Carl Melcher… Into the Great Alone
His best dreams were the ones about young women. They were interested in him and took his arm as they walked and talked. They wore colorful dresses of smooth fabric that slid over their skin; they were slim and lithe, not big and tattooed like so many 21st century American women. Sometimes they slowly morphed into older women over the course of the dream, their hair turning grey or cropped short like cancer victims, but they were always petite with warm skin and serious, attractive faces that looked at him with respect and love. There was no sex, but there was a hint of it to come. These women wanted to be with him, and when he woke to find them gone he was always disappointed and sad for a while.
He washed his eyes, his face, combed his hair, worrying about how thin it was becoming. He went into the kitchen and ran the water for the coffee machine. As he put the coffee into the filter basket, Ziggy the dog and Suzanne the cat were close at his feet and he was careful not to tread on them. The house was cold and he knelt before the pot-bellied stove and balled-up some newspaper for fire-starter. He made a mound of it and lay a couple of pine cones and two logs over top. He lit the paper, closed the door and stood. Ziggy looked at him expectantly. Like him, the dog was now old.
“Okay, Ziggy. You and Suzanne are next.” He went into the shed, the two animals close behind. He filled Suzanne’s bowl with kibble and she jumped up onto the drier and put her head in the bowl as she ate, arching her back up to be caressed. Siamese were interesting cats, he thought. He gave Ziggy his kibble and went back into the kitchen, getting out his coffee cup and saucer. He turned on his laptop, logged on, and clicked on the streaming site for the talk radio show. The traffic report from the San Francisco Bay Area where he used to live and work was on. He listened with interest and some schadenfreude to the managed chaos that getting to work in the Bay Area had become. He had done it for 35 years and sometimes when he listened to all the problems it sounded like he had gotten out in the nick of time. His congratulatory back-patting was suddenly and guiltily tempered by the knowledge that his son, a young man, now had to contend with it every day.
He added sugar and creamer to his coffee, sat down at the table and wondered what the hell he was going to do all day.
I lived in a California town called Chilton, high up in the Sierras. The population was 2,000, equally divided between young families, many of them on government assistance, and retired couples living on fixed incomes, with just a hand-full of loners like me.
Situated smack dab in the middle of a National Forest, it was a beautiful place, but I wasn’t happy here. Don’t get me wrong; Ansel Adams would have loved living here, so would a lot of others. And I did, in the beginning, but not anymore.
Main Street was typical middle-America -- a small supermarket, a bank, a burger joint, a gas station, bar, motel, that sort of thing. We had three restaurants: a Chinese (bad), a Mexican (bad also), and a diner (awful).
In the summer the place bustled with tourists -- happy families of campers in town for hamburgers and ice cream, fishermen buying beer and bait in the supermarket, middle aged, elderly walkers with green eyeshades and ski poles, photographers and bird watchers setting their tripods up on the sides of the road by the lake, young millennial hikers, scruffy and dirty-looking like homeless people, down off the trails to pick up their mail and use the laundromat. For the locals there were neighbor’s barbecues, yard sales, church picnics… But when winter settled in (there were no nearby ski resorts), most of the businesses closed and the people on the street dwindled to a few, and after dark… nobody, nothing.
Now that I was divorced and living alone again, I did my best to keep busy. I did a little writing. I’d had a few books published over the course of my lifetime, but none of them really went anywhere. I still had the desire to write, to be a part of the culture, so I continued with it. When I tired of that and wanted some diversion, there was cable TV or internet chat on Facebook, videos; I saw -- fire fights and bombings in the Middle East, young men doing death-defying BMX bike stunts, ISIS atrocities, young Antifa toughs, their identities hidden under bandanas, throwing metal barriers into plate glass doors, street fighting. If you wanted real, rather than virtual, you could wander the aisles of the Dollar General, or join one of the church groups or go to the AA or Overeaters Anonymous meetings. I’d never been much of a joiner and so I often went out alone to walk.
There were only about ten of us in town that went out during the winter months -- the two most down-and-out drunks in town, Henry and Manuel (roommates), two middle-aged couples who fast-walked together, two retarded adult men who lived with a kindly Christian family, me and my dog, Ziggy, and Danni, the beautiful, retarded girl who spent a lot of time sitting on her bicycle wearing her Disney Aladdin helmet, calling out to passers-by for attention. Twelve years old, with long scalloped blonde hair, already filling out with little breasts and hips, she always wanted to pet Ziggy or take him for a walk, or come to my house. I felt sorry for her, but as an older, divorced man, I kept a safe distance. I couldn’t imagine how much her parents must have worried about her.
I’d been happy in Chilton with my second wife, Divina, for most of our eighteen months, and then we’d split up. I had thought we had it all and would go the distance, till death do us part. After all, we were both older. I was sixty-five, she fifty-five, and we lived a quiet life in a nice clean house in a safe little town. Yeah… I know what you’re thinking.
I don’t blame Divina entirely. It takes two to make a marriage soar, and two to rip its delicate diaphanous wings off. We’d had love, commitment, but now it was gone. Sometimes when I look back, I think Divina expected me to rein her in, to get physical with her like she got with me a couple times. I definitely got the feeling when we got into it a couple of times that she expected a physical response from me, a push or a slap. But I could never get physical with a woman. I figured that when things sank to that level it was time to move on. And in California, if a man hit his woman, even if she’d hit him first, he’d quickly find himself in deep legal trouble.
This was all my doing. I was the one who found Divina, a Filipina, on-line in Spain, pursued her, married her. It was all based on my loneliness, and on that devil, attraction. She had a Mona Lisa smile and a tiny, girlish figure. When we finally met on skype, I felt like it was just perfect.
I had started out on regular dating sites, but somewhere along the way I got switched onto this other site -- Asian Cutie. I don’t remember how that happened, but all of a sudden, after weeks of struggling to get women to respond to my ‘winks,’ young, beautiful, and aggressive, women appeared on the screen, all of them pleading to chat with me. I’m no fool. There are only a few reasons why a sexy twenty-something year-old girl would be interested in a sixty-five year-old American man. I had fun teasing them at first, but I wasn’t going to succumb to the ‘drooling old geezer/hot young chick’ fantasy. I was ready to drop it all when Divina gave me a ‘flirt.’ She was middle-aged, 55, but looked more like 40. Her smile caught my eye right away -- warm, etched with a tired, stoic cast, as if she’d seen it all and knew every game people played and was ready for the real thing. So was I.
I sat on the couch reading, Ziggy snoring at my feet, Suzanne reclining Sphynx-like behind me on the high back of the couch. I was alone a lot now. That’s not a pity play, just a fact, my new norm. The fan on the propane stove came on, pushing hot air into the room; flames rippled orange light onto the carpet. Ziggy raised his head inquisitively, then lay it down again. It was almost eleven at night and I had an hour before I had to be at work, graveyard shift. Outside, the temperature was 15 degrees. Going out was like jumping into a pool of chilled water. I sat for a while longer, then made a thermos of coffee, put it in my brief case and went out, locking the door.
