Fifteen

“Folks, we’ll be landing in fifteen minutes,” the pilot said over the intercom.

Marshall breathed a little easier. The flight had been smooth for the past half hour since the terrible turbulence had ended. He’d finish up his bowl game and then sit back until the plane landed.

Bowl game, for those who don’t know it, involves anagrams of ten letters. The letters would be re-arranged to form one ten-letter word. But they could also be arranged to form two distinct, unrelated words with exactly the ten letters. Only one remained undone to Marshall, and its letters were AAABCDELNR.

As always, Marshall started with the partition of two words. Easier to divide and conquer, just like a software engineering problem. But he couldn’t think of anything. They hit a little bump. So he put it down and thought about spending the holidays with his parents.

His mother always had so many chores for him to do before Christmas. He usually got home a few days before his brothers stormed the place with the little hellions, all four of them. A little peace and quiet, Marshall enjoyed his time alone with Mother and Dad – cocktail hour by the fireplace, playing a game of scrabble. But this year, his mother would have him baking cookies, wrapping presents for the children, running to the store for candles, setting the dinner table.

“Candle.” Yes, that word works in the anagram. That left the letters AABR. Abra, the young woman in “East of Eden?” No, the game disallowed proper names – but “arab” worked. Candle and arab, perfect. And yes – Marshall saw the ten-letter word right away: candelabra.

Which reminded him, Mother would have him set up the Christmas candelabra yet again. He always hated that chore. So many crystals, and he’d already broken two pieces in years past.