"Dead Man's Plan"
by
Lee Eide
Lee Eide
All rights reserved by Denlinger's Publishers, including the right to reproduce this electronic book, or portions thereof, in any form, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review.
This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.
Eide was born in Minot, North Dakota. He moved to Red Wing, Minnesota in 1973 and has lived in the state ever since. He and wife Amy live in Burnsville, a southern suburb of Minneapolis. They share their home with a plethora of pets, including two dogs, two cats, one rabbit and three tiny fish. A strong Lutheran upbringing and loving family have not only helped him keep the faith during the pre-publication years but provide immeasurable support and inspiration for his present-day writing.
Thriller
DEAD MAN'S PLAN is a story for those of us who dream of freedom while living out our endless days in sunless cubicles, trapped inside the
oppressive barbed wire cocoon of corporate America. On one such endless day, Lee Wyatt decides to make a break for it. Which is why he
suddenly ups and drops his two-timing wife, ungrateful cat, and boring job in a Twin Cities bank. Lee does what many of us today lack the
courage to do—he hits the road in his broken down old heap, armed with only a strong sense of determination, four beers, and a bicycle. He
makes it as far as Dying Tree, South Dakota (a two-bit podunk berg) and from there the fun begins as Lee, freed from the 9 to 5 drudge of his
former existence, begins to discover for himself what life's all about. The local yokels are interesting and friendly. It's the sort of place you can
hang out, drink beer, shoot pool with Gomer Pyle archetypes and explore a few far-flung peyote-assisted spiritual frontiers with Native
American women.
Lee is looking for something more out of life, and he soon finds that life is looking for something more out of him as well. As he begins to dream for the first time of things heavenly and hellish, a new freedom captivates his soul—and just as he starts to flap his wings a bit, he discovers his paradise found is about to be lost. The town of Lee's rebirth is scheduled to be ripped apart by one of its native sons—Ricky Mann, a former hick turned famous actor who made it big in Hollywood and is back home to tear down the place and build in its stead a hideous entertainment complex, replete with slot machines, garish theatrical venues featuring washed up crooners, and plenty of Branson-ish extra-long parking spaces for the bluehairs in their motor homes. When fledgling spiritualist Lee sets himself and his newfound cosmic- consciousness against the powerful Hollywood icon and greed-o-maniac Ricky Mann, something has got to give. What follows is a modern day High Noon, acted out in places both high and low on numerous earthly and spiritual planes.
Author Eide describes DEAD MAN'S PLAN as a cross-genre "spiritual thriller", and I can't disagree. Eide makes a case that Christianity and reincarnation are NOT mutually exclusive. (Heh-heh-heh-heh-heh. Now you've got to read it to found out exactly what the heck that means.) DEAD MAN'S PLAN is the kind of book one hopes to run across in the brave new world of e-publishing, and one you won't want to pass up. Hopefully, you'll read at least some of it in your cubicle on "company time". --David LaGraff, ScribesWorld magazine
Kelly, October 31, 2001,
A Page Turner...
Dead Man's Plan is like a
roller coaster. It starts off at a slow pace but continually accelerates faster
and faster. I was enthralled, and forced to keep reading. This is the kind of
book that you hope to come across. The well-developed characters and setting
truly makes the book. Definitly a must read for Stephen King fans.
Paul R., April 20, 2001,
An interesting page-turner...
Coming from a
reader who loves Mystery/Suspense; this book is a must read. The vivid details
kept me reading. Excellent use of setting! An overall delight.
Amy A., a child-care
professional from Minn, February 23, 2001,
Better Than Any Printed, Conventional Book I've Ever
Read
DEAD MAN'S PLAN is everything you want in a great story -- it's
filled with drama, suspense, supernatural and spiritual intrigue and most of
all, believable and three-dimensional characters. It's like an updated western
Stephen King style, only a little less macabre and
better-written.
Meanwhile a man from a south Minneapolis suburb finally realizes his relationship with his wife, and more importantly with himself, has been a lie. One day while his wife is out carousing with her newest lover, instead of a dramatic confrontation and lengthy divorce, Lee Wyatt simply gets up, packs a few clothes and books, says good-bye to the cat, and walks out the front door. Several hundred miles, two days and one car later, Lee pedals his bicycle into the town of Dying Tree. He falls into a job at the Crazy Horse Golf Club as an assistant greenskeeper. There he is befriended by Frank Leeds, the course's maintenance man and head greenskeeper.
