The Forgetting-Part 2

Small Town Suspense Grows!

CHAPTER 2

Glenn
Standoff pulled the utility truck over onto the easement, slamming
the

emergency brake hard against the floor. This is where the report
had specified, and

he’d spotted it right off. A huge tree-branch hung
precariously suspended,

endangering the telephone lines directly
below. Luckily, he had got here first, before

catastrophe could
happen.

Sliding
out of the cab and setting his

hard hat to his head, he sucked in at
his cigarette. A swift glance at his watch told

him it was nearly
seven thirty. There was no sign of his assistants.

“Goddamn
Cormic and Mcguire, fuckin’ slacker punks!” he swore to the
empty

tree-lined road. They were obviously going to be very late.
They were always late. He

might have been late, too, if he’d actually
hit that freak standing in the middle of

the road in the fog. He took
those optional state saftey driving courses seriously.

After all, he
was a careful, responsible guy, not like those other two

assholes.
Careerless social blights, good for nothing but filling in potholes.
He

shook his head. As their supervisor, he often wondered how they
had managed to pass

the drug test the county required. Hell, if only
he had been there to stop them from

getting the job. They reminded
him of the chimpanzees he’d seen at the zoo once. Damn

monkeys!

He took another look at the time, his scowl softening. Nancy

had
woken him up early and told him her dream. He and her had been, well,
making

out in his dads garage back in Framingham. That had gotten him
all aroused and they

had made sleepy love, their naked bodies moving
together in a natural rhythm. Which,

in turn, had lead him to be a
little late, but he had made up for it by driving fast,

one of the
benefits of a county job. Still, he was never as late as his

two
chimpanzees. He decided to get a start anyway. It was on the clock,
the

taxpayers were paying him.

From
the side locker of the truck he

got out the Husquavarna chainsaw and
checked the oil and gas levels. Giving a pull on

the cord he started
it up, a cloud of blue smoke rising and merging with the

fog.
Depressing the toggle spun the blade, its tiny claws thrashing at the
air,

waiting for a real job. He set it on the ground, grabbed a pair
of ear protectors and

clamping them over his ears. Climbing carefully
up the slanted tree trunk he began to

cut slowly away at the large
limb.

Locked
into silence by the ear

muffs, his mind drifted, to thoughts of his
dads old garage, where pops had had his

shop. A tablesaw and a vice,
a big workspace lined with tools and bottles of nails.

There were a
lot of counters for all sorts of projects, plus enough room to work
on

the car. He remembered when he was younger, going into the shop as
dad was working,

seeing him in his heavy coveralls, smelling of oil
and wood chips.

He
missed his dad. The stroke had been quick, but the lingering death
had been

hard. Letting the chainsaw idle for a second, he glanced out
over the foggy landscape,

struck by the sudden vividness of his
recollections. It was the guilt, most likely,

but it hadn’t really
been his fault, he hadn’t gotten the high-paying county job

yet.
There had been no way he could have afforded that operation, and the
insurance

company had played like it was a god, bandying life about
without a care.

Bloodsuckers.

But
they had had plenty of good times, when he was

young. Glen attacked
the resilient limb again, as if the violence could bring

those
moments back. Once, his dad had fixed his mothers big flashlight, had
given

it to him, showing him how it worked. He could almost hear his
fathers heavy voice,

trapped inside his heavy earmuffs.

“See,
Glen, you press this

button like this and it comes on. The
electricity makes the light work.” It was magic

to him. By the
mere application of a little bit of force he could cause this

bright
beam to appear, like a long sword. He saw his fathers face, smiling
at him,

giving him this wonderful discovery, this welcome to the time
of machines. The smile

was large. By the simple pressing of a button,
of the toggle switch, he could make a

light come on. Glenn made the
chainsaw spin, then stop, then spin again, a slow smile

creeping
across his face.

Cormic
and Mcguire

spun to a stop in their road rally rabbit sport, flinging
gravel left and right.

They’d risen early to do laps on the old
logging roads, but had arrived late to work.

Stepping out and taking
off their crash helmets, They threw on rough work jackets.

“Sounds
like Glenn’s already started.” Mcguire

commented.

“Workaholic,” muttered Comic, “Ahh, hell,

let’s
suffer thru the reprimand.” Almost six years of high school
detention had

forged a heroic resilience to the acidic effects of any
kind of guilt trip.

