Author: mad reaper

Hope all had a lovely holiday weekend. Too frigging hot, for my likin’. Deeper into Chap. 3, here. Again, all previous warnings regarding quality and brevity content apply… and this one’s a long one.

Here we go:

Will stepped out of the bank feeling as if he were walking away from  probation hearing. He came in bedraggled, overwhelmed and ambiguous about his future. His arrival was met with cool professionalism mixed with a dash of skepticism. This sort of reception he found understandable, considering the condition of his pants and shoes. Though the first client through the door, he still had to take a seat and wait. Several minutes passed before he was led to an office. A man in a suit greeted him with a handshake and he was offered another seat. The paperwork he provided was reviewed, prompting several personal questions that compelled honest answers. His current state in life was examined with a necessary degree of scrutiny. More questions, this time focused on his future and his plans for it. Then, waiting as a new file was put together. More paper and ink. Will finally excused with another handshake and the agreement he would be reporting back, at least for the near future, on a regular basis. It had taken about an hour. All cool, calm and professional. He departed resolved to adhere to and fulfill the conditions and terms that had landed him here.

As he moved down the steps to the sidewalk, he put his sunglasses back on. Wouldn’t want to be recognized coming out of a place like that. Venlo was in full mid-morning swing. There were people on the sidewalk, cars on the street. The sun was well up and Will shed his jacket as he crossed the square to his truck. The warmth on his back was magnificent. The wave of warm air that hit his face when he opened the cab was a delight. Time in the sun had revived that “new car smell.” The seat wasn’t too hot to sit on, but those days were coming.

If nothing else, Spring was a great time to be in Limburg County.

The familiarity was a stunner. Even the bell over the door was the same, and the jangle it made when Will stepped into Blom’s triggered a deluge of memories. His senses fell into step with them. The smell, the concrete floor, even the fluorescent lighting put him right back at his grandfather’s hip. The town, the diner, the park, even the bank were all places he’d been scores of times, but Blom’s was different, almost magical. It was always the same, but ever changing. The stock reflected the seasons. Now, with the onset of Spring, the front of the store was piled with stacks of fertilizer, potting soil, seeds of every kind, flower or vegetable, ranging anywhere from twenty-pound bags to individual packets. Gas and charcoal grills were on display, as well as lawn mowers, hedge clippers and lawn and garden tools. There was even a part of the floor reserved for the fishing season. It was in the process of being stocked with rods, reels and tackle. As Will grew into his teens, he came to find this display an absurdity, as there wasn’t anything that could be considered more than a pond or sinkhole anywhere in the county. “Anybody tossing a line into the Wahpekute,” his mother had told him, “should be on the lookout for the men in white jackets. Anybody who’d eat a fish out of that cesspool is either suicidal or flat-out crazy.”

Will believed if there was anybody familiar with what qualified a person for admission to a psychiatric unit, it was certainly his mother.

A trip into town for groceries or a stop at the drugstore were routine errands, but a stop at Blom’s was usually tied to an event. His first baseball bat had been purchased here. Odd as it first seemed to Will, you could even buy a dozen live chicks—order on Monday and pick up on Friday– which his grandmother did around this time of year for as long as he could remember, replacing those unfortunate hens that had ended up on the table over the Winter. All the eggs collected at the farm were destined for the frying pan or a cake.

Year-round items, like tools, work clothing and other dull and boring necessities were located toward the rear. This was an area Will avoided whenever possible. There would be no avoiding it today. He chanced a broader view, looking beyond the displays dominating the entrance, trying to remember where the checkout stood. When he finally found it, he instantly chided himself for having had to search at all.

The strangely placed cashier station stood thirty feet off-center from the door, and almost that distance back from the panel of windows that fronted the building. It was a four-foot tall, three-sided booth that faced the entrance at an angle. If it weren’t for the cash register at one corner, a telephone at the other, if the surrounding merchandise could be ignored or hidden behind a curtain, it would have passed for a pulpit. The wash of relief he felt at seeing the spot unoccupied was not an unexpected sensation.

Every place Will had been this morning was familiar, but the people were not. An unfamiliar face in a town like Venlo was a guaranteed cause for attention. It could be conversation fodder for a week.

“Say, Jim, who’s that guy was in Durkin’s yesterday? Bought about twenty gallons of distilled water. Nearly cleaned out the store. He was driving a blue Cutlass.”

“Same guy was up to Blom’s. Asking for the same thing. Wearing a yellow shirt?”

“Yeah. He from Maastricht?”

“Don’t think so. Probably could get all the distilled water a man would ever need right there.”

“What’s he need it for?”

“Couldn’t tell you, never asked him.”

“Think he was from So-Dak?”

“Nope. Had Minnesota plates.”

Will had overheard countless exchanges, from sharing the excitement and mystery as a young boy, to adolescent contempt at the squawking of rubes.

“Yeah, well, any stranger shows up in Venlo, either theyr’re lost or runnin’ from the law.”

Running from something…

Will knew coming in here it was almost certain he’d encounter at least one familiar face. It was one thing to slip in and slip out of town, leaving nothing behind but coffee shop jabber. But, to show up suddenly with a past connection, rekindling a legacy long thought dead, and one so deeply rooted in the local culture, every move he’d make would be done under a magnifying glass as big as the county.

Will was snapped back into the present by the sudden appearance of a kid, a Native American boy about high school age. Will had been so lost in the surroundings he didn’t notice where the kid had come from, or how he’d gotten so close without his being aware of it. He just heard a sharp “Hi,” and there he was, just off to the side of him and no more than three feet away. He couldn’t help being startled. Before he could collect himself, the boy asked, “Can I help you?”

Before Will could answer, the boy twisted at the hips and shouted toward the back of the store, “Uncle Loren!” The kid turned back to face Will. “He’ll be here in just a second.” Another twist at the hips, and another call to “Uncle Loren.” He turned back to Will, an odd smile on is face.

Will couldn’t help but smile back, but the closed-lipped grin he presented felt no less odd than the one he faced. There was something about the kid, a scarcely contained jitteriness crawling beneath his skin like static electricity. Looking at him seemed to fuel it. As they stood there, facing each other, the boy started to rock ever so slightly, as if fighting the urge to dash off in whatever direction he was leaning. He boy kept flicking his head, scarcely tossing his shoulder length, poker straight and jet-black hair away from his face. The Mona Lisa smile never changed, but his eyes wandered, moving around Will, but never focusing directly on him.

Will didn’t quite know where to look either, until he noticed the knife dangling from the young man’s hip. The fringed, beaded buckskin sheath was at least six inches long. The haft was antler, thick, like from an elk or a mule deer. The corona of the horn served as a handguard. The rest of the handle rose from the scabbard in a curve, topped by a flared cap of silver. The kid’s hands were clamped on his skinny hips, and the handle was resting in the crook of the boy’s right wrist. Will had no problem keeping his eyes locked on that.

“Jared.” The voice, not loud but no less commanding, allowed Will to pry his gaze away from the weapon. He looked up to see a man exiting an aisle and coming toward them. Like the boy, he was Native American, but that’s where any resemblance started and stopped. The kid was all gangly adolescence, carrying a lot less meat on a frame than could accommodate another thirty pounds. What there was of him was lost in the drapery of “skater boy” attire; baggy jeans, an overlarge logo T-shirt and a ragged denim vest. While the boy appeared to be a clothes hanger with a head and feet—and an impressive pig-sticker—the man approaching filled every bit of his clothing. It was not a bodybuilder’s physique, all bulges and ripples, but a college wrestler’s; taut, compact, squeezed into a package a quarter size smaller than it should take to contain it. His hair was styled for running a boot camp. As Will saw it, swapping the shop apron he wore for a uniform with stripes his sleeves wouldn’t alter the impression he made. His eyes were on Will, but he approached the boy first.

“Jared,” he repeated, putting a hand on a bony shoulder and turning the boy to face him. “We need to get those pallets unloaded. They’re parked right in front of where all that stuff needs to be stacked. Just pile it up, nice and neat, and inside the markings on the floor. Just like we’ve done a hundred times.” He maneuvered the boy another quarter turn and set him loose with a light slap on the back. As the boy trotted off toward the back of the store, the man called after him, “Boxcutter, Jared. We’ve talked about this. Use the boxcutter.” Will had noticed when the boy was hurrying away, he’d been reaching for the knife. When the kid turned the corner, Will’s eyes drifted back to the guy in the shop apron.