I pulled up to the guard shack at the sawmill for my shift as a security guard. Up here there weren’t a lot of jobs available in the winter. Machinists and welders at the mill, gas station clerk, security guard at the mill, substitute teacher at the high school if you were degreed. I was, and I’d subbed there the semester before, but the kids were brats and I hadn’t liked it. So now I sat in a guard shack instead, making a patrol every hour or so, climbing steel catwalks around and over huge pieces of machinery that could grind a man to hamburger in seconds -- abraders that ripped the bark off of giant sequoia trees, high-speed band saws that sliced them into 2 x 10’s. As I walked my rounds in the cold and dark, I looked for signs of fire or pipes ruptured by the freezing cold.
I didn’t want to work; I was retired, but the spousal support I was paying to Divina every month, and the money I was sending to help my son through tech college, was more than was coming in every month from my SSI. And there were the occasional co-payments for medical bills, dental cleanings, new glasses, etcetera.
Things had been very different just a year earlier. I’d had money in my savings account and owned my own house. I still owned the house, but my savings account was almost exhausted. My marriage, and getting out of it, had been costly, but I still think I did the right thing. My lawyer said that if I had waited much longer I might have ended up losing my house.
Before Chilton, before my marriage to Divina, I lived in Concord in the San Francisco Bay Area and worked fifty five miles away at Western Aerospace. My son Anthony was living with me. I already had my little house up here in Chilton, which I was using as an occasional weekend getaway. I’d been with Western Aerospace for thirty years and was scheduled to retire in two more. I’d been separated from my long-time lady friend Lily for a couple years and divorced from my first wife for eleven. Things were quiet, settled, and boring. I felt like my health, and especially my sex, was slowly slipping away. What was the saying? Use it or lose it? Well, at sixty-five, how many years of a sex life does a man have left? Could be five years, could be twenty-five, could be one. Nobody knows. I had been sleeping alone too much and was in the most common kind of rut. You know, get up, eat, commute to work, work all day, commute home, make something to eat, clean up, watch a little TV because you’re too tired to do anything else, and go to bed. Repeat five days a week and recuperate on the sixth and seventh. Anthony, was twenty-five and in junior college. Like I had been at his age, he was still trying to find himself, vacillating between various jobs and being a student.
The only thing that made that phase of my life bearable was the knowledge that I was in the home stretch of my career at Western Aerospace, just a couple years from retirement. I knew I could put up with a few more years of anything, and I did. My day went like this: get up at four, drive to Frank’s, my carpool buddy’s place, by four thirty. We’d zip into the Starbucks at the strip mall. He’d run in to get his coffee. I’d wait. He’d come out and get in. Wordlessly I’d put the car in gear and take off. Going down 680, I’d do 75 like everybody else (actually, a lot of guys did 80 or more). We’d do the 65 miles in 36 or 37 minutes. It was easy. I’d put the car in cruise control and Frank would lie down in the back after he’d had his coffee, and go to sleep. One time his huge bulk rose up behind me and he said groggily, “where the fuck are we?” “Huh?” I said. I had gone two stops past our exit after evidently falling asleep at the wheel. But, as bad as my driving was, Frank’s was worse. When it was his turn I’d just lay down in the back and go unconscious, knowing that if he ran the car off the road at 85 mph, it was better that way. Fortunately that never happened. About 5:15 or 5:30, Frank would wake me as we rolled into the company parking lot. Since Frank was a manager, he worked ten hour days and so I had to as well. If we could have left earlier we could have avoided the worst of the evening commute, but often Frank wasn’t finished until 5:30 or 6:00. Then we’d get on the freeway and crawl home for two, two and a half hours. It was awful. Awful! That was my life for the two years after I’d broken up with my long-term (about six years) lady-friend, Lily. Then Western had a big meeting in an off-site conference hall and formerly announced the company’s poor performance, loss of contracts, and down-sizing. They had to jettison twenty percent of the workforce, enticing volunteers with generous severance packages. They asked for volunteers and mine was the first hand up.
Back then I went out on the occasional Friday or Saturday night to look for women. I found a couple, but we ended up dating for only a month or two. I wasn’t the kind of man that women instantly felt an attraction to; after a lifetime of experiences, I knew I had to work hard at it. So my choices seemed to be somewhat limited. I wasn’t tall, and women liked their men taller than themselves. And I was modest, not prone to bragging, and women liked men that were full of themselves, or at least that’s what I told myself in my jealous or down moments. Strangely, I did better with women from alien cultures. My first wife was Chinese, from Hong Kong. I met her in San Francisco on a blind date set up by one of my friends -- I had two of them, a Chinese man from Vietnam, and another guy from Thailand. After my marriage crashed and burned, I didn’t go out; instead I spent my time working and raising my son alone (the court had given my daughter back to her mother to raise). It was tough, but I had a little help from kindly neighbors who had two boys my son’s age, and I also belonged to a wonderful social support group of unmarried parents. We met on a regular basis to share our experiences as single parents, and the children got to interact with other children dealing with divorce or the death of a parent. It was a good concept and it helped me and my son a lot.
After about five years of singleness, I started making tentative attempts to meet women. I met Lily, also Chinese, at a singles’ dance in San Francisco. I truly didn’t have anything against American women, at least I didn’t think I did, but they just didn’t seem all that interested in me. Whereas, there were lots of Asian women in the San Francisco Bay Area and many of them seemed to fancy American men. When in Rome…
Like half the men at the club, the slow starters, I stood around between the dance numbers, drink in hand, trying not to look desperate as I sized up the women. Then Lilly made her entrance. She was, perhaps, a little over-dressed, in a gown of some kind, like she was part of a wedding party. I think others noticed that too. But she was beautiful. Her eyes were rounder than most Han Chinese, her skin lighter. She was not petite like many Chinese women, but my height and rather voluptuous. There had to have been an interloper high up in her family tree, perhaps a Silk Road foreigner hiding in the barn; what else could account for her exotic beauty? She moved about the club, her eyes downcast. Women this beautiful were usually not self-conscious and tentative; I couldn’t understand it. I watched her speak to a couple of men (she stayed well away from the women), but her conversations with them were brief. The men seemed uncomfortable with her, despite her beauty, as if she had some deformity which I couldn’t detect from the distance. Finally she came within range and I approached her. She was beautiful, but her gown -- pink and fluffy -- looked antique, like she’d found it on the set of Gone With the Wind or in a thrift store (later I would find out that she worked in a thrift store).
“Hello,” I said. “What’s your name?” Yeah, I know, I’m not exactly Mister smooth-talk.
“Lily.”
“Are you a professional single?”
She brought her hand up to her mouth, giggling, “I sorry. I… I don’t speak good.”
“No, no, relax, I understand you just fine.” (This would, of course, eventually turn out to not be true.)
She had a primitive command of English, but I didn’t care. She hovered close to me for about an hour. We danced a few and I was astounded by my luck. The male swells in the room weren’t willing to invest a little more attentiveness and effort to converse with her, but I was -- their loss. Before I said goodbye, we exchanged phone numbers. For the next three days, she called every day when I was at work. My son took the calls. “Dad,” he said, “I think she’s really interested in you.”
For our first two or three months together, I couldn’t take my eyes off her, couldn’t believe my luck. Lily liked her sack time. Her husband hadn’t been too interested -- turns out he’d had something on the side -- and Lily seemed to be trying to make up for lost time. Once, at her insistence, we made love in a copse of bushes in Golden Gate Park. Lily had never made love outdoors and she wouldn’t take no for an answer. After driving around, I found a spot that looked safe. Golden Gate Park had a homeless population in the thousands and I’d seen some of them close-up. They were not kindly, aged hippies, but feral, mean drunks, druggies, and criminals. I was nervous and on my guard for the approach of anyone, and so it wasn’t good for me, but we managed to pull it off. Lily seemed to have been simply satisfied to cross it off her list. Fortunately, most of our lovemaking was in my bed and she was playing catch-up. For the first couple months I was happy to comply, but eventually I slowed down a little, wanting and needing to get enough sleep after the toll of working and commuting. Lily, however, was relentless and usually got her way.
