Ever Onward by Wayne Mee Read Free Book Online Page B

glimpse, but Jessie thought it was a woman. They
stopped to investigate. Josh honked the horn and waited. Nothing.
He got out and called. Still nothing.
    “That house, Jess?”, he asked,
pointing to a rambling bungalow. Jessie nodded. “You stay by the
van. I’ll have a look.” He was half way up the walk when the shot
came. He felt the slug whiz by his head. Throwing himself on the
ground, he yelled for Jessie to stay down. Touching his ear, he
noticed with surprise there was blood on it. Cautiously he raised
his head. “We mean you no harm! We’re friends!”
    Another shot rang out. A .22 by the
sound. This time bark chipped off the tree he had rolled behind.
“Shit!,” Josh swore to himself, then he was up and running for the
van.
    “What’s up, Dad? Why they shooting at
us?!”
    Josh gunned the motor and tore down
the street. “Scared, probably! Or crazy! Not everyone’s going to
take what happened as calmly as old Doc!” He presses his sleeve
against his ear. There was little blood now, but it stung like
hell.
    The ride was short and silent. Josh
turned onto his own street and pulled in the drive. His home of
twenty-some years stood silent and empty. Now little more than a
box of dead dreams.
    “I thought Doc was fixing us supper?”,
Jessie asked.
    Josh, still frowning, nodded. “Want to
pick up a few things first. You too. Change of clothes and your
toothbrush. We’ll be staying the night at Doc’s.”
    “Good,” Jessie said. “This place
doesn’t feel like home now that Mom’s gone.”
    Josh looked at his son. Already
adapting, he thought. Christ, to be young again! He followed the
boy into the silent house.
    While Jess was gathering his things,
Josh went to the basement. Passing the washer and dryer gave him a
sudden twinge and his wife’s face floated before him again. It was
good they were leaving. Too many memories here, for him and for
Jessie.
    He went on into his workshop.
Cross-country skis and old packsacks greeted him. His eyes went to
his workbench, cluttered with tools. Cans of paint and half used
rolls ofwallpaper stuck out of the rough shelves he had made
several years ago. Always meant to clean this place up, he thought.
Now, what the hell.
    He looked up and found what he had
really came for; two long leather cases tucked in with the Alpine
skis and poles. Pulling them down, dust and cobwebs came with them.
Clearing off the workbench, he laid the two objects down. His
fingers trembled as he undid the zipper of the heaviest one.
Half-way, his hand fell to his side.
    “Jesus Christ!”, he muttered. “What
the hell am I doing?”
    Protecting your own! a cold voice
said. It was an ancient voice, first heard when the new upstart man
discovered that a stick could be a weapon. A primeval voice;
ancient; old; as old as the earth itself.
    Josh slid the shotgun out of its case.
The bare bulb overhead glared off its blue-black barrel, glinted
off the twin open hammers, danced along the wooden stock. His
father’s gun, dead now for a dozen years. Josh thumbed the breech
open. There was the familiar ‘clicking’ sound. Both barrels were
empty. He snapped it shut, old memories snapping into place along
with it. The weight, the heft, even the smell. Josh ran his hand
over the walnut stock. The scratch was still there. Josh had first
fired it on a duck hunt at thirteen. The recoil had knocked him on
his ass into the weeds, the gun to the bottom of the boat. His
father had shook his head and offered his hand.
    Smiling sheepishly, dripping
semi-stagnant pond-water, young Josh had reached out trembling much
like Adam had so very long ago. The touch of any god lingers
forever with a person.
    Good old dad. The late, great white
hunter. Kind but distant, caring but cool, unable to allow love to
show. More at ease with animals than people, at home anywhere but
at home, finally finding rest in the bottom of a bottle.
    But before he checked out for that
great skeet-shoot in the sky, he’d passed on