Bag of Bones CHAPTER SIXTEEN Free Essays

The book was big, okay? The book was major. I was afraid to change rooms, let alone pack up the typewriter and my slim just-begun manuscript and take it back to Derry. That would be as dangerous as taking an infant out in a windstorm. We will write a custom essay sample on Bag of Bones CHAPTER SIXTEEN or any similar topic only for you Order Now So I stayed, always reserving the right to move out if things got too weird (the way smokers reserve the right to quit if their coughs get too heavy), and a week passed. Things happened during that week, but until I met Max Devore on The Street the following Friday the seventeenth of July, it would have been the most important thing was that I continued to work on a novel which would, if finished, be called My Childhood Friend. Perhaps we always think what was lost was the best . . . or would have been the best. I don’t know for sure. What I do know is that my real life that week had mostly to do with Andy Drake, John Shackleford, and a shadowy figure standing in the deep background. Raymond Garraty, John Shackle-ford’s childhood friend. A man who sometimes wore a baseball cap. During that week, the manifestations in the house continued, but at a lower level there was nothing like that bloodcurdling scream. Sometimes Bunter’s bell rang, and sometimes the fruit and vegetable magnets would re-form themselves into a circle . . . never with words in the middle, though; not that week. One morning I got up and the sugar cannister was overturned, making me think of Mattie’s story about the flour. Nothing was written in the spill, but there was a squiggle as though something had tried to write and failed. If so, I sympathized. I knew what that was like. My depo before the redoubtable Elmer Durgin was on Friday the tenth. On the following Tuesday I took The Street down to Warrington’s softball field, hoping for my own peek at Max Devore. It was going on six o’clock when I got within hearing range of the shouts, cheers, and batted balls. A path marked with rustic signs (curlicued W’s burned into oak arrows) led past an abandoned boathouse, a couple of sheds, and a gazebo half-buried in blackberry creepers. I eventually came out in deep center field. A litter of potato-chip bags, candy-wrappers, and beer cans suggested that others sometimes watched the games from this vantage-point. I couldn’t help thinking about Jo and her mysterious friend, the guy in the old brown sportcoat, the burly guy who had slipped an arm around her waist and led her away from the game, laughing, back toward The Street. Twice over the weekend I’d come close to calling Bonnie Amudson, seeing if maybe I could chase that guy dow n, put a name on him, and both times I had backed off. Sleeping dogs, I told myself each time. Sleeping dogs, Michael. I had the area beyond deep center to myself that evening, and it felt like the right distance from home plate, considering the man who usually parked his wheelchair behind the backstop had called me a liar and I had invited him to store my telephone number where the sunshine grows dim. I needn’t have worried in any case. Devore wasn’t in attendance, nor was the lovely Rogette. I did spot Mattie behind the casually maintained chickenwire barrier on the first-base line. John Storrow was beside her, wearing jeans and a polo shirt, his red hair mostly corralled by a Mets cap. They stood watching the game and chatting like old friends for two innings before they saw me more than enough time for me to feel envious of John’s position, and a little jealous as well. Finally someone lofted a long fly to center, where the edge of the woods served as the only fence. The center fielder backed up, but it was going to be far over his head. It was hit to my depth, off to my right. I moved in that direction without thinking, high-footing through the shrubs that formed a zone between the mown outfield and the trees, hoping I wasn’t running through poison ivy. I caught the softball in my outstretched left hand, and laughed when some of the spectators cheered. The center fielder applauded me by tapping his bare right hand into the pocket of his glove. The batter, meanwhile, circled the bases serenely, knowing he had hit a ground-rule home run. I tossed the ball to the fielder and as I returned to my original post among the candy-wrappers and beer cans, I looked back in and saw Mattie and John looking at me. If anything confirms the idea that we’re just another species of animal, one with a slightly bigger brain and a much bigger idea of our own importance in the scheme of things, it’s how much we can convey by gesture when we absolutely have to. Mattie clasped her hands to her chest, tilted her head to the left, raised her eyebrows My hero. I held my hands to my shoulders and flipped the palms skyward Shucks, ma’am, ‘t’warn’t nothin. John lowered his head and put his fingers to his brow, as if something there hurt You lucky sonofabitch. With those comments out of the way, I pointed at the backstop and shrugged a question. Both Mattie and John shrugged back. An inning later a little boy who looked like one giant exploding freckle ran out to where I was, his oversized Michael Jordan jersey churning around his shins like a dress. ‘Guy down there gimme fifty cent to say you should call im later on at his hotel over in the Rock,’ he said, pointing at John. ‘He say you gimme another fifty cent if there was an answer.’ ‘Tell him I’ll call him around nine-thirty,’ I said. ‘I don’t have any change, though. Can you take a buck?’ ‘Hey, yeah, swank.’ He snatched it, turned away, then turned back. He grinned, revealing a set of teeth caught between Act I and Act II. With the softball players in the background, he looked like a Norman Rockwell archetype. ‘Guy also say tell you that was a bullshit catch.’ ‘Tell him people used to say the same thing about Willie Mays all the time.’ ‘Willie who?’ Ah, youth. Ah, mores. ‘Just tell him, son. He’ll know.’ I stayed another inning, but by then the game was getting drunk, Devore still hadn’t shown, and I went back home the way I had come. I met one fisherman standing out on a rock and two young people strolling along The Street toward Warrington’s, their hands linked. They said hi and I hi’d them back. I felt lonely and content at the same time. I believe that is a rare kind of happiness. Some people check their phone answering machines when they get home; that summer I always checked the front of the fridge. Eenie-meenie-chili-beanie, as Bullwinkle Moose used to say, the spirits are about to speak. That night they hadn’t, although the fruit and vegetable magnets had re-formed into a sinuous shape like a snake or perhaps the letter S taking a nap: A little later I called John and asked him where Devore had been, and he repeated in words what he had already told me, and much more economically, by gesture. ‘It’s the first game he’s missed since he came back,’ he said. ‘Mattie tried asking a few people if he was okay, and the consensus seemed to be that he was . . . at least as far as anyone knew.’ ‘What do you mean she tried asking a few people?’ ‘I mean that several wouldn’t even talk to her. â€Å"Cut her dead,† my parents’ generation would have said.’ Watch it, buddy, I thought but didn’t say, that’s only half a step from my generation. ‘One of her old girlfriends spoke to her finally, but there’s a general attitude about Mattie Devore. That man Osgood may be a shitty salesman, but as Devore’s Mr. Moneyguy he’s doing a wonderful job of separating Mattie from the other folks in the town. Is it a town, Mike? I don’t quite get that part.’ ‘It’s just the TR,’ I said absently. ‘There’s no real way to explain it. Do you actually believe Devore’s bribing everyone? That doesn’t say much for the old Wordsworthian idea of pastoral innocence and goodness, does it?’ ‘He’s spreading money and using Osgood maybe Footman, too to spread stories. And the folks around here seem at least as honest as honest politicians.’ ‘The ones who stay bought?’ ‘Yeah. Oh, and I saw one of Devore’s potential star witnesses in the Case of the Runaway Child. Royce Merrill. He was over by the equipment shed with some of his cronies. Did you happen to notice him?’ I said I had not. ‘Guy must be a hundred and thirty,’ John said. ‘He’s got a cane with a gold head the size of an elephant’s asshole.’ ‘That’s a Boston Post cane. The oldest person in the area gets to keep it.’ ‘And I have no doubt he came by it honestly. If Devore’s lawyers put him on the stand, I’ll debone him.’ There was something chilling in John’s gleeful confidence. ‘I’m sure,’ I said. ‘How did Mattie take getting cut dead by her old friends?’ I was thinking of her saying that she hated Tuesday nights, hated to think of the softball games going on as they always had at the field where she had met her late husband. ‘She did okay,’ John said. ‘I think she’s given most of them up as a lost cause, anyway.’ I had my doubts about that I seem to remember that at twenty-one lost causes are sort of a specialty but I didn’t say anything. ‘She’s hanging in. She’s been lonely and scared, I think that in her own mind she might already have begun the process of giving Kyra up, but she’s got her confidence back now. Mostly thanks to meeting you. Talk about your fantastically lucky breaks.’ Well, maybe. I flashed on Jo’s. brother Frank once saying to me that he didn’t think there was any such thing as luck, only fate and inspired choices. And then I remembered that image of the TR criss-crossed with invisible cables, connections that were unseen but as strong as steel. ‘John, I forgot to ask the most important question of all the other day, after I gave my depo. This custody case we’re all so concerned about . . . has it even been scheduled?’ ‘Good question. I’ve checked three ways to Sunday, and Bissonette has, too. Unless Devore and his people have pulled something really slippery, like filing in another court district, I don’t think it has been.’ ‘Could they do that? File in another district?’ ‘Maybe. But probably not without us finding out.’ ‘So what does it mean?’ ‘That Devore’s on the verge of giving up,’ John said promptly. ‘As of now I see no other way of explaining it. I’m going back to New York first thing tomorrow, but I’ll stay in touch. If anything comes up here, you do the same.’ I said I would and went to bed. No female visitors came to share my dreams. That was sort of a relief. When I came downstairs to recharge my iced-tea glass late Wednesday morning, Brenda Meserve had erected the laundry whirligig on the back stoop and was hanging out my clothes. This she did as her mother had no doubt taught her, with pants and shirts on the outside and undies on the inside, where any passing nosyparkers couldn’t see what you chose to wear closest to your skin. ‘You can take these in around four o’clock,’ Mrs. M. said as she prepared to leave. She looked at me with the bright and cynical eye of a woman who has been ‘doing for’ well-off men her entire life. ‘Don’t you forget and leave em out all night dewy clothes don’t ever feel fresh until they’re warshed again.’ I told her most humbly that I would remember to take in my clothes. I then asked her feeling like a spy working an embassy party for information if the house felt all right to her. ‘All right how?’ she asked, cocking one wild eyebrow at me. ‘Well, I’ve heard funny noises a couple of times. In the night.’ She sniffed. ‘It’s a log house, ennit? Built in relays, so to speak. It settles, one wing against t’other. That’s what you hear, most likely.’ ‘No ghosts, huh?’ I said, as if disappointed. ‘Not that I’ve ever seen,’ she said, matter-of-fact as an accountant, ‘but my ma said there’s plenty down here. She said this whole lake is haunted. By the Micmacs that lived here until they was driven out by General Wing, by all the men who went away to the Civil War and died there over six hundred went from this part of the world, Mr. Noonan, and less than a hundred and fifty came back . . . at least in their bodies. Ma said this side of Dark Score’s also haunted by the ghost of that Negro boy who died here, poor tyke. He belonged to one of the Red-Tops, you know.’ ‘No I know about Sara and the Red-Tops, but not this.’ I paused. ‘Did he drown?’ ‘Nawp, caught in an animal trap. Struggled there for most of a whole day, screaming for help. Finally they found him. They saved the foot, but they shouldn’t have. Blood-poisoning set in, and the boy died. Summer of ought-one, that was. It’s why they left, I guess it was too sad to stay. But my ma used to claim the little fella, he stayed. She used to say that he’s still on the TR.’ I wondered what Mrs. M. would say if I told her that the little fella had very likely been here to greet me when I arrived from Derry, and had been back on several occasions since. ‘Then there was Kenny Auster’s father, Normal,’ she said. ‘You know that story, don’t you? Oh, that’s a terrible story.’ She looked rather pleased either at knowing such a terrible story or at having the chance to tell it. ‘No,’ I said. ‘I know Kenny, though. He’s the one with the wolfhound. Blueberry.’ ‘Ayuh. He carpenters a tad and caretakes a tad, just like his father before him. His dad caretook many of these places, you know, and back just after the Second World War was over, Normal Auster drownded Kenny’s little brother in his back yard. This was when they lived on Wasp Hill, down where the road splits, one side going to the old boat-landin and the other to the marina. He didn’t drown the tyke in the lake, though. He put him on the ground under the pump and just held him there until the baby was full of water and dead.’ I stood there looking at her, the clothes behind us snapping on their whirligig. I thought of my mouth and nose and throat full of that cold mineral taste that could have been well-water as well as lakewater; down here all of it comes from the same deep aquifers. I thought of the message on the refrigerator: help im drown. ‘He left the baby laying right under the pump. He had a new Chevrolet, and he drove it down here to Lane Forty-two. Took his shotgun, too.’ ‘You aren’t going to tell me Kenny Auster’s dad committed suicide in my house, are you, Mrs. Meserve?’ She shook her head. ‘Nawp. He did it on the Brickers’ lakeside deck. Sat down on their porch glider and blew his damned baby-murdering head off.’ ‘The Brickers? I don’t ‘ ‘You wouldn’t. Hasn’t been any Brickers on the lake since the sixties. They were from Delaware. Quality folks. You’d think of it as the Warshburn place, I guess, although they’re gone, now, too. Place is empty. Every now and then that stark naturalborn fool Osgood brings someone down and shows it off, but he’ll never sell it at the price he’s asking. Mark my words.’ The Washburns I had known had played bridge with them a time or two. Nice enough people, although probably not what Mrs. M., with her queer backcountry snobbishness, would have called ‘quality.’ Their place was maybe an eighth of a mile north of mine along The Street. Past that point, there’s nothing much the drop to the lake gets steep, and the woods are massed tangles of second growth and blackberry bushes. The Street goes on to the tip of Halo Bay at the far north end of Dark Score, but once Lane Forty-two curves back to the highway, the path is for the most part used only by berry-picking expeditions in the summer and hunters in the fall. Normal, I thought. Hell of a name for a guy who had drowned his infant son under the backyard pump. ‘Did he leave a note? Any explanation?’ ‘Nawp. But you’ll hear folks say he haunts the lake, too. Little towns are most likely full of haunts, but I couldn’t say aye, no, or maybe myself; I ain’t the sensitive type. All I know about your place, Mr. Noonan, is that it smells damp no matter how much I try to get it aired out. I ‘magine that’s logs. Log buildins don’t go well with lakes. The damp gets into the wood.’ She had set her purse down between her Reeboks; now she bent and picked it up. It was a countrywoman’s purse, black, styleless (except for the gold grommets holding the handles on), and utilitarian. She could have carried a good selection of kitchen appliances in there if she had wanted to. ‘I can’t stand here natterin all day long, though, much as I might like to. I got one more place to go before I can call it quits. Summer’s ha’vest time in this part of the world, you know. Now remember to take those clothes in before dark, Mr. Noonan. Don’t let em get all dewy.’ ‘I won’t.’ And I didn’t. But when I went out to take them in, dressed in my bathing trunks and coated with sweat from the oven I’d been working in (I had to get the air conditioner fixed, just had to), I saw that something had altered Mrs. M.’s arrangements. My jeans and shirts now hung around the pole. The underwear and socks, which had been decorously hidden when Mrs. M. drove up the driveway in her old Ford, were now on the outside. It was as if my unseen guest one of my unseen guests was saying ha ha ha. I went to the library the next day, and made renewing my library card my first order of business. Lindy Briggs herself took my four bucks and entered me into the computer, first telling me how sorry she had been to hear about Jo’s death. And, as with Bill, I sensed a certain reproach in her tone, as if I were to blame for such improperly delayed condolences. I supposed I was. ‘Lindy, do you have a town history?’ I asked when we had finished the proprieties concerning my wife. ‘We have two,’ she said, then leaned toward me over the desk, a little woman in a violently patterned sleeveless dress, her hair a gray puffball around her head, her bright eyes swimming behind her bifocals. In a confidential voice she added, ‘Neither is much good.’ ‘Which one is better?’ I asked, matching her tone. ‘Probably the one by Edward Osteen. He was a summer resident until the mid-fifties and lived here full-time when he retired. He wrote Dark Score Days in 1965 or ’66. He had it privately published because he couldn’t find a commercial house that would take it. Even the regional publishers passed.’ She sighed. ‘The locals bought it, but that’s not many books, is it?’ ‘No, I suppose not,’ I said. ‘He just wasn’t much of a writer. Not much of a photographer, either those little black-and-white snaps of his make my eyes hurt. Still, he tells some good stories. The Micmac Drive, General Wing’s trick horse, the twister in the eighteen-eighties, the fires in the nine-teen-thirties . . . ‘ ‘Anything about Sara and the Red-Tops?’ She nodded, smiling. ‘Finally got around to looking up the history of your own place, did you? I’m glad to hear it. He found an old photo of them, and it’s in there. He thought it was taken at the Fryeburg Fair in 1900. Ed used to say he’d give a lot to hear a record made by that bunch.’ ‘So would I, but none were ever made.’ A haiku by the Greek poet George Seferis suddenly occurred to me: Are these the voices of our dead friends / or just the gramophone? ‘What happened to Mr. Osteen? I don’t recall the name.’ ‘Died not a year or two before you and Jo bought your place on the lake,’ she said. ‘Cancer.’ ‘You said there were two histories?’ ‘The other one you probably know A History of Castle County and Castle Rock. Done for the county centennial, and dry as dust. Eddie Osteen’s book isn’t very well written, but he wasn’t dry. You have to give him that much. You should find them both over there.’ She pointed to shelves with a sign over them which read of OF MAINE INTEREST. ‘They don’t circulate.’ Then she brightened. ‘Although we will happily take any nickels you should feel moved to feed into our photocopy machine.’ Mattie was sitting in the far corner next to a boy in a turned-around baseball cap, showing him how to use the microfilm reader. She looked up at me, smiled, and mouthed the words Nice catch. Referring to my lucky grab at Warrington’s, presumably. I gave a modest little shrug before turning to the OF MAINE INTEREST shelves. But she was right lucky or not, it had been a nice catch. ‘What are you looking for?’ I was so deep into the two histories I’d found that Mattie’s voice made me jump. I turned around and smiled, first aware that she was wearing some light and pleasant perfume, second that Lindy Briggs was watching us from the main desk, her welcoming smile put away. ‘Background on the area where I live,’ I said. ‘Old stories. My housekeeper got me interested.’ Then, in a lower voice: ‘Teacher’s watching. Don’t look around.’ Mattie looked startled and, I thought, a little worried. As it turned out, she was right to be worried. In a voice that was low-pitched yet still designed to carry at least as far as the desk, she asked if she could reshelve either book for me. I gave her both. As she picked them up she said in what was almost a con’s whisper: ‘That lawyer who represented you last Friday got John a private detective. He says they may have found something interesting about the guardian ad litem.’ I walked over to the OF MAINE INTEREST shelves with her, hoping I wasn’t getting her in trouble, and asked if she knew what the something interesting might be. She shook her head, gave me a professional little librarian’s smile, and I went away. On the ride back to the house, I tried to think about what I’d read, but there wasn’t much. Osteen was a bad writer who had taken bad pictures, and while his stories were colorful, they were also pretty thin on the ground. He mentioned Sara and the Red-Tops, all right, but he referred to them as a ‘Dixie-Land octet,’ and even I knew that wasn’t right. The Red-Tops might have played some Dixieland, but they had primarily been a blues group (Friday and Saturday nights) and a gospel group (Sunday mornings). Osteen’s two-page summary of the Red-Tops’ stay on the TR made it clear that he had heard no one else’s covers of Sara’s tunes. He confirmed that a child had died of blood-poisoning caused by a traphold wound, a story which sounded like Brenda Meserve’s . . . but why wouldn’t it? Osteen had likely heard it from Mrs. M.’s father or grandfather. He also said that the boy was Son Tidwell’s only child, and that the guitar-player’s real name was Reginald. The Tidwells had supposedly drifted north from the whorehouse district of New Orleans the fabled crib-and-club streets which had been known around the turn of the century as Storyville. There was no mention of Sara and the Red-Tops in the more formal history of Castle County, and no mention of Kenny Auster’s drownded little brother in either book. Not long before Mattie came over to speak to me, I’d had a wild idea: that Son Tidwell and Sara Tidwell were man and wife, and that the little boy (not named by Osteen) had been their son. I found the picture Lindy had mentioned and studied it closely. It showed at least a dozen black people standing in a stiff group in front of what looked like a cattle exhibition. There was an old-fashioned Ferris wheel in the background. It could well have been taken at the Fryeburg Fair, and as old and faded as it was, it had a simple, elemental power that all Osteen’s own photos put together could not match. You have seen photographs of western and Depression-era bandidos that have that same look of eerie truth stern faces above tight ties and collars, eyes not quite lost in the shadows of antique hatbrims. Sara stood front and center, wearing a black dress and her guitar. She was not outright smiling in this picture, but there seemed to be a smile in her eyes, and I thought they were like the eyes in some paintings, the ones that seem to follow you wherever you move in the room. I studied the photo and thought of her almost spiteful voice in my dream: What do you want to know, sugar? I suppose I wanted to know about her and the others who they had been, what they were to each other when they weren’t singing and playing, why they’d left, where they’d gone. Both of her hands were clearly visible, one posed on the strings of her guitar, the other on the frets, where she had been making a G-chord on an October Fair-day in the year 1900. Her fingers were long, artistic, bare of rings. That didn’t necessarily mean that she and Son Tidwell weren’t married, of course, and even if they hadn’t been, the little boy who’d been caught in the trap could have been born on the wrong side of the blanket. Except the same ghost of a smile lurked in Son Tidwell’s eyes. The resemblance was remarkable. I had an idea that the two of them had been brother and sister, not man and wife. I thought about these things on my way home, and I thought about cables that were felt rather than seen . . . but mostly I found myself thinking about Lindy Briggs the way she had smiled at me, the way, a little later on, she had not smiled at her bright young librarian with the high-school certification. That worried me. Then I got back to the house, and all I worried about was my story and the people in it bags of bones which were putting on flesh daily. Michael Noonan, Max Devore, and Rogette Whitmore played out their horrible little comedy scene Friday evening. Two other things which bear narrating happened before that. The first was a call from John Storrow on Thursday night. I was sitting in front of the TV with a baseball game running soundlessly in front of me (the MUTE button with which most remote controls come equipped may be the twentieth century’s finest invention). I was thinking about Sara Tidwell and Son Tidwell and Son Tidwell’s little boy. I was thinking about Storyville, a name any writer just had to love. And in the back of my mind I was thinking about my wife, who had died pregnant. ‘Hello?’ I said. ‘Mike, I have some wonderful news,’ John said. He sounded near to bursting. ‘Romeo Bissonette may be a weird name, but there’s nothing weird about the detective-guy he found for me. His name is George Kennedy, like the actor. He’s good, and he’s fast. This guy could work in New York.’ ‘If that’s the highest compliment you can think of, you need to get out of the city more.’ He went on as if he hadn’t heard. ‘Kennedy’s real job is with a security firm the other stuff is strictly in the moonlight. Which is a great loss, believe me. He got most of this on the phone. I can’t believe it.’ ‘What specifically can’t you believe?’ ‘Jackpot, baby.’ Again he spoke in that tone of greedy satisfaction which I found both troubling and reassuring. ‘Elmer Durgin has done the following things since late May: paid off his car; paid off his camp in Rangely Lakes; caught up on about ninety years of child support ‘ ‘Nobody pays child support for ninety years,’ I said, but I was just running my mouth to hear it go . . . to let off some of my own building excitement, in truth. †T’ain’t possible, Mcgee.’ ‘It is if you have seven kids,’ John said, and began howling with laughter. I thought of the pudgy self-satisfied face, the cupid-bow mouth, the nails that looked polished and prissy. ‘He don’t,’ I said. ‘He do,’ John said, still laughing. He sounded like a complete lunatic manic, hold the depressive. ‘He really do! Ranging in ages from f-fourteen to th-th-three! What a b-busy p-p-potent little prick he must have!’ More helpless howls. And by now I was howling right along with him I’d caught it like the mumps. ‘Kennedy is going to f-f-fax me p-pictures of the whole . . . fam’ . . . damily!’ We broke up completely, laughing together long-distance. I could picture John Stor-row sitting alone in his Park Avenue office, bellowing like a lunatic and scaring the cleaning ladies. ‘That doesn’t matter, though,’ he said when he could talk coherently again. ‘You see what matters, don’t you?’ ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘How could he be so stupid?’ Meaning Durgin, but also meaning Devore. John understood, I think, that we were talking about both he’s at the same time. ‘Elmer Durgin’s a little lawyer from a little township tucked away in the big woods of western Maine, that’s all. How could he know that some guardian angel would come along with the resources to smoke him out? He also bought a boat, by the way. Two weeks ago. It’s a twin outboard. A big ‘un. It’s over, Mike. The home team scores nine runs in the bottom of the ninth and the fucking pennant is ours.’ ‘If you say so.’ But my hand went off on its own expedition, made a loose fist, and knocked on the good solid wood of the coffee-table. ‘And hey, the softball game wasn’t a total loss.’ John was still talking between little giggling outbursts like helium balloons. ‘No?’ ‘I’m taken with her.’ ‘Her?’ ‘Mattie,’ he said patiently. ‘Mattie Devore.’ A pause, then: ‘Mike? Are you there?’ ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Phone slipped. Sorry.’ The phone hadn’t slipped as much as an inch, but it came out sounding natural enough, I thought. And if it hadn’t, so what? When it came to Mattie, I would be in John’s mind, at least below suspicion. Like the country-house staff in an Agatha Christie. He was twenty-eight, maybe thirty. The idea that a man twelve years older might be sexually attracted to Mattie had probably never crossed his mind . . . or maybe just for a second or two there on the common, before he dismissed it as ludicrous. The way Mattie herself had dismissed the idea of Jo and the man in the brown sportcoat. ‘I can’t do my courtship dance while I’m representing her,’ he said, ‘wouldn’t be ethical. Wouldn’t be safe, either. Later, though . . . you can never tell.’ ‘No,’ I said, hearing my voice as you sometimes do in moments when you are caught completely fiat-footed, hearing it as though it were coming from someone else. Someone on the radio or the record-player, maybe. Are these the voices of our dead friends, or just the gramophone? I thought of his hands, the fingers long and slender and without a ring on any of them. Like Sara’s hands in that old photo. ‘No, you can never tell.’ We said goodbye, and I sat watching the muted baseball game. I thought about getting up to get a beer, but it seemed too far to the refrigerator a safari, in fact. What I felt was a kind of dull hurt, followed by a better emotion: rueful relief, I guess you’d call it. Was he too old for her? No, I didn’t think so. Just about right. Prince Charming No. 2, this time in a three-piece suit. Mattie’s luck with men might finally be changing, and if so I should be glad. I would be glad. And relieved. Because I had a book to write, and never mind the look of white sneakers flashing below a red sundress in the deepening gloom, or the ember of her cigarette dancing in the dark. Still, I felt really lonely for the first time since I saw Kyra marching up the white line of Route 68 in her bathing suit and flip-flops. ‘You funny little man, said Strickland,’ I told the empty room. It came out before I knew I was going to say anything, and when it did, the channel on the TV changed. It went from baseball to a rerun of All in the Family and then to Ren Stimpy. I glanced down at the remote control. It was still on the coffee-table where I’d left it. The TV channel changed again, and this time I was looking at Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman. There was an airplane in the background, and I didn’t need to pick up the remote and turn on the sound to know that Humphrey was telling Ingrid that she was getting on that plane. My wife’s all-time favorite movie. She bawled at the end without fail. ‘Jo?’ I asked. ‘Are you here?’ Bunter’s bell rang once. Very faintly. There had been several presences in the house, I was sure of it . . . but tonight, for the first time, I was positive it was Jo who was with me. ‘Who was he, hon?’ I asked. ‘The guy at the softball field, who was he?’ Bunter’s bell hung still and quiet. She was in the room, though. I sensed her, something like a held breath. I remembered the ugly, gibing little message on the refrigerator after my dinner with Mattie and Ki: blue rose liar ha ha. ‘Who was he?’ My voice was unsteady, sounding on the verge of tears. ‘What were you doing down here with some guy? Were you . . . ‘ But I couldn’t bring myself to ask if she had been lying to me, cheating on me. I couldn’t ask even though the presence I felt might be, let’s face it, only in my own head. The TV switched away from Casablanca and here was everybody’s favorite lawyer, Perry Mason, on Nick at Nite. Perry’s nemesis, Hamilton Burger, was questioning a distraught-looking woman, and all at once the sound blared on, making me jump. ‘I am not a liar!’ some long-ago TV actress cried. For a moment she looked right out at me, and I was stunned breathless to see Jo’s eyes in that black-and-white fifties face. ‘I never lied, Mr. Burger, never!’ ‘I submit that you did!’ Burger responded. He moved in on her, leering like a vampire. ‘I submit that you ‘ The TV suddenly went off. Bunter’s bell gave a single brisk shake, and then whatever had been here was gone. But I felt better. I am not a liar . . . I never lied, never. I could believe that if I chose to. If I chose. I went to bed, and there were no dreams. I had taken to starting work early, before the heat could really get a hold on the study. I’d drink some juice, gobble some toast, then sit behind the IBM until almost noon, watching the Courier ball dance and twirl as the pages floated through the machine and came out with writing on them. That old magic, so strange and wonderful. It never really felt like work to me, although I called it that; it felt like some weird kind of mental trampoline I bounced on. Those were springs that took away all the weight of the world for awhile. At noon I’d break, drive down to Buddy Jellison’s greaseatorium for something nasty, then return and work for another hour or so. After that I would swim and take a long dreamless nap in the north bedroom. I had barely poked my head into the master bedroom at the south end of the house, and if Mrs. M. thought this was odd, she kept it to herself. On Friday the seventeenth, I stopped at the Lakeview General on my way back to the house to gas up my Chevrolet. There are pumps at the All-Purpose Garage, and the go-juice was a penny or two cheaper, but I didn’t like the vibe. Today, as I stood in front of the store with the pump on automatic feed, looking off toward the mountains, Bill Dean’s Dodge Ram pulled in on the other side of the island. He climbed down and gave me a smile. ‘How’s it going, Mike?’ ‘Pretty fair.’ ‘Brenda says you’re writin up a storm.’ ‘I am,’ I said, and it was on the tip of my tongue to ask for an update on the broken second-floor air conditioner. The tip of my tongue was where it stayed. I was still too nervous about my rediscovered ability to want to change anything about the environment in which I was doing it. Stupid, maybe, but sometimes things work just because you think they work. It’s as good a definition of faith as any. ‘Well, I’m glad to hear it. Very glad.’ I thought he was sincere enough, but he somehow didn’t sound like Bill. Not the one who had greeted me back, anyway. ‘I’ve been looking up some old stuff about my side of the lake,’ I said. ‘Sara and the Red-Tops? You always were sort ofint’rested in them, I remember.’ ‘Them, yes, but not just them. Lots of history. I was talking to Mrs. M., and she told me about Normal Auster. Kenny’s father.’ Bill’s smile stayed on, and he only paused a moment in the act of unscrewing the cap on his gas tank, but I still had a sense, quite clear, that he had frozen inside. ‘You wouldn’t write about a thing like that, would you, Mike? Because there’s a lot of people around here that’d feel it bad and take it wrong. I told Jo the same thing.’ ‘Jo?’ I felt an urge to step between the two pumps and over the island so I could grab him by the arm. ‘What’s Jo got to do with this?’ He looked at me cautiously and long. ‘She didn’t tell you?’ ‘What are you talking about?’ ‘She thought she might write something about Sara and the Red-Tops for one of the local papers.’ Bill was picking his words very slowly. I have a clear memory of that, and of how hot the sun was, beating down on my neck, and the sharpness of our shadows on the asphalt. He began to pump his gas, and the sound of the pump’s motor was also very sharp. ‘I think she even mentioned Yankee magazine. I c’d be wrong about that, but I don’t think I am.’ I was speechless. Why would she have kept quiet about the idea to try her hand at a little local history? Because she might have thought she was poaching on my territory? That was ridiculous. She had known me better than that . . . hadn’t she? ‘When did you have this conversation, Bill? Do you remember?’ ‘Coss I do,’ he said. ‘Same day she come down to take delivery of those plastic owls. Only I raised the subject, because folks had told me she was asking around.’ ‘Prying?’ ‘I didn’t say that,’ he said stiffly, ‘you did.’ True, but I thought prying was what he meant. ‘Go on.’ ‘Nothing to go on about. I told her there were sore toes here and there on the TR, same as there are anyplace, and ast her not to tread on any corns if she could help it. She said she understood. Maybe she did, maybe she didn’t. All I know is she kep’ on asking questions. Listenin to stories from old fools with more time than sense.’ ‘When was this?’ ‘Fall of ’93, winter and spring of ’94. Went all around town, she did even over to Motton and Harlow with her notebook and little tape-recorder. Anyway, that’s all I know.’ I realized a stunning thing: Bill was lying. If you’d asked me before that day, I’d have laughed and told you Bill Dean didn’t have a lie in him. And he must not have had many, because he did it badly. I thought of calling him on it, but to what end? I needed to think, and I couldn’t do it here my mind was roaring. Given time, that roar might subside and I’d see it was really nothing, no big deal, but I needed that time. When you start finding out unexpected things about a loved one who’s been dead awhile, it rocks you. Take it from me, it does. Bill’s eyes had shifted away from mine, but now they shifted back. He looked both earnest and I could have sworn it a little scared. ‘She ast about little Kerry Auster, and that’s a good example of what I mean about steppin on sore toes. That’s not the stuff for a newspaper story or a magazine article. Normal just snapped. No one knows why. It was a terrible tragedy, senseless, and there’s still people who could be hurt by it. In little towns things are kind of connected under the surface ‘ Yes, like cables you couldn’t quite see. ‘ and the past dies slower. Sara and those others, that’s a little different. They were just . . . just wanderers . . . from away. Jo could have stuck to those folks and it would’ve been all right. And say for all I know, she did. Because I never saw a single word she ever wrote. If she did write.’ About that he was telling the truth, I felt. But I knew something else, knew it as surely as I’d known Mattie had been wearing white shorts when she called me on her day off. Sara and those others were just wanderers from away, Bill had said, but he hesitated in the middle of his thought, substituting wanderers for the word which had come naturally to mind. Niggers was the word he hadn’t said. Sara and those others were just niggers from away. All at once I found myself thinking of an old story by Ray Bradbury, ‘Mars Is Heaven.’ The first space travellers to Mars discover it’s Green Town, Illinois, and all their well-loved friends and relatives are there. Only the friends and relatives are really alien monsters, and in the night, while the space travellers think they are sleeping in the beds of their long-dead kinfolk in a place that must be heaven, they are slaughtered to the last man. ‘Bill, you’re sure she was up here a few times in the off-season?’ ‘Ayuh. ‘T’wasn’t just a few times, either. Might have been a dozen times or more. Day-trips, don’t you know.’ ‘Did you ever see a fellow with her? Burly guy, black hair?’ He thought about it. I tried not to hold my breath. At last he shook his head. ‘Few times I saw her, she was alone. But I didn’t see her every time she came. Sometimes I only heard she’d been on the TR after she ‘us gone again. Saw her in June of ’94, headed up toward Halo Bay in that little car a hers. She waved, I waved back. Went down to the house later that evenin to see if she needed anythin, but she’d gone. I didn’t see her again. When she died later on that summer, me and ‘Vette were so shocked.’ Whatever she was looking for, she must never have written any of it down. I would have found the manuscript. Was that true, though? She had made many trips down here with no apparent attempts at concealment, on one of them she had even been accompanied by a strange man, and I had only found out about these visits by accident. ‘This is hard to talk about,’ Bill said, ‘but since we’ve gotten started hard, we might as well go the rest of the way. Livin on the TR is like the way we used to sleep four or even five in a bed when it was January and true cold. If everyone rests easy, you do all right. But if one person gets restless, gets tossing and turning, no one can sleep. Right now you’re the restless one. That’s how people see it.’ He waited to see what I’d say. When almost twenty seconds passed without a word from me (Harold Oblowski would have been proud), he shuffled his feet and went on. ‘There are people in town uneasy about the interest you’ve taken in Mattie Devore, for instance. Now I’m not sayin there’s anythin going on between the two of you although there’s folks who do say it but if you want to stay on the TR you’re makin it tough on yourself.’ ‘Why?’ ‘Comes back to what I said a week and a half ago. She’s trouble.’ ‘As I recall, Bill, you said she was in trouble. And she is. I’m trying to help her out of it. There’s nothing going on between us but that.’ ‘I seem to recall telling you that Max Devore is nuts,’ he said. ‘If you make him mad, we all pay the price.’ The pump clicked off and he racked it up. Then he sighed, raised his hands, dropped them. ‘You think this is easy for me to say?’ ‘You think it’s easy for me to listen to?’ ‘All right, ayuh, we’re in the same skiff. But Mattie Devore isn’t the only person on the TR livin hand-to-mouth, you know. There’s others got their woes, as well. Can’t you understand that?’ Maybe he saw that I understood too much and too well, because his shoulders slumped. ‘If you’re asking me to stand aside and let Devore take Mattie’s baby without a fight, you can forget it,’ I said. ‘And I hope that’s not it. Because I think I’d have to be quits with a man who’d ask another man to do something like that.’ ‘I wouldn’t ask it now anywise,’ he said, his accent thickening almost to the point of contempt. ‘It’d be too late, wouldn’t it?’ And then, unexpectedly, he softened. ‘Christ, man, I’m worried about you. Let the rest of it go hang, all right? Hang high where the crows can pick it.’ He was lying again, but this time I didn’t mind so much, because I thought he was lying to himself. ‘But you need to have a care. When I said Devore was crazy, that was no figure of speech. Do you think he’ll bother with court if court can’t get him what he wants? Folks died in those summer fires back in 1933. Good people. One related to me. They burned over half the goddam county and Max Devore set em. That was his going-away present to the TR. It could never be proved, but he did it. Back then he was young and broke, not yet twenty and no law in his pocket. What do you think he’d do now?’ He looked at me searchingly. I said nothing. Bill nodded as if I had spoken. ‘Think about it. And you remember this, Mike: no man who didn’t care for you would ever talk to you straight as I have.’ ‘How straight was that, Bill?’ I was faintly aware of some tourist walking from his Volvo to the store and looking at us curiously, and when I replayed the scene in my mind later on, I realized we must have looked like guys on the verge of a fistfight. I remember that I felt like crying out of sadness and bewilderment and an incompletely defined sense of betrayal, but I also remember being furious with this lanky old man him in his shining-clean cotton undershirt and his mouthful of false teeth. So maybe we were close to fighting, and I just didn’t know it at the time. ‘Straight as I could be,’ he said, and turned away to go inside and pay for his gas. ‘My house is haunted,’ I said. He stopped, back to me, shoulders hunched as if to absorb a blow. Then, slowly, he turned back. ‘Sara Laughs has always been haunted, Mike. You’ve stirred em up. P’raps you should go back to Derry and let em settle. That might be the best thing.’ He paused, as if replaying this last to see if he agreed with it, then nodded. He nodded as slowly as he had turned. ‘Ayuh, that might be best all around.’ When I got back to Sara I called Ward Hankins. Then I finally made that call to Bonnie Amudson. Part of me was rooting for her not to be in at the travel agency in Augusta she co-owned, but she was. Halfway through my talk with her, the fax began to print out xeroxed pages from Jo’s appointment calendars. On the first one Ward had scrawled, ‘Hope this helps.’ I didn’t rehearse what I was going to say to Bonnie; I felt that to do so would be a recipe for disaster. I told her that Jo had been writing something maybe an article, maybe a series of them about the township where our summerhouse was located, and that some of the locals had apparently been cheesed off by her curiosity. Some still were. Had she talked to Bonnie? Perhaps showed her an early draft? ‘No, huh-uh.’ Bonnie sounded honestly surprised. ‘She used to show me her photos, and more herb samples than I honestly cared to see, but she never showed me anything she was writing. In fact, I remember her once saying that she’d decided to leave the writing to you and just ‘ ‘ take a little taste of everything else, right?’ ‘Yes.’ I thought this was a good place to end the conversation, but the guys in the basement seemed to have other ideas. ‘Was she seeing anyone, Bonnie?’ Silence from the other end. With a hand that seemed at least four miles down my arm, I plucked the fax sheets out of the basket. Ten of them November of 1993 to August of 1994. Jottings everywhere in Jo’s neat hand. Had we even had a fax before she died? I couldn’t remember. There was so fucking much I couldn’t remember. ‘Bonnie? If you know something, please tell me. Jo’s dead, but I’m not. I can forgive her if I have to, but I can’t forgive what I don’t underst ‘ ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, and gave a nervous little laugh. ‘It’s just that I didn’t understand at first. â€Å"Seeing anyone,† that was just so . . . so foreign to Jo . . . the Jo I knew . . . that I couldn’t figure out what you were talking about. I thought maybe you meant a shrink, but you didn’t, did you? You meant seeing someone like seeing a guy. A boyfriend.’ ‘That’s what I meant.’ Thumbing through the faxed calendar sheets now, my hand not quite back to its proper distance from my eyes but getting there, getting there. I felt relief at the honest bewilderment in Bonnie’s voice, but not as much as I’d expected. Because I’d known. I hadn’t even needed the woman in the old Perry Mason episode to put in her two cents, not really. It was Jo we were talking about, after all. Jo. ‘Mike,’ Bonnie was saying, very softly, as if I might be crazy, ‘she loved you. She loved you. ‘Yes. I suppose she did.’ The calendar pages showed how busy my wife had been. How productive. S-Ks of Maine . . . the soup kitchens. WomShel, a county-to-county network of shelters for battered women. TeenShel. Friends of Me. Libes. She had been at two or three meetings a month two or three a week at some points and I’d barely noticed. I had been too busy with my women in jeopardy. ‘I loved her too, Bonnie, but she was up to something in the last ten months of her life. She didn’t give you any hint of what it might have been when you were riding to meetings of the Soup Kitchens board or the Friends of Maine Libraries?’ Silence from the other end. ‘Bonnie?’ I took the phone away from my ear to see if the red LOW BATTERY light was on, and it squawked my name. I put it back. ‘Bonnie, what is it?’ ‘There were no long drives those last nine or ten months. We talked on the phone and I remember once we had lunch in Waterville, but there were no long drives. She quit.’ I thumbed through the fax-sheets again. Meetings noted everywhere in Jo’s neat hand, Soup Kitchens of Maine among them. ‘I don’t understand. She quit the Soup Kitchens board?’ Another moment of silence. Then, speaking carefully: ‘No, Mike. She quit all of them. She finished with Woman Shelters and Teen Shelters at the end of ’93 her term was up then. The other two, Soup Kitchens and Friends of Maine Libraries . . . she resigned in October or November of 1993.’ Meetings noted on all the sheets Ward had sent me. Dozens of them. Meetings in 1993, meetings in 1994. Meetings of boards to which she’d no longer belonged. She had been down here. On all those supposed meeting-days, Jo had been on the TR. I would have bet my life on it. But why? How to cite Bag of Bones CHAPTER SIXTEEN, Essay examples

Financial Evaluation Of The Hypothetical Company SSS

Question: Discuss about the Essay for Financial Evaluation of The Hypothetical Company SSS? Answer: Introduction The assignment is about the Financial Evaluation Of The Hypothetical Company Sss. The financial performance measurement will be done using the ratio analysis. The balance sheet and the income statement of the company will be prepared using the data from the trial balance of the company. Additionally, the statement changes due to using IAS 1 like comprehensive income and position of the income statement will be critically analysed in this paper. The change in the ratios and the financial performance of Golfy and Tenniswise will be prepared in this study and the comparative analysis for investment decision for the investor will be recommended in this assignment.Final accounts of Sunny Soccer Sports for the year end 31st October, 2013 Profit and Loss a/c of SSS as at 31st October, 2013 Income Sales 120000 cost of goods sold 40000 Gross income 80000 wages 17000 Heat 2000 Advertising 5000 postage 500 Rates 700 Petrol 2300 Total o/h 27500 Income from Rent 300 Net profit before tax 52800 Table 1: Profit and Loss a/c of SSS as at 31st October, 2013 Balance sheet of SSS as at 31st October, 2013 Current assets Bank 22000 cash 500 Debtors 8000 closing stock 80000 Balance 80000 Rates Total CA 110500 Current liabilities Trade creditors 11000 Additional creditors 1200 Total CL 12200 Working capital 98300 Fixed assets Premises 200000 Vehicles 25000 Total fixed Assets 225000 323300 Capital 270500 Add: PAT 52800 Total equity 323300 Table 2: Balance sheet of SSS as at 31st October, 2013 Statement on changes to reporting standards under IAS for profit statement and financial position The 1st standard of IAS provides the information of the general application of providing the financial statement according to the reporting style mentioned in IFRS. The objective of the international accounting standard is to provide information about the financial performance, financial position of the entity and cash flow of the firm. The report consists of statements of assets, liabilities, equity, income and expenses and cash flows mainly. Further, the statement also provides the information regarding the attributed profit to the shareholders on an annual basis (ey.com 2011). The IAS 1 has changed the reporting style of the accounts of an entity balance sheet as statement of financial position and income statement as statement of comprehensive income. The comprehensive income of the entity requires to be disclosed in a separate statement so that the surplus of the asset revaluation can be understood from the accounting statement. Additionally, the actuarial gains are also added in the comprehensive income statement. The gains or losses from foreign entitys translation selling the firms assets and hedging of the commodities or foreign currency are reflected in this statement too (Iasplus.com 2016). The financial position of the companies is expressed in the fair value of the assets and liabilities. The change in the balance sheet of the firms has been taken place lately where the changes in the financial position of the different attributes are observed except changes in the equity. Additionally, the current assets are presented in fair value of the market to present in a materialistic way (Ifrs.org 2016). The financial position of the firms must be classified into four parameters mainly current and non- current