“My nephew,” the man told him. “He’s got FAS, thanks to my sister.” Will nodded his understanding. The man’s expression was amicable, but the hint of reproof was hard to miss.

“He’s harmless, but all people see is the knife.”

Will couldn’t help responding with, “It’s hard to miss.” He was answered with a smile almost identical to the one he’d seen scarcely a minute before.

“It was his grandfather’s.” The smile returned for another moment, then was replaced with, “What can I do for you?”

Will threw a glance toward the counter. Still unoccupied. He allowed himself to think Fate may have thrown him a bone. Bernie’s gone. Retired. Moved to Florida. Died in his sleep. Buried. He was free to fly under the rural radar long enough that he could make his presence known at a time he was in control of the mans and the terms. He looked back. The expression he met was all “customer service.”

“I’m starting a renovation,” he said, “and just found out I’m stuck doing the demolition on my own. All I’ve got right now is my bare hands, and I figured that would make things tougher than I want it to be.”

Uncle Loren told Will was told to grab a cart, and then directed him to follow him with a wave of his hand. The first stop was a display of hammers, scores of them. Will couldn’t even imagine what at least half of them could have been purposed for. “Everything but breakfast, lunch and dinner.” His grandfather’s words popped out before he even knew he was talking.

After a quizzical look from Loren, he was asked, “Are you knocking down a barn, or working on a house?”

“House.”

“Just demolition?
“For now. Just ripping out walls and tearing down counters and cabinets.”

“Are the walls sheet rock or plaster?”

“Plaster and lathe.”

Loren nodded. “My sympathies.” He reached into row of sledgehammers. He pulled out a splitting maul and handed it to Will. Eight pounds. Heavy enough to knock stuff loose, but not so heavy it’ll yank you into the next room of you swing too hard or hit a soft spot.”

Will tapped the wedge side of the head. “Am I going to need this?”

Loren shrugged. “Maybe from time to time. Hit a stubborn section or something. But, trust me, there’s a time coming that your going to want to use it, needed or not.”

Will was directed to add a carpenter’s hammer, a hand maul, a nail ripper and a couple prybars. He was turned loose with a roster of suggestions, and where he could find it. “Need anything or have any more questions, give a holler.”

Will wandered the back of the store, pushing his cart. Alone, he took his time, adding the items recommended, and others he believed would come in handy in his unusual situation. He heard the bell over the door jangle a few times, could hear a few voices, picking out Loren’s, and even thought he could hear the boy, hacking away as he freed up shrink-wrapped merchandise. He didn’t encounter another person as he meandered among the rows of tools, relishing the peace to be found simple tasks performed for simple purpose. Therapy.

Once more I qualify this latest product: Early draft, early draft, early draft. Raw and quite possibly rife with typos and moments of “huh?”  I’ll say no more… other than comments/criticism not only welcome, but solicited. Dive in.

Will’s plan had been to nurse his breakfast for as long as he could to cut down the time he’d have to wait for the bank to open. This idea was abandoned the instant the waitress turned her back. Though he’d lost his appetite, he knew he needed the food. He attacked the sprawling meal that contested the limits of the plate. He shoveled forkful after forkful into his mouth, only sipping enough coffee to propel the food down his throat when his mouth got too dry to swallow. When the waitress showed up for a refill he waved her away, and hoped his bulging cheeks would discourage any attempt at conversation. It appeared to have worked, and when she finally came by with the check, barely a quarter of the food that was delivered remained on the plate. Making a show of chewing, he gave a nod and jammed a piece of toast between his teeth. She didn’t linger. He dropped the fork in relief and bolted the last tepid dregs from the cup. After a few deep breaths, he tucked the check and a twenty-dollar bill—an almost one hundred per cent tip– under the edge of the plate. He wasn’t going to risk a clean getaway by getting hung up at the cash register.

Will slid out of the booth and directly into a brisk walk toward the door. He caught the waitress in the periphery of his vision, taking an order at a center table. As she turned toward him, he waved. “Thanks, gotta run. It’s all on the table.” He was at the door just as somebody coming in pulled it open. With a cheery, “Muchas gracias!” he slipped through. Pulling out his shades, he took a hard right, opposite the direction of both his truck and the bank, and slipped the sunglasses on. He didn’t drop his pace until he was well past the windows of the diner.

Now what . . . ? It would be an hour before the bank doors were open. Will kept walking, toward the end of town, which meant a familiar park, and just beyond that, the Wahpekute River, the border between the “real world and home.”

He crossed the last street, and continued through a wrought iron arch. He followed a flagstone path that branched off in several directions. Unlike the vegetation of his property, the grass here was short. Though still matted from months of snow cover, it was almost solidly green. It would soon be standing straight and in need of a mowing. Will left the path and made for a cement bench just a few yards short of the riverbank.

Will was uneasy. He tried to focus on the band of brown water than moved past. The river was high, almost flush with the bank. On the opposite side, trees and brush stood rows deep in the water, the eddies and ripples around them were the only evidence the water was moving. The view had no calming effect. In his head, the question of his presence here was again begged. What there was for an answer followed, but he still couldn’t find any sense in it.

He was in the long past domain of his mother, but it was his father that had put him here, in the present. Will didn’t even know he owned the goddamn house until three days after the funeral. He heard it from the lawyer—his father’s lawyer—during the execution of the estate and the final disposition of the will. After the preamble and its declaration regarding the soundness of his father’s mind, there was a brief summary of the estate—“high six or low seven figures, depending what day it is…” he was told. He couldn’t ignore the low chuckle when the attorney added. “If he’d lived another year or two, we might well be talking high seven or low eight.” Will hadn’t shared the man’s amusement and killed it with a cold stare. The lawyer sobered, then said, “Your father spent a great deal of time in his final months focused on making this a seamless and simple process.” He paused a moment, as if waiting for a show of appreciation. After a moment, Will nodded, then let what came next flow past his ears as if he were a dog with its head sticking out a car window. The only concern he’d had was how his son was going to come out in this. As it turned out, a good deal of that time spent during those “final months” had been focused on Kurt. The young man had a good head on his shoulders, but no matter how even keeled a twenty-two-year-old might be, adding more than a handful of zeroes to his bank account could put him on the fast track to rehab, prison or a morgue. But, the old man was nothing if not controlling. He’d put enough stipulations on his grandson’s new money that the kid could cash in for a free PhD if he wanted one, but wouldn’t be able to party any harder than a sales clerk for the next eighteen years. As for the rest of it, Will didn’t give a shit. If he’d learned anything in his life, it was that having this kind of money bought nothing short of bondage. It owned you.

The attorney’s droning finally came to an end. Will allowed some life to come back into his expression. The final question he’d been asked was whether he was going to allow the people who’d been managing his father’s money to keep their jobs, or if he had plans to manage it by other means.

Will shrugged. “Leave it where it’s at,” he said. He sat up straighter in his chair and added, “For now, anyway.” He figured he’d need a few weeks to settle down before he decided whether to give it all away, buy an island, or reserve himself a seat on the first manned flight to Mars. Decisions, decisions…

“I’d support that as your best choice,” the attorney commended. Will’s agreement was a shrug. He sleepwalked his way through half a dozen signatures, then sat back and waited for a signal it was time for him to leave. He waited impatiently as the lawyer sent for a secretary to make copies. The first thing he was going to do was make his old man buy him a beer. The lawyer wasn’t through with him quite yet.

“There’s just one more thing,” he told Will. He put a large manila envelope on the desk. “I have some documentation here regarding the house.”

Will looked away from him. “I don’t want anything to do with his fucking house.”

“Oh no,” the attorney said, sounding a little confused. “His residence was sold months ago. Those proceeds were included in the estate.”

Will was forced to face back across the desk. He was more confused than the lawyer. He shook his head and shrugged. His father’s attorney pushed a manila envelope toward him. “Your grandparent’s house,” he said, as if it explained everything. It did not. Will looked down at the envelope, but didn’t touch it. “The only instructions I’d been given regarding this issue was that I remind you of it.”

Still looking at the envelope, Will said, “Remind me? I don’t get it.” It was all he could muster.

He heard the lawyer swallow, but it was almost a minute before he spoke: “It’s… yours. It has been, essentially, since your grandfather’s death.” There was a heavy pause. Will’s eyes darted around the room, he didn’t dare let them focus on any single object. From a thousand miles away, he heard, “You didn’t—”

“Son of a bitch,” he interrupted the distant voice. It felt like a shout, but it came out as a sharp hiss. He found a place to focus his vision, locking his gaze on the attorney. “No. I didn’t know. That son of a bitch never told me.” Will sank back in his chair. He realized he was breathing in way that was causing his entire body to shudder. “That son of a bitch,” he whispered through a ragged exhale. It took him a few minutes to get his breathing—and his brain—back under control. The lawyer sat in silence with a knuckle between his teeth.