One day Divina asked me to take her to the bank so she could open up her own checking account. I had opened up a joint checking account for us when she’d arrived, giving her responsibility for managing the household expenses. The money for this was direct-deposited every month from my SSI check. Now she wanted her own account to tuck away the money she was earning. We argued about it and she brought up the fact that I had my own savings account at a bank down in San Francisco. That was true, but this was for the money my employer had given me to sweeten my early retirement, before I met Divina. My pension, accumulated over a lifetime of work before I met Divina, also went into this account for our rainy day fund. I’d already taken from this account for occasional trips, luxuries, but I reserved the right to manage it myself.
We went into the Alpine Bank. The building was big, built forty-five years earlier when logging companies employed thousands up here -- a long counter with ten stations. Only three of them were open, the others roped off. The other side of the bank was dimly lit and devoid of customers, with a floor-to-ceiling diorama of a doe leaning down to nibble the grass, as above, a fanged mountain lion on a rocky ledge prepared to pounce.
I directed Divina towards Charlene, a talkative, friendly woman, Canadian by birth (we’d talked a few times before Divina arrived. I’m pretty sure she was interested in me, but I was already courting Divina on Skype at the time and I’m loyal to a fault, or a fool; take your pick.)
Charlene smiled. “What can I do for you two love birds today,” she said.
I smiled.
Divina’s face was taut. After a pause she said timidly, “I want to open an account.”
“Not a problem.” Charlene tapped at her keyboard. Adjusting her reader glasses, she studied the screen. The tellers on either side of us smiled as they busied themselves.
In the beginning, Divina did not work and that had been fine with me. After the required three-month wait, we submitted a Form I-765 work permit application as stipulated in the terms of her Fiancé Visa. There really was no need for her to work. I owned my home and we had no rent to worry about and could live comfortably on my social security. That made our marriage wonderful in the beginning… waking up every day not having to fight the hordes of commuters to get to a job you didn’t like, a cranky boss, catty co-workers, tedious Quality Control meetings, long commutes home. And when you arrived home you spoke a few pleasantries to your wife or husband, made dinner, washed and put away the dishes, then sat together on the couch, both of you too tired to do much but yawn and watch TV in a daze. Then it was time for bed, but only for sleep, because you were too tired to do anything else.
“You already have a checking account,” said Charlene, “is this a new one?”
“That’s right,” I chimed in -- the loyal, supportive husband -- “we have a joint account. But this one is for Divina.”
I noticed the other tellers react slightly, an eye blink, a tightening of facial muscles. When Divina had told me she wanted her own checking account, I’d felt a rift opening between us. But what could I do? This was 21st Century America, California… She was an adult and had a job now, two actually. I could see that the tellers found the whole business curious and I wondered how long it would be before half of Chilton would be discussing it over dinner.
Charlene knew that Divina was in the country on a 90-day fiancé visa because when we opened our joint account, Divina still had only her Philippine passport for identification. She’d arrived in autumn as the weather was beginning to cool. Here, 5,000 feet up in the Sierras, we had four seasons. Three were wonderful, but winter, the longest, was harsh and not for the faint of heart. I’m talking ten degrees at night, sometimes ten below, highs in the low-thirties during the day, and snow, lots of it, measured in feet, not inches. Hard to believe for California, right?
In order to satisfy one of the requirements of the visa we had to get married within ninety days. But we got along so well that two weeks after she arrived we decided to drive over to Reno Nevada and marry in one of the little boutique wedding chapels. Snow was threatening and I had no chains for the pickup, but we took a chance and went for it. And although the skies were grey and portentous, we made it there okay. It was great. We went shopping at the mall, had lunch, got married, saw a movie, and honeymooned overnight in one of the casinos, arriving back in Chilton the next morning.
At that time, due to the terms of the visa, Divina couldn’t work, and so most days we were forced to hang out at home next to a toasty-warm wood stove, watch TV, read, or growing bored with that, catch a little afternoon delight in the bedroom, actually a lot of it. It was wonderful, let me tell you.
We had four wonderful months like that -- long, leisurely breakfasts, comforting walks around the town, watching the river skin over with ice, the trees along the banks turn crystalline white with frost. Then we’d head home where I’d pull her into the bedroom. Forget the old adage about the way to a man’s heart being through his stomach. There was a better route and Divina knew it well. Afterward, we’d have a nice nap, then leisurely preparations for dinner. Divina was a great cook. I loved her Pork Adobo.
Then Divina informed me that the money she had brought with her, (I hadn’t known about it) that she had been sending home to her parents every month, had run out. She told me that her parents depended on it to live, and that I could either take over the monthly allotments or she would have to go to work.
I crunched the numbers; it wasn’t good. If I took over the payments, we’d have a negative cash-flow. If a disaster befell us, like the truck’s engine blowing out, or the roof beginning to leak, we’d have no money to cover it. That would mean a loan, maybe a lien on the house, which after saving for it over a lifetime, I absolutely did not want. I told her that if she wanted to work it was fine with me. It would take away some of our leisurely honeymoon time, but the alternative bothered me more.
We looked through the want-ads in the local paper. The only thing Divina qualified for was in-home elder care. The salary wasn’t bad for up here (most folks made minimum wage, and I’m not talking about high school kids, but rather adults with high school kids); it payed eleven bucks an hour and included a health care plan paid for by the agency if the employee worked a minimum of thirty hours a week. The only problem was that Divina did not drive and the clients were too far for her to walk to. So I retired from my retirement to go to work as Divina’s driver. I’d do my thing at home until the phone rang, and then off I’d go to Uber her to the next client’s place. I didn’t mind, of course; that’s what husbands do.
Don’t get me wrong. After Divina went to work it was still good between us, at least for a while. She was ten years younger than me, so I had already considered that she might want to go back to work. While she was gone I spent my time reading, going on Facebook. And the sex was still good, although there wasn’t as much of it. Despite that, I had more sex with Divina in these eighteen months than I’d had with my first wife over fourteen years of marriage.
To her credit, Divina was a hard worker. Her clients liked her, and within a month she had a full dance card as word of her work-ethic spread. She had no problem making thirty hours a week. Then she heard of an opportunity at the supermarket, one of the few businesses in town open all year long. She got hired. Now she was working sixty hours a week. Of course things began to slowly change.
Divina had been sending her parents $750 a month. Now she was earning $2300 a month and it was all going back to the Philippines. Her finances had tripled and I was the one who had made it all possible. I should’ve been a UN poster boy for supporting Women’s Empowerment; I should’ve been happy. But instead I felt used. On the other hand (why does there always have to be an ‘other hand?’), it was her money. It would have been nice though if she would have put some of it in the community pot. Despite all of this we still got along okay and we still had great sex.
(a novel-in-progress)
Unpublished prologue to my Historical, White Seed
In the spring of 1586, on the island of Roanoke, off the coast of what would someday be known as North Carolina, fifteen English men passed the night within the walls of Fort Raleigh. Some kept a watch, while most slept...