Over the next two months, Lee Wyatt, freed from his own personal past, becomes intertwined with the town's unique place in the region's mythology and history. Dreams of being a sheriff in the old west combine with a mystical night in the Dying Tree Cemetery with a native American named Soaring Eagle to bring the ghosts from the town's past more firmly into the present. Though aware of their strength and eternal presence, Lee has no idea just how much of a role they'll play in the developing modern-day drama.
Dead Man's Plan plays upon the age-old fascination with ghosts, personal transformation, and the spirit of the old west to produce a story whose theme-the evils of corporate welfare-is a topic addressed by TIME magazine in a series of articles in mid-1999. At its very core, the novel is an exploration of the deepest depths of the human soul and outermost reaches of the human mind. A blend of old-fashioned values and new-age mysticism propel this novel a level above most stories. It enlightens while entertaining the reader. Humor, adventure, ethics, suspense, and spirituality come together in this page-turner.
Chapter 3
Lee Wyatt pushed through the front door and waited for
five seconds. He shook his head, a rueful smile skipping across his face like
the countless stones he and his brother’d had slung across ponds in their
youth. For a few uncertain seconds, Lee was waiting for Frank, a St. Bernard
puppy they’d had for six months. For a few seconds, he’d forgotten that they’d
made the difficult decision to give the dog to another couple, someone who had
a big enough yard to let it stay outside when they weren’t home. When Lee and
his wife Mary had it, the animal had driven them crazy by chewing up anything
it could reach. Carpeting, shoes, toilet paper rolls, empty beer
and pop cans, phone and television cords—they were all fair game for Frank. The
dog’s energy level, though certainly less than many breeds, was still sufficient
to leave the animal bored and restless. Chewing was his way of passing the
long, otherwise boring days while his owners were off at work.
Then the piles of dog turds began appearing. Frank had apparently just been completely housebroken when evidence to the contrary keep appearing with daily, stinking regularity. Mary wasn’t going to put up with it and while Lee would normally given the animal a chance to come around, it was painfully obvious Frank wasn’t happy in their two-bedroom townhouse. From an emotional, recreational perspective, the dog was suffocating.
Lee shut the door. He shuffled to the table in the dining room, set the briefcase on top of the table, and said softly as he made for the refrigerator, "Sorry Franky, we tried to make it work. Hope you’re happy in your new home."
The accountant pulled back the door, surveyed the artificially-cooled landscape, and after careful deliberation, opted for a bottle of Bud Ice. Damn it, he couldn’t help it. He loved those penguin commercials. Somehow Anheiser-Busch had succeeded in nudging him toward the bottles of Bud Ice whenever he prowled the aisles of his favorite liquor store.
"Shoo be doo be doo," he crooned while twisting off the cap.
The caller ID flashed an incessant blinking red light. Someone had called. Lee, with the penguin-beer in his left hand, used his right hand to work the buttons on the phone accessory. Mary’d called at 5:03 p.m. She’d left a message. He snapped up the portable phone, keyed in the message retrieval number, punched in the secret code, and listened to his wife’s recorded voice.
"Hi, I’m out with a few girls from the office. I should home be home between ten and eleven. I’ll call you later to let you know what’s going on. Talk to you soon."
A female voice began giving him options about saving the message and so on. He hit the 1 and then the * button to end the call. Lee and his penguin hauled their beer out on to the patio. As soon as they were outside, a gold and white Persian cat, belly hanging about four inches above the floor, ambled after him.
"BROOOWWWW," yelled the cat as it approached him. Lee dropped on to the wrought iron bench they’d purchased earlier in the summer. He patted his lap.
"Come on up, big guy. You can do it."
Bellows took two more steps, paused, crouched, and launched its considerable girth into the air. Though the top paws reached its goal, the declawed state his owners had cursed him with meant it had no way to get a good grip to pull itself up. Anticipating such, Lee hoisted the rotund kitty up into his lap. A cloud of cat hairs danced in the air in front of him.
"Now was that so hard? Don’t answer that question," Lee said scratching the animal under the chin. Bellows’ eyes closed immediately as it rolled on to its back. He rubbed the exposed belly.
"BROOOWWW," gave way to passionate purring. The cat settled in for a short summer’s nap.