“Hey
Glenn!” Mcguire shouted as they approached, watching their

boss
stand on the curving tree branch. Cormic noticed that Glenn was
running the

chainsaw on and then off, a childish grin plastered on
his face.

“Hey
Glenn, whatcha want us to do?” Mcguire shouted again. Glenn,
lost in the

cottony prison of his earmuffs, thought he heard his name
being called, and looked up.

An inkiness descended over his eyes, his
heart beat magnified, a crushing oppresive

weight behind his ears. A
confinement that brought forth an instinctive fear. A

tremble ticked
in his leg, uncontrollable. But then he remembered.

There
was a pop. His vision cleared, crystalline clear. He saw his mother
calling,

he would show her what he could do. He pressed the
flashlight on, and ran towards her

as she stood out the back porch,
smiling at him, so proud. He turned the flashlight

towards him as he
ran, looking into its jiggling beam of pure whiteness.

“Mother!”
he said, tripping over something in the grass, falling. “Look
what I can

do!!” Glenn slipped off the tree, the chainsaw blade
spinning under his hand, hitting

the ground. It kicked into him,
tearing through Carhart canvas to cut deep into soft

flesh, sending
tissue flying into the earth, turning it damp with his blood.

His
hand remained pain-locked, pressing the chainsaw trigger, keeping it
churning.

His face distorted into a grimace, but would not give up
its smile. “I make light,

I..”

Cormic
and Mcguire stood in shock, unbelieving as they watched Glenns

body
heave and convulse, the blade ravaging his chest cavity, splitting
his heart,

hollowing out his body.

“I
make light, I make light..” Glenn barely

managed to gasp one
last time as his spinal cord was severed, a blood bubble bursting

out
his mouth. His grip at last loosened, the chainsaw idling, sputtering
to a

halt. Cormic finally moved, yelling at McGuire.

“Fuck,
get on the

fucking C.B. and get some help out here!!” The two
sprang into action, doing the best

they could. The light that had
shone in Glenns eyes slowly faded to a staring black,

and the tense
facial muscles relaxed, the smile, too, eventually dying

out.

Jody paced in the kitchen preparing a late breakfast of ice

cream
and banannas when she heard the commotion outside, and the loud knock
a

second later. Who could it be? she wondered. Usually jerry called
if he was going to

drop by… she peered out through the curtain. An
insistent stranger pushed his way up

to the door as she swung it
partially open.

“Excuse
me, ma’am,

but our companies looking for new customers in this area.
I wonder if you’d mind

taking a minute out of your busy schedule to
look over a few of our products?” A man

she had never seen
before stood before her, smiling at her as he regained his

breath.
Jody leaned against the doorjamb, looking him over. He appeared to be
a

typical salesman, of the type now gone, the kind her grandmother
used to invite in for

tea while she pored over sample books of
carpeting or wallpaper. Jody had never really

liked them, their pushy
fake conversations and handshaking. There was something

about
inviting business into ones personal home that just wasn’t right.

“Jon
Fontaine’s my name,” he said, regaining his breath and handing
her his

business card. “I’m in the selling game,” he smiled
at his little rhyme. Jody could

see him gearing up for another
long-winded run on sentence. There was something

different about this
man, though… she couldn’t quite place it. Maybe it was a tinge

of
nostalgia, a feeling of sorriness for this man whose job seemed so
out of time

and place, a thing of the past. In fact, the impression
he gave her was of a man of

the days gone by. He really wasn’t as
threatening as she remembered those others, the

cologne-selling,
leering men who put their hands on her knees when grandma was out

of
the room. No, this was a tall, thin, tan, handsome looking man with
soft brown

eyes, almost apologetic.

“Well,
what do you sell,” she asked,

shifting on her feet. It wasn’t
like she was against shopping, it just had something

to do with her
personality. She liked stores, and everything they offered. If

only,
she decided, she could convince herself this was nothing more than a
store

coming to you, it might even be enjoyable.

“I
have plenty of

catalogues here”, Jon said, fumbling with his
briefcase. It popped open, and he pulled

out some confused pamphlets,
struggling to control them as they threatened to escape.