liabilities ad assets. However, the current value of the equity and reserve of the firm is also disclosed here. Change in the shares, the portion of the shares in the subsidiaries are required for the companies to be disclosed in the statement of the financial position (Lole 2014). Meaning of financial ratios There are many financial ratios present in the market under which we can measure the financial performance of a short-cut method. The method of ratio analysis provides the direction to the different stakeholders for analysing the performance of the firm in point of view of profitability, position of liquidity in the company as well as the efficiency of the management. According to McKeown et al. (2014), ratio analysis provides the analysts the understanding of financial performance as well as the financial position of the company on an accrual basis. Profitability ratios provide information about profit margin as well as the return to the investors. Gross profit and net profit margin provide the information regarding the profitability from the revenue of the business. However, the return on equity is the measurement of the return to the shareholders on the basis of their investment in the company. The capital is invested in the business and the return is the profit after tax for the firms (Nicholls 2013). The profitability margin shows good result due to the high value of the financial statements from time to time. The analysis can show that profit and return on the business due to change in different activities of the firm. Gross profit margin = gross profit / sales Net profit margin = Net profit / sales ROCE = Net profit / capital employed in business Liquidity ratio of the company can provide the information regarding the liquid present in the company's balance sheet. The liquid assets are the backbone of the business to run the operation smoothly to get better performance from the daily activities of different aspects of the business. Further, measurement of the liquidity may show that the capacity of the firms to pay its obligations regarding the operations. The daily activities of the business always require the liquid assets and cash to run the operation without hazards (Parmar 2014). However, he saw that higher liquidity may reduce the efficiency of the funds as the cash may become idle due to lack of many actions in the business. In this context, the analysts prefer two tests mainly - current ratio and acid test ratio. The test of the liquid assets in the firm's financial position may be judged using the current assets where the relative measurement of current assets is done with the current liabilities. However, the invent ory is not much liquid as observed by many analysts (Ross 2012; Taillard 2013). Thereby, the change in the method is applied by deducting the inventory from the entire current assets and measure the current ratio of quick responding assets those can be liquidised fast. Current ratio = current assets / current liabilities Quick ratio = (current assets inventory) / current liabilities Management efficiency is very crucial to the performance of the firms as they are depended on the efficient decision-making ability of the management. It is clear that the management of the companies is responsible for delivering the better performance to the business from time to time. Therefore, the main concerned issue for the analysts is to measure the efficiency of the measurement (Velez-Pareja and Davila n.d.). However, the decisions made by the management of the firms could not be disclosed in public as it may reveal the strategy of the company in the outside world. So, it is customary to measure the efficiency of the management by measuring their efficiency and effectiveness in managing the working capital of the business as well as the change in the payables and receivables position of the business (Vickerstaff and Johal 2014). Inventory turnover ratio = Sales / Inventory Days of collection = Receivables / (sales/365) Days of payable = Payables / (sales /365) Report on comparative analysis of financial performance and position Profitability measurement The profitability measurement of Golfy and Tenniswise was done here where the gross margin from the business observed. Golfy had almost half the gross margin of Tenniswise in the current period. However, the difference in net margin of the two companies reduced havoc as the operating cost of the former was low in the concerned period (Zaimah et al. 2013). The same picture was observed for measuring the return on equity whereas both the company yielded almost negligible difference to return the shareholders from the annual financial performance. Thereby, from the ROCE point of view, it can be said that Golfy had used the lesser capital to return more comparatively with Tenniswise. SSS had better profit margin as well as yielded better return to the shareholders in the current year. Liquidity Liquidity measurement of the two companies showed that Golfy had the better position of liquid assets in the company as it had better ratio compare to Tenniswise. In this context, the liquidity ratio of SSS was better than these two companies (McKeown et al. 2014). Efficiency The efficiency ratio of the companies showed that Golfy's management was more efficient in collecting the debt and managing the creditors. However, the payment days of the creditors for Golfy was lower than Tenniswise; the creditor management was better for the first company. However, the inventory turnover ratio of Golfy was poor compared to Tenniswise as seen in the calculation. Thereby, it can be said that the later one has performed well in turning over the inventory into sales faster than the former one (Hillier 2013). Comparing with SSS, the working capital management of Golfy and Tenniswise was poor. Conclusion In power point The efficiency ratio of the companies showed that Golfy's management was more efficient in collecting the debt and managing the creditors. However, the payment days of the creditors for Golfy was lower than Tenniswise; the creditor management was better for the first company. References Ahmed, A. (n.d.). Financial Ratio Analysis of Square Pharmaceuticals Limited.SSRN Electronic Journal. Berk, J., DeMarzo, P. and Harford, J. (2012).Fundamentals of corporate finance. Boston: Prentice Hall. Beyersdorff, M. (2014).International GAAP 2014. Chichester, UK: J. Wiley Sons. Beyersdorff, M. (n.d.).International GAAP 2014. Brealey, R., Myers, S. and Marcus, A. (2012).Fundamentals of corporate finance. New York: McGraw-Hill/Irwin. Collings, S. (n.d.).Corporate finance for dummies. Dr.Vani R Kamath, D. (2013). Ratio as a tool of financial analysis for Indian Retail sector companies.IOSR Journal of Business and Management, 10(5), pp.32-34. ey.com, (2011).Changes to the presentation of other comprehensive income amendments to IAS 1. [online] Available at: https://www.ey.com/Publication/vwLUAssets/IFRS_Developments_Issue_7/$FILE/IFRS_Developments_Issue_7_GL_IFRS.pdf [Accessed 9 Feb. 2016]. Hillier, D. (2013).Corporate finance. London [u.a.]: McGraw-Hill. Iasplus.com, (2016).Revised IAS 1 requires statement of comprehensive income. [online] Available at: https://www.iasplus.com/en/news/2007/September/news3764 [Accessed 9 Feb. 2016]. Ifrs.org, (2016).Illustrative examples - Statement of financial position, statement of comprehensive income, and statement of changes in equity. [online] Available at: https://www.ifrs.org/XBRL/Resources/Documents/Illustrative%20Examples%202013/ixbrl_example2_2013-03-28.xhtml [Accessed 9 Feb. 2016]. Lole, J. (2014).Accounting standards. Kingston upon Thames: Wolters Kluwer [for] the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales. McKeown, W., Kerry, M., Olynyk, M. and Beal, D. (2014).Financial Planning. Milton: Wiley. Nicholls, C. (2013).Corporate finance and Canadian law. Toronto, Ont.: Carswell. Parmar, V. (2014).Analysis Of Financial Statements. SaarbruÃÅ'ˆcken: LAP LAMBERT Academic Publishing. Ross, S. (2012).Fundamentals of corporate finance. New York: McGraw-Hill. Taillard, M. (2013).Corporate finance for dummies. Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley Sons, Inc. Velez-Pareja, I. and Davila, M. (n.d.). Financial Analysis and Control - Financial Ratio Analysis (In Spanish).SSRN Electronic Journal. Vickerstaff, B. and Johal, P. (2014).Financial Accounting. Hoboken: Taylor and Francis. Zaimah, R., Masud, J., Haron, S., Othman, M., Awang, A. and Sarmila, M. (2013). Financial Well-Being: Financial Ratio Analysis of Married Public Sector Workers in Malaysia.Asian Social Science, 9(14).

Worldviews and Culture an Example by

Worldviews and Culture The three worldviews governing international relations are: the system maintainer, system reformer and the system transformer. First, the system maintainer perspective is associated with strong political orientation. Critical in this worldview is the emergence of newly industrialized countries, which can pose a threat to the current dominance of US hegemony. This emergence might cause a chaotic relationship in the international system. Need essay sample on "Worldviews and Culture" topic? We will write a custom essay sample specifically for you Proceed Given that those states who incorporates this view is anarchic in quality, the challenge that the system maintainer perspective may encounter is the probable resistance of some of the states in the internationalization trends. Another challenge for this worldview, is centered on its assumption that a state must be military equipped and superior, as this point has over the years gained negative feedbacks from the public. Until now, there are growing discontentment on the US pursuit for extra military power and its continuing involvement in wars. The second worldview is the system reformer. Critical in this worldview is its utopian character rather than being realist. The challenges posted to this worldview are towards really solidifying rival nations and create policies that shall manage conflicts in the global political arena and ensure equality among the rich and the poor. Another is the probability of linking nations to cooperate for the pursuit of common interests has always been questionable and it has never occurred in the past that nations work together for common interest, but rather for the benefit of their personal goals. The third world view is the system transformer. Critical in this worldview is its difficulty to assess if there are countries who can play the role of being a system transformer in its altruistic sense rather than being a fake. The challenges that this worldview faces is with regards to its little popularity in the global arena particularly in the US. Somehow, cooperation seems less appealing to the people and favors more an arms race to ensure political and economic stability through military supremacy. Another challenge is that, as this view works to save the Third World from conflicts, it is the case that Third World countries would always seem to favor being associated with First World countries even it would be detrimental to their economy because these underdeveloped countries would tend to seek for protection. The increasing popularity of internet as a means of globalization has widely affected the promotion of loyalty and maintenance of national identity. The advent of internet popularity has been used to manipulate and extract information that although some would serve useful to others, may mean detrimental to a nations culture. The discontentment of France for example towards the published articles and auctioned items in the internet which were vital to their historic heritage is a proof how can internet be used as an agent of cultural loyalty or disloyalty. The internet as it can be accessed by anyone, anywhere in the world is one of the most powerful tool in shaping the identity of an individual. The inability to restrict the information that can be shown in the internet may serve dangerous to others. Although there are facts that are to be well-gathered and disseminated, cultural relativism must always be employed. Restriction policy based on the cultural importance of certain facts must be properly guided. If a content of a certain article or feature can promote discontent or disillusionment towards the cultural membership of the people, they must be restricted from access or at least be regulated. Political culture plays a big role in the undertaking of this regulation. The politics of culture dictates which of the facts are detrimental to their culture or which of those can promote their identity and heritage, thus they can influence which of those should be restricted from access. Though, it must also be ensured that the facts stated will also render truthful information and shall not be biased towards other criticisms. Works Cited Lamy, Steven L. Challenging Hegemonic Paradigms and Practices: Critical Thinking and Active Learning Strategies for International Relations. October 8, 2007 http://www.apsanet.org/imgtest/Lamy_APSA_2006.pdf Lamy, Steven L. ed. US Perspectives on the Soviet Union. Contemporary International Issues. 1988.