Captain William Morton, appointed Officer-in-Charge by Sir Richard Grenville, awoke and sat up in the blackness of the storehouse. The memory of the sound that had brought him from his sleep taunted him. Cursing silently, he rubbed his forehead slowly and it came to him -- the sound of the latch being lifted! His pulse quickened as he listened with all his being. There... the careful trod of bare feet on the straw-covered earthen floor. Morton reached over and touched Gilbert who was sleeping nearby. The other man began to say something and Morton clasped a hand over his mouth. Both men slowly got to their feet. Wordlessly, Morton directed Gilbert toward the back doors. Gilbert slowly slid his sword from his scabbard and walked off. Morton pulled the heavy wheel-lock pistol from his belt as he looked about in the darkness. Gasps, curses, and other sounds of struggle came from the back of the building, then silence. Morton crept stealthily in that direction and sensed someone just ahead of him. "Gilbert?" he called softly. Getting no response, he brought the wheel-lock up and pulled the trigger. The flash illuminated the savage's grotesquely-painted half-human, half-animal face as he was thrown backwards onto the floor, his life running out through a fist-sized hole in his guts. The thunder of the pistol reverberated through the building and a hellish screaming commenced outside as savages rushed from their hiding places towards the various buildings of the fort.
Morton found Gilbert's body. The man had no pulse. Morton left him and crept through the dark toward the front door. The shrieks and cries grew louder and he heard the calls of his own men mixed in with them. A musket boomed. Reaching the door, Morton quickly closed and bolted it, muting the chaos. Cursing the darkness, he knelt to charge the pistol with powder. A musket boomed, followed by more savage shrieking. Someone shook the front door violently, testing it. Footsteps ran off. He heard a scratching sound from the east side of the building. Were they trying to dig their way in through the wattle and daub walls? The sound stopped. As if on command, quiet spread through the dark like blood through a bandage. Morton listened intently, straining to hear his men's voices, wondering if they were still alive. How many savages had gotten inside? The scratching sound came again at the east wall. Was this a marauding band of four or five, or was a whole village attacking? He prayed to God that the latter was not the case. There would be no hope for them if it were.
Morton cursed himself for his laxity. He commanded here in Grenville's name and he had failed. They had seen no savages in the two months they had been here. And because of that he had recently reduced the guard. The men had evidently taken that as an excuse to become complacent and careless. Last night many of them had gotten drunk. And the savages had obviously noted all of this. Now his men were paying the price.
From outside a voice called, "Is anyone in there? Are you all right?" Morton was on the verge of responding, but something slightly exotic about the voice stopped him. He remembered the story of Wanchese, one of the savages that had been brought to England and taught English at Sir Walter Raleigh's estate. When Wanchese had been returned to this place, he had run off and become wild again, swearing vengeance on the English. A musket boomed as if in response to the question and a savage shrieked with fury. A minute passed and several muskets fired. The devilish chorus of shrieks and cries began anew. God in Heaven, Morton thought, there were dozens of savages! Could they last till daybreak?
Morton heard a soft rustling on the roof above and remembered the unfinished section of thatch. His eyes could barely make out the rafters as he pointed the wheel-lock upward. He wondered how much powder he had left. Outside, another musket boomed. The reports were decreasing in frequency. The rustling on the roof stopped. Had he imagined it? He could hear his own breathing and tried to still it. Looking back up, he located a lighter patch of black that marked the unfinished hole in the roof. A swath of stars shone there. Something dark eclipsed the tiny pinpoints of light and he fired. A heavy thing rolled quickly down and off the roof, thudding heavily onto the ground outside. Then silence. Morton knelt to recharge the pistol. As he worked it grew quiet again, no screaming, no musket fire. He had just placed a wad and ball in the muzzle when another rustle of sound came from above. Morton grabbed the rod to ram the ball home when a thud sounded not far away. Someone had dropped down onto the floor! He slid the pistol in his belt and drew his sword. His eyes picked up a large form in front of him. He was about to lunge when the faint starlight revealed a familiar bearded face.
Allen's eyes were big with fear.
"Where are the others?" Morton whispered.
"All gone but for Banks and Fagan. Banks had two arrows in 'im. We pulled 'em out but the points stayed in. He be ailin' bad."
Morton nodded. "Gilbert's dead in the back. Did the watch fall asleep?"
Allen shook his head guiltily. "Nay. No one saw anything from the ramparts, no one heard the buggers. All of a sudden dozens of them be jumpin' down from the walls..."
The scratching at the wall stopped. Morton held his hand for silence as he turned in that direction. They listened, but the scratching did not resume.
Morton turned back to Allen. "How did you and the others get out?"
Allen shook his head. "I know not about the others. I was with four men that caught a volley of arrows. Like bloody pincushions, they were, and they fell back on top of me and around me. The savages ran up to take a look. They thought I was dead and they ran on to attack and overturn the cannon."
Morton looked closely at Allen and saw that he was covered with blood. He had no sword. A musket boomed, followed by more screaming. Then silence.
"The shallop!" Morton whispered.
"What?" said Allen.
"We must get to the shallop. It is our only chance."
Allen nodded and looked around at the darkness. Quiet reigned.
Morton knelt and rammed the ball into the muzzle of the pistol. He got to his feet. "Where are the other two?"
Allen pointed toward the front door. "I told them to wait out there."
They went to the door and Morton looked at it suspiciously. He pulled his sword and handed it to Allen. Morton quietly lifted down the bolt and slowly pushed the door open as Allen held the sword at the ready. They crept out into the cold night air. A shape separated itself from the dark of the building. As it drew near, Morton identified Fagan, who had his arm around Banks to support him. Banks' eyes were half-closed and Morton figured he would soon die. A shriek came from the other side of the building and Morton poked his head about the corner. A small fire burned in the center of the common and many savages stood about in groups of two and three. Morton saw bodies on the ground, eight or nine of them. He cringed at the sight and sounds of a savage standing over one, clubbing the dead man's skull to bloody splinters.
Morton looked away in disgust. It was only a matter of minutes before they would be discovered. He motioned for the others to follow him. In a crouch, they made their way through the opened gate and toward the beach. Morton was surprised to find no savages near the shallop. He and his men would have to move quickly before their escape was discovered. While Banks sat on the sand to rest, Morton, Allen and Fagan tugged and pushed the heavy shallop into the water. Morton and Allen quickly pulled themselves aboard and shipped the mast. Fagan brought Banks over and Morton and Allen lifted him aboard. Then Fagan slid aboard and lay panting on the bottom. Morton and Allen hoisted the sail and if filled with a slap, pushing the little boat away from the island. Morton sat and took the tiller. A few minutes later they cleared the channel and hit the roll of the sea. As a steady wind drove the boat northward, Morton felt it was the hand of God, delivering them. "Bless us Lord, and deliver us," he said.
"Aye," said Allen.
"Amen," said Fagan.
Silently Morton prayed that Grenville would be as merciful with him for losing the fort -- if ever he saw the gentleman again.
Morton held the tiller steady as the boat sailed north through mild seas, making, he estimated, three or four knots. No one spoke until Banks called weakly for water. Allen stood and found the keg in the middle of the boat. He lifted it easily and shook it, cursing. "Empty," he spat.
"See if there is any food," said Morton.
