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The Vampires of Eden
The Vampires of Eden
The Vampires of Eden
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The Vampires of Eden

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Paul Hereford does not feel like someone who is coming home. As he turns onto the two-lane road leading into his hometownChouteauville, Missourihe has no idea he is about to embark on a life-changing odyssey that will bring him both heartache and a redemption he didnt know he needed.

After decades of a political life and a literary career on the East Coast, Paul buys a plot of land in Chouteauville and settles in his new haven to write one more book. He is the author of numerous obscure novels, but now hes trying something hes never done before: serious nonfiction.

As he seeks out former friends and new acquaintances, however, the writing becomes more difficult, the memories become clearer, and the characters become more familiar. Pauls childhood best friend, his high school crush, and the little neighbor girl are just a few of the people that create the seasoned writers new worldand help him understand exactly what he needs.

The Vampires of Eden shares one mans evocative journey of atonement and the pursuit of peace as he discovers the past is never really past.

LanguageEnglish
PublisherAbbott Press
Release dateOct 8, 2013
ISBN9781458211064
The Vampires of Eden
Author

William M. O’Brien

William M. O’Brien lives in Ferguson, a suburb of St. Louis, in the neighborhood where he grew up. He is presently working on another novel. He has put up a Facebook page for his fictional character, Raphael P. Gallagher, and hopes to use that site to hold discourse with his readers.

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    The Vampires of Eden - William M. O’Brien

    Chapter 1

    I had been on the road for hours, crossing the Illinois prairies in my seasoned Chevy truck. On the last leg of my journey I fell into a sort of hypnosis. Everything blurred together. There was the same dull roar of spinning tires, the same empty, fertile fields laying in wait for spring, the same places to stop for fast, unwholesome food, the same monotonous tide of American motorists constantly racing about like those frenetic cells seen coursing in the bloodstream when viewed under a microscope. Strains of the healthy and the malignant were all bound inextricably together in a precious stream winding through endless time.

    It was all very surreal. I did not feel like someone coming home. There was no longer any semblance of a home there, at the place of my upbringing. This was altogether a different sort of pilgrimage I had undertaken. On my way back from the east I took several detours to visit the birthplaces of famous, dead authors. Since my teenage years I had been especially drawn to the Lost Generation, and in St. Paul I read again The Crack-Up by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Before that I had paced the forlorn Victorian streets of Oak Park, listening to church bells, and hearing in my mind Papa’s spare, beguiling prose, tolling in the cold wispy air.

    During the many hours on the road I listened to any ‘oldies’ station I could find, honoring the heart’s reverence for the songs scored on my psyche during high school (I graduated the year before Nixon abdicated the throne). Those were wonderful years for pop music. You still hear these songs on the commercials that sell us the means of pursuing happiness. We used to call that selling out; now it is just selling; and we’ve apparently gotten comfortable with the notion that everybody is selling something or other.

    When I heard Janis Joplin croon that freedom is tantamount to having ‘nothing left to lose,’ I vowed that I had had enough of freedom. I was longing to find peace. I did not expect too much beyond that, however, for I had come to believe life must disappoint; not because one is like Gatsby, besotted by his own colossal illusions, but because one cannot really know what lays beyond our own truths.

    It seems like several lifetimes ago, when I finally turned onto the narrow two-lane road leading into Chouteauville. I found myself slowing down to stare at everything. The crooked line of telephone poles running before me seemed very picturesque. Big cities do not have such things. I drove my truck through the tiny village and down the slope of Maria Street to the river. I parked the truck and walked to the water’s edge. I gazed across the massive gliding force of the river at the weathered limestone formations protruding from the bluffs on the other side. As a boy I had imagined these crumbling battlements and towers to be the ruins of an ancient civilization. The rocks were still bewitching, cast in the enchanting glow of a wintry afternoon.

    I glanced around, whispering to myself, What now?

    Turning away from the river—I had to yank each foot out of the muck to break the suction that held me fast—I trudged up the slippery path I had come down. I passed by my white Chevy and wandered like a ghost over the streets of my hometown. My shadow danced out in front of me, or swung off to traipse along (as a loony companion) at my side, or it disappeared altogether, wavering behind me as I walked directly towards the light.

    On Labadie Road I passed by the only large houses in the village. I glanced down at the boats in the marina nestled in their slips behind a sheltering breakwater. All of a sudden there was a small dog accosting me; his hackles raised, baring his fangs, growling viciously.

    Get back, you little bastard! I shouted, more annoyed than anything else at the ridiculous creature’s effrontery.

    I heard a man’s voice summon the dog; it whirled around and scampered back to be snatched up into his master’s arms.