As Lee watched two teen-age boys blast ground strokes back and forth on the tennis court across the way from their unit, he thought back to the phone message. Out with the girls was her code for being with her newest boyfriend. Pete, Harry, Larry -- he couldn’t remember for sure. The particulars didn’t matter. Mary was fast becoming a female Bill Clinton. Lee had thus far played along with the charade. She suspected he knew of the affairs but they’d never discussed it. Though they’d never separated, in an emotional sense, Mary was never really there for him. Maybe it was their different interests. Lee ate up spectator sports. She imbibed public television. He loved to play golf. She had no idea what a loft wedge was and didn’t care to ever find out. He was good with numbers. She hadn’t ever balanced her checking account. He was a regular church-goer at the Lutheran church five blocks away. She stepped inside churches only for the occasional wedding or funeral. He read novels like a madman. She watched television religiously.
Whatever the root causes, the result was a missed connection. Checking accounts weren’t the only separate pieces in their lives. Their spirits had never really danced with one another. A nebulous but very real barrier had always kept them apart, the energy exchange between them limited and superficial.
What the hell were they supposed to do about it now? Nine years of marriage had produced no children, which was fine with him. The world had entirely too many folks the way it was. Lee reasoned that it was okay to have children but if you had them, your whole soul had to be devoted to loving and raising them in the very best you knew how. Only the people who were truly enthused about having kids should have them. That was his philosophy. There was plenty of ways for non-child producing adults to help care for the world’s children. Babysitting nieces, nephews and neighbor kids; donating to the March of Dimes and United Way; leading Boy Scout and Girl Scout troops; saying hi to your friends' children; behaving politely in public; and praying for the safety and well-being of children around the world at church services were just the tip of iceberg.
Lee swigged his beer, then watched the boys play tennis for a several minutes, his mind slowly uncluttering itself with each THWACK of the tennis ball. A glance down. Bellows was snoozing fitfully, the stout feline struggling to slip into a deeper sleep. The Bud Ice was nearly gone. He decided to pace himself on the last quarter of the beer so that the feline beast got in a few more moments of sack time.
Having trudged through the marital muck of his life, he turned to his job. He’d labored for seven years as an Intermediate Accountant III at the Global Link Federal Credit Union in Richfield, Minnesota. Standing only fifteen miles from their town home, it was like the Mall of America—big, convenient, and profitable. But he’d grown increasingly dissatisfied with his role at the credit union. Whenever he'd applied for a higher position within the department, like accounting supervisor , he'd been rejected. Moreover, the pay at his mid-level accounting position was considerably below market. The company line was that the tremendous benefits made up for the lower pay.
While knocking off most of the rest of the beer, Lee considered that argument. While it was true the medical, retirement and almost-free flying benefits were significantly greater than the average employer, he knew the primary reason for the lower pay. It was the higher-than-normal compensation of executive management . At the expense of all the other employees, the higher-ups were overpaid. Lee’d seen memos and journal entries that detailed bonuses to the execs, usually over $150,000 for the three of them. While the president, CEO and CFO weren’t making the exorbitant salaries you read about in Time or Newsweek or hear on the evening news, for the credit union industry, their management salaries were well above market. And that was before the year-end bonuses.
Lee slugged down the last few drops of Bud, smiled at the penguin on the label, then glanced down at Bellows. All four paws were in the air, shooting off at different angles. His spider web-fine whiskers twitched.
"Dreaming of a nice fat little mouse with a broken leg, huh?"
Then he thought, no, he’s probably dreaming of large sausage pizza with extra onions. The cat, like Frank, ate anything it could reach. He especially liked steak hot off the grill. One time Lee tried to retrieve a piece of steak the little shit had stolen off his plate. When he’d cornered the cat, it actually growled at him as Lee tried to recover the pilfered meat. Then it hit him. That’s how he felt about his years at the credit union. What was rightfully his—in other words, fair pay for all the years of competent, loyal service—had been swiped off his plate by the voracious claws of upper management.
He’d been tolerant of the situation for all these years but while outwardly he didn’t express much discontent, inwardly it’d been gnawing away at his emotional guts. Now, today, on this Friday night in June, Lee Wyatt decided that for at least once in his life, he was going to be one-hundred percent truthful with himself. No making excuses for people. He was going to see what the situation truly was, compare it to his feelings, and act wisely and truthfully.
Number one, he was getting ripped off by the credit union brass. He wasn’t going to put up with any longer. It wasn’t fair to him or his coworkers.
