"shirley"
by horace p sternwall
illustrated by rhoda penmarq and roy dismas
"she can't dance, she's going to have to learn to sing."
those were the first words shirley remembered hearing, in a dressing room in alberta or maybe it was a hotel room in manitoba. shirley's parents were vaudevillians of the old school and had performed the exact same song and dance act up to eight times a day for three hundred days a year for ten years by the time shirley was born and fourteen years after that before her father ran off with a "bad woman", strangled her, and was sentenced to life imprisonment in washington state. ..