“Er,
ah…” he stuttered, as one slid out of his grasp. She deftly
swooped it up

before it hit the doorstep, handing it back to him.
“Why don’t you come in,” she

smiled, holding open the
screen for him. He was such a pitiable sight, an awkward

puppydog
offering up faux trinkets with a heart of true gold. It wasn’t that
she

didn’t recognize her own naive vulnerability in certain
situations that others would

tell her were risky… it was more that
she felt compelled to it, driven by some

motivation deeper than she
could control. She remembered her grandmother, brushing her

hair as
she lay in bed as a little girl. “Compassion and understanding
will always

lead you to the light,” she had said. But now she
was gone, and all Jody had were her

words to hold onto, to grip with
the fingers of a child who wouldn’t let go.

“I
haven’t been through this area before,” Jon said,

holding
tightly his slipping, prized papers as he followed her down the hall
to the

living room.

“Well,”
Jody said, over her shoulder, “It’s not like

we get many
salesmen around here anymore. It’s not very populated, you know.”
She

moved some of her papers and an old photo album off the couch.

“Please,

sit down. would you like some coffee, tea?” she
asked, moving towards the kitchen.

“Ah,
actually, no thanks. I’ve got to get moving, you know, no

drinking on
the job,” he said with a nervous laugh. “Besides, the
bosses, you

know…” Jody sat down in the easy chair opposite
the couch. Poor thing, she half

smiled.

“The
bosses…” he whispered, leaning in close to her.

“They
like to keep an eye on us.” He winked at her, and suddenly, she
felt a cold

hard knot grow in her stomach. She felt she had been
taken in, once again, tricked by

compassion. Her intuitive warning
devices had failed her. Jon shuffled the papers on

the floor and
handed her the disarrayed stack. It only took a quick glance down

to
verify her fear. She was holding a crazy collection of memorabilia,
an old

defaced ’50’s comic book, some old recipe cards cut from
magazines, a crumpled

maple-leaf, a news article, faded and yellowed,
stained by the passage of time. She

looked up at him again. His hands
now look stained and grimy, not as tan as she had

thought. His face
was pockmarked and had a small scar under his chin.

“Um,
Mr. Fontaine, would you excuse me,” she said, keeping a tight
lipped smile,

half rising out of her seat, but he suddenly lurched
forward, his hand moving like

lightening, grabbing her wrists. Her
heart pounded rapidly, she thought about

screaming, but she knew
Jerry, her nearest neighbor, lived half a mile away, no one

would
hear. Jon looked straight into her eyes. She felt her throat
constrict. All

her nightmares flooded into consciousness, enveloping
her in all their fear. A mad

man, a killer who would rape her. She
found she could not avert her gaze from his

forehead, from the sweat
that lay in little beads on the tensile plastic surface of

the
furrowed brow. This man was… human, she thought, and it was

so
horrible.

“Ma’am,
I’ve just got to tell you,” he said, looking

intently, his eyes
searching every inch of her face in their linked proximity. His

grip
loosened a little. He let go of her wrists and buried his face in the
palm of

his hand.

“I…
I’m so confused…” he looked up again,

grasping her wrists
before she could react, moving to the edge of his seat, where

she
could see into his briefcase, sitting open beside him on the sofa. It
too had a

strange collection of bric-a-brac. an old rocking horse toy
sat sideways, atop a stack

of old postcards from South America, some
with old faded ink writing and cancelled

postmarks. An old victorian
photograph of a baby, held by a victorian mother in sepia

tones lay
perched atop a stack of old stained newspapers and comic book pages.
An

advertisement for a vacuum cleaner that looked like it was from
the stone ages lay

ripped in half. There was a snowglobe, and a
flashlight. She returned his gaze,

steady, trying not to show her
fear. He sat up, a smile on his face, noticing her

glance at his
collection. He looked so out of place that it threw her once

again
into a state of utter fear; never had a smile communicated such a
sense of

chaos and foreboding to her.

“Actually
ma’am, if you are

interested, you could just call this number and the
company would be more than glad to

help you out. but,” he
dropped his voice, leaning in close again, though she tried to

back
away, his breath smelled old and foul.

“Really,
I would just

write it down on this paper,” he whispered, pushing
a scrap of childrens notebook

paper at her. He sat back and smiled,
releasing her, rubbing his hands together.

“Well
ma’am,” he said, more loudly, looking over to his

briefcase,
gathering up his papers. ” I really should get back on the road
now.

