Norman walked on the road until it quit being a road. It just faded into the prairie. There was a small cabin in the distance at the base of a hill, and he headed for it, kicking at dirt clods and rocks  as he went. There were faint ruts from tires and wagon wheels that made a straight line to the cabin.

The cabin stood in a small grove of trees. They were scrub trees, but trees nevertheless, some of the only ones in the settlement. Their branches bent and tossed in the steady wind, and Norman welcomed their shade as he walked beneath them.

The cabin was small, and it looked like it had been built in stages over the years. The center room was the largest and probably the oldest, built of limestone with a short limestone chimney. There were smaller rooms on two sides with wooden walls that might have come later.

One addition, off the side opposite the chimney, looked like a wooden continuation of the limestone cabin. It was a little narrower, its roof slightly lower, but it had the same wood shake shingles as the cabin. It also had a door at the end with glass panels on either side. Outside that door was a small, square, limestone patio with a metal roof.

About a hundred feet past the patio was a well with a cover and square roof with a bucket underneath. It must have been spring fed. A trickle of water ran in the creek bed that sloped away from the well.

The cabin’s other addition, a smaller wooden room set in the wall to the right of the chimney had a metal roof like the one over the patio.

There was also another entry door that appeared to be the back door in the limestone wall next to the chimney. About twenty feet outside that door was a root cellar dug into the base of the hill behind the cabin, and Norman looked inside. The cellar itself was down three steps, dank and musty with limestone walls, low ceiling and dirt floor. It was about ten by ten with shelves lining the walls stocked with jars of canned who knows what, the glass so dusty that you couldn’t see through it. In the back wall was an opening supported by wooden posts that looked like the beginning of a tunnel that went further under the hill. It might have been the mine that Maxine talked about. With the cellar door open, there was barely enough light to see inside the tunnel. It could have been the opening to an old mine in years past, but now it was all caved in.  The tunnel ended abruptly in a sloping dirt wall about six feet past the posts.

The only windows in the cabin, besides the glass panels at the front door, covered the wall on the side of the chimney opposite the smaller addition.

After he circled the place without seeing signs of life, Norman chose the front door and knocked on one of the glass panels, tentatively at first, but then more boldly. His knocks brought no sounds of movement from within, so he tried the knob, and the door swung easily inward.

“Hello!” he called. “Is anyone here?”

The only response came from the whine of the wind around the corners of the cabin, and Norman stepped inside, leaving the door open behind him. He called again, but there was only silence.

The room inside the door was the wooden addition opposite the chimney that had wood shake shingles like the original part of the cabin. It was short, little more than the length of a bed, and narrow. In fact, there were two beds, twin size, on each side against the walls, neatly made with quilts spread over them. Between was maybe six feet of walking space. The room opened into the center of the cabin with the fireplace straight ahead.

Norman surveyed the main cabin from left to right. A pot bellied stove sat on the hearth, piped up the chimney flue, and a wood bin against the wall to the left of it was stocked with split logs. Norman knew from seeing the outside of the cabin that the chimney was short, not tall enough to draw well. A fire on the open hearth would probably have been smoky, and besides being used for cooking, he guessed the stove kept the smoke down. The wall to the left of the fireplace was the side with the windows. Beneath them was an armchair with a cover thrown over it, stuffing peeking from the holes in the well-worn arms and a round cloth-covered table. On the table was an oil lamp with a glass shade, and a glass ashtray. Norman had not seen Noah smoke, so the ashtray might have been a holdover from Angus, or a previous Mac Taggert. Against the wall to the right of the fireplace was a table with fold-down leaves and a hutch with plates and drinking glasses. The corner on that side of the fireplace was flanked by two doors. The one in the back wall was the outside door. The door in the sidewall opened into a small bedroom that was the smaller wooden addition, the one with the metal roof. It was barely large enough to hold a double bed, a nightstand, and a short chest with drawers. There was no closet, just hooks on the wall.

There was no electricity or indoor plumbing in the place. The walls were paneled with knotty pine, and the floor was rough wooden planks. It was impossible to keep out the dust, the way the wind blew, but the place was clean enough. It was small and cozy with everything you needed, stove for heat and cooking, beds, and a place to sit and look out the windows. Norman looked around one more time before he departed the same way he came in,closing the door behind him.

He sat in the patio’s shade, letting the breeze cool him.