The Complete Guide to AP US Government FRQs

The Complete Guide to AP US Government FRQs SAT / ACT Prep Online Guides and Tips Free-response questions on the AP US Government exam are more straightforward than those on some other AP tests, but they can still be tough if you're not ready for them. In this guide, I'll lay out a step-by-step method for answering AP Government FRQs, go through a real example, and tell you where you can find additional practice resources. AP Government Free-Response Section Format The free-response section has four questions total, each of which is worth an equal percentage of your score.You’ll have an hour and 40 minutes to answer these questions, which means you should spend no more than 20-25 minutes on each of them.Each question is typically worth between 5-7 raw points, and the free-response section as a whole makes up 50 percent of your score.All the free-response questions have pretty much the same format, so it's one of the simpler AP free-response sections overall. Free-response questions on this exam will ask you to integrate your knowledge of the various content areas covered by the course.This includes analyzing political events in the US, discussing examples, and demonstrating your understanding of general principles of US government and politics.You'll also be asked to examine data from charts, define key terms, and explain the roles that different parts of our government play in the political system. AP Government FRQs: Step-By-Step Solution Process This section provides a step-by-step process for answering any question on the AP US Government exam.Here’s a sample question that I’ll reference throughoutso that you can see how these steps might work in practice: Step 1: Read the Introduction to the Question Most questions on this test will have an introductory sentence or two before they break down into parts that you need to answer.This will give you background information and a general sense of what to expect in the rest of the question.Some questions are accompanied by images or charts (as we will see in the example section).If that’s the case, you should also take a second here to review the graphics and make sure you understand what they’re showing. If you want, you can read the intros to all the questions before choosing where to begin. It may help to build your confidence and improve your efficiency to start with a question that’s easier for you.In the sample question, you would note from the introduction that the question is going to be dealing with the role of political parties in US government.The intro also tells us that political parties have recently gained influence in Congress while losing influence in the actual election process. Step 2: Identify (and Underline, If You Want) the Command Verb For each part of each question, you’re given specific instructions on the type of answer that is expected.These instructions include verbs like â€Å"identify†, â€Å"explain†, â€Å"describe†, â€Å"define†, and â€Å"compare.† It’s important to be aware of exactly what the question is asking you to do so that you can earn full points.These command verbs are the first words you should zero in on as you read.If you think it will help keep you focused, you can even underline them as you go through the question. In part a of the sample question, the command verb is â€Å"describe.†This indicates that you need to do more than just state an important function of political parties; you need to expand on exactly what it is.In parts c and d, the command verb changes to â€Å"explain†, which means you’ll need to include even more elaboration in your answer on how certain factors have affected party politics. Step 3: Address All the Potential Points After finding the command verb in the part of the question you’re answering, take note of how many examples or descriptions you need to provide.Each of them will almost always correspond to a point in your raw score for the question.Be careful to answer the question thoroughly but directly, addressing all of these points in a way that will make it easy for graders to assess your response.You don’t need to write an essay for these free-response questions. Just go straight for the answer to avoid ambiguity. For part a of the sample question, you’re asked to describe two important functions of political parties, which means that part a is almost certainly worth two points.You need to make sure you provide two distinct functions and make it easy for the grader to award points foryour answer.If you go through the rest of the question, it looks like there are five raw points available in total:two for part a, one for part b, two for part c, and one for part d.Write your answer carefully so you can scoop up all of them! Step 4: Reread Your Answer Finally, reread what you wrote to ensure that it makes sense and addresses the question completely.Did you give the correct number of descriptions/examples/identifications? Does your answer directly respond to what the question is asking overall?If you’re satisfied, move onto the next part of the question and return to step 2! AP Government FRQ Example Now, I’ll go through the answers to a real AP Government free-response question from the 2013 exam to show you what your responses should look like: First, let’s consider the chart and the introductory sentence for this question.It looks like we’re comparing the distribution of judicial appointments by gender and ethnicity for two different presidents. For part a, you are asked to describe one way in which the judicial appointments of Obama and Bush were similar.You might say that in both cases more than half of the appointees were white, with Obama at 59 percent and Bush at 82 percent white.You could also say that the percentage of Hispanic nominees was similar for each president or that in both cases Asian American nominees were the rarest of all the ethnic groups.You would earn one point for this part of the question if you included either of those responses. For part b, you are asked to describe two differences between the presidents in their judicial appointments.One difference you might point out is that a significantly larger percentage of Obama’s nominees were women - almost half compared to Bush’s mere 22 percent.A second difference is that Obama appointed a greater percentage of candidates from racial minorities. For example, 22 percent of his appointees were African American as compared to Bush’s 7 percent.You could earn two points for part b, one for each difference between the two sets of nominees. Part c asks you to explain how party affiliation impacts judiciary nominations.You might say that the President often chooses nominees with similar views who will adhere to his policy preferences.This typically means people who belong to the same political party as the President.You could also say that the President tends to choose nominees who will make his party’s electoral base happy and lead to victories in future elections.Part c was worth one point. Finally, part d asks you to describe what a President can do to increase the likelihood that his federal court nominees will be confirmed.Possible answers to part d include: Consulting with the Senate/using senatorial courtesy Selecting a moderate candidate in the first place Properly vetting candidates and choosing people who are highly qualified You would earn one point for this part of the question if you described any one of these methods.Notice that this question was worth a total of five raw points, which is probably the lowest raw point value you’ll see on any of the AP US Government free-response questions.However, a lower raw point value doesn’t mean it’s worth any less in your final scaled score; each free-response question is equally important on this test. Even people who make extremely important decisions, like federal judges, are appointed partially based on their political favorability. How to Practice AP US Government Free-Response Questions There are several resources that you can use to hone your skills in answering AP Government FRQs. Official College Board Resources The College Board site hosts free-response questions from previous tests that you can use for practice.Questions that come from tests administered between 2004 and 2015 are accompanied by scoring guidelines, so you can check your answers and tally up how many points you would have earned.These are the best sample free-response questions you can get because you know for sure that they accurately represent what you’ll see on the real test.The questions from 2002 and 2003 don’t have scoring guidelines, so be aware that you won’t be able to check the official answers if you choose to use them. Review Books Review books can also be good resources for free response practice although they tend to vary in quality.The Princeton Review book for AP Gov includes five full practice tests, so there should be plenty of free response questions that you can use to practice your skills.The Barron’s review book also has a couple of practice tests and extra free response questions that may be useful for practice. If you don’t want to buy the book, you can also takeBarron’s free online practice test for AP Gov, which includes free-response questions and scoring guidelines.If you use these free-response questions for practice, just be sure to intersperse them with official questions from the College Board so that you maintain an accurate sense of what to expect on the real test. Review books can be great resources for free-response and multiple-choice practice questions and for test-taking strategies that you may not have discovered on your own. Conclusion The four free-response questions on the AP US Government exam can be approached methodically to earn the maximum number of points. Read the introduction to the question first so you can get your bearings. Then, for each of the separate parts, identify the command verb, address all aspects of the question, and double check your answer for missing pieces and careless errors. I'd suggest practicing at least a few free response questions before heading into the exam. The best resource to use is the College Board website, which has an archive of past questions accompanied by answer guidelines. These questions are pretty simple compared to the free-response questions on other AP tests once you get the hang of them! What's Next Not sure where to begin in studying for the test as a whole? Read our five-step plan that will help you prepare to take on any AP test. If you're missing some of your notes that you need to study for AP Gov, check out this article with links to all the content you need to know for the test. Do you have a target score in mind for this exam? Learn more about what it takes to earn a 5 on an AP test and whether you should aim for one yourself. Want to improve your SAT score by 160 points or your ACT score by 4 points?We've written a guide for each test about the top 5 strategies you must be using to have a shot at improving your score. Download it for free now:

Philosophy and Cinema Journal Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Philosophy and Cinema Journal - Essay Example   In re Bazin’s famous page (p. 13), where he referred to the camera as a non-living agent that recreates the world, he said: â€Å"For the first time an image of the world is formed automatically, without the creative invention of man.† It may be true that the camera does the recreating but to say that the process is without the creative intervention of man is, to this writer, not perfectly accurate. The angles, the lighting, the lenses choice, and the timing of all these elements are products of the cameraman’s creative intervention which results in the shot. Bazin, who elevated photography as the most significant in what he called â€Å"plastic arts,† had only superlative descriptions of its aesthetic and creative powers. Aesthetically, it is superior, according to Bazin, because of its ability to present reality in its most naked condition. Unlike other forms of art, nothing comes between the original subject and the cold lens of the camera. What the camera does is to strip the object of all contextual non-necessities attached to it by time, place and space and lay it bare to the viewer, an experience that is almost impossible in real life. And to Bazin, photography â€Å"can surpass art in creative power† which surprisingly implies despite his extolling photography, that he did not classify it as art.     Photography is more creative because there is no need for a meticulous combination of tricks to create an object of hallucination, like what surrealist do, but it is a hallucination and at the same time, also a fact.

Ashputtel Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Ashputtel - Essay Example These characters, especially the ones in fairy tales, were made to stir imagination and provide some relief to suffering by their inspirational portrayal of roles and human attributes or emotions that reflected the reality with which people were deeply attached so they could well relate to the human needs. With fictitious yet meaningful story, Ashputtel has since endured to embody a model that everyone can follow to find comfort from state of domestic oppression knowing that as long as one remains humble despite numerous cruelties, there would be blessings in the end. Most of the young people particularly the rural folk girls had admired Ahsputtel while she represents the importance of obeying to parents. Though meekness and innocence are rare and somewhat are unrealistic traits, Ashputtel provides an impression that the rich of the mid-19th century society in Europe were capable of doing good. Her character as a rich motherless girl whose privileges are taken and exploited by the tw o wicked stepsisters and their mother plays a role of ideal kindheartedness. Brothers Grimm might have intentionally made Ashputtel incapable of defending herself out of all the good she does to justify the magic or miraculous gifts which she deserve eventually after all her sufferings. This may sound exaggerating but it worked during the early times to change people’s way of thinking for the better to help them view that the continuing hardships due to absence of justice would make them get a remarkable destiny. The modern world however is too transformed to consider going after the past approach into the present circumstances of people. Even children nowadays are capable of forming independent ways by which to learn and cope with practice of values that are rather revolutionary compared to how a young individual should envision his or her development by following examples shown by Ashputtel. Ashputtel’s moral had certainly taught the 19th century world simplicity and values that were important for building one’s character out of pure politeness during times of inhumanity but this idea needs to be turned into something fit for humans of the 21st century. The original lesson which Cinderella brought to inspire many of different levels of the older society is weak in the sense that an increasingly postmodern situation could not afford to tolerate defenseless behavior in the same way that it would not shield an individual from its harsh realities. A person who acquires Ashputtel’s nature runs the risk of coming out unable to become dynamic and independent. With low self-esteem, such individual is not likely motivated to stay hopeful like Cinderella does and this all the more permits opportunists or the vicious ones to abuse the use of authority and take advantage of the weak for not being able to express themselves properly. If Ashputtel’s lesson were to apply itself to the current way of living, the stepsisters must not have g iven into the bloody cutting of their toes since the new Ashputtel would have managed to help them change hearts from bad to good through the process of fighting for her rights. At this age, people in general should still be served the same encouragement of gaining knowledge in literature as of old days and not be deprived of relishing literary pieces that have