I…” he looked confused, turning his head, staring around
the room. He focused on a

red lampshade for a minute, then looked
down at his hands. “I..I…” his jaw suddenly

went slack,
his gaze seemed blank, as if all the life had suddenly departed

from
his slumped body, leaving this husk which would start to drool at any
minute.

Jody slowly slid off the edge of her chair, moving to the
phone by the kitchen. Jon

made no movement towards her, staring at
his hands, mumbling to himself.

“Is..
is this Kansas?” he asked, making a puppy dog face of

confusion
and doubt.

“It’s
ok… Mr. Fontaine, I..I just have to

call for some.. water. would
you like some water? ” she said from the kitchen, lifting

the
phone, grasping the long breadknife that lay on the counter, holding
it out of

his sight. Jon cooed, and she felt strange, talking in that
tone of voice that one

usually reserved for little kids. Her
compassion was coming back now, giving her

strength, not doubt. This
man was an adult, of that she was afraid, but he seemed so

confused,
so lost, so hurt… she felt a small part of her that still wanted

to
take him in her arms and comfort him. Dialing Jerry’s number. She
stood

nervously in the kitchen doorway, listening to the phone ring,
watching her strange

guest sit, disoriented, on her couch.

“Hello?”
Jerry answered after

a click. In as quiet a tone as she could, Jody
whispered what was going on, and Jerry

said he’d be right over. Then
she hung up, and stood in the kitchen doorway, one hand

on the knife,
caught in the flypaper of silence, dancing a muted dance with

her
murmuring passive partner, entranced by the bright colors of his
scattered

confetti.

Back at the police station, or the polite square brick

building
which passed for one, Sheriff Bradford Tolland pushed a warm
styrofoam cup

between Cormics shaking hands.

“Here
you go, something warm to calm

you down.” The young man looked
haggard, stunned. And who wouldn’t be? Sheriff

Tolland mused, after
watching someone eaten by their own chainsaw, with no reason why.

It
was the nature of accidents, the sheriff knew, from having had to
deal with them

all his life. It was his job, especially in this small
town where crime was just a

bunch of young stoned vandals. They were,
plain and simple, accidents. A brief slip,

and a life was over. One
slight misstep, or a cigarette left burning, all these random

events
could lead to death. What could one really do? Taking care always
helped,

sure, but then accidents still occurred, well, when they
occurred. To have to watch

them, though, was something else.
Traumatic, he thought, watching these two boys

struggle in front of
him.

“Would
you boys like anything to eat, or how

about a cigarette?”

“Yeah,
yeah,” Mcguire said, and took the proffered

Camel. Cormic drank
his coffee, letting the hot steam rise into his eyes, bathing them

in
warmth and making them drift from the horrific image of the morning.

“If
only we hadn’t been so late.” moaned Mcguire, shivering. The
sheriff stared

him in the eye.

“You
can’t change the past, what happened is over.

Accidents in life
occur. Sure you could have been there earlier. Maybe if you

hadn’t
worn a hat today, maybe if I hadn’t put contacts in my eyes this
morning

or if the goddam sky wasn’t so goddamn red at sunrise, then
maybe none of this would

have happened. But what can you do! You want
to spend all your life living in the

realm of could have beens? Is
that what you want?”

“No,
no. It’s

just that, it’s, I just wish…” Cormic went silent and
simply looked back into the

shiny black of his coffee. Mcguire puffed
away at his cigarette. He glanced at Cormic.

“If
you hadn’t wanted to test the new suspension.” he said

coldly.
Cormic started up from his seat, spilling the coffee.

“Hell,
you’re the one that wanted new suspension in the first place,

you
little…”

Tolland
jumped between them, calming them with his

steady, deep voice, and
the strong pressure of his hands to their shoulders.

“Listen,
listen to you. Don’t you fall into this trap. Don’t live

the could
have beens. Ok? Sit down, take a deep breath, you guys know

better.
You’re not at fault. Calm, ok, calm…” The two young men
shuffled about,

returning heavily to their seats. Tolland knew they
hadn’t meant it. Why, they’d

been friends since as long as anyone
could recall. After finishing high school, the

two of them had gone
to work for the county. They were the type who never leave

their
small home town, they have no reason to. They were born and bred of
their

land, and would live their entire lives here, drinking on
thursdays at the bar,

driving their road rally cars and motorbikes on
all the trails, picking up on all the

new girls that would come to
town, or finding them in the neighboring towns in those

towns’ bars.
Eventually marrying, having kids, most likely getting

divorced.
Tolland hoped there werent any domestic violence calls, waiting for
him

under the masks of the boys faces. He sighed and got Cormic
another warm cup of

coffee, sponging off the desk.