Allen rummaged through the wooden boxes in the stern, cursing angrily. "Nothin'!"
"Well," said Morton half-heartedly, "we cannot blame the savages for that, can we?"
Allen said nothing and sat dejectedly.
Morton knew that there was one more guilty than the thief -- himself. Security and discipline were his charge and he had failed to provide them. "Likely the thief is back at the fort," he said, wishing as soon as the words left his lips, that he had never uttered them.
Neither Allen nor Fagan responded and Morton said nothing further. He looked at the dim outline of the empty water cask and silently cursed. Banks would have to do without his water. Morton turned to him. The man's head hung backward over the gunnels, his eyes reflecting starlight like two pools of stagnant water. "Banks is dead," he said to Allen. "Lay him out in the middle of the boat. We will do without water for as long as we can and put as much distance as possible between us and cursed Roanoke."
After Banks had been laid out, Allen and Fagan sat, keeping their thoughts to themselves. Morton settled back against the gunnels. Unable to sleep, he steered the boat through the night while the other two men slept fitfully, muttering incoherently on occasion. Morton wondered what would become of them. If God willed it they might make it as far as the cod banks. But they would have to find food and water along the way. Morton turned to look at the dark mass of the land off the port. In a day or so they would have to put in. Perhaps they could make camp on the beach and signal a passing ship with their fires. And what if it were a Spaniard that spotted their light, a tiny voice asked him. As Morton pondered this a large shape passed beneath the boat, leaving behind a phosphorescent wake. Morton whistled softly to keep his spirits up. The big fish followed the boat for a long time, sometimes swimming past, then coming round again to follow. Once it passed so close that it's skin scraped the wooden hull. Morton prayed silently and finally the fish left them. Someone cried out in their sleep. Morton decided it was the lad. As day slowly dawned, the wind began to wane. Morton sat up stiffly, the sound he made waking the other two.
Allen looked at him. "How far do you reckon we got?"
"I know not," said Morton. "We had a good following wind most of the night, but it's been dropping for the last hour or so. I'd say fifteen or twenty miles."
Allen rubbed his hand along the gunnels as if stroking a horse's flanks. "She be a good girl, this boat."
Morton nodded. They owed their lives to the sturdy craft.
"There's somethin' to the south," said Fagan.
Morton turned and searched the horizon. He could see nothing but the morning's haze and the ripple of the sea.
"What is it?" said Allen. "Where?"
"There!" Fagan pointed. "See there?"
"Aye," said Allen, "I see it."
Morton turned again as he kept a steady hand on the tiller. He saw nothing and wondered if the lads were hallucinating.
"Is it a sail?" Morton asked.
"Nay," said Allen. "Could be a savage dugout."
"Jesus, Mary and Joseph," Fagan exclaimed, "there is more'n one!"
"Aye," said Allen.
"How many?" Morton asked.
"Three," said Allen, "Maybe more."
Morton looked up at the mast. The sail hung slack, rippling slightly in a tepid breeze. "Allen," he barked angrily. "Grab an oar. We had better row." Morton put one of the oars in the lock and he and Allen began rowing as Fagan took the tiller. After an hour of it Morton could see the craft in the distance. They were still mere specs on the horizon, but he could count six of them. Fagan saw him staring and turned round.
"They be gaining," Fagan said. "Another hour, maybe two at best, and they will have us."
"Shut up and steer," Morton snapped, licking his dry lips. His arms, hands and back were afire but he dared not stop. He knew what their fate would be if the savages caught them. He would throw himself in the sea rather than let that happen. He looked up at the sky. The sun was high above now, beginning to burn off the morning's haze. They rowed as hard as they could for another hour as the dugouts steadily gained on them. Morton could see the savages in the lead craft standing as they dug their paddles deep into the sea. It would not be long.
"Blasted heathens!" Allen cried. Tears ran down his cheeks into his beard. "Heathen bastards!
Morton said nothing, his throat as dry as kindling.
"Ahead there!" Fagan called, "what is it?"
Morton turned to look but saw nothing. Perhaps the lad was so panicked he was losing his mind. Morton took another look and saw a whitish blur low on the water in the distance. It took a few moments for his feverish brain to realize what it was -- fog. Thick, white fog, like heaven itself come down to earth to save them!
Allen turned and saw it. "Thank God," he cried. He dug his oar in with renewed vigor and it was all Morton cold do to match him. Fagan became giddy with hope. "Pull hard!" he cried to them, "Pull!"
As the first cool, clammy tendrils of fog whipped by, Morton could hear the calls and talk of the savages in the lead dugout, and see their faces. He and Allen continued to pull and soon the whiteness enclosed them completely and the savages were lost to view. They rowed for another few minutes and Morton stopped and signaled Allen to do the same. Quietly shipping the oars, they floated on the swells, listening breathlessly. After a while they heard savages talking softly in their tongue. They waited breathlessly and slowly the talk faded. After a couple hours, Morton and Allen began rowing again, moving the boat slowly through the fog. Hours passed and it seemed that they had long lost their pursuers. Slowly Morton became aware of a sound -- distant waves breaking upon an invisible shore with a steady, dull rumble. Fagan heard it and stood in the prow to stare out into the milky whiteness. Morton's ears picked up a new sound -- the dull rumble of waves crashing onto rocks. Morton prayed. After all they had been through they must not allow the shallop to crash upon any rocks that might be lying in wait. God help them! Surely He had not taken them this far to let them drown like rats.
Morton listened to the distant rumbling and wondered what God had planned for them. He thought of Gilbert lying back in the storehouse at Roanoke, his head crushed by a savage's club. At least they had avoided that sad fate.
The sound of the surf grew louder and threatening as they slowly rowed toward it. The sea grew agitated and the shallop bounced and rolled. "Mother Mary protect us," Fagan cried. Morton prayed silently. One small, hidden rock could smash the shallop to splinters and toss them into the cold sea. Suddenly a wave lifted the shallop like a huge hand. Morton and Allen gripped the gunnels tightly as they were swept smoothly forward and set gently down upon the shore.
"Mother Mary!" Fagan cried. His reddened face beamed with joy. "'Tis a miracle!"
Morton was awed by their deliverance and for a few moments he and Allen simply sat in the shallop, staring about. The light was muted and gray, the fog swirling thickly around them. Morton shook from the cold as he climbed out into the ankle-deep water. They dragged the shallop further up the incline of the beach. Morton took out the mallet and began driving a rod into the sand to tie her up.
The other two men stared silently into the shifting patches of thick fog, listening warily. Morton finished securing the boat and turned to Allen. "Get the cask and come with me."
Fagan called out. "We should all go together."
Morton shook his head. "Stay with the boat, lad. We will return soon."
"But I have no weapon," said Fagan, "only a little knife."
Morton pulled the heavy pistol from his belt and handed it to him. "Take this and be quiet."
Allen shouldered the cask and Morton pulled his sword. They walked up the beach, disappearing into the fog. After they had gone a short distance Morton paused and turned to Allen. "Search north about five hundred paces and I will go south. We will meet back here." He pointed to the deep tracks their booted feet had made in the sand and Allen nodded in understanding.