Somewhat composed, Will stretched an arm. His hand hovered over the envelope. “It’s all in here?” he asked. The lawyer came back to attention. “All the property details, title, tax records, all of it? Everything?”

The lawyer nodded. “Yes–” He was about to say more, but Will waved the hand in his face and picked up the envelope. He turned without a word and made for the office door.

“Mr. Holliday,” he heard behind him, “the rest of your documents…”

“You’ve got my address,” Will said over his shoulder, and was out.

+   +   +

          Will was fourteen when his grandfather died. He had no reason to believe anything had been bequeathed to him. His grandmother had told him to take anything he wanted of his grandfather’s right after the funeral. Will had been so crushed by his passing that he couldn’t take anything as simple as even a watch or one of his service medals. The time he’d spent with her after that she’d never informed him that he was the actual owner of the farm. Why would she? It was only contingent upon her own death, after all, and Nan would never include as crass a subject as possessions or property when dying was the issue. Such a thing wasn’t discussed.

After leaving the lawyer’s office, Will had scoured the contents of his envelope. The will was simple.

We, Martin Oskar and Anna Willemina Rijsbergen, bequeath all assets, including all properties, monies and possessions without exception, to Willem Martin Holliday (grandson), immediately and forthwith upon contingency of our deaths or debilitation.

That was it. It was signed by both, dated over two years before his grandfather had actually died. His mother was gone almost three years after her father. There’d been no mention of her in the will, or in any of the paperwork included. Neither had there been any mention of his father, though his signatures were all over the documents associated with the execution of the will. All of this had been taken care of in Minneapolis. The witness’s signatures were there as well. It was not the attorney Will had met with, but it was the same firm. Will’s name was on the paperwork as well, just beside his father’s. He hadn’t contributed a drop of ink to the papers. There was an added document, stapled to the will and dated five days after his grandmother’s death. It was a bank statement.

The last bearer of the once affluent and influential, admired and envied Rijsbergen name  ended its history in Limburg County with a little more than six thousand dollars in the bank. Over half of that amount was lost to funeral expenses. An antithesis of his father, had Anna Rijsbergen made it a year or two longer, she would have died flat broke.

What remained was added as a trust fund in Will’s name, collectible upon reaching his age of majority. That hadn’t happened, but there was a record of its addition as a drop in the bucket to the obscene volume of his father’s legacy, and not applied until the very day of his father’s own demise. There was no question this had been planned well in advance– years.

+   +   +

Fucker. Will spat, attempting to add his own drop to the flow of the Wahpekute. His effort fell far short. Regardless of the complexity and distance of their relationship, Will could never claim the father did not know his son well. If Will had known of this at fourteen, he would have been insistent on preserving the place just as he’d always known it. He may even have been goofy enough in his pubescence to have insisted on living there. At eighteen, he’d have sold the place without a second thought. Not for the money, but as a means of deleting half of his past. The agonies of life with mom were still sutured fast in his gut. He was desperate to rid himself of it in any way he could. But now, with the years passed and the last tangible string of family history snapped, there was no way he could let the place go without having at least one final, long and hard look at it. His father knew this. Whatever agenda he had that directed his actions, his father had at last held a hoop he could force Will to jump through. Whatever intention lay behind it, Will knew it was neither sinister or spiteful, but it wasn’t gracious or benign, either. And all that would have mattered to his father was that it would work.

Thus, Will was sitting on a bench in Riverside Park, in Venlo, Limburg County, Minnesota. Both halves of his messy past were now fused together in one messy whole, despite his best and lifelong efforts to prevent it. Now he had to decide what kind of future he was supposed to make of it.

“Fucker,” he repeated, this time out loud. With that epithet firmly in mind, he suddenly thought of a person he could apply it to directly. He pulled out his phone and rang up the contractor. When the ringing stopped, he kept his ear to the phone long enough to be sure it was a live voice at the other end. “Hey! Will Holliday here,” he barked. He gave it an instant to sink in, and lingered a few seconds to allow the man to formulate some kind of excuse. As soon as he heard a voice again, he said, “You’re fired.” He hit “end call” with his thumb. He looked at the phone. He’d expected to gain some modicum of satisfaction from the call, but had not. He caught note of the time before the screen went black, surprised at how long he’d been sitting there. If he paced himself just right, he would be at the doors of the bank right when they opened.

 

 

As previously warned, 90% of what follows is pure first draft. Maybe a little or a lot bloated or awkward.

+ + +

Will pulled out of his driveway and turned east, straight into the rising sun. He felt a flash of happiness. He’d at least made one decision that had shown an immediate, practical use. His overpriced shades cut the glare beautifully. He drove well below the speed limit, appraising the open land on either side of the road. On the left were endless rows of stubble, left over stumps of last years crops, short, dead stalks of corn or sunflowers. There were scattered patches of grey, melting snow. With a cloudless sky overhead, Will knew they would be gone by the afternoon. To the right was a different story. A carpet of flattened brown grass, dotted with young, leafless trees, interspersed with lower, spindly branched bushes he presumed to be sumac. It was an odd contrast to the regimented acreage on the other side of the road. It was when he came to the end of this fallow stretch of agricultural neglect, almost a mile past the driveway, that he realized it was his own land he’d been looking at, gone the way the rest of the property had over the last twenty years. The joy his sunglasses had become fleeting. What, he asked himself for what had to be the dozenth time in the last twenty-four hours, am I doing out here.

Halfway to the intersection that could have either taken him to Maastricht or the Twin Cities, Will turned right on the only paved road between that point and his driveway. It led to Venlo, Limburg County’s “second city.” It was the town that his great granduncle had essentially built, putting to use his skills as a mason, and the place where his grandmother grew up. As a child, Will had always delighted in a trip to Venlo, especially with his grandfather. When he passed the stack of grain elevators he could almost feel the tingle of anticipation that had always come with moving by those pillars of concrete. Whatever errand had brought them into town meant he’d be getting an ice cream, and going home with some silly little toy bought at the five and dime next to the drugstore.

Just past the elevators and to the right was a transit feedlot. What little livestock that had been raised for market in the area had been brought there before being trucked off for slaughter. Will used to hate the lot, its maze of pens and livestock chutes, the rows of barbed wire and raw wooden fencing, the reek of shit, bovine, porcine and ovine. He especially hated it at night with its sick glow of amber HPS lights, made fuzzy by the rising vapor of animal body heat, breath, and fresh urine fogging the chill night air. A terminus of imminent slaughter, it exuded an all too palpable Treblinka vibe.

With only a dirt road as a buffer from the feedlot, there was the trailer park. “If I lived in that,” his mother once remarked, “I’d cross the road, hop a fence and just wait my turn.”

The feedlot was gone, Will noticed, now just a big patch of weeds and wireless utility poles. The trailer park, however, appeared to have tripled in size.

A bit farther and on the left was long wooden building with a gravel parking lot. A sign on the steel roof said: “Blom’s—Farm, Fleet and Feed” His grandparents went to Blom’s at least once a week. “If you need it, Blom’s has got it,” his Grandfather would say, “About all Bertie doesn’t have is breakfast, lunch and dinner.” Will needed to stop there as well, but breakfast was the first thing on the agenda.

With a sign declaring the speed limit was now thirty miles and hour, he entered the town “proper”. Another sign confirmed it: “Venlo, pop. 1230.” The trailer park may have burgeoned since his last visit, but the residential numbers had not. If his memory was sound, the last time he’d been here it had been home to over two thousand people.

The town had come into shape after the first wave of settlers had become securely established. With few roads and the land beginning to deliver on its potential, traveling to Maastricht, centered in the Dutch enclave, for market and resupply was not just a hardship, but an expenditure of time and energy best spent in the field. It was costing the farmer at both ends. Venlo became the commercial and social hub for the western third and southern fringe of the county, and the Rijsbergens put a hard stamp on it. Though not one of the original three brothers who’d settled held any political office or elected position, the affluence that set them apart from their immigrant peers put them in a position to call the shots with little resistance or complaint. If allowed have their way, their money would be used to the benefit of all. They shrewdly financed the construction of the first church and the first bank. They became full partners and provided the building and the seed money for the first mercantile. With the subsequent arrival of peripheral business and services and the sense of permanence becoming reality, the youngest brother arrived in time to place the first bricks.