“Thanks,
sheriff.”

“Yeah,”
Mcguire said, “sorry about all that.”

“That’s
all

right, you boys have had quite a shock. Try being a cop sometime,
you get this every

day.”

“No
thanks, ” said Cormic, thinking he probably wouldn’t be

able to
smoke dope if he was a cop.

Mcguire
stared out the window

at the small town of Shrewsbury, Massachusetts.
On the main street people slowly went

about their day. Depositing
money in the bank, buying groceries or having the

breakfast special
at Lucy’s One and Only Cafe. Everyone, Mcguire realized, but

Glenn.
He stubbed out his cigarette. Sheriff Tolland once more addressed

the
two.

“Now,
I know its hard, but I need to get an official account,

for the
records. Can you tell me what exactly happened, when you got there?”
He

pushed play on the small cheap tape recorder which had taken the
place of his

front-desk sergeant after the first wave of budget cuts
had hit the state.

“Well,”
Cormic began, “We showed up late,a bit after 7:30, and he was
cutting away

at a tree with the chainsaw, you know, clearing it away
from phone lines.”

“And
I came up to him, and yelled his name.” Mcguire said. “That’s
when he fell,

and.. and..”

“Glenn
had done this work before?” Tolland asked.

“Yeah,
we do it all the time, very routine.” Cormic replied.

“Tell
me exactly, if you can , the procedure for clearing trees.”

“Well,
I mean its all pretty normal, nothing to it really. You know,
chainsaw work.

Wear protective gloves, heavy boots, ear plugs..”
Tolland interrupted.

“He
was wearing ear plugs and running a chainsaw, did he hear you?”
Mcguire thought

for a moment.

”
He looked up at me, but I didn’t think he could

hear me, then he just
sort of…”

“Ran
off the tree.” Cormic

finished.

“Ran?”
Tolland asked, looking skeptically at

Cormic.

“Ran,
slipped, fell. Yeah.” said Cormic.

“You
said ran, though, first impressions are important. Why did he fall?”
The two

young men exchanged glances.

“Well,
he kind of did run to us, or our

direction.”

“I
thought he wanted to, you know, kind of show us

something.”
Mcguire said, casting another glance out the window.

“What?
Show you what?” Tolland inquired.

“I
don’t know. Nothing, I

guess, he just fell and..” The image of
the flying guts and skin came back suddenly to

McGuire, he could
smell the oil of the chainsaw mixed with the steaming flesh.

He
shivered, feeling the bile rise in his throat.

“Now,
think clearly,

did he say anything?” Mcguire turned his gaze
from the window back to the sheriff,

thinking hard.

“I
think, think he said, ‘Mother’…” Tolland etched

the word into
his scratch pad. This accident report was going nowhere.

“Isn’t
that what they’re all supposed to say when they go..”

muttered
Cormic.

“Only
in war, Cormic, only in war. ” The sheriff said,

smiling sadly
at the two shaken men.

“But
maybe in an accident too,

maybe in an accident too..” he added,
pondering. There was a silence as each was

caught up in their own
thoughts. The sheriff flicked his eyes from face to face. There

was
nothing more to learn. What can one learn from an accident but to
take more

care? He sighed, remembering poor Glenn. He’d last seen
him, when… two months ago?

When that big rig had hit a tree,
blocked the road. A very nice guy, married to that

slender Nancy. He
felt himself age years knowing he’d have to tell her the news, if

she
hadn’t found out already. Small towns had their own back avenues

of
communication. Turning back to Cormic and Mcguire, he cleared his
throat and

stopped the tape-recorder.

“Now
go on home, take a few days off, rest and

relax, deal with this as
best as you can. Thanks a lot for your help. If you ever

need
anything, just stop on by. Now go on, get out of here.”