Morton watched Allen disappear into the mist before he turned and walked south. He hadn't gone far when he found what he was looking for -- a small stream about the width of a man and a couple inches deep, cutting through the sand. He followed it inland to where it had cut through a sand bank. He stopped and knelt to it, slaking his thirst. Standing, he decided to go back and get Allen. The wind gusted suddenly, parting the fog, and Morton froze. Twenty paces away, a savage stood looking in the other direction toward the mainland. Despite the cold, the man was naked from the waist up. Heavily muscled, he wore a fringed skirt of sorts. He held a bow, resting one end of it in the sand by his naked foot. A quiver of arrows hung about his waist and, incredibly, what looked like a tousled lion's tail dangled from his hind quarters down between his legs to his ankles. Morton's heart began pounding. The fog closed in again and the man disappeared from view.
Morton gripped his sword tightly as he silently crept back the way he had come. Reaching the place where he and Allen had parted, he followed the other man's tracks. They came to an end atop a small grassy dune. Thick blood adhered to a nearby clump of scrub grass, but there was no sign of Allen. Morton walked twenty paces in the direction of the shallop and came across the big man's body. Two arrows protruded from him.
Morton continued toward the shallop. The light was growing brighter. In the east a golden glow suffused the horizon. The fog was beginning to break up! He heard a commotion ahead. The fog parted slightly and he saw four of them around the shallop. Fagan was alive where he lay upon the sand, trussed up like a hog bound for market. Several savages were inspecting the pistol. Another had climbed into the shallop and was haranguing his fellows authoritatively. As Morton moved backward into the whiteness, Fagan's eyes met his, imploring him. Morton shook his head as he backed away and Fagan was lost to view. Morton ran south along the beach. Panting, he squatted down upon his haunches to rest and turned to look in the direction from which he had come. His boot prints boldly proclaimed his path across the virgin beach. Cursing, he ran into the surf and pushed as quickly as he could through the surging water. Exhaustion overtook him and he was forced to go back up onto the beach where he collapsed. Somewhere above a gull cried in alarm. Morton turned to see three of the savages racing down the dune at him. He ran back into the surf. The sea tugged at him, slowing him, and something hit him hard in the back. He turned to see and another arrow buried itself deep in his throat. He fell facedown and the receding surge of white water pulled him quickly past the breakers to where he joined the stream of seaweed, sticks and other flotsam floating swiftly south.
The Wish
Frank Merck strolled the carnival midway with his wife, Millie. She clutched his muscled arm possessively with one hand, holding a paper container of greasy, ketchup-smeared french fries in the other. Frank was unaware of Millie's hand as he took in the sights and sounds of the game tents. Then a girl of about nineteen, working the ring-toss booth caught his eye. She smiled seductively. Frank stopped and swallowed hard as he admired her breasts moving beneath her white tee-shirt.
"Frank?" said Millie, as she tugged on his arm, "Frank!"
"Huh?" he said, the spell broken.
"I want to get a cotton candy," said Millie. "The booth is back the way we came in. Do you mind?"
"Get what?" said Frank, his mind still on the girl.
Millie released his arm and turned to him angrily. "Frank! I'm talking to you!"
Frank looked into Millie's puffy face and wondered what he had ever seen in her. His trim, muscled appearance, the result of years of daily effort - weight-lifting, jogging, eating right - contrasted sharply with her fat form. Millie was at least fifty pounds overweight and her hair was an unkempt mop of greasy brown clumps.
Millie looked into his eyes angrily, her lower lip quivering. A red drop of ketchup glistened on the fuzzy sleeve of her white mohair sweater.
"What is it?" he said angrily.
"Well, you don't have to yell." Millie's eyes misted over. In a whining voice she said, "I wanted a cotton candy."
"All right, where are they?"
Millie pointed and they walked back. Frank remembered the early days of their relationship. He had been in such a hurry... a walking talking, twenty two-year-old erection. But even if he had been older and wiser, he never could have known that it would turn so bad so quick. Now, a divorce would ruin him. Millie's father had taken him into the family's plumbing supply business and Frank had worked hard and done well. A divorce would land him back on square one at the ripe age of thirty five.
Millie tugged at his arm.
"What?" he snapped.
"It's over there."
They turned and Frank took one last, quick look at the girl. She was bending over the table in the middle of the tent, retrieving the wooden rings scattered among the cases of Coca Colas. Her buttocks were firm and pert beneath her tight jeans. He could almost feel them cupped in his hands. She turned round and saw him looking. She smiled.
Frank glanced at his watch. He could tell Millie he was going down to the high school track to jog. Then he could come back here before they closed at midnight. He felt the flush of desire and pulled Millie along a little faster. "All right, babe," he said. “Let's get your cotton candy and then we're getting the hell out of here. I want to do some running tonight before it gets too late."
Millie purchased a blue sphere of cotton candy and they headed for the parking lot. They passed a booth with an old Gypsy woman sitting outside in a lawn chair. 'Madam Rosa,' the sign over the tent proclaimed, 'Knows all! Tells all! - One dollar!'
Millie slowed.
The old woman smiled at them, getting slowly from her chair. "God bless you, children," she said, flashing a toothless smile. "Come inside. I read your palms."
"Let's go in, Frank," said Millie.
"Millie, for crying out loud! I told you I wanted to get back and get some jogging in."
Millie gave him a hurt look. "It'll only take a minute."
The woman smiled kindly at Frank, then took Millie by the arm. She led her into the tent as Frank followed reluctantly, sitting down in an old wooden chair. Overhead, moths flitted noisily around two neon tubes suspended from the tent roof.
Millie sat and the Gypsy sat opposite her. The old woman looked over Frank. "It won't take long, Dearie. How about if I read the two of you for a dollar fifty."
Frank threw his eyes skyward, "for chrisake.”
The woman got to her feet and came over to him, taking his hand. "Please, you're in a hurry. I will do your palm first and then you can go outside and smoke."
"I don't smoke."
Ignoring the comment, she pulled his hand under the light and leaned closer to it. She studied it for a moment and then gasped and moved away.
"That was fast," Frank said to her acidly, "that must've been speed palmreading. What did you see?"
"I see nothing," said the Gypsy, avoiding his eyes.
Frank looked down at his hand. "So do I. Exactly nothing. Except for a few wrinkles. C'mon Millie."
Millie remained seated, a pout on her face, as the Gypsy woman backed away from Frank.
Sitting down before Millie, the Gypsy looked over quickly at Frank and said, "I don't read you. You wait outside."
Frank stayed in his chair while the Gypsy took Millie's hand in hers. She looked closely at the palm. Rocking back and forth, the woman's eyes became slits as she began speaking excitedly in a strange language. Suddenly she stood up and made the sign of the cross. "You must both go now."
"Go?" Millie whined, "but you didn't even tell us our fortunes..."
"I'm sorry, I cannot read you. Please go."
"And I can't pay you, either," said Frank angrily as he got to his feet. "C'mon, Millie."
Neither Frank nor Millie spoke as they drove the dark country roads. The car's V-8 hummed quietly as an occasional bug crashed into the windshield with a click. Millie broke the silence.
"What do you suppose she saw in our palms, honey?"
Frank sighed angrily in the darkness of the car. "She didn't see nothin'. Those people are fulla crap."
"I don't know, honey. They're very sensitive people and she looked genuinely scared. Frank, she saw something in our palms and it scared her."
Frank threw her an angry look. "Aw, cut it out, will ya? She probably thought I was a detective or something and it made her nervous. Those people are involved in a lot of scams, you know."