    The man looked familiar to me. The effects of money, I supposed, having been around those sorts enough in my younger days to now wish to cast them all together in a disposable lot. He was past the age of retirement, possessing a distinguished crop of closely cut, gray hair, a ruddy complexion and the refined, cautious aplomb one acquires from enjoying, over the years, the absolute security of money. It was a face expressive of that infinite reserve reflected from the Romanesque façades of many small-town American banks. He continued to stare at me intently. It was a little vexing. I was about to walk off when he addressed me.

    Sorry for the annoyance. I’m Chuck Derry. He approached me with his hand extended. The dog in his other arm glanced anxiously up at his master’s face.

    Paul Hereford. I emulated the man’s protocol of presenting the full name, as if reading from a program. His bearing, demeanor and the steely resolution in his eyes signaled that he belonged to the tiny gentry class of Chouteauville. He’s a real tiger, I offered in a congenial voice.

    The man laughed hollowly in a practiced rite of good manners. Well, my wife loves him.

    I nodded amiably.

    Hereford? He acted as if he recollected hearing the name somewhere; I surmised the cultured fellow must be familiar with my novels. Do you live around here? His curiosity seemed strangely forced.

    No. Or, at least, not yet. I grew up here. I used to live right over there. I pointed in the general direction of the squat little yellow house of my childhood. It was green now. A long time ago, I added.

    Yes, yes. He began nodding his head eagerly; the riddle was solved. I believe I knew your mother. Charlotte?

    Oh. Yes. I studied his guarded eyes more closely. I was about to confess I didn’t remember him, but it didn’t seem to make any sense to articulate the obvious. She may have met him after I moved away to attend college, but then again, she may have known him before then. There’s no reason why I should have known about him.

    I fought the compulsion to say something more, to engage the man in polite discourse, now that a connection had arisen. I actually wanted to ask him how he knew my mother, but I was afraid to broach the subject.

    The nervous dog trembled as he reposed in his master’s arms, panting lightly, his tongue lolling out of his mouth. He drew his tongue in now and eyed me suspiciously, ready to go on a war footing any second should his master say but the word.

    I live right there. Derry pointed to an immense structure composed of blond wood and large panes of glass, reflecting the world’s blank, envious stares. The whole edifice was wrapped around, on all three levels, by decks and elaborate stair structures. I own the marina down there. His proud face seemed to censure his own boasting while yet addressing the necessity of affixing himself in this milieu where I had discovered him.

    Ah, I see.

    I remember your mother told me you were a writer.

    "Was a writer, I laughed lightly. That’s about right." It had been seven years since I’d published anything.

    Mr. Derry’s mouth opened soundlessly as he grappled with my clumsy responses. He was merely striving to be sociable. I felt uncomfortable and just wanted to get away from him.

    You say you’re moving back here?

    Possibly, I said tersely. I was reluctant to encourage his curiosity.

    Well, it’s good to meet you. Not wishing to detain me against my wishes he adroitly concluded the affair, much to my relief.

    Yes. We shook hands once more.

    I strode off towards my truck, reproaching myself for having acted rudely to one of the locals, possibly the most prominent, when all he had done was offer the hand of friendship. Why had I brushed it aside? The dogged resilience of old habits, possibly, but it was rather distressing to see that part of me triumphing so decisively over the ephemeral good intentions I had lugged with me across so many state lines.

    Unwilling to leave the land just yet, I kept walking, moving away from the village. It calmed my nerves to have the great river flowing along there beside me. The cottonwood trees became friendly acquaintances who had known me in my childhood. The land was unfolding, becoming more familiar to me, as an old face will do, after a long separation.

    I stretched my legs along the verge of a fallow cornfield to the east of the village. After the long trip it felt good to be walking on the soft, forgiving earth, swinging my arms, feeling my heart pump my blood, seeing my breath pouring out in front of me as a palpable reminder that I was of the elements too.

    Behind me the sun continued to slide away. A diffused golden radiance had, by subtle degrees, been added to the cobalt sky. The world lay before me enriched by an infinitude of golden tints.

    Chapter 2

    I spent the night in a squalid little motel room watching television reporters gleefully poring over the results of the latest presidential primaries. It was early February. I saw many familiar faces spouting their propaganda, feigning conviction like the clergy of a state religion.

    I had walked away from that life a long time ago. I had become an apostate. So I laid on the bed, pretending to exorcise the spirits of all my past loyalties, while sipping expensive Scotch out of a clear plastic cup, clicking from station to station, offering my own views to a reticent cockroach who happened to be clinging to the ceiling.

    Franz—do you mind if I call you Franz? Do you have a party affiliation? No? Me neither, anymore. It appears Hillary will regret not deploying her forces more strategically to fight in the caucuses. But, if you ask me, she never could have seen this coming. This new guy comes out of nowhere and half her camp deserts to the rebel flag. This is the stuff of Shakespeare’s history plays.