Effects of Fungicide Iprodione and Nitrification Inhibitor

Effects of Fungicide Iprodione and Nitrification Inhibitor Effects of fungicide iprodione and nitrification inhibitor 3, 4-dimethylpyrazole phosphate on soil enzyme and bacterial properties Manyun Zhang a, b, à ¯Ã‚ Ã¢â‚¬ ºÃƒ ¯Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ªÃƒ ¯Ã‚ Ã‚ , Weijin Wang a, c, Yaling Zhang a, Ying Teng b, à ¯Ã‚ Ã¢â‚¬ ºÃƒ ¯Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ªÃƒ ¯Ã‚ Ã‚ , Zhihong Xu a, à ¯Ã‚ Ã¢â‚¬ ºÃƒ ¯Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ªÃƒ ¯Ã‚ Ã‚  a Environmental Futures Research Institute, School of Natural Sciences, Griffith University, Brisbane, Queensland 4111, Australia b Key Laboratory of Soil Environment and Pollution Remediation, Institute of Soil Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing 210008, China c Department of Science, Information Technology and Innovation, Dutton Park, Queensland 4102, Australia Abstract Agrochemical applications may have unintended detrimental effects on soil bacteria and soil health. However, limited studies have been conducted to evaluate the effects of repeated fungicide applications and interactive effects of different agrochemical applications on soil bacteria. In this study, an incubation experiment was established to evaluate the potential influences of fungicide iprodione and nitrification inhibitor 3, 4-dimethylpyrazole phosphate (DMPP) on soil enzyme and bacterial properties. Weekly iprodione applications decreased the activities of all enzymes tested, and single DMPP addition inhibited soil ÃŽ ²-glucosidase and urease activities. Compared with the blank control, bacterial 16S rRNA gene abundance significantly decreased following repeated iprodione applications, but increased after DMPP application. After 28 days of incubation, the treatment of iprodione and DMPP applications had higher bacterial 16S rRNA gene abundance than the counterpart with i prodione applications alone, and the similar trends were also observed in the Shannon index. Repeated iprodione applications significantlyincreased the relative abundance of Proteobacteria, but decreased the relative abundances of Chloroflexi and Acidobacteria. The combined applications of iprodione and DMPP increased the number of members of Gaiellaceae, Microbacteriaceae, Nocardioidaceae and Methylobacteriaceae. Simultaneously, bacterial community structure was significantly changed by repeated iprodione applications, alone or together with the DMPP. These results showed that repeated iprodione applications exerted negative effects on soil enzyme activities, bacterial biomass and community diversity. Moreover, relative to iprodione applications alone, extra DMPP application had the potential to alleviate the toxic effects of iprodione on soil bacterial biomass and community diversity. Keywords: agrochemicals; soil enzyme; 16S rRNA gene; bacterial community diversity and structure Introduction Fungicides play important roles in ensuring the crop quality and yield in modern agriculture (Maltby et al., 2009; Sabatier et al., 2014). The infections and phytopathies caused by fungi are the major problems and threats in agricultural production, which leads to the intensification in applications of fungicidal agrochemicals (OMaille, 2015). Previous research has shown that in some developing countries, fungicide application dosages were as high as 8 kg ha-1 y-1 (Liu et al., 2015). Iprodione, as a broad-spectrum fungicide, has been widely used in the intensive agriculture to control phytopathies of cash crops, and iprodione residuals have already been detected in water (Goewie et al., 1985; Sauret et al., 2006), soils (Leistra and Arrià «nne, 2004) and vegetable and fruit (Picà ³ et al., 2004; Juanà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ Garcà ­a et al., 2005; Angioni et al., 2012). According to a report of the Pesticide Data Program, U.S. Department of Agriculture (2014), the detected amount of iprodion e was the highest among all agrochemicals, and iprodione was the only fungicide detected in baby food. Besides the crop phytopathies caused by fungal pathogens, the lower utilization efficiency of nitrogen (N) fertilizer and nitrous oxide (N2O) emission are also worldwide problems in agricultural production (Clough et al., 2007; Menà ©ndez et al., 2012). As a result, nitrification inhibitors are sometimes applied to enhance the utilization efficiency of N fertilizer. The most widely used nitrification inhibitor in recent years is 3, 4-dimethylpyrazole phosphate (DMPP) (Menà ©ndez et al., 2012; Florio et al., 2014). The fungicide iprodione and nitrification inhibitor DMPP may be simultaneously applied into soils in some circumstances. Fungicides are designed to control fungal pathogens, but their lethal effects are not constrained to fungi only (Duah-Yentumi and Johnson, 1986; Muà ±oz-Leoz et al., 2011; Schnug et al., 2015). Once entering into agricultural soil, fungicides and their degradation metabolites may have detrimental effects on soil bacteria and, hence, the overall soil environment. There have been increasing research interests in the impacts of iprodione on environmental safety (Leistra and Matser, 2004; Verdenelli et al., 2012; Morales et al., 2013), because the iprodione is widely applied into agricultural soils at high dosages. Previous studies generally focused on the impacts of a single iprodione application, whereas few studies paid attention to the effects of repeated iprodione applications which occurs in intensively managed cropping systems. Furthermore, iprodione and other agrochemicals (such as DMPP) may be applied into agriculture soils simultaneously. To the best of our knowledge, few stud ies have been conducted to evaluate the interactive effects of different agrochemicals. Researches are, therefore, required to better understand the effects of combined iprodione and DMPP applications on soil bacterial properties. In this study, the iprodione and DMPP were applied into an agricultural soil. Soil enzyme activity, bacterial 16S rRNA gene abundance and bacterial community structure were determined. The main objectives were to (1) assess the effects of iprodione and DMPP on soil enzyme activities; (2) evaluate the impacts of agrochemicals on soil bacterial biomass via determining bacterial 16S rRNA gene abundance; (3) reveal the responses of soil bacteria at different taxa to the agrochemical applications; and (4) compare the potential impacts of iprodione and DMPP applications on soil bacterial community structure. This study will improve our current understanding of the ecological risks of iprodione and DMPP applications, alone or together, on soil nutrient cycling and bacterial properties. 2. Materials and methods 2.1. The chemicals and soil samples A commercial wettable powder formulation of iprodione (Bayer Crop Science, Hangzhou, China) and a chemical reagent DMPP (purity > 97.0%; CIVI-CHEM, Shanghai, China) were used for soil treatments. Soil samples were taken from a farmland (36.78†² N, 118.67†² E) located in Shandong Province, China. The surface soil (0-20 cm) was collected, air-dried at room temperature, mixed thoroughly and sieved (< 2 mm) prior to use. The selected physical and chemical properties of the soil were as follows: sand (50-2000 ÃŽ ¼m), 31.4  ± 1.4%; silt (2-50 ÃŽ ¼m), 36.9  ± 0.8%;   clay (< 2 ÃŽ ¼m), 31.7  ± 0.6%; soil pH (in water), 7.19  ± 0.05; organic carbon (C) content, 10.0  ± 0.1 g kg-1; total N content, 0.93  ± 0.01 g kg-1; Olsen-P, 28.8  ± 0.2 mg kg-1;   NH4OAc-K, 69.9  ± 1.5 mg kg-1; cationic exchange capacity,   16.9  ± 0.4 cmol kg-1. All treatments were added with urea at 200 mg N kg-1 dry soil before the iprodione or DMPP application so that enough substrate ( NH4+-N) was available for soil nitrification (DMPP is generally applied with the urea in agriculture). 2.2. Experimental design Four treatments were used in this study: Treatment 1 (CK), without any iprodione or DMPP applications; Treatment 2 (IPR), weekly iprodione applications at 1.5 mg kg-1 dry soil (the frequency followed the instructions); Treatment 3 (DAA), nitrification inhibitor DMPP application at 2 mg kg-1 dry soil (equivalent to 1% of applied urea-N) at commencement; and Treatment 4 (I+D), weekly iprodione and initial DMPP applications as described in treatments 2 and 3. Each treatment was prepared in triplicates. The chemicals were dissolved in double distilled H2O (ddH2O) and then applied into the test soil. Sixty glass bottles (4 treatments 5 sampling time 3 replications) were filled with the treated soil at 150 g dry weight per bottle. Soil moisture was adjusted to 60% of the water holding capacity and was maintained by the additions of ddH2O. The soil samples were then incubated at 28  °C in the dark, and after 0, 7, 14, 21 and 28 days of incubation, soil samples were collected after mixin g thoroughly in each bottle for analyses of soil enzyme and bacterial properties. 2.3. Soil enzyme activity and geometric mean of assayed enzymes activities Soil ÃŽ ²-glucosidase activity was determined using a soil enzyme assay kit (Catalogue No. HK000218, Toyongbio Company, Shanhai, China). The analytical method was based on that soil ÃŽ ²-glucosidase can hydrolyze p-nitrophenyl-ÃŽ ²-D-glucoside to generate p-nitrophenol. The determination method followed the manufacturers protocol, after treated with toluene, soil samples were incubated with the p-nitrophenyl-ÃŽ ²-d-glucoside and citrate-phosphate buffer (pH = 6.0) for 1 h at 37  °C. The reaction product (p-nitrophenol) concentration was determined with a spectrophotometer at 410 nm, and the results were expressed as ÃŽ ¼g p-nitrophenol g-1 dry soil d-1. Soil urease and phosphatase (acid phosphatase and alkaline phosphatase) activities were determined with the commercially available quantitative analytical kits (Jiancheng Bioengineering Institute, Nanjing, China). In the analytical kit of soil urease (Catalogue No. T017), urea was used as the substrate that can be hydrolyzed by soil urease to generate NH 4+-N. Prior to the urease determination, the test soils were treated with the toluene, and then they were incubation with the urea and citrate buffer (pH = 6.7) for 24 h at 37  °C. The concentration of NH4+-N generated from urea hydrolysis was determined via the indophenol blue method, and soil urease activity was expressed as ÃŽ ¼g NH 4+-N g-1 dry soil d-1. Soil phosphatase activity was determined with disodium phenyl phosphate as the enzyme reaction substrate. Soil phosphatase could hydrolyze the disodium phenyl phosphate at different pH conditions, and in the analytical kits of soil phosphatase and alkaline phosphatase (Catalogue No. T008 and T009), the buffers were acetate buffer (pH = 5) and borate buffer (pH = 9.4), respectively.   After 24 h of incubation at 37  °C, enzyme actions were terminated, and released phenol was determined at 660 nm. Soil phosphatase activities were expressed as ÃŽ ¼g phenol g-1 dry soil d-1. Soil arylsulphatase activity was determined according to the method of Floch et al. (2009) with minor modifications. P-nitrophenyl-sulfate was used as the reaction substrate, and the buffer was 0.5 M acetate (pH = 5.8). After 1 h of incubation, the reaction was halted by the additions of 0.5 M CaCl2 and 1 M NaOH, and the p-nitrophenol concentration was measured with a spectrophotometer at 410 nm. The soil arylsulphatase activity was expressed as ÃŽ ¼g p-nitrophenol g-1 dry soil d-1. The geometric mean of assayed enzymes activities (GMEA) was calculated to integrate data from variables that have different units and variation range. The calculations were made by following Hinojosa et al. (2004). where Glu, Ure, AcP, AlP and Ary were soil ÃŽ ²-glucosidase, urease, acid phosphatase, alkaline phosphatase and arylsulfatase activities, respectively. 2.4. Soil DNA extraction and real time quantitative PCR (qPCR) The genomic DNA of soil samples was extracted from approximately 0.5 g of soil with a Fast DNA SPIN Kit for Soil (MP Biomedicals, Cleveland, OH, USA). Soil bacterial biomass was revealed via determining bacterial 16S rRNA gene abundance, and qPCR was performed to assess bacterial 16S rRNA gene abundance with the universal primers 515F (5-GTGCCAGCMGCCGCGG-3) and 907R (5-CCGTCAATTCMTTTRAGTTT-3). The standard curve of qPCR was obtained by performing serial dilutions of the plasmid containing bacterial 16S rRNA gene. Each qPCR reaction was prepared in a 20.0 ÃŽ ¼L of solution consisting of 10.0 ÃŽ ¼L of SYBR ® Premix Ex Taqâ„ ¢ (TaKaRa Biotech, Dalian, China), 7.6 ÃŽ ¼L of sterile ddH2O, 2.0 ÃŽ ¼L of soil template DNA and 0.4 ÃŽ ¼L of universal primers. The thermocycling conditions were as follows: 95  °C for 3 min, followed by 45 cycles at 95  °C for 10 s, 56  °C for 30 s, 72  °C for 30 s, and then plate reading. The melting curve analyses were conducted by gradually heatin g the PCR mixtures from 65  °C to 95  °C with the determination of SYBR green signal. Negative control was run with sterile ddH2O as the template. After testing the diluted soil DNA suspension, there were no inhibitions detected for the qPCR, and the amplification efficiency of the target gene was 114.52%, with R2 > 0.995. 2.5. The Illumina MiSeq and sequenced data analysis At the end of incubation, soil bacterial community was also analyzed with the Illumina MiSeq platform. After amplifying the V4 region of bacterial 16S rRNA gene with the primers 515F/907R, the PCR products were purified and then subjected to the Illumina Miseq platform (Majorbio Bio-Pharm Technology Co., Ltd., Shanghai, China) to sequence nucleic acid bases of PCR products. The raw reads were de-multiplexed and filtered via the QIIME (version 1.17) with reference to the following standards: (1) The approximately 300 bp reads were truncated at the end side, receiving an average quality score of < 20 over a 10 bp sliding window, and shorter sequence reads (truncated length < 50 bp) were discarded; (2) raw reads with vague bases were discarded; and (3) only sequences with > 10 bp overlap were assembled with reference to the overlapped sequences, and the unassembled reads were unwanted. Operational taxonomic units (OTUs) were clustered within a 0.03 difference via the UPARSE (version 7.1 http://drive5.com/uparse/) for assessing community richness (Ace and Chao1 richness estimators) and community diversity (Shannon and Simpson indices). The richness estimators Ace and Chao1 were nonparametric and abundance-based estimators, which could predict the true value of taxa based on the proportion of rare taxa in a sample and were suitable for community richness ana lysis (Sogin et al., 2006; Gihring et al., 2012). The Shannon and Simpson indices were used for heterogeneity assessment, and the main difference between them was in the calculation method of taxa abundance. 