Millie said nothing.
Frank clicked the radio on, turning the volume up loud to dispel the cold, creeping apprehension that seemed to ooze through the car windows from the blackness outside. They drove for another five minutes and the music began to fade. Saying nothing, Frank turned the dial. All the other stations had faded too. That was odd, he thought. He turned the volume up all the way and harsh static filled the car, but no music. "That's weird," he said absently as he clicked it off. "I just had the damn thing fixed last month."
The road turned and they approached the wooden bridge spanning Crooked Creek. As the car rumbled over the wooden planks, the engine suddenly went dead.
"What the hell?" said Frank. He coasted to the side guardrail and pulled the emergency brake on. The headlights died suddenly. Frank turned the light switch on and off repeatedly, but the lights stayed off. He opened the door and got out. The rhythmic chirp of crickets filled the hot air. Frank lifted the hood and felt around with his hands.
"Maybe the battery cable came loose," he called in to Millie's darkened form, "that would account for everything going dead at once."
Millie got out of the car and stood beside him. "It's such a beautiful night, Frank. "There are so many stars in the sky. Jees! Look at that one over there. It's so bright!"
Frank slammed the hood down noisily. "Crap," he said, "I can't figure it out. Those cables are tight. I can't budge them! It must be the battery. But I never had a battery go out all of a sudden like that." He pounded his fist on the hood and walked over to lean against the wooden rail of the bridge. Millie followed him.
"Don't worry, honey," she said, "someone will come along soon. Let's just enjoy the moment."
Frank thought again of the pretty young woman who had given him the come-on look. She would be available tonight, whether he was or not.
"Damn," he said through clenched teeth. He felt mad enough to turn the car over.
"What?" said Millie absently.
"I wanted to go running," he said angrily.
"That's my Mister America," she said jovially, "that's all he ever thinks about." She ran her fingers lightly along his muscled arm. "When we get home we'll think of some other way for you to get your exercise."
Frank pulled his arm away. "Yeah,” he said, thinking, that's a good description of it too.
"Huh, honey?"
"Never mind."
Millie tapped him on the arm. "Let's wish on a star, honey. See that big blue one over there? I'm making my wish on that one."
Frank said nothing, thinking instead, 'yeah, I wish you would die, that's what I wish... Within the week!'
"Frank," said Millie nervously, "it's started moving. It's coming this way."
"Huh?"
"The star. It's coming this way. Honey, I'm scared!"
"What star? Where?" Frank scanned the sky.
"Over there! It's getting bigger. See! Oh, Frank..."
Frank saw it racing toward them, growing larger, brighter. Millie started running. Frank ran after her. The wind began blowing forcefully and suddenly it was bright as day. Frank looked up and all he saw was light. He tripped over something and fell hard onto the road. Millie grabbed him tightly around the neck. Light burned through Frank's eyelids, searing his eyes. The sound of a thousand chain saws exploded in his ears and heat washed over him as the furious sound and light permeated his entire body. He passed out.
The two doctors walked quickly down the brightly-lit corridor. "Sorry to bother you, Doctor Bernstein," said the younger of the two, "but I knew you'd want to talk to him."
"It's all right, John. Maybe he can shed some light on this. How long has he been conscious?"
The young doctor glanced quickly at his watch. "Five minutes. The nurse just told me."
"What about his wife?"
"Dead. Last night."
Doctor Bernstein shook his head as they turned a corner and approached the elevator. The doors whoosed open and the young doctor pushed '4'. He turned to Doctor Bernstein. "I'm surprised she lasted as long as she did. The cancer was in such an advanced stage. Well, you saw."
Bernstein nodded slowly. "Yes. How does he look?"
"Hideous. His neck and face have swollen incredibly. The burning and swelling seems to have fused his legs together, and his arms to his sides. But the lab reports indicate something entirely different."
The door opened and the two men exited the elevator. "What's that, Doctor?" said Bernstein, as they turned down a tiled corridor, "what do they indicate?"
The younger doctor’s breath came quickly as he struggled to keep pace. "A complete breakdown of muscle and bone tissue, almost - I know this sounds incredible - but, almost a metamorphosis."
They came to a set of double doors. The younger doctor pushed them open. "He's in here."
Frank Merck floated in a world of pain. Like water, it supported his body, pressing in at every point. He couldn't move a muscle. He heard someone come into the room, but he could not turn his head to look at them. A face looked down into his.
"Can you talk?"
"I think so," said Frank Merck, but only a strangled groan came from his lips.
"Your wife is dead," said the doctor. "Can you tell us what happened out there?"
Frank Merck closed his eyes. The effort to keep them open was too much. She's dead, he thought. I wished and she's dead. He felt a slight twinge of pity for her and then he was seized with a euphoric giddiness. He thought comically of the cricket from the Disney movie singing, when you wish upon star... And what a star they had wished upon! A blue giant! I wonder what she wished for, he thought. Probably a plate of spaghetti and meatballs.
A voice kept repeating his name, drawing him up from the well of pain. He opened his eyes.
"Mister Merck," said the doctor, "are you in great pain? If you are, blink your eyes twice."
Frank did as he was told.
Doctor Bernstein turned. "Get a nurse down here with four milligrams of Dilaudid."
Three hours later, his round completed, Doctor Bernstein returned to Frank Merck's room and stared down at the bloated form. The face was not a face anymore. The eyes, ears, nose and mouth were now almost completely covered by oily, blistered skin. He flipped the sheet down. The body was a long mass of slick whitish scar tissue. He stepped back. It reminded him of something. Bernstein suddenly felt sick. It was the sight and smell, coupled with the thought in his head. He had noticed the smell before, but had not connected it with the patient. The smell was much stronger now.
Oh, my God, he thought, that's what he smells like... that's what he looks like! A larva... or a huge french fried potato!
Carl Melcher… into the great alone
His best dreams were the ones about young women. They were interested in him and took his arm as they walked and talked. They wore colorful dresses of smooth fabric that slid over their skin; they were slim and lithe, not big and tattooed like so many 21st century American women. Sometimes they slowly morphed into older women over the course of the dream, their hair turning grey or cropped short like cancer victims, but they were always petite with warm skin and serious, attractive faces that looked at him with respect and love. There was no sex, but there was a hint of it to come. These women wanted to be with him, and when he woke to find them gone, he was always disappointed and a little sad for a while.
He washed his eyes, his face. He combed his hair, noticing and worrying about how thin it was becoming. He went into the kitchen and ran the water for the coffee machine. As he put the coffee into the filter basket, Ziggy the dog and Suzanne the cat were close at his feet and he was careful not to tread on them. The house was cold and he knelt before the pot-bellied stove and balled-up some newspaper for fire-starter. He made a mound of it, then laid a couple of pine cones and two logs over top. He lit the paper, closed the door and stood. Ziggy looked at him expectantly. Like him, the dog was old now.
“Okay, Ziggy. You and Suzanne are next.” He went into the shed, the two animals close behind. He filled Suzanne’s bowl with kibble and she jumped up onto the drier and put her head in the bowl as she ate, her back arching up to be caressed. Siamese were interesting cats, he thought. He gave Ziggy his kibble and went back into the kitchen, getting out his coffee cup and saucer. He turned on his laptop, logged on, and clicked on the streaming site for the talk radio show. The traffic report was on. It was from the San Francisco Bay Area where he used to live and work before he retired. He listened with interest and some schadenfreude to the managed chaos that getting to work in the Bay Area had become. He had done it for 35 years and sometimes when he listened to all the problems it sounded like he had gotten out in the nick of time. His congratulatory back-patting at this was suddenly and guiltily tempered by the knowledge that his son, an almost-grown man now, had to contend with it every day.