    I listened to the TV correspondents explaining everything through the prism of our two-party system (a rotten spoils system). It was rich fare because I happen to know how much these clowns know about the lives of the politicians that they dare not divulge to the credulous public.

    I came of age with Hunter S. Thompson and Timothy Crouse, who, incidentally, revealed to us, in The Boys on the Bus, how the migrations of whores predicted the whereabouts of the Secret Service, and this in turn foretold the movements of the President.

    Now, these high priests of the Media pretend to be appalled at the mere suggestion of such shenanigans. Our brave men in uniform are all impeccably honorable since the Infidels destroyed the Twin Towers of our Middle Earth. Yossarian is dead and buried.

    I did my best to enjoy the spectacle of these court jesters, who must keep court secrets because they are paid princely wages to play the fool. The truth is, now that these Television News People are paid as handsomely as CEOs, or drug lords, it galls them that they have to do any serious journalistic work at all. They want to be honored as Tribunes of the people. They want to deliver oracles to direct the behavior of docile citizens. In truth, they have burrowed into the very marrow of what that defunct historian, C. Wright Mills, once called the power elite. They have obtained the power to transcend ordinary life…

    What an odyssey for Hillary, I exclaimed to the unmoved Franz.

    I recalled seeing Hillary on TV, in a coffee shop, fighting back tears as she pled for her candidacy; speaking from the bottom of her heart (if you can imagine those catacombs, after all that she’s gone through).

    I led myself, torch in hand, down those damp corridors, peering into the awful chambers where the medieval racks and wheels of our democratic process are operated by the henchmen of the media. I mused upon that handmaiden of Liberty, that raving madwoman, Ms. Demos, who had reduced Hillary to this bizarre act of supplication. Surely the chase after votes has become indistinguishable from grubbing after Nielsen ratings.

    Had she only bled crocodile tears? Who can tell?

    I had come home to resolve such issues for myself. I wanted to believe my past mistakes were more than shriveled dead things caught in the cobwebs of my dusty attic. I did not want to believe character was entombed in the tissue. I suffered a moment contemplating the improbable nature of what we call free will.

    The next day, after sleeping soundly, I rose early, passed through the drive-through at McDonald’s and hit the road, munching a delicious egg-and-sausage biscuit. I drove down a two-lane road at a casual speed while the drivers heading off to work tore past me with grim faces girded for battle. A strange way to start the day, I thought, glad to be going in the opposite direction.

    The sun was just breaking free of her eastern moorings. I let my eyes rest on the broad glassy expanse of the river for a peaceful moment. Then I glanced over at a pub perched on a spur of high, rocky ground that jutted eastwards, over the cornfields to the east and south of Lower Chouteau.

    As children, we established fortresses there amongst a colony of cottonwoods. We flung ourselves into imaginary roles, as fur trappers, Indian chieftains or cavalry officers.

    I looked at the whorls of neon script adorning the face of the building, ‘Michael Derry’s Pub.’ I surmised the proprietor was related to the man and the ridiculous dog I had met the day before. There was a large empty deck extending out over the bottoms, waiting for spring.

    I let the truck creep (worn brakes squealing) down Maria Street, which serves as the boundary separating the higher plateau of Chouteauville proper, often called Upper Chouteau by the locals, from the wild, tangled, desolate bottoms of Lower Chouteau. The only active dwellings of Lower Chouteau were the ragged shacks, perched on perilous stilts, ranged along the marshy coastline.

    Out in the bottoms, scattered amongst the cottonwood trees, one could see a good dozen abandoned bungalows moldering in a low, hovering mist. Monuments testifying to the last deluge. My eyes lingered on the derelict shells for a moment. Childhood friends had lived out there. I had not seen any of them since I left for college.

    After ambling around for a while I found myself again climbing the steps of St. James church. The heavy wooden doors were unlocked so I pushed them open and walked in and sat down in one of the pews. A dim light penetrated through the stained-glass windows depicting the Stations of the Cross. The filtered morning light cast an eternal, dusty gloom over the empty interior. There was a solemn pall of latent feeling pervading the space around the altar, and floating in the nave, and diffused above the empty pews. Something utterly lost and forgotten lurked there, gathered about the meaningless forms.

    More than light mantled down as I sat there in the ancient silence. Possibly it was a palpable sense of the hidden depths of our humanity, the absolute truths we incarnate in crude forms; an intimation of all that resides in memory, including the blood’s memories, and even the hidden stuff of dreams, which always evades the false clarity of consciousness.

    The ghosts of my childhood began to collect about me. I breathed in a rare emotional atmosphere, as intimate to my memories as the earth’s oxygen was to my lungs. I became lost to my surroundings, remembering the friends of my youth and how I had moved away and forgotten them. But I never really forgot them, of course, and I could imagine them outside on these very church steps, inhabiting the vast panorama of all that has gone irrevocably into the past.

