A field of dead grass under saltshaker snow: field mice burrowed deep beneath it. I walk, holding my thumb and finger to my purpling lip. Winds whip across the plain, delivering lashings. It is cold here, dead. The once pillowy snow has turned to ice shelves around yellow tufts of grass. I crunch the ice underfoot, nearly slip.
The feeling that something is missing. Eerie silence blankets the plain. There were once machine guns here. In a sometimes war. Now there are ghosts. I breathe it in…and…yes. Memory.
An old man sits to a bar, orders up. His forearms are trees, his skin is worn and splotched red. A bar for seafarers, and rough men, situated near docks filled with longshoremen and skipper captains. The weather is steadily cast over, sky gravelly and concrete. A seagull waits for its chance. Outside: drizzle.
Another man sits a stool away with amber in his glass. He sips. His face is sprouted with sixish days of bracken. Ashen and despondent but not old. He wears black shoes, a woolen peacoat, he is from the city.
“Hello, young man.”
He sucks his teeth and drops his pint glass to the bar. “Hello, old man.” Turns and sees him for what he is: worn and leathered, stained with oil and work, having a fisherman’s beard.
“What brings you to the docks?”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re not from here.”
“I just…needed…away,” says the young man, glancing around.
“I see.”
“I work in business.”
There’s a shift among the wooden chairs by the window. Two men stand up, making raucous laughter.
“I’m just…” searches for words. Now it feels interrupted, poorly timed, he relents. The old man waves a hand to dismiss any expectation, turns back to the bar, and leans into it.
A moment expires before the young man lifts his glass and rests it against his chest. “I’m young but I’m not so young.”
The old fisherman laughs.
“War makes you old,” says the young man. His movements are slow. Considered. Efforts to entrench.
Were you in a war?” says the old man.
“Yes.”
The old man steeps in thought. “I had a war. Long ago.” For several moments he’s lost in reverie, then abruptly: “It’s something I know about.” Sets his drink back to the bar. Tenuousness sits between them. Stratification of layers. The blazing of a path for life to travel from one generation to the next.
The young man takes another drink then replaces his glass on the table. “I was younger than I am now, and younger still when I left. But,” he sighs, “I suppose all men go to their wars as young men.”
“It’s how they return that matters,” says the old man with hidden contentiousness. He tells the keep he’ll have another beer. It comes fast. Above the bar is a notice sign. Very telling. “Haven’t been home long have you?”
The young man shakes his head. “Eight months.”
“It’ll find you. But you’ll be okay.” Old man has another gulp of dark. “Takes time but it finds you, and you find it. Finding out you don’t belong is…hard. You’ll be alright.
The young man nearly protests that he is fine, that he does have a home, and does belong, but the old man shakes his head, a sour reaction.
“Not what I mean,” says the old man. “Takes time before it sets in, before it finds you.”
The young man: What is it?
Strange now. It seems he has known him for…ever. An alternate universe bringing them together, and now they’ve lived entire lives in the space of minutes. They peer through the window to where a seagull has spotted it, and flies to pick it up. It’s raining now. The geraniums droop in the rain.
In the distance: low clouds, rain, and a farmhouse, barn, and two silos like rockets. Closer, at mid-range, two hounds with their noses to the ground scatter over the acres. There are old fenceposts shunted at a weak angle. The ground is wet.
I wait for the gunfire rattle, for the whump of mortar shells, cries of MEDIC! but there is only silence. The sound of empty pasture, slow rain, seconds seeping into soil.
I stab the spade shovel into the soft earth and lean against it. How did I get here? All this space, all this wide-open space.
The old man prepares to turn in but sits back down. Pays a look at the young man two stools over—
“It ain’t gonna get no easier, kid. Sure as hell ain’t gonna make any more sense. You need to take a few moments — fine — take your moments. Just don’t languish too long.” He lets a sigh. “I watched it in a friend of mine after we came back. Drank it to a place deep inside.” Holds up an empty pint glass. “Be careful with this. There’s worse things than living in the past.”
“Like what?” asks the young man.
He set the glass — “Like getting stuck there.” — down.
I take my dogs inside the empty house. I open the fridge door and extract a brown bottle, pop the cap, and drink. Out there the world comes at me fast, but here it’s slow. Everything hovers in the sky above the gravel, and out there beyond the fields. Here it’s slow enough to make some sense out of it. Out there it goes too fast. I can’t keep up.
They really have a lot of ideas about what works for guys like me. They know all the excesses, what I need more of and what I need less of. I am tired of all their knowing. Here with my hounds — away from the world, away from their knowledge — no one has to know anything.
A seagull sets down on a fencepost. The ocean is close. It hangs in the air. [pink] Mist. When I strain, I hear the ocean’s rumble. There is an interdiction that happens sometimes when the machine guns start sawing wood and plaster, flesh and stone. Sometimes the horizon turns blurry, and I move in slow time. Sometimes I am stuck until I am…no longer stuck.
I walk to the kitchen. I undo a shirt button. Then I drink the last from the bottle. I toss it in the trash and select another to replace it. The dogs lie down on the floor, and the ocean rolls in.
Roman Newell is hard at work on his debut novel — 20XX — a work in magical realism, which explores the complexities and conflicts in modern day societies amid confusing social norms, rapidly evolving technology, and impact traumas. Follow Roman’s Substack to be added to the 20XX contact list.
Another wonderfully written piece. Your story reminded me of my high school years when my friend's father took us to drink at the nearby VFW post. We were underage to be drinking but that mattered little there. I reveled in the stories those old veterans told always wondering where fact ended and embellishment began. Most stories were not about war (most of the men would have been WW2 veterans). My biggest memory of that time was an overwhelming sense of melancholy, whether from the drink, the dilapidated bar, the area I lived (very lower middle class/blue collar), or the war, I'll never know.
Needed a break from high fantasy, so this was just the ticket. Good work.