He added sugar and creamer to his coffee, sat down at the table and wondered what the hell he was going to do all day.
I lived in a California town called Chilton, high up in the Sierras. The population was 2,000, equally divided between young families, many of them on government assistance, and retired couples living on fixed incomes, with just a hand-full of loners like me.
Situated smack dab in the middle of a National Forest, it was a beautiful place, but I wasn’t happy here. Don’t get me wrong; Ansel Adams would have loved living here, so would a lot of others. And I did, in the beginning, but not anymore.
Main Street was a mile and a half long, with two gas stations, a small supermarket, a bank, a laundromat, a tire shop, a bar, two motels, three thrift shops (the owners called them antique stores), three churches, a real estate office, two gasoline stations, a library (only open twenty hours a week), a hardware store, a Chinese restaurant (bad), a Mexican restaurant (bad also), and a diner-style restaurant (awful).
In the summer the place was bustling with tourists -- happy families of campers in town for hamburgers and ice cream, fishermen buying their beer and bait in the supermarket, middle aged and elderly walkers with green eye shades and ski poles, photographers and bird watchers setting their tripods up on the sides of the road by the lake, young millennial hikers, scruffy and dirty-looking like homeless people-- after being on the trail for weeks at a time -- come down to town to pick up their mail and use the laundromat. For the locals there were invites to neighbor’s barbecues, a flea market, yard sales, church picnics, that sort of thing. But when winter settled in (there were no nearby ski resorts), most of the businesses closed and the people on the street dwindled down to a few. And at night… nobody, nothing.
Now that I was again divorced and alone, I did my best to keep busy. I did a little writing (I’d had a few books published over the course of my lifetime, but none of them really went anywhere). When I tired of that and wanted some distraction, there was cable TV or internet chat on Facebook, and videos; I saw it all -- fire fights and bombings in the Middle East, young men doing BMX death-defying stunts, ISIS deviltry, young antifa toughs, wearing bandanas to hide their identity, throwing metal barriers into plate glass doors, street fighting. If you wanted real rather than vicarious and virtual, you could wander the aisles of the Dollar General, or join one of the many church groups, or go to the AA or Overeaters Anonymous meetings. I was never much of a joiner, however, and so I just went out alone and did a lot of walking.
There were about ten of us in town that regularly walked during the winter months: the two most down-and-out, slovenly drunks in town, Henry and Manuel (they were roommates), two older couples who fast-walked together, two retarded adult men who lived with a kindly Christian family, me and my dog, Ziggy, and Danni, the beautiful, but retarded, girl-child who spent a lot of time sitting on her bicycle, wearing her Disney Aladdin helmet, calling out to passers-by for attention. A sweet little thing, 12 or 13, with long scalloped blonde hair, already filling out with little breasts and hips. She always wanted to pet Ziggy or take him for a walk, or to come to your house. I felt sorry for her, but as an older man, I kept a safe distance. I couldn’t imagine how much her parents must have worried about her.
I’d lived in Chilton with my second wife, Divina, for about eighteen months and then we’d split up. I had thought we had it all and would go the distance, you know, till death do us part. After all, we were both older folks. I was sixty-five, she fifty-five, and we lived a quiet life in a nice clean house in a safe, quiet town. Yeah… I know what you’re thinking.
I don’t blame Divina entirely. It takes two to make a marriage soar, and two to rip its delicate diaphanous wings off. Now our love was gone, disappeared forever like Hillary’s emails. Sometimes looking back, I think she expected me to rein her in, to get physical with her like she got with me a couple times. Maybe it was cultural; I don’t know, but I definitely got the feeling when we got into it a couple of occasions that she expected a physical response from me, a push or a slap. But I would never get physical with a woman, didn’t have the stomach for it. I figured that when things sank to that level it was time to move on. And in California, if a man hit his woman, even if she’d hit him first, he’d quickly find himself in deep legal trouble.
I was the one who made the marriage happen. I found Divina on-line, in Spain, pursued her, married her. It was based on my loneliness and on attraction -- that Mona Lisa smile, and her tiny girlish figure. When we finally met… on skype… I felt like it was just right, almost perfect. She was Filipino. It’s funny; I had started out on the regular sites, like Match. But somewhere along the way I got switched onto this other site -- Asian Cutie, something like that. I don’t remember how that happened anymore. I just remember all of a sudden there were all these young, pretty, and aggressive women, all of them pleading to chat with me. I caught on pretty quick. There are only a few reasons a sexy nineteen year old chick would be interested in a sixty-five year-old American man. I had fun teasing them at first, but no way was I going to fall into the ‘drooling geezer/hot young chick’ fantasy. After a while I was ready to drop it all when Divina gave me a ‘flirt.’ Her smile caught my eye right away, warm, stoic, etched with a serious, but tired look, as if she’d seen it all and knew every game people played, and was ready for the real thing. So was I.
I sat on the couch reading, Ziggy snoring at my feet, Suzanne reclining Sphynx-like behind me on the high back of the couch. I was alone a lot now. No, that’s not a pity play, just a fact, my new norm, and my choice as well. The fan on the propane stove came on with a hush, pushing hot air into the room. Ziggy raised his head inquisitively, then lay it down again. The room was cozy, the flames rippling orange light onto the carpet. It was almost eleven at night; I had another hour and then I had to be at work, graveyard shift. Outside the cold was oppressive, 15 degrees. Going out was like jumping into a pool of chilled water. The night before it had gotten down to five. I made a thermos of coffee, put it in my brief case and went out, locking the door.
I pulled up to the guard shack at the sawmill ten minutes later for my shift as a security guard. Up here in Chilton there weren’t a lot of jobs available in the winter. Machinists and welders at the mill, speedy-mart clerk, security guard at the mill, substitute teacher at the high school if you were degreed. I was, and I’d worked there the semester before, but hadn’t liked it. The kids weren’t dangerous, like the thugs in the big cities, but they were brats just the same, and I quickly tired of putting up with their attitudes and bullshit. So now I sat in a guard shack instead, making a patrol every hour or so, climbing steel catwalks around and over huge pieces of machinery that could grind a man to hamburger in seconds -- abraders that ripped the bark off of sequoia trees, huge band saws, planers. Occasionally I touched the buttons affixed to walls and doors with a computerized wand that recorded that I’d been there, and I looked for signs of fire, or pipes ruptured by the freezing cold.
I didn’t want to work. I was retired, but the spousal support I was paying to Divina every month, and the money I was sending to help my son through tech college, was more than was coming in every month from my SSI. And there were the occasional co-payments for medical bills, dental cleanings; the glasses I’d just gotten had set me back seven hundred bucks with the exam. My savings account was slowly dwindling and I just couldn’t let that happen.
Things had been very different just a year and a half earlier. I’d had about a hundred thousand in my savings and 401k, and owned my own house. I still owned the house, but the hundred thou was down to just twenty now. Getting out of my marriage had been expensive, but I still think I did the right thing. My lawyer said it could have been much worse. If I had waited too long I could have ended up losing my house.