Venlo was the utter cliché´ of quaint. Sidewalks lined both sides of Main, ornate lampposts stood on every corner, bearing flower baskets in Summer and stars, wreaths and bells when the snow was on the ground. Main street traveled the length of the town, which ran all of eight blocks, entirely fronted by businesses. The residential was tucked behind them on either side. The middle four blocks were set back, making room for a central square featuring a three tiered fountain. Will could never leave town without tossing a penny into it, always aiming for the top basin.

Will’s truck was the only vehicle moving on the street. As far as he could tell, nothing had changed, though he hadn’t spared it much scrutiny. As he entered the square from the north, he turned right, moved another half block and parked. His destination, the diner, was at the other end of the square. There were several vehicles parked directly in front of it. Will appraised this with mixed feelings. One was relief that it indicated the place was open, the other was anxiety as he was certain his presence would be anything but inconspicuous. He glanced back at his truck before crossing the street. Good move, he told himself. Pulling up with a truck with less than a thousand miles on it wasn’t a means of remaining inconspicuous in a town like this. Neither was walking in with Rockstar shades. He tipped them above his forehead, thought a moment, then folded them up and tucked them inside his jacket.

The diner held not even a quarter of what appeared to be its capacity, but when Will stepped through the door, every eye in the restaurant was on him. Even the three guys at the counter, who had to twist themselves into corkscrews to face the door. With plenty of places open, Will didn’t wait to be seated and strode directly to the last open booth of half the dozen that lined the front window. He knew every step he’d taken had been watched. He could feel it. He swung himself in the deepest corner of the diner, and squeezed in even deeper.

Will stared through the window, across the square to the opposite corner from the diner, at the three-story brick building that took up half of the block. The bank. A glance at his watch told him he had just over an hour and a half to kill before it opened. He’d cut himself off from view so effectively that, when the waitress showed up, it seemed she’d just materialized out thin air.

“Coffee?”

Will, trying not to appear startled, said, “Please.”

The cup was on the table before he could finish the word and she was pouring before he’d gotten his mouth closed.

“Cream? Sugar?”

“No . . . thanks.”
His cup was full and there was a menu on the table. Before he could tell her he already knew what he wanted, she was gone. Well, then… He picked up the menu. There were a lot of minutes to kill, and perusing a menu should be good for a few.

The cause of the woman’s abruptness became clear as he studied the folder. The bell above the door had been ringing steadily. It appeared he beat the morning rush. He was grateful for that. He’d also apparently hidden himself effectively, because a couple of times a few people had showed up at the booth ready to sit, only to express surprise it had been taken. He only offered a weak smile as means of apology as they scuttled away for find another spot to eat. When the waitress appeared again, he was ready.

“Number three.” He slid the menu to the edge of the table.

“Eggs?”

“Over easy.”

“Hashbrowns or American fries?”

“Hashbrowns.” He saved her a question and added, “Bacon.”

“Toast or a—”

“Have you got rye?”

Her eyes never left the pad. “Pumpernickel”

“Perfect,” he told her.

She snatched up the menu and was gone, but an instant later was back, filling up his coffee cup right when he was looking at his last gulp. Gone again. He sat back in the corner, giving his fresh cup a moment to cool. Maybe he’d get in and out of here as merely a blip …

With his wait for the bank to open down to less than ninety minutes, Will’s breakfast was placed in front of him. He was suddenly ravenous. “Thank you,” he said as he cup was again refilled. He picked up a fork and just as he was tearing open the yolk of one of his three eggs he heard, “You’re new in here.”

He didn’t let it freeze him, but it stopped his reaching for a slice of toast. Without looking at her directly, he said, “I’m from the Cities.”

“You didn’t walk all that way, did you?”

Will was instantly aware of his sodden feet and the clusters of adhesive seed pods plastered to his pants. There was no possible way she could have seen them while he’d been seated in the booth. She’d taken it all in when he came through the door, and hadn’t so much a caught a glimpse of her when he entered. He was compelled to look at her now. Her smile was unreadable, the arch of her brow even more so. She didn’t linger for a response, but the way she’d left caused him to believe that if he’d given one, she know it was nowhere close to the full story.

+   +   +

Let’s also not forget, ebook on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Lunacy-Death-perspective-developed-investigation-ebook/dp/B079DWFH9T/ref=redir_mobile_desktop?_encoding=UTF8&keywords=lunacy%20and%20death&qid=1526512194&ref_=mp_s_a_1_1&sr=1-1

Thus begins chapter two.  As I previously warned, it may be rough, bloated and sporting some typos. It’s sorta long, so I’ll say no more.

+   +   +

 

As bad nights went, Will had suffered through worse, but wasn’t eager to repeat it. He’d awakened every hour or so, shivering and disoriented. Thanks to modern automotive technology, he was able to start the truck and get the heater running without having to leave his sleeping bag. With the sky shifting to gray dawn he awoke for what he decided would be the last time. His bladder wasn’t going to allow any more sleep. The sharp air that hit him when he opened the door woke him completely. He couldn’t bring himself to pee on his brand new gravel. The ground surrounding the circle wasn’t lacking for moisture and Will had no problem adding to that.

With a relieved belly and his mind kick started by the damp morning chill, he re-evaluated the house. It was a classic, turn of the twentieth century post-Victorian foursquare. The house plan had been ordered out of a Sears-Roebuck catalogue. It was a mid-sized to large plan. Four main rooms on the first floor; kitchen, dining, living room and “sitting room.” The upstairs was accessed by a staircase placed on the outside wall between the kitchen at the rear northeast corner and the sitting room at the southeast, There were four bedrooms on the second floor. Modern minded and foreward thinking, Will’s first American generation maternal great grandparents had built a first and second floor bathroom included in the plan. They’d also had it wired for electricity. They lived in it for a full decade before they were able to enjoy either of those modern amenities.

The house, though a common style found nationwide, was a freak in Limburg County for two reasons. The first was that it was made of brick. At the time, brick was a material that was rare and expensive in this part of the world. It was reserved for use “in town” for the construction of banks, government buildings, and stores owned by well-established and prosperous merchants. Wood was the standard for the working class, and that wasn’t cheap, either. To build such a structure was nothing short of ostentatious. It had doubtless sent a message to the neighbors that they stood no chance in “keeping up with the Rijsbergens,” Will’s maternal ancestors had no problems asserting a certain degree of superiority. Unlike most of the Dutchmen they’d accompanied to the eastern prairie of their new country, they hadn’t arrived broke. Far from it. Another reason brick had been the chosen material was that one of Will’s grand-uncles was a master mason.

The other thing that set this house apart was that it had been built “backwards.” By the time sod houses and ramshackle cabins were being replaced by modern family homes, the transportation infrastructure of the county was well in place. The houses built in the farmland faced whatever roadway that crossed their property. This house faced away from the county road, fronted by the Wahpekute River. This was done, Will’s grandfather told him, because his great-grandmother enjoyed sitting on the porch in the evening and watching the river flow by. “Bullshit” his mother countered when he repeated the story, “you can hardly see that murky creek from the porch. They built the house facing that way because they enjoyed turning their backs on everyone else.”

Will’s eyes settled on the porch. From the edge of his gravel island, and through the screen of leafless, overgrown bushes, he couldn’t imagine anybody wanting to sit there now.

Not without hesitation, Will stepped from the gravel. His shoes and socks had dried overnight with help of the truck heater. Stiff as they’d been when he put them back on, it was infinitely preferable to soggy. He winced with his first step. The water seeping into his footwear seemed colder than the night before. By the time Will was standing in front of the porch he was soaked to the knees. The pillars supporting the outer corners were canted out, and roof was sagging and at either end. The porch roof itself was patchy bed off moss that grew in an odd pattern that matched the pattern of the shingles. Two more wooden pillars were at the center, on either side of the stoop that led from the yard to the deck. They were paintless, and also rotting at the tops. Framed between them at the rear of the porch was the front door. It was a tow inch thick slab of white oak, five feet wide with a window of leaded glass. To Will’s amazement, the glass was intact. His view of the door itself was cut in half by an eight-by-four, nailed into place across the middle of the door into the frame. Curious, he thought. He couldn’t remember his father as having taken any steps to have the place closed-up in any way after his grandmother died.