Number two, what could he do about it? If he told his boss, the controller, about it, it wouldn’t do any good. Even if he went right to the top and told the president himself—John Roff—it wouldn’t do any good. If Lee told him the rest of the non-management workers wanted a bigger slice of the financial pie, John Roff, acting as voice of the executives, would growl. But unlike Bellows, he wouldn’t act so docile when Lee tried to actually take back what was rightfully his. If he filed a formal complaint with the board of directors of the credit union or even with the National Credit Union Administration, the growl would escalate to a bite.
Lee could easily envision John Roff and his cronies inventing an excuse to fire him. They’d go through the employee manual until they found an obscure rule that he’d broken. They’d use that as ammunition for firing his troublemaking ass.
He reached down and gently picked up Bellows. The cat muttered a cry of protest and resentment over being roused from its slumber.
"Sorry big guy, but you’re separating me from another beer," he told Bellows before setting the feline on the bench. The cat hopped down and ambled back inside, just ahead of him.
He snapped up another beer and hauled it back outside. The two teen-age boys playing tennis were switching sides of the courts. The taller one kidded the other about being behind. The teased one brushed off the taunt and said something about not losing another the game the rest of the match.
Lee returned to his spot on the wrought iron bench. He twisted off the top and tilted the bottle to his mouth. After a long sigh, he gently laid the container down on a near-by stand. His mind slipped back into the house of thought he’d just been in a few minutes earlier. No, it was true that there was really nothing he could to improve his standing at the credit union. Executive management was entrenched there, meaning sub-par pay for the rest of the employees wouldn’t improve much. That meant he’d have to find an accounting position at with a different organization.
He shook his head. The prospect of staying in the numbers game didn’t exactly excite him. It didn’t, as Jimmy Dean would say about a certain brand of sausage, melt his butter. Lee knew accounting was a critical part of any business. It was just that he didn’t want to have to do it personally any longer. There were plenty of other qualified accountants in the universe. If Lee Allen Wyatt hung up his ten-key calculator and pocket protector, the accounting industry wouldn’t be any worse off. The pool of accountants and bookkeepers was plenty big enough to absorb the loss.
The challenge was finding something he wanted to do for a living. No easy, obvious answer popped up to replace the void left by accounting’s exit.
What the hell, there’s gotta be an answer, he thought. Then he realized what he needed to do was completely change his thinking process. He had to somehow dig down deep inside to find his true self. That meant not being duped by surface appearances and past behaviors. He couldn’t rely on those outward, easy clues for answers. He had to reinvent himself by changing his inner landscape. To do that, he had to change his outer landscape as well. His current life was too full of routines and structures pointing to his old, unhappy, out-of-place self. To induce a drastic change in his attitude, Lee felt he had to drastically alter his outer environment.
"You gotta get the hell out of Dodge, partner," he muttered. The now ex-accountant slugged down the rest of the beer, grimaced, sighed, and belched.
"Enough of that shit for awhile," he declared before marching upstairs. On the way up, he petted Bellows, told the cat good-bye, and then filled a suitcase with clothes and several paperback books. On his way toward the front door, he paused long enough to slip the wedding band off his finger and leave it on the dining room table. He considered leaving a long, detailed, emotional note for Mary. Instead he scribbled on a Post-It note, "Like Dennis Miller used to say, I AM OUTTA HERE. We’re finished. We’ll work out details of the divorce later. Right now, I’ve got to go."
From there he hustled into the living room. He found a photograph of Bellows in an album, pulled it out and slipped it into the suitcase. One last look around. Nope, nothing else he really had to have.
"Oh what the hell, might as well finish off the rest of them," he said before opening the fridge to grab the last four Bud Ices. "Now I’m outta here."
He walked through the house, out through the front door, and into the garage. Two minutes later, the maroon Escort rumbled out of sight.
**********
He’d been driving over six-hundred miles, three-quarters of it on I-90. It was a little before five o’clock in the morning. Lee had seen a billboard and two highway signs about the Badlands National Park exit. It’d be coming up pretty damn soon. As a child of six or seven, he’d visited the badlands in North Dakota. They were, as he recalled, just outside a small town named Medora. He’d never been to the badlands in South Dakota. One thing was for sure: he was sick to death of driving along the flat prairie land at 85 mph. The sheer monotony of the landscape, drone of the Escort's engine, and consumption of the beer conspired together. Their ultimate aim was, of course, to make him fall asleep behind the wheel. Though he injected three cups of coffee into his fatigued system, the tricky trio of boring landscape, beer and engine noise were winning the battle. Teetering on the precipice of sleep, Lee determined he had to either pull off the road and give in to the siren song of slumber or take a detour through the Badlands National Park. Eager to put as much distance between his old life and himself as possible, he opted for the second choice.
