Henry.

 

     Here on the blog, for the first time ever, an excerpt from my novel, tentatively titled,"Fire Nights in Bear Dance". This scene appears in Chapter One...

(apologies for typos and such, this is an unedited draft.)

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     Henry Chote shuffled through the Sporting Goods department at the Walmart. At his age, he was happy to still be able to do his own shopping. He had new knees, but his hips were another story, so as long as he had a buggy to push and hang on to, he was fine.

     He’d been blessed with golden skin from his Cherokee grandfather, but 92 years in the sun had severely wrinkled his once handsome face. His Elizabeth had been the lucky one, dying so young, remembered in her beauty. Henry would only be remembered as a stooped over old man with too many stories. He knew he would die soon, a simple statement of fact. He wasn’t sick, it was simply his time. He didn’t mind the dying so much, he just didn’t want to know it was coming. Henry didn’t want to have those last minute thoughts. Those worries and regrets that must fly to the surface of your consciousness at such a moment. He hoped to die in a dream. He dreamed of Elizabeth, naked under the trees of a long ago summer. Blond hair spread around her head as she quivered beneath him.  He sighed, and turned the buggy into the fishing aisle.

     There was a glass counter with a cash register, where you could buy guns, or a fishing license. At the moment a vaguely familiar man, who looked to be in his fifties, was bent over looking at hunting knives lined up like soldiers in the case. The man stood up straight and looked around for an employee. Not seeing one immediately, he pushed a button located on a pole near the cash register. Within a few seconds a woman’s voice came over the PA system: “Help needed in Sporting Goods. Help needed in Sporting Goods.” The man began to drum his fingers on the glass, but stopped when he noticed the old man watching him.

     “Is there something you want?” the man frowned.

     “No.” replied Henry. He continued to stare.

     “Old man, what is your problem?,’ said the younger man.

     “I know you,” Henry smiled. “It took me a minute, but now I recognize you.  Must be almost 40 years now. Looks like everything turned out okay for you…”

     “You can’t possibly know me. I’m not from around here,” the man snapped. Henry caught just the slightest shimmer of something in the younger man’s eyes.

    “ I do know you! You’re …”

   “May I help you?” Henry’s memory was interrupted by an overweight young man in a blue vest, who spoke while looking down into his cell phone.

     The man reached over and grasped Henry’s wrist, holding it too tight, and looking the old man straight in the eye, said,

     “Leave me alone!” Letting go of Henry’s arm, he turned and started speaking to the kid, who’d missed the rough exchange as he was busily tapping into his phone.

   Henry hesitated just a moment then pushed his buggy into the next aisle, lingering there for a few minutes looking at camping gear. Mulling over the odd exchange, he decided he should go over and confront the man again, but when he got back around the corner, both he and the blue vested boy were gone.

     Twenty minutes or so later, Henry left the store with a bag of new fishing lures, got in his battered old pick-up, and turned the radio to his favorite classic country station.  He drove slowly on the busy road. A convoy of angry looking young men in neon colored Hondas low to the ground, blew past him honking their horns and flipping him the bird.

     “Assholes,” Henry said out loud.

     Henry was humming along to “Ring of Fire” as he came up to a red light and stepped on the brakes. The pedal went to the floor. The old truck was still moving forward.

     “Aw, Dammit!” Henry grumbled to himself. He’d felt the brakes getting soft and had meant to take the truck over and have his grandson look at it, but just hadn’t gotten around to it. Knowing the truck was going to roll into the intersection, he tried the door. He might break a hip when he fell to the road, but the damn things needed replacing anyway. He fumbled just a second too long with the button lock on the old door. A chicken truck speeding through the intersection plowed into the passenger side of the old Chevy.

     Henry didn’t die immediately, but laid there for a minute or two in the rubble of his truck, the smell of burnt rubber, antifreeze, and gasoline wafting around him. Feathers. Millions of white feathers floating in the air.  He was aware of some pain and people yelling in the distance. Then he heard a softer voice and opened his eyes to the sight of the most glorious blue sky through broken glass.

     “Elizabeth,” the old man whispered into the feathery air.