fiction

Beartown State Park

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Walter didn’t walk.  He ambled.  Today, though, he had a destination.

Walter wasn’t much of a planner, preferring to be spontaneous or, as he put it, just going with the flow.  But the flow today, required some preparation.  He had packed a lunch:  cheese sandwich, apple, Hostess pink Sno Balls and a bottle of Gatorade.  Green. 

He had seen the photo in a magazine.  Beartown.  He was even intrigued by the name.  A Vietnam memorial to a lost son deep in the heart of the West Virginia high mountains.  A series of boardwalks and large rocks, verdant and mysterious.  A sanctuary, sacred and oozing peace.  The perfect place to soothe a soul or lift a spirit.

Somewhere he could amble, but he had to get there first. 

Not yet dawn and the day was drizzly.  He threw a poncho in the backpack with his lunch and DSLR. Yup, he’d pulled out the big guns for Beartown.  It looked like a photographer’s dream location – moody yet tranquil.  He wondered if there were really bear up there on that part of Droop Mountain.  Droop Mountain, for sure, but in this state park?  He didn’t know.

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The Physician

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I told my physician that I seemed to be in the tertiary stage of the disease.  He looked at me for a long time before saying,

“Do you know what that means?”

Photo by Sasun Bughdaryan on Unsplash

I gave him a puzzled look, cocked my head, and waited for him to go on.

“In this case, it would mean you are dead.”

“Oh.  Well.  No.  I’m not dead.  I’m feeling much better at the core of things, but I’m still sick.  What stage is that?”

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Jake Sanders

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Fumbling with the jack, Caitlyn gave up and retrieved the big red gas can that had belonged to an ex-boyfriend. The car had run out of gas and then developed a flat tire when she coasted into the construction zone to get out of traffic.  Caitlyn was putting one foot in front of the other and chanting “If you are going through hell, keep going” over and over.  Winston Churchill’s voice, as she imagined it, reverberated in her head. 

Photo by Emily Schultz on Unsplash

“If you are going through hell, keep going.”  This day was starting badly during a year of one bad day after another. Bad news, stress, family mayhem, and other assorted and sundry disasters were abundant.  

Her 17-year-old Subaru was ready to go to the Subaru afterlife.  The gas gauge had quit working a few months earlier.  She thought she had enough in the tank to drive past the expensive stations to the cheap one where she was a regular. She was wrong.

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