Think we should find somewhere else to live. Wilma I love him to death but if we don’t he will lose the whole thing and we will be forced to find something else right then. I think it would be a good idea to leave before that happens.

That evening Wilbur told Bill We need to find somewhere else to live Uncle Bill, it's just a little crowded in here. Bill laughed he knew the real reason they wanted to move and he didn’t blame them Well I was thinking about going to Reno this weekend why don’t you and Wilma go with me. You might want to check on working for one of the casinos there the pay isn’t bad and the tips are real good a lot better than Wilma makes at the café.

That Friday evening they got in Bill’s Cadillac and drove to Reno, Nevada. Bill knew a couple of the managers at Harold’s club where he worked for ten years as a janitor. He introduced Wilbur and Wilma to them Saturday morning. They liked what they saw and informed them they could make between $50 to $75 a day each with the tips and the salary. Wilbur told them they would be back the following week.

The cocktail dress Wilma would have to wear was not all that revealing but it was tight. Wilbur would be running a roulette wheel. They returned to Bakersfield and were just going to drive their 1936 Ford to Reno.

Bill You going to stay there or are you going fruit picking again next year? Wilbur I guess that depends on how well we like it. Bill Take the truck and trailer just in case. Wilbur We will start here so if we go picking can’t we get it then? Bill The truck and trailer might not be here then. Wilma drove the car to Reno and Wilbur drove the truck and trailer. Bill had signed the title to both over to Wilbur and would not take any money for them. He said call it a wedding present.

Wilbur and Wilma worked separate shifts and Wilbur didn’t like that he worked late nights and Wilma worked the swing shift. Wilma was a good looking young girl and made very good tips. She also got her ass rubbed a lot. That was all that happened the security guards explained the rules to anyone getting to familiar with the help.

Wilma made over $100 a day her tips were really good. Wilbur made about $50 so they were actually doing better than picking fruit and the work wasn’t as hard but neither one of them liked their jobs. Wilma told Wilbur about some of the men patting her ass.

Wilbur smiled and said They told us that would happen is it starting to bother you? Wilma Not really I just can’t see what they get out of it they can tell I’m not interested. Wilbur The money is good but whenever you say babe we are out of here.

They were both ready to leave when the picking season started. They parked the car and put a cover over it at the house they had rented and paid six months rent to hold it until they returned. They were certain they could get their jobs back they told them her mother was in bad health which she was in bad health before she died in 1938.

Nothing jumped out at them their second year on their rounds of fruit picking so they returned to Reno on November 10th of 1941 they were immediately rehired. The following month Pearl Harbor was bombed by the Japanese. Wilbur and Wilma had talked about him probably having to serve in the army if America did go to war. Of course everyone was talking about America getting in the war but the talking had just ended.

Wilbur went the following day to volunteer and was turned down. The reason was a bad heart, strange he had never had a sick day in his life. They were both on the swing shift now. The managers thought that might be why they left before so they put them together.

Wilbur I’m going to a specialist in Sacramento next week. This just doesn’t make any sense I have never been sick a day in my life. Wilma seeing he was really going through with it told him "Nothing is wrong with your heart. The Doctor over the army physicals is a customer of