The sky grew lighter but sunrise was still another hour away. As he eased the old Escort up to the guard’s station at the park’s entrance, ominous sounds drifted from under the hood. Loud, clicking, abnormal sounds that seemed to his admittedly mechanically-challenged ears to be cries for help. Like a loved one sitting by a terminally ill loved one, there was nothing to do but pray and assure the patient that they’d be all right.
"Just one in the car, sir?" asked a clean-cut, young man of perhaps twenty-two or twenty-three.
"Yep."
"Ten dollars, please."
"Ten dollars?!"
"Yes sir. It’s ten dollars per person. Didn’t you see the rates on the sign back there?" he asked.
"Oh, is that what that was?"
A nod of the head.
"That’s right. You look pretty tired. You know, there’s a Super Eight right off the interstate. It’s only another five miles ahead. I’ll be happy to give them a call to see if they’ve got a room available."
"That’s all right. I’ll be fine. Just another cup or eight of this—" Lee raised the plastic mug of coffee from Tom Thumb "and I’ll be fine."
"If you say so, sir. Now then, that’ll be ten dollars. We also accept Visa and MasterCard if you don’t have the cash."
"Let me see, hold on a second or two. I think I’ve got a ten here," Lee said while rifling through his pants pockets in search of his wallet.
"Aha, here we go."
Lee handed the bill over. The park employee thanked him and urged him to pull over and take a nap at one of the scenic lookouts if he needed to.
"Thanks. If I need to, I will."
He waved at the young man before shifting into drive. The Escort groaned, hesitated, and then grudgingly eased ahead. Lee began to reach toward the glove compartment for the maintenance log. He wanted to see when the date of the last oil change and tune-up.
"Fuck it," he said. At this point, it didn’t matter. Checking the maintenance log now would be like a doctor asking a patient stricken with the Ebola virus when they’d last had a physical. His old Ford Escort, which had taken him many places during the last eight years, including well over a hundred golf courses, to and from work over interstate and city roads, out to the Grand Canyon on one vacation (1993) and over to Fenway Park (1996) on another, would carry him as far as it could. And that was that. Like most people and even most animals, it did the best it could and the cards of chance would come up as it they did.
"Come on, baby," he whispered soothingly, "you can do it. Daddy wants a new life. You be a good girl and keep going, and you can sleep all day and maybe even part of the night after we reach Wall."
Wall was home to Wall Drug, an urban legend for the millions of folks who’d never been there. Of course, millions of people had trekked through the Dakota prairie over the sixty plus years since the business had opened up in the early 1930’s. The advertising signs along Interstate 90 for Wall Drug were as numerous as Wilt Chamberlain's one-night stands. WHERE IN THE HELL IS WALL DRUG was plastered to thousands, probably millions, of car bumpers. WHERE IN THE HECK IS WALL DRUG was available to the folks with aversions to profanity.
As he eased the car around the hairpin curves, Lee marveled at the bizarre landscape. The Badlands were just behind the Mt. Rushmore and Crazy Horse monuments as South Dakota tourist attractions. He could certainly understand why. The terrain was so diametrically opposed to most of the state. Instead of the wind-whipped flatlands, the topography looked like God had dropped several hits of acid and went to town. In reality, it’d taken wind and water millions of years to create the mazes of twisted, turning, nonsensically-shaped hills, canyons and mounds that spread out before him. The variety of shapes and angles was staggering. Most people said they saw shapes like castle towers and battlements, church spires and pyramids. It reminded Lee of gazing up at the sky as child and trying to identify what the clouds looked like. To his left, he saw a jumble of mini-hills that's pattern of peaks approximated the big dipper.
To his left, the sun hurled red javelins of fire from 93 million miles away. Most of the land was tucked snugly in blankets of shadow, still snoozing happily. That’d change soon enough but for now, the lunar-like expanse of land was more dark than light, the jambalaya of configurations hiding more than it flaunted. He braked, the old Escort’s speedometer down to twenty miles an hour, as he and old his friend negotiated another tight curve.
After the road straightened out, Lee leaned on the accelerator. The speedometer remained at twenty mph, however. He frowned, then applied for pressure with on the gas pedal. The Escort’s insides growled and shrieked but wouldn’t speed up for him.
"Shit," he muttered. "Come on, girl, you can do it. We’re all pulling for you."