    There was a lot of gaudy, holy bric-a-brac that was strange to behold across the valley of time. But then my eyes came to rest on the frail, emaciated hero nailed to the cross hanging on the wall above the altar. He was the same. His terrible dignity intact. His ribcage protruded starkly from his wasted flesh. He sagged from the nails in excruciating despair. How many hours had I stared at this tortured figure, mesmerized by this vision of heroism?

    I rose and ambled out into the blinding morning light. I walked down to the river and cleared my head, watching sea gulls circling about, screaming about the joys (or terrors?) of being free creatures tethered only to instinctual imperatives.

    I decided to take another look at the house where I had lived as a child. I was passing my old front yard when I noticed an object partially hidden in a wild patch of thorn bushes.

    I stood there, transfixed. I stepped closer. Was this the same statue Mom used to move around the yard all the time? No, it couldn’t be.

    Why did my mother periodically move her Madonna statue about the property? Most of the time she kept the statue by the poorly tended garden in the backyard—my mom never quite found the time to cultivate her garden. She fastidiously clipped at a row of lilac bushes now and then. It was odd, I could suddenly remember seeing her cradling the statue and carrying her—laboring like a refugee forced to carry all she’s got left in the world—from the garden in the backyard around to the front yard, placing her by the front porch.

    Memories of my mother wafted through my mind like a melancholy nocturne. Music was one of her simple pleasures of an evening, when she stayed in. During one phase the portable phonograph in the living room played dreamy waltzes, and then, for a while, haunting nocturnes, while she idly flipped through the glossy pages of magazines devoted to the beautiful people of Hollywood. She acquired a strange admixture of things, the spoils of knowing affluent men (on a part-time basis) who ladled out the trifles of their plenty in exchange for the thrill of gadding about with a beautiful woman on the arm.

    She had been a simple, voluptuous, wildly attractive woman who did not have a great deal of luck in her life. I had been an ungrateful son who never understood who she was, and, in all my arrogance, believed that I ought to know. I had come home to atone, I suppose, for much that was regrettable, even though I had passed beyond the need of wallowing in sentimentality. She was gone. Life is for the living. Only ghouls push an archeological spade into the earth of one’s own backyard. I knew by heart all the modern psalms devoted to feeling good about oneself.

    As I continued to appraise the housing stock of the village, I noticed the plethora of other Madonna statues dispersed throughout the yards. Each one is supposed to be a replica of Yahweh’s famous daughter-in-law. He had been such a violent, angry old god, and she was as perfectly conceived as her blessed son.

    Strolling by I noticed that all the grimy statues were adorned with the same filmy negligees spun out of plain weathered dust. They stood out in the elements like an order of vestals prepared to wait forever, if necessary, for the next great movement that would stir the hearts of humankind.

    All of a sudden I decided on a course of action. I would return under cover of darkness to abduct the Madonna who was, in my opinion, living a life of exile in my old front yard. I would remove her to my own plot of ground. For this purpose I would have to buy land somewhere. And all of a sudden it was settled. I grew excited. I would own a piece of my native soil.

    Chapter 3

    I felt a little uneasy walking into a local bank; for some vague reason I was having reservations about my decision to buy property in Chouteauville. The next instant, it seemed, I was exchanging pleasantries with an attractive young woman behind a desk and the question was happily settled once more.

    You say you’ve decided to move here? Her eyes remained on the document she was rapidly scanning.

    Yes. I’m coming home after many years of being away.

    Do you have family in the area? Her voice rose brightly.

    No. I had hoped she might question me about those many years I had spent away; allowing me to delve into the fact I am a published author. There was no ring on her finger and she was the sort of woman for whom I would have put forth a gallant effort, when I was younger. I could still turn a woman’s head, but now she was an older specimen than this winsome girl.

    Oh. She glanced at me with delicately knitted brows, for just an instant, then she was crisp and professional once more.

    Well, welcome back. We shook hands to conclude our transaction. Her hand felt soft, elegant and resplendent with the freshness and beauty of youth. Her perfunctory smile did not linger as I collected myself.

    Her feminine curiosity had flickered for an instant and then it vanished on the granite face of my advanced age. I was just another citizen who had deposited a goodly sum of cash into their coffers. All we had really done was move electrons around and deface pieces of paper, but these rituals served to establish my bona fides for the local tribesman who honored the same financial probity honored everywhere else. If you come with money, you come blessed.

    I left the bank feeling like a nomad who finds himself suddenly bound to the land. I slapped my hands together and got into my truck.