Will moved closer. The wooden stoop had long collapsed. He could barley make out a pattern of it through a tangle of dead vegetation. He was dissuaded from stepping up by the floor of the porch. The boards were warped and rotted. At the edges, small, naked saplings had sprouted through the rotted wood and stood almost two feet high. In a couple of weeks they’d be showing buds. Two large windows, one for the living room on the left, the other for the parlor on the right. The paint on the frames was almost gone, with a few swatches of white still clinging. Several panes had dropped away, but they were more or less intact.

He moved to the western side, stepping through a tangled mat of dead grass and sodden stalks of collapsed prairie thistle. Crossing the corner, Will noted the brick wall was dead plum. He moved close to the wall. The first side window for the living room was almost gone, both the storm window and the interior one. It did not look like a case of vandalism, however, but simple age and weather. So much for barring the front door. This side of the house took the full brunt of storms from the west. The row of trees, bordering the yard fifty feet away, wasn’t all that effective when wind was blowing steady at thirty miles an hour and gusting to sixty. Feeling a tingle of trepidation, Will looked inside.

The first thing he noticed was all the furniture was gone. He didn’t expect to see any, but at the same time, he couldn’t recall his father taking any steps to clear things out. The carpet was still there, however, a huge oriental rug that centered the room, leaving a border of bare wood floor a foot on every side. The pattern was lost under a thick layer of dust and fallen chunks of plaster. The walls on every side were bulging, stained wallpaper. In some places the paper had either torn or rotted away, the plaster dropping off to expose the lathe. He could see through the arch into the sitting room. It didn’t seem to be in as bad as the living room, but was still in horrible shape. Will looked up to the ceiling. Where the plaster hadn’t dropped, it hung, dangling in chunks of every size and shape, clinging by some invisible strings to the lathe. Where it hadn’t completely dropped or dangled, it bulged. Best not to go in there without a helmet. In the center of it all hung a brass chandelier. Brown with verdigris, it held two rings of porcelain candles, topped by small bulbs shaped like flames. It hung from stretched wires. The ceiling medallion it highlighted was gone. Pieces of thick plaster were caught between the faux candles, the rest of it laying in a scattered pile on the floor directly beneath. It did, however, appear to be completely intact, bulbs and all. Will couldn’t imagine what the price would be for such a piece back in the Cities. I might soon find out, he thought.

He moved along toward the back of the house, every step challenged by clinging vegetation and ending with a little more water working into his shoes. It was the same story at the dining room. The windows nothing more than warped and rotted frames, a few panes, some intact, some cracked broken, still clinging to their places but most of them gone. It was no different for the glass on the second floor.

At the back, the same, though the windows had fared a little better, both at the ground floor and above. Away from the house, looking back toward the county road were a few outbuildings. The closest was an outhouse, a two-seater deluxe model. It was gray and paintless, tilted and twisted heavily to one side, the roof completely collapsed. Will believed he could level the structure with a shove. Further beyond, a four-bay machine shed, a chicken coop, both made of wood, and a brick utility building that had primarily served as a slaughter house for the few chickens, pigs and cattle that were always on hand. All were obscured by the unchecked tangle of growth. Only the roofs were visible, and all but the utility shed were near demise. The slaughterhouse had a tin roof. Will had no desire to give them a closer look.

He trudged across the back yard to the driveway. Acoss the drive, in the northeast corner of the farmyard about one hundred yards away, was the barn. It had been invisible in the darkness when Will had arrived. About a third of the roof was a hole. The shingles and decking around it sagged at the edges, as if being sucked into the barn by an invisible vortex. Will could see daylight through the hole, which indicated the other side of roof was about in the same shape. The sides of the barn, however, held an evident stain of red and appeared to be straight and fully intact.

Back on dry ground, Will looked at the east side of the house again. The windows were in better shape than the rest, but were still nothing more than rotten frames holding about a third of the glass that had been there. The roof, just as the brick shed, was tin. There were no holes, and the only evidence of neglect was the lightning rod that had stood at the peak. It had fallen over and was lying on the slope, held there by the wire at its base. Even under scrutiny at his distance, Will couldn’t see anything disastrous, but he could only assume the grey metal sheets only masked a score of problems just beneath it. There were tar patches at many of the seams, patches that had been made decades ago. The only thing certain was that twenty-plus years of brutal summer sun, sub-zero winters, rain, ice and wind had created countless gaps that went untended.

His gaze held the full side of the house, then zeroed in on the open side door. He knew he should go inside. Check out the bedrooms on the second floor, and probably work up enough guts to take a peak at the basement. He shivered, but the only cold he felt was in his feet. In fact, it felt to him the temperature had gone up at least ten degrees since he gotten out of the truck. He stared at the doorway, an open black void. Not now, he told himself. Any more inspection could well crumble the resolve he’d mustered the night before. It had been tested strongly enough by what he’d seen already. Nope. Enough.

He turned his eyes away from the door and looked at his watch. Six A.M. He was hungry. There had been a diner in Venlo that opened at six. He had no reason to believe it wouldn’t still be there. And he had to go into town anyway. The cell service out here was spotty, and his first order of business was to fire the contractor, who’d made a more complete shambles of an already worthless kitchen. He also had to go to the bank. There were at least two hours before that was open, so he’d just have to make slow work of his breakfast.

Before entering his truck, he looked at his feet. They were soaked, mud smeared and coated with an impressive amount of dead vegetable matter. His pants were wet to his knees, and covered with dead leaves and stickers of every size and variety he bent and plucked off a dozen balls of burdock. He thought about changing, but his extra shoes and socks were at the bottom of one of the totes in the box of the truck. He didn’t want to dig through it. He sighed and looked back at the house. His attire was a perfect match for his dwelling. He got in the cab and hoped the heater would dry his feet off enough that he wouldn’t squelch with every step he took. Put on his sunglasses and started the truck. As he turned in his beautiful driveway, he figured there wasn’t anybody in town that would know him, and nobody he’d concern himself with when it came to first impressions.

+   +   +

Like I said, long. 2nd half coming in just a few short days… Don’t be shy in telling me what you think.

This is how it’s going to be for a while. It’s a nice break– for me– from the route I’d been taking. I’ve learned putting stuff up here always results in a push to follow up, and it’s proving to be an excellent tool in getting my butt in front of a keyboard. Feel free to douse me with criticism.

 

+   +   +

 

A mile beyond the bridge, was the first town across the county line: Hasselt. Calling it a town was a stretch, even when Will was a child. There was not a business or industry within the limits of the community, just a cluster of farm houses surrounded by a couple sections of tilled acreage. His grandfather had once explained to him that it was the first real settlement built by the newly arriving Dutch immigrants. His grandfather explained those first Limburgers had built that way as a means of protection. He’d related each house represented over one hundred acres of working farmland, but they built close together out of fear the Dakota might recover enough to mount another uprising. They felt they stood a better chance if they lived close to each other. A few years later, the bureaucratic process of becoming a county disrupted and divided the community more than the Indians ever stood a chance of doing. Connecting the county seat of Maastricht to the rest of the state by the most direct and efficient route split the settlement right down the middle. Will’s mother offered her distinct perspective on the role Hasselt played in the history of the area. She told him it was there to serve as a warning against going any farther up the road.

His mother’s sardonic take flashed through Will’s mind as he rolled through. Judging by the number of lighted windows he passed, Hasselt’s potential as either quaint first impression or viable deterrent had greatly diminished over the last two decades.

Will continued on Limburg County Road One, its gentle northward curve lined by windbreaks of naked trees intermittently broken by intersecting, unmarked gravel roads. He’d traveled two miles beyond Hasselt when he approached the first paved intersection, Limburg County Road Two. Will had the right of way, there was no approaching cross traffic, but he pulled to a full stop. He let go of the steering wheel and rested back fully against the seat.

Five miles straight ahead lay Maastricht; the epicenter of all things Limburg County. There were bars. There were restaurants. There had to be at least one modern, chain motel. Will took a deep breath. The mindset he’d somehow constructed in his head, allowing him to treat this that as a mad-crazy road trip, a silly, impulsive adventure done for laughs had collapsed. The purpose he’d placed on this excursion that had lain like a coiled snake in the back of his mind suddenly rose up and struck. He hadn’t come here on impulse. He hadn’t come to serve nostalgia. He’d come to bury, then resurrect . . . or so he’d made himself believe. Seven miles to the left was his reason for coming this far. Seven miles west was what he’d determined would be the end of one life, and the beginning of another. He could go to Maastricht. He could drive straight ahead, eat a good meal, have a couple beers, sleep in a well-made bed… and then what? Find a more reckless way to spend Daddy’s money, he told himself. No reason to stop disappointing him just because he’s dead…

He took another long breath, held it a moment, blew it out hard and grabbed the steering wheel. Hitting the gas hard enough to elicit a screech from the tires, he fishtailed his way onto Limburg County Road Two, moving west.