Cormic and Mcguire shuffled slowly out, leaving the sheriff to fill
out his

reports. The two of them stood looking at each other across
the roof of their

rallycar, depressed and upset. The whole morning
had been a drain.

“Hey
man,” said Mcguire, ” You got any good weed on you?”

“Sure
I do,

sure I do Mcguire. Looks like we’ll both need it, huh?”
They got into their car and

drove off.

The
sheriff watched the road rally sports rabbit turn

a corner and
disappear. Accidents take their toll, he said to himself, they do
take

their toll.

“Mother,”
he whispered, reading his note on the

scratchpad, turning back to the
report.

STYLE="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 150%">

Shrewsbury
was

a normal town, in some ways, spread out in front of him, basking
in the early

afternoon sun. Get it while you can, he thought, before
Mr. Winter comes. Peter walked

down the main street, a couple hundred
feet of bank, local grocery store, rural feed

and hay, the lone
diner and out of business antique stores. It was a little

after
three, the hour he was supposed to meet Jack at the bar. Not that he
had

necessarily wanted to awake, but the alarm would not be silent.
He had kept swatting

at the grating machine as if it were an annoying
sheep constantly wanting more grain.

Anyway, he hadn’t seen Jack as
of recent. One can only hole up in books for so long.

This
place is in a constant state of disrepair, he noticed, looking at

the
town’s potholed mainstreet and dilapidated store signs. Hardly anyone
ever

came through here, since it was mostly an off the road town,
with its population of

small town eccentrics, the odd novelist or two
who had retreated here after publishing

a couple of novels, and of
course, its one struggling graduate student. The only two

real points
of interest were the bare bones of the viking settlement, a

little
north of town, and the big old railway depot.

Once, in the

1860’s, during the civil war, it had been a major
northern troop transfer point, and

the large railroad station at one
end of the town had been built up as quickly as it

had left. Now it
sat alone, a large empty monument to silence. Every couple of

years
the town council tried to drum up support to turn it into

a
mini?shopping complex, and every year a entrepreneurial,
youthful

go?getter moved on in, only to age quickly in the next
couple months, abandoning

their dreams and moving on, or lingering,
stuck in the morass that was the towns

sluggish economy. But it was
the reminates of the old viking settlement a few miles

west of the
town on the coast which attracted Peter, had brought him here

to
Shrewsberry in the first place. It was his hope that by being close
to this near

nonexistent sight of a depression where a cabin may have
stood, of a scrap of metal

that was perhaps a nail, and other, even
less exhilarating evidence of Viking

colonization, that this
proximity would lend to an atmosphere which was congenial, if

not
downright helpful, to his thesis. There was a theory he held which
put

geography as an important factor to history. Still, Peter
sighed, why couldn’t the

vikings have chosen to land in Pittsburg or
someplace more lively. The town was

already, after four months,
sucking him into its backward tow, eating itself up and

him with it.
If only he wasn’t so dependent on his work to give his life

its
meaning, he would have split long ago.

He
trudged heavily up

to Hanks Bar, feeling like he really needed that
beer. Mr.Gresham, whom he sometimes

noticed at Lucy’s One and Only
Diner, was sitting on the bench in front of the door,

next to Harrys’
feed and garden supply store. He looked like he was waiting

for
someone, like he had been waiting a long, long time.

“Hi,
Mr. Gresham,” Peter said, walking up the decaying wooden stairs.
“Waiting for

someone?” Gresham looked at him, frowning. He
still wore his green marines jacket from

the war. Peter had no idea
what any of the myriad medals and decorations were for, but

they
always attracted him. Gresham didn’t say anything, looking down at
his

scuffed old combat boots.

“Hey,
can I buy you a drink,” Peter

said, suddenly feeling responsible
for the old man’s lack of loquaciousness. He knew

he was a putz in
that way, but he just couldn’t bear to be confronted with

someone
that exuded such an air of dead hopelessness. It just made him think
of

himself. Gresham looked up and cleared his throat.

“I
don’t

drink,” he said, his small, deepset eyes peering out from
his weathered face.

“Well,
how about a coffee then,” Peter said, trying to gather up

a
shred of self respect. That’s right, he told himself, if it doesn’t
work, force

it on through. Gresham looked up, actually, Peter
imagined, cracking a small smile of

feeling.

“Well…I
suppose a cup wouldn’t hurt me, ” he said.

