Category: Uncategorized

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.