# # #

 

Will would have missed the driveway if it weren’t for the new gravel. He saw the apron of fresh roadway spilling fanning to the edge of the pavement, the material so new it was almost luminescent against the dark shoulder. It took him a moment to understand what he was seeing and almost drove past it. He turned into the drive wondering if ending up in South Dakota would be such a bad thing. He stopped. The lilac and bridal wreath bushes that lined the drive were overgrown into gnarled, skeletal hedgerows, the naked branches hanging to the edges of the bright, new road. The bare shrubbery shrunk funnel-like down the gravel strip beyond the range of his headlamps, ending in a dark abyss. Down the rabbit hole, he thought, and removed his foot from the brake pedal.

A hundred yards down the driveway, the overhanging brush of the hedges faded way to a dense snarl of waist high overgrowth. Twice that distance farther the driveway opened to lopsided oval of fresh gravel of approximately forty feet in diameter. Plenty of room for guest parking! He pulled to the center of it and killed his headlights. The house would be about thirty feet away to the right, but he didn’t want to illuminate it with the halogens. Will harbored no illusions about how it would look. It had been built like a fortress and he knew nothing short of an earthquake or explosion could ever render it structurally unsound. In the moonlight he had no trouble appraising the unruly jungle of growth fencing him in on his little island of glorified dirt. Translating it to how two decades of neglect would affect any parts of the house vulnerable to the elements wasn’t difficult. There were at least a score of wood framed windows, the roof and a large wooden front porch. Rain, wind, snow and sun would have their inexorable effects, and for all he knew a tornado or two may have paid a visit. Mother Nature aside, there was no limit to the havoc that could be wrought by a generation of bored farm kids.

Will sighed, still not looking toward the house. He arranged for some preliminary work inside as well as the driveway. There should be lights in the kitchen at the very least, and maybe even a working tap, so no matter how it looked on the outside, he could expect some rudimentary habitability. He grabbed a flashlight from the glove box and stepped outside. With the angle of the moon above, the house was little more than a hulking silhouette. He circled around the truck to the edge of the gravel, giving his eyes a little more time to adjust. A vague landscape of ridges and recesses began to rise from the pitch-black rectangle in front of him, but no details emerged. He could tell the base of the structure was ringed by an inverted skirt of saplings and young trees, but he also knew from spine tingling trips to the cellar as a kid that the foundation consisted of limestone slabs two feet square and a foot thick. Roots be damned, this place wasn’t going to budge for a few hundred years. Yet, when he switched on the flashlight, he knew something was wrong.

It wasn’t the obviously battered side door. That was expected, and though clearly pried and pounded, it was closed. The stoop leading up to the door was bright and fresh eight-by eights, it’s rotted predecessor lying in a heap beside it. The overgrowth was afforded new density in the beam of the light, and a flash over the windows beside the door was grim but by no means a shock. It wasn’t anything to do with the building itself, but the narrow, scarcely discernible path leading from the gravel island to the door itself was what triggered his apprehension.

It should be bigger, he thought, wider, more beaten down. He left the truck and walked toward the house. Away from the gravel, the ground was saturated. Will’s feet sank a good half- inch when he stepped from the driveway. He didn’t let the cold moisture seeping into his socks bother him. He squelched his way to the stoop. The door was secured by a new metal hasp, with a large bolt holding the eye in the slot. Will figured he should be grateful it wasn’t a padlock. He slid the bolt out, flipped the hasp, and pushed.

Will had been exposed to any number of odors the average human being would not—and should not—be familiar with. The odor that hit his nostrils when the door scraped open—he’d expected a creeeak—wasn’t foul or overpowering, but it wasn’t good. There was an underlying sourness, like a tamarack or cedar swamp. Mixed in was the hint of mold, wet concrete, decaying wood, damp plaster and the expected dust and mildew, and the hint, merest hint, of an unspecific tang of organic, animal decay, like a long dead rodent or bird. After a moment, his brain was able to find a relative stink filed away in his subconscious. What passed over his olfactories was similar the smell that hovered around an exhumed casket before it was opened. It was a portent that wan by no means lost on him. He pushed the comparison out of his head, if not out of his nostrils

Will played the flashlight around until he found the light switch. Certain of what would happen before he even tried it, he flipped it up. Nothing. At first glance he knew it hadn’t been touched in the last few days, and probably not for two decades. He knew better than to even try the faucet. So much for rudimentary existence.

Will swept the light over the entire kitchen. He slapped away or beat down any flares of recognition and any memories they might kindle. Keep it objective, he forced himself to think. What the light revealed looked to be a compromise between investigation and vandalism. Holes were knocked into walls in places where plumbing or wiring may lurk. The cabinet doors below the sink stood open. There where footprints in the grime, wipe marks on the counters. The light switch at the end of the kitchen beside the bathroom door had indeed been pried loose, and he saw the fixture in the ceiling at the center of the room had been partially disassembled. Somebody had been in here intending to do some work, but aside from the temporary stoop, no actual work had been done. Will had set this up weeks ago. He didn’t act on any desire for further exploration, because at this moment, he felt none. That would be better left for the light of day. He went back outside, leaving the door open. Maybe some of the smell would dissipate. He squelched back to his truck.

Back in the cab, he pondered what to do next. One of his first steps would be firing the contractor he’d hired to do the kitchen. That would take all of five minutes, but would also have to wait until morning. Though wanting nothing to do with the inside until the sun was up, he was tempted to walk around the outside of the house, if for no other reason than there was nothing else to do. Then he remembered there was a cistern out there somewhere—or had been. It would be a lousy time to find out the hard way. He couldn’t help but think it amusing that he’d flounder around until he died, drowned and freezing in the dark, found god-knows when, decomposed, adipocere… and a whopper of a bank draft in his pocket. The idea put a grin on his face. He’d taken a dozen cases that were screwier than this would be, but none of them had ever involved a piece of paper worth a quarter million dollars turning up in a decomp’s pocket.

Dying in an old water tank wasn’t funny for long. He sighed and took another look at the house. Morning, he decided. Don’t do another thing until the sun was up. His mind kept turning to what he’d need to do, but he pushed it out of his head. The temptation to run into Maastricht rose again; eat a real dinner, have a couple beers, find a decent place to pass the night. The temptation was just a disguise, a ruse. He knew if he headed east he wouldn’t stop until he was back in The Cities. He’d have had himself talked out of this mad scheme before he had ten miles behind him. No, he reminded himself, not this time. No more impulsive changes of plans, no more sideways retreats. Start what you finish for once, Willem. For once.

He kicked his shoes off, put his pillow against the door and stretched across the seat. He folded the sleeping bag over his legs. The light of day. This would all look better when the sun was up. Yet he was unable to finish that thought without adding: And maybe it wouldn’t. He lay in silence, save the ticking and pinging of the truck’s cooling engine. The night settled in around him. After a few minutes the noise from under his hood was gone. Through the passenger window Will saw a slice of the sky over and through the bare branches of the windbreak. There were more stars visible in a square foot of window than he’d ever seen in the entire sky on any night back in St. Paul. That was something, he told himself. That was something right there. He reached for a coke and a bag of chips, and after a few moments consideration, the joint laying in the ashtray. How many years..? He couldn’t quite stretch out, and at some time in the night, if he did manage to fall asleep, he was going to wake up freezing his ass off and needing to pee, but for now he was comfortable enough. He lit crumpled cigarette held the smoke, and on the exhale choked out, “Holy shit.” The finish of his next toke was punctuated with “Holy fucking shit.”

#   #   #

So concludes the End of the Beginning, but by no means the beginning of the end. Chapter One of a yet-to-be-named Magnum Opus… or so I tell myself. What has preceded and what is to come is a rough draft, mind you and some of it will be written mere moment before being dispatch to the internet. It could be sketchy, bloated and at times incomprehensible (Hey, reading this means bearing witness to the creative process! You can brag: I was there when…..) Comments? Questions? CRITICISM! All welcome.