“Come
on in, then,” Peter said. “Drinks are on me!”

He
pushed open the door into the dark bar, smelling of

beer?soaked
wood. Hank was tending as usual. Peter and Gresham sat down at

the
counter, the same counter that Peter had been visiting almost daily
now for the

last month or so.

“A
beer, Hank, and a coffee for Mr. Gresham. ”

“Black?”

“Black
as the night,” Gresham replied,

looking around the dimly lit
room. He gave a curt nod to Sheriff Tolland, who was

using the
payphone in the back.

“Seasons
up again, Paul,” the sheriff

said, covering the phone with his
hand momentarily before turning back to his ghostly

conversation,
staring at the beeper in his hand.

Hank
placed the drinks

on the bar and moved back to his cash register
where he resumed reading his paperback.

Gresham grunted and picked up
his coffee. Peter watched the man drink, wondering if

maybe he
shouldn’t have sat down with him today. He certainly didn’t seem to
want

to talk to anyone. Peter pointed to Greshams’ medals.

“You
fought in

the war?”, he said, feeling embarrassed at being such
an unskilled conversationalist

that he had to rely on tactless,
forward blurtings. The two of them had had

conversations before,
though always avoiding the subject of the man’s past. Peter

wasn’t
sure why he had babbled out that question. It’s a sign, he realized,
I’ve

spent to many days without leaving the house lately. Gresham was
obviously taken aback

at the bluntness of the question. People
usually talked their way around such things.

Still, Peter could see
he appreciated some of the honesty. Gresham harrumphed,

turning
silently away for a moment, then looked straight up into Peters

face.

“My
eyes have seen things out there in the jungle you don’t

even know
about” the vet said, drinking from his steaming cup of coffee,
steam

vapors blurring his features.

“I
wouldn’t want to see what you

refer to anyway, Mr. Gresham, I
wouldn’t want to know either.”

“I
hope you never have to, not at all, seen enough youth go down as it
is, back

then. Even now, todays cities, they’re as bad as the
jungles. Just no mines that’s

all, no hidden mines.” He leaned
closer to Peter, looking at him from under heavy,

worn eyebrows, “I
just don’t want to be invalidated, you know, forgotten. Used to

be
all these movies I’d go see, all these movies attempting somehow to
bring that

whole mess to some sort of resolution, and they were
getting close. Sure they’re

movies an all, but some of them were
working, hell I knew some guys were helping with

the scripts, we were
trying to work our own way out of it. We were in there, and now

we
want out, we want out, but we just don’t want to be plain forgotten,
that’s

all, don’t want our deeds gone to waste.” The older man
leaned back, sipping again at

his coffee, his eyes glancing out the
window and around the bar. Peter followed his

gaze and then brought
it back to Greshams face. It was worn, tired, ready to give up

the
fight. There were tics and movements of the muscles, as if old faces
were

trying to push their way up to the surface. Peter sipped his
beer slowly. He knew

about the power of history. The old viking ruins
kept him in a constant state of

unknowing, and all he had were a few
rusty nails and rotted wooden beams to tie him to

the past. He had
worked for almost four years on one runic inscription, carved

a
thousand years ago, created in ten minutes by an ancient, unknown
human being…

it was enough to drive him crazy. Reconstructing one
word per year, a hopeless battle

against the power of the past. It
was different than war, though, especially in

Vietnam… or had
Gresham been in Korea? Peter couldn’t remember. That was when

ones
own past was becoming lost… Gresham slid his cup away from him and
stood up,

nodding to the sheriff, throwing some change on the counter
top, stopping Peters

objections with a glance.

“Well,
gotta get back to the shack.”

Peter
swiveled on his stool. Gresham looked down at the floor for a

minute,
as if indecisive, and then looked up, clearing his throat.

“I’m,
uh, going hunting this weekend if you’d like. Deer seasons up again.”
He

lifted his eyebrows at Peter.

“I’ve
never been hunting,” Peter

replied. Gresham snorted.

“Well,
I’ve got more than a couple guns lying

around. Come up afternoonish,
if you want. Saturday.” He stood around for a second

more, then
abruptly turned with a backward wave and shuffled out the door.

The
bells hanging from the jamb continued to ring behind him, and Peter
turned back

into his beer, wondering where in the hell Jack was,
thinking about

guns.