Introduction

If you would not be forgotten

As soon as you are dead and rotten

Either write things worth the reading

Or do things worth the writing

-Benjamin Franklin

Introduction

February 18, 1976, just after 2 AM:

I picture it like this:
The light of the moon broke free of the clouds that had reached menacingly across the sky in all directions until only a couple of hours before. It bathed the wreckage of a small airplane that lay in a vacant field. It bathed the path of debris strewn behind it toward the gap it had ripped through the trees. It bathed frozen sap that had oozed from ragged stumps and it reflected off of the ice of a frozen pond. It bathed a man’s swollen eyelids as he squinted to consider it through the broken plexiglass of the cockpit windshield. It bathed him as he climbed out of the twisted mass and stumbled away. It bathed him until he was out of the sight of his son, left sitting there amongst the remnants of his family - now all alone.

Several Miles away David and Ricky walked across a cold factory parking lot toward David’s car. The dull glow of sodium arc streetlights cast a surreal orange-yellow hue over the snow and ice that lay in small patches across the asphalt. The light played over their shadows, stretching and compressing them simultaneously as they walked from pole to pole. They were both beat from another long shift and were anxious to get home.

Ricky paused to light a cigarette and glanced up at the sky, towards the fat orb of the moon which had emerged above Hebron, Nebraska. The town slept quietly below and seemed to sit in suspended animation encapsulated by the crystal clear and frozen air of the winter that was draped over them. When Ricky and David had come to the small factory late yesterday afternoon the sky had been plastered with a low layer of grey clouds; they had been over the region all day. The layer now had now all but evaporated.

The cloud’s passing revealed the moon and a deep, dark sky beyond dotted with a brilliant and endless field of bright stars. Around the town the land rolled away and the moon illuminated the barren and empty fields and the skeletal woodlots that surrounded the town and ran off in all directions, melding seamlessly beyond with the vast, empty, frozen Nebraska prairie.

A cold breeze wafted around Ricky, causing him to shiver slightly. The thermometer nailed to the wall of the factory just outside the door had said 26 degrees and he believed it. Puddles of water had turned to ice and the clumps of snow that managed to stick to the ground from the last storm were now frozen blocks of white speckled with black dots of soot. He had experienced nights like this enough over his life out here to know what freezing cold felt like. He could tell by the sharp chill of the air in his sinuses and how he exhaled a cloud of fog with each breath he took. The cold settled over his cheeks and began to nip at his ears and the tip of his nose as he walked though it, hunched into the collar of his heavy winter coat.

As they approached the car, Ricky flipped away the glowing butt which erupted with a cascade of small orange embers that were carried a short distance by the breeze as it skipped off a bare section of asphalt before extinguishing itself on a piece of ice. Walking to the passenger side, he grabbed the frozen handle of the door and pulled on it to jerk it open. It swung out with a creaky moan.

He slid into the big front seat, slamming the door shut behind him and settled into the cold and cracked vinyl. He shrugged his shoulders pulling his neck deeper into the collar of his thick coat and waited as David got in on the other side, fumbled with his keys and started the engine.

The car was frozen and the ignition strained over several times before the engine coughed to life with a rough rumble. David punched the accelerator, and the engine revved with a series of roars that were accentuated by high pitched squealing from frozen belts. They continued to whine and click for several seconds before tapering off as the engine gradually warmed and eased itself down to an irregular, sputtering idle.

David waited a little while to let it warm up some more, gunning it a few times to assure it wouldn’t stall when they tried to drive away. In the meantime he fumbled with the heater switches, adjusting the airflow to the defrost/foot setting so the cold air would at least be off of their faces. He cranked the fan to the highest setting and a breeze began to rush from the vents under the dash, washing across the cold tips of their boots and filling the frozen interior of the car; cold at first, but slowly warming.

David rubbed his hands together briskly until the heat was blowing full and filling the car with toasty warmth in contrast to the frigid night just outside the windows. When the car seemed to be running smooth enough, he popped on his headlights which illuminated the cloud of white exhaust that poured out of the tailpipe into the freezing air and washed over the car with the breeze. He gunned the motor once or twice more, then pulled down on the shifter and guided the old machine slowly forward out of the parking space and over the patches of ice and snow as he maneuvered toward the entrance of the lot.