The we was God and himself. And maybe the security guard he’d just spoken to. As for the rest of the world, it probably didn't give a shit. There were bigger fish to be concerned with. Pockets of abject poverty, the disintegration of the family, collapse of ethics in government leaders, ruination of natural resources, especially the waters of the planet, and so on. But for Lee Wyatt, the biggest fish in his pond was his dying auto-mo-fucking-bile. He still didn’t know exactly where he wanted to end up but he knew it wasn’t here. Not in middle of the Badlands National Park near Wall, South Dakota.
"See, I’m going nice and slow now. I’m not standing on the accelerator any more. Doesn’t that feel better?" he purred to the car.
His old buddy responded by losing even more speed while issuing a series of unhealthy sounds from the hood.
Fifteen mph.
He glanced in the rearview mirror. No one behind him. That was good.
Ten mph.
"God damn it."
Five mph.
Grudgingly, he pointed the car at the turnoff for a scenic overlook. The motor died before he was all the way off the road. The car’s rear end stuck out in the westbound lane, blocking a quarter of the road.
"Oh come on, you could have least made it another thirty feet, for Christ’s sake."
He slammed his fists off the steering wheel.
"Oh well, life rips your heart out and then you die a horrible, slow, agonizing death. What can you do?"
He sat in the driver’s seat. He’d never before seen and heard a car die. The odometer froze on 99,892 and one-tenth miles. Lee briefly thought about turning the key again to see what would happen.
"Not a chance in hell," he announced, then did it anyway.
If ever a car cried, the sound issuing from under its hood was it. It sounded like the dying cry of a cat or dog that’d been fatally struck by a car. His friend the car was roadkill, though the terminator wasn’t another car but rather time itself.
Lee breathed out a heavy sigh, then said reverentially, "Thanks for the memories, old girl."
The ex-accountant laid his head on the steering wheel, closing his eyes for several seconds. As tired as he was, Lee knew if he didn’t move within five or ten seconds, he’d be asleep at the wheel. His eyes snapped open. The desolate, bizarre beauty of the Badlands surrounded him, the sheer weirdness of the misshapen topography evidence of forces much greater than but not necessarily adverse to himself. He tried unsuccessfully to identify the row of shapes standing off to his right and fifty yards ahead. One instant they appeared to be a row of headstones, complete with engravings summarizing the lives of the persons buried several feet under, the next they were giant dominoes with sidebars about the games they’d been involved in over the years. Lee shook his head in an attempt to connect with the reality of the situation. Now the row had been transformed into a line of statues of well-known presidents of the United States with summaries of the secrets of their lives. Little-known facts such as childhood acts of theft, sexual fantasies or heretofore unknown interests like wood carving or poker replaced normal presidential fact sheets.
Without realizing why he was doing it or how quickly he was truly moving, Lee strode toward the shapes in question. A burning desire to know just what in the hell those things really were pulled him relentlessly closer as a breathless young female virgin draws her boyfriend closer by undoing the top buttons of her shirt.
Five feet away, Lee decided it wasn’t quite close enough to identify the true nature of the shapes. The first two strides were without incident but the third one was, unbeknownst to the strider, too close to the hill's edge. Before he could do anything about it, Lee was tumbling and bouncing down a sharp incline. Though he threw up both hands, the series of collisions with the hard clay sand rocked him like waves attacking the Titanic. The last one tugged him under. Darkness was complete and absolute.
He woke an indeterminate time later. Though exhausted, he started climbing up the incline. Details of the valley from which he climbed were fogged with fatigue and shadow. Forty, perhaps fifty steps later, he reached the top. The steepness of the climb surprised him as his breathing grew increasingly difficult during the ascent. After reaching relatively flat land again, he bent over to rest. Thirty or so seconds later, he was ready to continue. Lee shuffled over to the his fallen car, undid the straps on the carrier, and grabbed the 18-speeder. He nearly toppled over after hopping on but righted himself just in time. After he’d fallen back into the routine of pedaling and balancing, Lee grew exuberant of his successful negotiation of the highway. A crazy smile shot onto his face. Though the number of reasons for his happiness were no doubt multiple and complex, his consciousness soared above them all, slave to no one explanation but thankful to whatever kept him going along this lonely highway. He swung a glance over his left shoulder and then waved one last time at the silent, still 1981 Ford Escort.
Electronic Editions: ( * Disclaimer )
Download via Email $6.95
3.25" PC disk $6.95 + $2.55 shipping and handling each disk.
NEW - InstaBook paperback Edition