BLUE HANDS
By Alan M. Clark
(Cover Illustrator)


     Bunyan Webb was a superior classical guitarist. He had studied with the best and played Carnegie Hall. Guitar concerts were written for him to perform. Whether he was playing the guitar or not, his expressive hands seemed to stay in motion. This was a charismatic man with a lot of energy and interests.

     My father met him in the Nashville Guitar Society and then brought him into our home as guest many times for dinners and guitar music.

     After I moved to San Francisco to study art and had been there a few years, Bunyan moved out there to be close to family. We got together and he gave me guitar lessons. I wasn’t any good at it, but it was an excuse to get together. I became involved in scuba and free diving with Bunyan along the California coast. He was a scuba instructor and asked me to asist him on occasion with a class.

     We were free diving in Sonoma County California, at the base of high cliffs when he became tangled in bull kelp strands. By the time I reached him, he was unconscious. I had no dive knife and had to get the one strapped to his ankle in order to cut him free.

     I hauled him to a nearby rock jutting from the surf. His hands were blue. They were still, no longer expressive. Bunyan’s life was gone. I never saw him again.

     Shortly after that day I bought a dive knife. I never had cause to use it until I needed a model for the cover of Dorothy Francis’ mystery novel, COLD-CASE KILLER. It brought back some unpleasant memories, but many more pleasant ones of Bunyan Webb.