He paused when he got there, looking up and down the vacant and darkened street that ran in front of the factory. Then he spun the wheel and pulled out of the parking lot and onto the road. He pointed the car toward the outskirts of town and home.

There would be no one out here this time of night, and he was glad. He was tired and the last thing he needed was to get stuck behind a slow moving semi-truck or someone lost from I-80, some sixty miles to the north of them. The solitude of the highway was one of the benefits of the night shift. But now, he was looking forward to the warmth of home, a cold beer, some T.V., and bed. They both were.

Upon reaching the darkened highway 81, he turned the car north and accelerated into the night. As they glided across its frozen asphalt, he clicked his headlight beams to high. The bright light played and bounced off the highway and broke apart thin, wispy fingers of mist that gathered in low spots and crossed the road in irregular intervals, breaking up like specters as the car rushed through them.

The heater had made the whole car nice and warm and David cranked his window down a crack and patted the breast of his coat for the pack of cigarettes he had stuffed into it earlier. He lifted the pack to his lips to pull one out, then punched the lighter on the console off to the side of the old radio, tossing the pack onto the cracked dashboard.

A few seconds later the lighter popped back out. He reached down and extracted it, guiding the glow of the coils to the tip of the cigarette until it illuminated his face with an orange hue as he inhaled the mellow smoke. He grabbed the pack back off of the dash and held it out to Ricky, in offering. Ricky pulled a cigarette out and David dropped the pack back on the dash and pulled the lighter back out of it’s hole, offering it to Ricky.

“Thanks,” Ricky said, as he cracked his window as well and took the lighter.

He touched the hot coils to the tip of the cigarette, puffing several times to get it lit, and took a deep breath, which he held in briefly before exhaling with a long, deep sigh. The moonlight shining through the windshield played off of the ghostly whirls of smoke that briefly filled the car, before it was sucked out the small window gap in a thin sheet, quickly dispersing into the frozen night rushing by outside.

Ricky reached down and messed with knobs of the old radio, turning up the volume a little, and further tuning in the country station that crackled through the worn speakers in the dash until it sounded a little better. Hank William crooned softly through the mild static, and he tapped his fingers on the dash for a moment. Then he settled back in his seat and took another long drag from the cigarette, fixing his gaze on the brilliantly glowing orb hanging still in the sky above them that colored all objects below with pale shades of white and grey.
Ricky glanced at David. His face was painted with the dim greenish glow from the lights of the dashboard, the cigarette hanging loosely between his fingers draped casually over the top of the steering wheel. His gaze was fixed on the road ahead as he quietly hummed along to the song. David turned his attention to the moon again, and lifted his arms, reaching behind him over the seatback in a long stretch.

“Nice night,” He said with a groan as his back and neck cracked and popped.

“Yeah,” David replied, briefly scanning his eyes around the moonlit sky and landscape around them before returning his attention to the darkened road beyond the windshield, perpetually rolling toward them.

Ricky chuckled, a little.

“Watch out for werewolves though!” he said with a laugh. David cracked a smile.

“Ah-oooo!” he quipped.

His smile froze as the high beams suddenly washed over an odd figure. Something or someone had staggered onto the road, still some distance away. It wasn’t a deer; rather stood like a man, albeit hunched over. As they approached it held out it’s arm and appeared to wave. David hit the brakes hard and pulled off the road onto the shoulder. The car slid to a halt, enveloping them in a cloud dust.

The headlights washed over the figure as it stumbled slowly towards them through the dust. It was, or at least appeared to be, a man, his face grotesquely disfigured - almost like a Halloween mask. His clothing was tattered and covered in dark stains. David hadn’t seen a car crashed anywhere nearby, so where had this man come from?

He glanced at Ricky, who stared fixated on the man lurching and limping as he approached.

For a moment they both wondered what was about to happen.