    I spent a lot of time on my cell phone talking to realtors, while tramping about Chouteauville examining every house that was for sale. None of the houses in Upper Chouteau appealed to me; none had large enough yards. I strolled through the abandoned streets of Lower Chouteau, struck by the thought I might be able to buy several of these empty lots. I could build my home from scratch.

    I made a complete circuit of Lower Chouteau and, after coming full circle, I noticed a badly weathered For Sale sign lying on the ground by the rubble of the old McCluer place.

    According to local lore this plot had once been owned by a mysterious sporting gentleman who had fled from the East. I stared off at the clouds while trying to recall the legends. One story held that Daniel McCluer fled to this region to escape gambling debts; another version of his tale suggested a tragic duel precipitated his flight from the East. In any case, there was a romantic atmosphere cast about this illusory figure. How had I forgotten about this place?

    I circled the wreckage. Two rows of rusty iron posts were still securely fastened in a massive slab of concrete. An ugly flotsam of the most recent reincarnation of an abode clutched desperately at the sturdy posts. It had become a thriving hotel for mice and barn owls. On the ground underneath the structure a dense tangle of underbrush had crept in and secured a refuge for secret, slithering life. At the far end a solitary cottonwood tree had grown up out of the debris, adding a note of finality to the motif of abandonment.

    I imagined myself living there, in a new villa, erected on these solid posts; sitting up there, happily looking out at the Mississippi River—right outside my back door!

    There were several majestic sycamore trees down at the river’s edge, their crooked white arms stretched out to each other in an affecting show of lonely regard. I took an inventory of the local tree population. There was a copse of ash trees, and numerous river birches, and of course, all around, there were a great many stately cottonwood trees populating the bottomlands. These water-loving trees had always reminded me of home, or rather, of my childhood, when I encountered them elsewhere in the world.

    I let my eyes trace a faint path leading down the slope, wending towards the river. I imagined myself, of a morning, traipsing down that rustic path, passing through the copse of the ash trees, going out along the river, until the path struck off around the stilted homes. A slough of water cuts in behind a densely wooded island, sheltering a great bounty of wildlife and, just then, my imaginary jaunt was interrupted by a great blue heron who lifted off from the shore and flapped majestically further downstream.

    I will need a telephoto lens for my camera, I thought.

    I glanced around and frowned at the incongruous proximity of Michael Derry’s Pub. It was situated to command a picturesque view of the river, a view which was partially blocked by the toppled heap of McCluer’s legendary remains. A place rotting in the kind of shattered, leafy splendor that would only be attractive to a poet like Wordsworth. Or the solitary Hereford boy.

    I wondered if the owner of the pub had thought of buying this property so he could scrape off the abomination and restore the rustic landscape for the appreciation of his patrons.

    Well, it’s mine now—if it’s for sale—that’s how it goes. He who dallies is lost. I settled the argument in my favor as if singing a patriotic lyric.

    On a whim I raised my hand to bless the future diners who would sit out on Derry’s balcony. I made the papal cross, in honor of that delightful character who thereby takes his leave of his wife, and her lover, and the general audience, at the end of Tender is the Night.

    I called my realtor and left a message. I’ve found a place. I want to act soon. I’ll be paying cash.

    She called me right back.

    I was astonished by the price; not because it was low or high (it was rather high), but because it brought home to me how much I had managed to save over the course of my life.

    Money is freedom, of course, I had always known this. It gives one freedom of movement, it opens doors, offering many choices in many situations. Sinking all this money in a house would effectively remove many other choices and options for many years… I was suddenly singing the line about freedom in that Janis Joplin song, Me & Bobby McGee.

    I arranged a time and place to meet with the realtor before returning to my motel in nearby St. Charles, stopping on the way to buy a bottle of celebratory Scotch.

    Alone in my room I toasted my good fortune. The news on the television meant nothing to me any longer, the wider world of sordid politics had lost its relevance.

    In no time I was engaged in heated negotiations with the current owners of the McCluer remains. I drove a hard bargain. Dangling cash in front of the weary owners who had waited for years in vain, hoping for commercial development to put the hopelessly remote and overly rustic Lower Chouteau on the map.

    Within days, I commenced the next phase of my project, plunging into negotiations with several contractors (a hard-bitten bunch), finally selecting one who frowned the whole time we spoke. I agreed to pay him a surcharge if he managed to expedite the completion date. He accepted my terms, agreeing to add more men to his crew.

    He also consented to having me there at the job site every day while his men worked. I am sure he feared I would meddle with his workers, taking me for a member of that fussy breed, the urban gentry, who has come to the country to build his dream house. He has read books and believes he knows more about architecture than the carpenters, and he is striving after impossible standards of craftsmanship.