2.6. Statistical analysis Two-way analysis of variance was conducted to detect significant differences among treatments, sampling times and their interactions, and Duncans multiple range test was used to compare statistical significances (P < 0.05) of the means among different treatments at each sampling time and among different incubation time in a specific treatment. Linear discriminant analysis effect size (LEfSe) method (http://huttenhower.sph.harvard.edu/galaxy/root) was employed to reveal biomarkers of soil bacteria among the treatments. The sequencing data were further processed to assess similarities and discrepancies of the whole bacterial community structure among different treatments using the principal coordinate analysis (PCoA) and the unweighted pair group method with arithmetic mean (UPGMA). 3. Results 3.1. Soil enzyme activities and GMEA Soil enzyme activities were significantly affected by the treatments, but the interactions between treatments and sampling time were not significant for the ÃŽ ²-glucosidase and alkaline phosphatase activities (Table S1). The ÃŽ ²-glucosidase, urease and arylsulfatase activities in the CK treatment increased significantly during the first 7 days of incubation (P < 0.05, Fig. 1). By the end of the incubation, the soil enzyme activity in the CK treatment rose from 1004  ± 51 to 1278  ± 133 ÃŽ ¼g p-nitrophenol g-1 dry soil d-1 for ÃŽ ²-glucosidase, from 60.9  ± 4.9 to 323.0  ± 19.6 ÃŽ ¼g NH4+-N g-1 dry soil d-1 for urease, from 698  ± 129 to 802    ± 76 ÃŽ ¼g phenol g-1 dry soil d-1 for acid phosphatase, from 2.21  ± 0.12 to 2.23  ± 0.13 ÃŽ ¼g phenol g-1 dry soil d-1 for alkaline phosphatase, and   from 20.9  ± 2.7 to 28.8  ± 2.3 ÃŽ ¼g p-nitrophenol g-1 dry soil h-1 for sulphatase. After 7 days of incubation, there were no significant differences in soil enzyme a ctivities between IPR and CK treatments, with the exception of acid phosphatase activity. However, soil enzyme activities in the IPR treatment decreased after repeated iprodione applications. DMPP application had no significant effects on phosphatase and arylsulphatase activities during the whole incubation period, but ÃŽ ²-glucosidase and urease activities were consistently inhibited by the DMPP application (89.8% and 76.5% % of the control after 28 days of incubation, respectively). It is interesting to note that, after 28 days of incubation, the activities of soil enzymes in the I+D treatment tended to be higher than those in the IPR treatment (Fig. 1). As shown in Table 1, the GMEA in the CK treatment increased significantly during the first week and remained relatively stable during the following three weeks of incubation. However, compared with the CK treatment, the GMEA was negatively affected by repeated iprodione applications, and the GMEA in the DAA treatment also tended to be lower than their counterparts from 7 days to the end of the incubation (88.9% of the control after 28 days of incubation). Consistent with the trend presented in Fig.1, the GMEA in the I+D treatment was significantly higher than its IPR counterpart after 28 days of incubation (P < 0.05). 3.2. Soil bacterial 16S rRNA gene abundances Both the treatments and sampling time could significantly affect soil bacterial 16S rRNA gene abundances (Table S1). The gene abundances in the CK treatment increased from 3.89-109 to 1.64-1010 copies g-1 during the 28 days of incubation (Fig. 2). A single iprodione application generated negligible effect on soil bacterial 16S rRNA gene abundance after 7 days, but repeated iprodione applications significantly (P < 0.05) decreased soil bacterial 16S rRNA gene abundance, relative to the CK treatment. At the end of the experiment, the bacterial 16S rRNA gene abundance in the IPR treatment was 6.55-109 copies g-1 dry soil, which was the lowest of the four treatments. The gene abundances in the DAA treatment tended to be higher than those in the CK treatment, especially from 14 days onwards. Relative to the iprodione applications alone, extra DMPP application at the commencement increased the gene abundances, after 28 days of incubation, bacterial 16S rRNA gene abundance in the I+D treatm ent was significantly (P < 0.05) higher than that from the IPR treatment. 3.3. Soil bacterial community diversity A total of 624067 raw sequences (> 200 bp) was obtained from the four treatments, and the average length of valid sequences was 396.71. The similarities and differences among OTUs of the four treatments were demonstrated in a four-set Venn diagram (Fig. 3). The unique OTUs were 12, 16, 13 and 22 for the CK, IPR, DAA and I+D treatments, respectively, and the four treatments shared 1653 OTUs. After 28 days of incubation, the Ace and Chao1 estimators, and Shannon index of the CK treatments were 1863  ± 37, 1853  ± 24 and 5.55  ± 0.15, respectively (Table 2). The IPR treatment had the lowest estimator Chao1 (1772  ± 17) and Shannon index (5.40  ± 0.05) among the four treatments, while the I+D had the highest estimator Chao1 and Shannon index. The Simpson index showed no significant differences among the four treatments. Relative to the CK treatment, DMPP application did not exert adverse effects on richness estimators and diversity indices, and DMPP applications had the potential to increase the Shannon indices. 3.4. Soil bacterial community structure The OTUs could be assigned into 11 predominant phyla which were in the following ranking orders: Proteobacteria, Actinobacteria, Gemmatimonadetes, Chloroflexi, Firmicutes, Acidobacteria, Bacteroidetes, Planctomycetes, Nitrospirae, Saccharibacteria and Verrucomicrobia, and the relative abundances of these phyla varied among the different treatments (Fig. 4A). The phylum Proteobacteria was the most abundant, comprising approximately 37.2%, 45.9%, 36.4% and 39.8% OTUs for the CK, IPR, DAA and I+D treatments, respectively. The phylum Actinobacteria was the second most abundant, and the proportions varied from 14.5% to 21.9%. There were no significant differences of relative abundances across all the predominant phyla between the CK and DAA treatments (Fig. 4B). However, compared with the CK treatment, repeated iprodione applications significantly (P < 0.05) increased the relative abundance of phylum Proteobacteria, but decreased the relative abundances of Chloroflexi and Acidobacteria. A t the genus level, the genera Micromonospora, Gemmatimonas, Haliangium and Bacillus accounted for large proportions in the twelve soil samples (Fig. 5). 3.5. Comparison of bacterial community structure LEfSe analysis demonstrated that there were significant associations among predominant bacterial taxa in the four treatments (Fig. 6). The predominant bacterial taxa were the Opitutaceae and Xanthomonadales families in the CK treatment, the Xanthomonadaceae, Erythrobacteraceae, Sphingomonadaceae Sphingomonadales and Rhodocyclaceae families in the IPR treatment, the Streptomycetales Order and the Gemmatimonaceae and Cytophagaceae families in the DAA treatment and the Gaiellaceae, Microbacteriaceae, Nocardioidaceae, and Methylobacteriaceae families in the I+D treatment. The results of LEfSe analysis further revealed that, consistent with the relative abundances shown in Fig. 4, the phylum Protebacteria increased following iprodione applications. A two-dimensional PCoA plot of bacterial community structure explained 68.2% of the total variance, with the PCoA1 having a greater power of separation (accounting for 57.7%). The two-dimensional PCoA demonstrated that the treatments without iprodione applications (CK and DAA treatments) resulted in a shift to the left along PCoA1 (Fig. 7A). There was no significant difference in the PCoA values (both PCoA1 and PCoA2) between the CK and DAA treatments, and this suggested that soil bacterial community structure was not significantly altered by the DMPP application. However, iprodione applications alone (IPR) or together with the DMPP (I+D), shifted the bacterial community to the right side along PCoA1. The IPR and I+D treatments were located in the opposite directions of the origin, with the I+D treatment having lower PCoA2 values. Consistent with the trends presented in the PCoA plot, four clusters could be grouped for these twelve soil samples (Fig. 7B): Cluster 1 contained the samp les of the DAA treatment, CK_1 and CK_2, but the CK_3 sample alone was classified into Cluster 2; Cluster 3 consisted of the samples of I+D treatment, and the samples of IPR treatment were all grouped in Cluster 4. 4. Discussion 4.1. Effects of iprodione applications on soil enzyme and bacteria As a soil xenobiotic, the fungicide iprodione displayed toxicity to soil bacteria on various aspects including the activity, biomass and community diversity (Duah-Yentumi and Johnson, 1986; Verdenelli et al., 2012). Previous researches have also revealed that the principal degradation metabolite 3, 5-dichloroanniline is more biologically toxic and stable than its parent compound iprodione (Athiel et al., 1995). Consequently, both the fungicide and its degradation metabolites have the potential to inhibit the non-target bacteria. On the other hand, the broad-spectrum fungicide could inhibit the flourish of fungi, which can also exhibit the indirect impacts on soil bacteria community (Muà ±oz-Leoz et al., 2011; Verdenelli et al., 2012). The ÃŽ ²-glucosidase, urease, phosphatase, and arylsulfatase are essential in the cycling of C, N, P and S in soil, respectively (Muà ±oz-Leoz et al., 2011). The activities of these enzymes tended to decline after repeated iprodione applications, highlighting the severe impacts of repeated iprodione applications and perhaps the accumulations of its metabolites on soil nutrient cycling. The fungicides could negatively affect soil enzyme activities as a result of: (1) directly reducing the biomass of soil microbes that produce enzymes, (2) competing for the active sites of enzymes with substrates, (3) decreasing the substrate bio-availability through the reaction with substrates, and (4) reacting with the enzyme-substrate complexes (Wang et al., 2009). In the IPR treatment, soil enzyme activities and bacterial 16S rRNA gene abundances decreased concurrently. We postulated that the declines of soil bacterial biomass caused by iprodione applications might have resulted in the decreases of soil enzyme activity. Soil bacterial 16S rRNA gene (both the abundance and community diversity) has been used as an important ecophysiological index for assessing soil contamination (Sipilà ¤ et al., 2008; Bell et al., 2014). In this study, soil bacterial 16S rRNA gene abundance was not significantly affected by the first iprodione application, but decreased with repeated iprodione applications (Fig. 2). The result was consistent with earlier finding of Duah-Yentumi and Johnson (1986) that the impacts of iprodione on soil microbial biomass differed between single and repeated applications. The reasons for these phenomena might be that accumulations of the fungicides and perhaps their degradation products following repeated application increased its eco-toxicity (Trabue et al., 2001; Zhang et al., 2016). Direct measurement of soil bacterial community could reveal shifts in the diversity due to fungicide applications, which might not be detectable by measuring overall bacterial activities and biomass (Lupwayi et al., 2009). Repeated iprodione applications resulted in consistent reductions in the values of bacterial alpha diversity (Table 2). The result was in agreement with the finding of Verdenelli et al. (2012) that iprodione application had significantly negative impacts on microbial community diversity in both agricultural and grassland soils. Moreover, repeated iprodione applications led to declines in the relative abundances of phyla Chloroflexi and Acidobacteria (Fig. 4). The Chloroflexi is associated with the second step of soil nitrification and plays key roles in soil N cycling (Sorokin et al., 2012). As decomposers in soil environment, Acidobacteria could degrade torganic matters derived from plants and soil animals, maintaining soil nutrient cycling and energy flow (Ward e t al., 2009). These changes in the relative abundances of functional bacteria indicated that iprodione applications might slow down soil organic matter turnover and soil nitrification.In this study, we found that repeated iprodione applications, alone or together with the DMPP, caused significant changes in the soil bacterial community structure. In contrast, Wang et al. (2004) showed that a single iprodione application at lower dosage was not detrimental to the soil bacterial community. Given that iprodione was often repeatedly applied at high dosages in intensive agricultural systems, shifts in bacterial community as observed in this study could lead to a series of alternations in soil microbial communities and soil C and nutrient cycling. Therefore, more attention should be paid to the long-term ecotoxic effects caused by repeated applications. 4.2. Effects of DMPP application on soil enzyme activities and bacteria Compared with the CK treatment, DMPP application resulted in significantly lower soil urease activity, (Fig. 1), which was largely responsible for the decline in GMEA in the DAA treatment. It is interesting to note that soil ÃŽ ²-glucosidase, as a proxy for soil organic matter mineralization capacity, was also negatively affected by the DMPP application. Maienza et al. (2014) revealed that DMPP application had adverse impacts on the growth of soil heterotrophic bacteria and fungi. All these results suggested that DMPP might have the potential to slow down soil organic matter decompositions, and this could get supports from previous research results that DMPP could reduce soil carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) emissions (Weiske et al., 2001; Maris et al., 2015). The LEfSe analysis revealed that Gemmatimonadetes and Cytophagia families increased following DMPP application (Fig. 6). The Gemmatimonadetes containing photosynthesis genes could assimilate CO2 into organic material via phototrophic pathway and transform solar radiation into metabolic energy, which plays an important role in the increase of soil organic matter content (Zeng et al., 2014). Some strains of the Cytophagaceae family have the nifH gene and have the potential to increase soil N content by biological N fixation (Xu et al., 2014). Dong et al. (2013b) also reported that DMPP application could significantly increase soil nifH gene abundances. These results indicated that apart from inhibiting soil nitrification, DMPP application might have the potential to improve soil C and N contents via (1) decreasing CO2, CH4 andNOX emission;(2) slowing down soil organic matter decompositions; (3) promoting the flourish of some functional microorganisms; and (4) promoting activity of N-fixing bacteria. Consequently, although soil urease and ÃŽ ²-glucosidase were inhibited, the whole soil bacterial biomass increased following DMPP application (Fig. 2), and this is also one of the positive effects generate d by DMPP application. An increase in soil bacterial biomass is commonly found in parallel with increases in community diversity (Weinbauer et al., 2007; Torstensson et al., 2015). Based on the data presented in Table 2, we found that DMPP application promoted, rather than decreased, soil bacterial community diversity, which is consisted with the result of Dong et al. (2013a). Furthermore, both the PCoA and UPMGA indicated that a large proportion of soil bacterial community in the DAA treatment overlapped with that in the C