For those missing madness and mayhem, the book is still available:

https://www.amazon.com/Lunacy-Death-perspective-developed-investigation-ebook/dp/B079DWFH9T/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1525975841&sr=8-1&keywords=lunacy+and+death+book

As I move from death-blogger to more genteel offerings, I’m putting up a continuation of my last post. If it’s been confusing, I’ll explain myself. My initial purpose of this blog had been to blow out some of the crud lying around in my head. It was also to at least attempt to clarify and inject some reality into a profession that is not served well when filtered through a pop-culture lens. I’d heard for years how “cool” and how “great” it must be to work in a Medical Examiner’s Office. I won’t deny that I find it both great and cool. I often find myself surprised at how privileged I feel to do such work. But, I also felt a deep compulsion to separate the reality of this work– and the work done in a secure psychiatric facility– that is so grossly misrepresented in shows like CSI and Law and Order, or films like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. This also includes the stuff offered as “reality” to eager viewers of  the ID channel and Justice Network programming. I can’t help but feel entertainment value is greatly diminished when encountering such things first hand, and those “subject’s” whose circumstances are the basis of that “entertainment” have families that are looking you in the eye and hoping for answers.

After the last two years or so, I got it out, put it in book form (well reviewed, little purchased– C’est la vie!) and suddenly found a lot less crud in my head. The last few years of pounding this out and offering it up has served me in unexpected and wonderful ways. I truly thank all of you who have taken the time to read it, comment on it, and encourage it. At the same time, the compulsion and urgency I felt faded and granted me an odd and unexpected degree of . . . peace.  Wow.

However (I say this in lieu of “but”,  because all know what follows “but” means) I also found myself exhilarated by a sense of drive and discipline I thought I’d lost years ago, when it came down to putting words down and shoving them in front of the eyes of others.

I’ve written all of my life, but had lost the keen LUST I’d had for it sometime back. Found it again. So… I’m holding on to that drive and discipline and pulled a novel I’d been dicking around with for a long time. I’m putting it up if for no other reason that I can’t write one thing down without following it up with something else. I might just get it finished.

 

• *  *  *

Two hours later Will stopped. He’d left St. Paul almost two hours and ago, and the Interstate thirty minutes after that. It had been nothing but trunk highways and semi-trucks, and he’d been slipping into highway hypnosis since the sun went down. He pulled into a Cenex station to snap his brain back into focus. After topping the fuel tanks, and a stop in the bathroom, he stayed to eat a rubbery wedge of pizza from the faux deli in the back of the station. Before he left he bought some pop, a few bags of chips and a ball cap. He was in his truck and ready to pull onto the highway when he turned around and went back into the store.
“Gimme the cheapest lighter you’ve got and a pack of those Zig-Zags,” he told the teenager at the register, pointing to the rack of cigarette papers next to the cash register.
The look the kid gave him made Will feel like he was in high school again, buying a condom he’d never use. As he paid, he wished he’d had his sunglasses on. Will saw the kid in his rearview mirror as he drove away, grinning at him through the window.

He pulled over a mile down the highway from the station and rolled a joint. A truck would roar past him while he was parked on the shoulder and he would hunch his shoulders to hide his clumsy work. He felt like his dome light was the only illumination for a thousand square miles, and after it happened a couple of times he cursed himself for not being clever enough to at least spread a roadmap over his steering wheel to lend some legitimacy to his being pulled over. The stuff was making him paranoid and he hadn’t so much as touched a flame to it. When finished, he appraised his lumpy, illicit cigarette. His lack of practice was evident. Throw it away, he told himself even as he dropped it into his clean, shiny ashtray. Get rid of the whole damn works. But he closed the ashtray, put the sandwich bag back under his new, plastic girlfriend, and pulled back onto the highway.

The next few miles passed with one eye on the rearview mirror, on the lookout for an approaching sheriff’s department squad or the State Highway Patrol.
One hundred thirty miles away from his old apartment, Will turned south. A few minutes later, he crossed the Minnesota River. He climbed out of the river valley and soon abandoned his linear route, swinging onto county roads and trunk highways—south a bit, west a bit—occasionally slowing to lean over the steering wheel, as if it allowed him to get better bearings. How many years had it been since he’d been out here? Twenty-five? He’d made a couple of trips since his mother’s funeral. Twenty-two? Not counting Mexico, it had been at least that long since he’d been west of Minneapolis. There was a map in his glove box, but reaching for it would feel like defeat. He took the road markers he passed and turned them over to memory and instinct, and told himself he’d be “home” in an hour.

Will spent forty uncertain miles knowing he was moving in the right direction, and at the same time sure he was lost. Then, one road sign put him at ease. He smiled, hit the gas, and made another turn west and kept accelerating until he saw another sign. It flashed in his headlights after his truck crested a low hill and began the descent to the Wahpekute River. Will slowed and pulled to the shoulder a few yards before the bridge, the sign’s reflective background glaring in the blaze of the halogen lamps. He got out of the cab. A breeze blew from the West, damp and cold. He zipped his jacket and jammed his hands into his pockets. He walked up to the sign. It read: Limburg County. Somebody had tacked an “er” to Limburg with a sharpie marker, and below that added, “where life stinks.” Will smirked. It was an old joke. The first time he’d heard it was from his mother.

He walked past the sign and onto the bridge. In the middle of the span, he leaned over the guard rail and looked down. He couldn’t see anything, but he could hear the low rush of water as it flowed around the pilings. He stepped up on the curbing at the edge of the bridge. The rail came to his knees and he flexed them against it to keep himself steady. He unzipped his pants, reliving for a moment the exhilaration he’d felt almost forty years ago when his mother had encouraged him to do it, and peed into what she had described as the boundary between her home and the real world.
He went back to his truck, eager for the warmth, still wondering what the hell he was doing out here.

It’s been over a month. There’s good reason for it. I suddenly hit a point where I’m dried up, worn out, sorta/kinda had it. True tales of death and dismemberment are all well and good, it’s just that I—all of a sudden—don’t want to blather on about it any longer. No for the time being, anyhoo. Never say never and all that. After the book came out, I sputtered out on the side of the freeway and found out the tank was empty. Found I didn’t have a hell of a lot more to say about it. Outa my system. For the moment, I’ve decided to let the car just sit there. Maybe I’ll come across a filling station on the stroll home, go back and fill ‘er up, or say screw it and let the Troopers handle it.

However! Taking a break from blathering on is not in my nature. I just want to take it in a different direction. As I’ve secured this place on the webernets for over another year, I’m going to put it work, albeit in a different way and in a different direction. I’ve even been gracious enough to offer a sample below, and encourage all who read this to wipe away the tears and lemme know what you think:

• * * *

 

ONE

Will took one last walk around the apartment. Every step he took was an echo bouncing off the plaster walls. They were as bare and clean as the day he’d moved in fourteen years ago– flat white and not a nail hole or a dusty silhouette of a picture frame anywhere. There wasn’t even a single furniture scuff mark on the wall, and by the time Will had moved in, Kurt had been too old to leave handprints.

“Geez,” the building manager said when he’d stopped by with the damage deposit check. “I wouldn’t even have to paint.”

“Lucky you,” Will had said. He handed over the keys and folded the check into his pocket. Will had known the man for over ten years, and it was the longest conversation they’d ever had.

With the last of his possessions removed, all that was left was dust. That could have been anybody’s. He’d taken care of that with the lady across the hall’s vacuum, which, as it turned out, had been his a week before. He’d already forgotten she’d bought it from him. When he knocked on her door and asked to use it, she reacted as if he’d come to repossess it.

“You mean you want it back?” She started to ease the door shut.

“Pardon?”

“The price tag said twenty dollars,” she said, hand moving toward the chain on the jamb. “I even asked you if it was right.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he said, not knowing what she was talking about. “I’m just finishing up. I won’t need it more than ten minutes. Then I’ll have it right back to you.”

She hesitated; as if she were pondering whether not giving it to him would result in his kicking down her door, taking back his vacuum cleaner and anything else he could get his hands on. Finally, she nodded. “Okay. Just give me a minute.” She closed the door and he heard the chain rattle into place. He waited, wondering if he should, but the chain rattled again, and the vacuum was pushed into the hall through a gap in the doorway just wide enough to accommodate it. He was only slightly less baffled when he recognized it.

It took Will less than the ten minutes he’d promised. After checking the apartment one final time, pulling open all the cupboards and the single closet, knowing already there was nothing of his left, he and the vacuum were back in the hallway. When Will closed the door behind him, the lock in the knob clicked. Now he was out for good. He took out his wallet, put the damage deposit check away and removed a twenty-dollar bill. With the money sticking out from the zipper in the dust bag, he rapped twice on his now former-neighbor’s door and, without waiting for an answer, walked down the hallway and out of the building.