    In fact, my only purpose was to push them towards the goal, as Lincoln had pressed his generals, until he found Grant, whom they called the butcher, and to whom Lincoln gladly turned over his Grand Army. I was anxious to be in my new quarters, and willing to pay a price.

    I purchased an army surplus tent, one of those squared-off canvas relics you see in the famous Brady photographs that documented army life during the Civil War. I set up a tidy little campground.

    I watched the demolition crew as they surrounded the old domicile like a band of Celts laying siege to a Roman villa. They brought up a yellow backhoe, snorting and roaring, and I watched as the hydraulic arm began reaching out and tearing off the rotten lumber. The bones of the old domicile disintegrated like mummy bones and it was only a matter of weeks until another group of construction workers were crawling up on the posts and attaching the heavy planks that would support the new structure.

    Before long they were forming up the walls of a new home and, for a while, it resembled a cage suspended in the air, with blond, wooden bars, and I began to read Kafka’s Hunger Artist series again.

    I sat outside my tent in a comfortable lawn chair on the crest of the hill at the edge of my property. It looked out over the river. I made myself coffee on a Coleman stove. I built bonfires every day, collecting wood for hours at a time, just so I would have something to do, and to keep warm.

    I regularly purchased cold beer for the five young men of the work crew to encourage their camaraderie once they quit for the day. I had offered them, as a bargain, exclusive of the arrangement I had with their boss, additional cash incentives, to be paid out if they managed to finish my house sooner than originally projected. The incentive was substantial enough to induce them to arrive early, linger in the evening, and to lustily berate and rouse one another to greater efforts. Their obscene, comic bravado rang through the days and pulled me into reveries regarding the sowing of my own wild oats.

    I sat outside my camp tent, in my folding chair, attended by the crackling flames of a cheery fire, reading the remnants of a once-fine library I had sold before my return. I read Youth by Joseph Conrad, with a great deal of pathos, my own youth flooding back to me in waves of sunlight.

    Chapter 4

    O ne Saturday morning in April I was sitting outside my tent, relaxing in one of the heavy, iron lawn chairs I had recently purchased. There was a hearty fire. I had brewed up a pot of coffee on my propane stove. My empty stomach grumbled. I pinched the fat around my waist with my fingers after reading a line from another surviving volume of the lost library ( The Seven Pillars of Wisdom ), ‘ The body was abandoned as rubbish.’

    I was determined to fast in the upcoming days, in preparation for the next project, as yet but a germinating concoction.

    Chouteauville was still asleep. In Lower Chouteau I was the only resident, besides the summerhouses up on stilts along the shore. Occasionally the owners showed up on weekends to do some work, now that the season was nigh.

    In Upper Chouteau I heard several lawn mowers roar to life. They could be heard foraging in small plots of grass, sometimes moaning as if in the throes of a glutinous passion. I wanted to get closer to smell the fragrance of mown grass. It whirled me back in time. I decided to take a stroll and buy a copy of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, as if the printed edition of a morning newspaper were still a rational means of obtaining the news.

    The little convenience store just down the road from Derry’s Pub had no name, per se, only a crudely fashioned sign on the front of the building stating, ALL GOODS QUICKLY GOTTEN.

    The owner was a deferential gentleman from Pakistan. He sometimes stood at the counter with his tiny son clinging to him. A slender, demure woman, presumably his wife, moved about the store, stocking shelves, sweeping the floor, and smiling profusely at customers in a way that discouraged conversation.

    As I approached the store, I was astonished to see my old childhood friend, Raphael P. Gallagher, exiting the store with a woman. He unfurled the Post-Dispatch out in front of him, reading the headlines as he walked along. His glasses caught the sun and flashed at me.

    At first I could not believe it was him. I stared at this tall, angular fellow who had his head turned in a certain way, looking down, declaiming to the woman. His hand swept out and gestured to accentuate a point and in that instant I knew it was Raphe.

    Hey! I yelled. You hoosier! What are you doing?

    He stopped in his tracks and swung round to glance at me as if I were a vagrant soliciting a hand out. He leaned forward and his mouth dropped open. His arm fell and the paper slapped at his leg. For a short interlude we squared off that way. He looked sideways at the woman and scratched at his scalp with one hand.

    You didn’t expect to ever see me here again, did you? I strode over to him, holding out my hand.

    Paul? he stated incredulously. What are you doing here?

    I live here. I smiled at his consternation.

    He looked very confused. "Where do you live?"

    Right down there. I raised my arm and pointed. I bought the old McCluer place—

    "That was you?" He was astounded.

    I’m going to build a hoosier compound that will have them talking for miles around.

    The confused woman who accompanied Raphe inched closer to him, her shoulder lightly touching against him before she settled in once more, as an observer. She wore a heavy coat of makeup which, in the merciless light of day, appeared to me as sedimentary layers dwindling away underneath her jaw line.

    That’s your white truck? he mused to himself. He stared at my encampment in angry disbelief. With the flag?

    Yeah. I bought it used a few weeks ago. Do you like it?

    Why are you here, now?

    To live—what did Emerson say? I couldn’t continue; something caught in my throat. That ‘now’ of his throbbed like an arrow just after it strikes the bull’s-eye. Once I had regained my composure I tried once more to deploy humor. They always say you have to live in the now, right?

    His eyes acknowledged and rejected my attempt to deride the use of trite aphorisms.

    You’re going to live in Chouteauville? he asked acidly.

    "It is my postage stamp of earth." I blithely alluded to the phrase someone applied to Faulkner’s corner of the universe in Mississippi when he advised him to go there to find his work. Raphe turned his head away as if to shield himself from the use of clever stratagems.

    You’re living there by yourself? His demeanor was that of a prosecuting attorney intent on winning a highly publicized case.

    By myself.

    He nodded his head, biting nervously at his wispy mustache. He was wearing old, hoary Levi jeans and a plain cotton t-shirt (no doubt purchased from Sears in a 3-pack). He was shod in dusty, cracked work boots. I studied the tiny fissures on his boots, and raising my eyes I examined the filigree time had chiseled into his face.

    He scanned my visage as well, and then my clothes, which had fallen from the pages of the L. L. Bean catalog. I sported a light blue polo shirt, khaki pleated shorts and a brand new pair of leather deck shoes made by Timberland.

    "I can’t believe you’re still living here." I instinctively tried to aggravate his consternation. He glowered at me in fuming silence.

    The woman appraised each of us with a reproving eye. She scrutinized Raphe’s face for a moment and then turned purposely to me, making a little smacking sound with her lips. Her tremendous hazel eyes lit up her entire face.

    Hi. My name’s Annette. We shook hands. Her grip was firm and delicate. Everything about her was feminine. Beneath her white blouse a titillating projection of her large, shapely breasts caused me to lose my train of thought. Raphe noticed the infinitesimal movement of my eyes as I surveyed his woman’s buxom figure.

    His reticence was unnerving. All the questions we were not asking each other now began to fill up the space between us, like a cloud of stinging smoke. Meanwhile the sunlight was ricocheting off his glasses and flashing in my eyes, as he turned his head about in great agitation. I had the sensation of being scanned by some fierce, relentless laser device designed for the interrogation of prisoners.

    Don’t mind him, he has the worst manners sometimes. Annette adopted the role of peacemaker. For a second I contemplated a joke regarding the tragic fate of most peacemakers. But for all I knew Annette was a devout Christian of some stripe. I did not want to offend her. Then it occurred to me that Raphe and I had both been raised Catholic—for all I knew Raphe was a practicing Catholic!

    I held my blasphemous tongue. There was not even an earthly father to vouch for me, much less a celestial one.

    This is Paul Hereford, Raphe addressed her brusquely. The contempt in his voice stabbed a pin through me, transfixing me for her understanding. I knew him in high school. He was willing to ignore the fact we had been friends since the first grade?

    On his face I could see a seething ferment. He fought with himself, pondering the meaning of this bizarre intrusion of the past. We stood as on opposite shores of a raging river in a silent storm. We seemed to be stranded in a place where even shouting is of no use.

    So, you’ve been living here, your whole life? I inquired, responding to his scorn as best I could.

    No! He spat on the ground. He was torn, he wanted to leave, but our history held him there against his will. He opened his mouth to speak but Annette spoke first,

    We moved here a year ago. Raphael wants to retire here. She began to chatter upon the topic of the recent move as if we were all close friends catching up after a short absence. He wants to buy a boat some day and become a river rat. She turned to look at Raphe, who clearly had been the author of the phrase ‘river rat,’ but his countenance dismissed her efforts to smooth over animosities she didn’t understand.

    My eyes met Raphe’s for an instant, arcing across many years. Out of my aggrieved heart a vision, or hope, rose like a bubble, and burst into a shimmer that left nothing but the empty air of deflated hopes between us.

    Do you have family around here? Annette asked me.

    No family, I replied simply. Raphe began shaking his head vigorously.

    Oh, well you’ll have to come over sometime. She persisted. Her feminine instincts prevailed over Raphe’s anger. We’ll just do something simple. Raphe loves to barbeque. Again she looked at him as if expecting him, any moment, to relent and come around to a more hospitable mood.

    I expect to get my electricity hooked up in a couple weeks, I offered somewhat fatuously. I have a motel room in St. Charles right now. I haven’t even bought any furnishings yet, but after I have electricity—or, you could come over anytime, really. I have the tent, it’s like a campsite… you guys could come over some evening. Anytime. My voice trailed off as my nervous chatter melted on Raphe’s icy disdain.