The afternoon sun was shining bright enough that Will had to squint. The streets and sidewalks were wet with melting snow. He’d heard the temperature was supposed to be in the fifties, but it felt cold. It was the wind, blowing steady and strong from the west and carrying all the chilled moisture that wasn’t making it into the gutters and drains. He hunched against the damp breeze and walked to a three-quarter ton, four-wheel-drive pick-up truck that was so new there were little strands of rubber still poking up from the treads of the tires. It was the first and only new vehicle he’d ever owned. Before getting into the cab he looked into the box. What was in there didn’t even take up half of the space available: A half-dozen plastic totes holding his clothes, and a few books; a steamer trunk with more books, two photo albums, some tools, a seventy-five foot extension cord, his coffee maker, two place settings worth of dishes and a desk lamp. His golf clubs were sealed in the bag, and there were three five-gallon plastic pails with the lids snapped on tight that were filled with golfballs. A small tin file cabinet was jammed in a corner. There was a tent, a camp stove, an inflatable mattress with an electric pump, still packed into a plastic box made just for that purpose; a pair of fishing poles, a tackle box, and a cooler that he’d filled with groceries that morning. In the back corner there was a small gas generator and a full five-gallon gas can. There was still enough space left in the back of the truck that Will had to purchase a couple of nylon cargo straps to keep it all from sliding around.

He climbed into the cab and started the truck. Beside him were the rest of his worldly possessions. His sleeping bag was rolled up on the floor of the passenger’s side with his pillow. Against the door was a box containing his farewell gifts from the office. There were several cards, a medico-legal death investigation manual, a framed photo of him grimacing while he pulled the clothes off a decomposed corpse, a pewter beer stein and a toe tag with his name on it. He hadn’t given them much time to put together a party. There were two other gifts in the box, given to him privately by his partner. One was a more or less anatomically correct inflatable female, the other was a bag of weed. Will knew where the love-doll came from; a case his partner had been out on just a few days before Will quit. A frantic son-in-law had pulled it from a closet and begged Will’s partner to get rid of it before his wife showed up to see her dad. It was new and still in the package. Will glanced back through the rear window and looked at the plastic box with the camping equipment and motorized pump. If he ever got desperate enough, he at least wouldn’t wear himself out blowing her up. He didn’t want to know where the dope came from, and didn’t ask, but accepted it just the same. His badge was supposed to be in the box too, but Will had found it. He’d turned it in when he quit, but his boss must have put it in the beer mug, wrapped up in a wad of bar napkins, just before they’d stuffed Will into a cab after his send-off. He wouldn’t have found it if the two drinking glasses he’d saved for himself weren’t already packed. The badge was on its way back to the office via FedEx.

Will put the truck in gear, but before pulling away, looked once more into the back of his new vehicle. A week ago, what he owned, while still not a lot, probably wouldn’t have fit into a fifteen-foot moving van. What he hadn’t sold, he’d given away. What he couldn’t give away, he tossed into a dumpster. Yet, for a moment, what little rested behind and beside him seemed like almost too much.

He picked up a pair of sunglasses from the dashboard. It was a very nice piece of eyewear. The price asked for them was ridiculous– well over one hundred dollars. They were his as a result of impulse, and he’d gotten them for nothing. The sunglasses had been displayed in the showroom of the dealership where Will had bought the truck. Will had noticed them when he first arrived. When the salesman was working on the paperwork for the pick-up, an uncontrollable smile on his face he couldn’t be blamed for– Will hadn’t dickered for an instant and the whole sale had been agreed on in about fifteen minutes– Will noticed the glasses again while sitting the salesman’s cubicle.

“Well, then!” the salesman said, slapping the pen on the papers and turning them around for Will to sign. “Everything’s in order. The bank says go!” The man chuckled and gave Will a wink. “One little scribble and you’re out of here in one hell of a ride.”

Will stopped peering over the edge of the cubicle and faced the man. He smiled. “Some nice shades you’ve got over there.”

The salesman raised his eyebrows. “Excuse me?”

Will gestured over his shoulder with his pen. The salesman tilted his head and looked toward the counter where the glasses were displayed.

“Ah,” he said, shaking his head, forcing his grin into one of disbelief. “Can you believe what they’re asking for those things?”

“An outrage,” Will said.

The salesman kept shaking his head, even while he directed his eyes toward the unsigned papers in front of Will.

“I want ‘em,” Will told him.

The salesman looked up and raised his eyebrows again. “Whoa, buddy! You’re in a spending mood today.” He gave Will another wink. “Did a rich uncle die or something?” He threw in another chuckle.

Will was tempted to say, No, a rich father, but he just returned the salesman’s grin with one of his own. He tapped his jaw with the pen and watched the salesman’s eyes shift between the papers, the sunglasses, and the pen bouncing against his face.

“Uh,” the salesman shifted in his chair. He pushed another chuckle out. “If they give you any problems with the check,” he tapped the papers with a finger, “send them over and I’ll be glad to vouch for you.”

Will quit tapping his face. “Nah… I want them in the package.”

“Package?”

“Yeah,” Will said. “Throw ‘em in with the truck.”

The salesman shifted again, lifting his butt out of the chair for a moment, settling back down with a slight forward lean over the desk. “Well, I,” he said in a low voice, “can’t really do that.”

“Sure you can.”

The salesman shook his head. The smile was still in place, but it appeared to Will that the rest of his face was struggling to keep it there. “No, really,” he said. “I’ll admit there was a time when a guy could throw in a few extras for a client, but…” he shook his head, as if saddened at living in times that took all of the fun and playfulness from the business of providing quality transportation, “those times are gone.”

“This is a cash deal,” Will said. “Sure you can.” Will clicked the pen. The ball retracted, taking its legally binding ink with it.

The salesman sat for a minute, his smile gone. He looked at the paper, then at Will. He sighed and the grin was back. “What the hell, huh? What the hell…” He rose and clapped Will on the shoulder as he exited the cubicle. Will watched him stalk across the showroom floor and snatch the glasses from the display. Before disappearing around the corner with them, Will saw him reaching into his back pocket for his wallet.

When the salesman returned, Will was slouched in the chair, twirling the keys to the truck around an index finger. The salesman put the glasses on the desk. “Can’t let a man drive out of her not properly accessorized, right buddy?”

Will stopped spinning the keys. He put the glasses on. The price tag was still attached and it dangled across his nose. The salesman settled into his chair and reached for the papers. He made a little grunt when he saw Will had signed them already. The salesman looked at him. “Anything else?” Will asked. The tag flipped and came to rest between Will’s lips. He blew it out and it flipped up and came to rest on the frame above Will’s left eye.

The salesman laughed.

Will stood and extended a hand. “Thanks.”

The salesman stood and accepted the handshake. It seemed he was about to add an obligatory closing comment, but Will was already out of the cubicle.

Will adjusted the frames and checked himself in the rearview mirror. They were indeed a sharp pair of shades. He liked them better than he liked his new truck. He wondered how long he’d enjoy them before he sat on them, or left them in a bar. Pulling into the street, he turned the radio on. He’d yet to set the tuner for the stations he liked. A CD would have been better, he thought, settling for a head-banger station. The truck was equipped with a player, but he’d divested himself of his stereo even before he’d bought the truck, and all of his discs had gone with it.

It had taken Will over an hour to get out of the Twin Cities. He didn’t suffer the usual tooth grinding frustration at being locked behind mile after solid mile of brake lights, or the mad lane changes of idiots trying to squeeze through the merest gap in a neighboring lane to steal another inch closer to home. Even the sight of someone yapping on a cell phone had no effect on him. Will was high above the snarl in his new truck, the sun’s brutal angle neutralized by his magnificent shades, and he knew it to be a very real possibility he’d never again drive on a road with more than two lanes, which made him wonder. What was he doing, driving away from a present he’d been comfortable with for the past fifteen years, into a past that was never really his? Mexico, Costa Rica. That was where people ran away to. Switzerland, Monaco. That’s where people went when they had more money than sense. Skip off to Nepal or Tibet, hang with the lamas and strive toward a “higher level.” Go back and finish med school and disappear into some third world shithole, build a clinic, play Dr. Livingstone and redeem the past that was his.

He pushed the speedometer past seventy five. If anybody was supposed to go where he was headed, if it was a destination worthwhile, there’d be a freeway to it.

•    *   *   *

Soooo…. that’s what’ll be occupying me for the next few months.