    Well, that’d be nice. Annette’s tone now echoed the doubt ringing around inside my head. She was no longer confident she would be able to bridge this divide. She considered her mate’s implacable antipathy. One finger, armed with a red fingernail, scratched nervously at her chin. She studied me suspiciously, obviously wondering, for the first time, what kind of asshole I might be to have provoked such ire in her man.

    Did you leave the coffee pot on? Raphe asked her, jerking his thumb in the direction of their home.

    No, I turnt it off.

    There had been a time when we would conduct gleeful, exegetical studies concerning the local manners of speech and other customs. Annette’s speech brought to mind old textbooks, in which Germanic declensions are explained, and the history of verb conjugations, leading one inevitably to the gruesome history of the English Language. Along the way one encounters lovely tales of heroic scribes, the Venerable Bede, for instance, and a myriad of questions now piled up on the ground around us.

    Raphe avoided my eyes.

    I stared up at the sky, contemplating the social implications of language, and how the epithet ‘hoosier’ was used hereabouts to describe individuals lacking in financial means or having a poor command of the English language, and I recalled that I had just used this epithet as soon as I had recognized him.

    Annette wore a pair of tight, black pants that extended to her calves. I had noticed that from behind she presented to the world a splendid example of an ageless archetype. The finely sculpted derrière of the sensuous woman. All the movements of her body were feminine; her body possessed a natural grace which even time was having some difficulty dismantling. A puff of strangely colored hair blossomed like cotton candy atop her winsome face.

    So you two went to school together? She sought to nudge us onto a more cordial path.

    A long time ago, Raphe retorted. He stood there appraising me as if I were a horse Flem Snopes was trying to sell him, or maybe it was only the horse’s ass that was on the block. He was stretching his long, gaunt jaw out in a weird way, craning his head around, doing everything he could to avoid looking at me. He appeared to be on the verge of addressing an audience of spirits, somewhere off stage, who might better appreciate the indignity of this farce that was being foisted upon him.

    We met in the first grade. I felt compelled to enlighten her as to the true depths of our history.

    And then you left to go to college. Raphe cut me off disdainfully. Suddenly his eyes bore into mine. In scathing silence he excoriated me for turning my back on my best friend after going off to college, and after achieving success as a novelist.

    I absorbed the censure as calmly as I could manage. I was provoking him just by being there. While standing there accepting his withering rebuke I could not entirely disguise my shock at the fact he wore the last remnants of his thinning blond hair swept in a pitiful manner over his bald spot.

    As I was examining this fatuous obeisance to vanity he reached up to comb his fingers through the long filaments, brushing them back into place. A soft, pleasant, spring breeze playfully raked the strands off again as soon as his hand dropped to his side.

    Annette sighed heavily to express her disapproval of these proceedings. She narrowed her eyes to register the fact we were both acting like stubborn children. She must have been something of a beauty, before the relentless siege of days stormed the last defenses and defaced the noble visage. She was still rather attractive, in a matronly way.

    Well, good luck with the compound, and all. Raphe said in a voice as insincere as could be imagined. His sardonic tone was still familiar to my ear.

    Come down anytime you want, I fired back, matching his acerbic tone.

    As they walked off Annette looked at me over her shoulder, somewhat aggrieved by this episode; her hazel eyes lodged a protest against the bizarre unaccountable behavior of men.

    It was just like a woman to eagerly grasp at the opportunity to aggrandize her social position, regardless of her ignorance of the material facts of the case. A woman’s endurance transcends emotional noise, which is why she wallows there. She bears the precious eggs; she can be preternaturally stubborn. The past was one thing, her plans for a future, quite another.

    Why were you so ignorant? I heard her accuse him, using the sense of the word found in the vulgate, meaning rude and insensitive.

    Then after I could barely hear either one of them anymore I picked up another shard of her piercing voice as she cried out,

    "So he’s the writer!" Her voice rang with excitement.

    I walked back to my compound, incensed and mystified. I sat outside my tent, emotions moving through me like the great current gliding by on the river. I was incredulous at the fact Raphe had moved back to Chouteauville a year before me. When I made the decision to come back I recognized an obligation to look him up, for old time’s sake, as they say, but a part of me doubted I would make the effort. At least not for a while, a long while; probably not until I had another book published to bolster my confidence.

    I had grave misgivings, believing one ought to let the dead bury the dead and one ought to also let the past remain in the past. It might be a far better thing to have Raphe remain a ghostly creature sealed off in the sanctity of the past. What did Wordsworth say? Other lot was mine.

    Chapter 5

    T hey finished my house around noon. I sat at my camp table and wrote a hefty bonus check for each of the workers, as per our agreement, for finishing the project before May 13 th . That date had

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