So, why had he come, he asked himself? What was he looking for? Was he just drawn by curiosity and the lack of anything better to do, or was there something else? After speaking to the man at the store, walking through what little there was of Maxwell, talking with Maxine, trudging along the road to the cabin, and finding nothing there of consequence, he had to reassess the whole thing. What seemed like a quest of some kind now seemed like a dead end, not much different than the bus ride that started the whole journey. He knew it was Noah’s strange words that drew him initially, but what did they really say? He had been rolling them over in his mind ever since, during the hitchhike with truckers and farmers, and finally during the last miles to town, but maybe the old guy was just loony. Maybe it was no more than the babbling of a confused mind that was never right from the start. Maxine said as much.

“Noah was a drinker.”

That was the first thing she had to say, almost like an apology. And Norman knew first hand about the fragmented mind of a drinker.

“You kind of had to throw out the normal way you think about people, and start over again with Noah.”

Noah’s talk seemed at first to Norman like it made a strange kind of sense, posing a mystery that opened the door to an adventure, but did it? Seeing the dried-up town and ramshackle cabin brought him back to square one, right where Norman had begun the journey, washed up and down to his last dime. He scuffed at the flat stones of the patio floor with the toe of his shoe. Just let it go, he told himself.

“Just let it go, God damn it!” he said aloud.

At that point, as he sat in the weathered chair beside the weathered table on the weathered patio, everything began crashing in on him. Everything in his life was gone, his job, his daughter and granddaughter, Henry… Why keep fighting it?

Norman laid his head on his arms on the table and began to weep. And once he started, he could not stop. He felt like he was at rock bottom, and the despair of it all was more than he could bear. The tears came, and he sobbed uncontrollably.

He had cried like that twice before in his life, once when his mother died, and again when Henry passed. But this seemed worse. There was no reason to stop, no light at the end of the tunnel, no kind hand on his shoulder or kind voice in his ear. There was only the wind whistling around the cabin.

******************************************************************

Norman did not know how long he sat there. At some point, he stopped sobbing, but he kept his head on his arms. He was exhausted mentally and physically. He might have slept for a while, and maybe it was the wind that tugged him awake. He didn’t know. He felt like he had been running against the wind for his whole life, but it didn’t matter anymore. Nothing mattered. It was not like he was in a void, for the space was filled with something, maybe a presence of some kind. He became briefly aware that his mind had emptied of all thoughts, and then he returned to the silence. Henry’s voice was the only thing he heard.

“Don’t ever surrender, you hear me? That’s like giving up! You just allow. Allow the fact that your dumb ass is responsible for all this. That’s when things will start getting better.”

In the silence, Norman allowed. It didn’t change anything in the outer, but it changed something inside. For the first time that he could remember, he felt peace.

“Don’t nothing happen by accident!” Henry sometimes said. “Sometimes you got to look real hard for the reason, but it’s there.”

Norman opened his eyes and looked around, but he saw nothing except that the sun was much lower in the sky. He saw nothing that seemed like a good reason for his being there. Maybe he wasn’t looking with the right eyes. Maybe he needed to see in a different way.

Maxine said that Angus MacTaggert was old when Noah was young, and there were MacTaggerts before Angus. How far back was that? A hundred and fifty years? That would be when this territory first opened up. What did the land that later became Maxwell look like then? A hundred and fifty years ago, people were still plowing up the prairie sod and building houses out of it.

“Colder than a well digger’s ass!” Noah had said and laughed at Angus’s joke.

And suddenly Norman knew it. Maybe it came from emptying his mind and allowing a new inspiration, but he finally got it.

“Angus knew right where to look, and he shared it.”

Noah’s talk was about two different things at once.

Norman walked to the well, and pulled on the wooden cover that was on top of the bricks. It gave easily in his hands, and he tugged it loose and rolled it aside. Looking inside the well, Norman could see the reflection of water at the bottom.

A hundred and fifty years ago, water would have been the lifeline as people settled the territory and moved further west, and the first MacTaggert knew right where to look for it. The man knew how to find water and dig a well. There was still water in it a century later.

Peering inside, Norman saw a patch of blue on one of the bricks.

“Blue ten down,” had been Noah’s words, words that did not fit with the rest.

Norman counted down ten rows of bricks to the one with the blue mark. Getting to the brick was as far as Norman could reach, but it was loose, and he pulled it from the wall of the well. Behind the brick was a sack, and Norman removed it from the cavity.

Norman emptied the contents on the wooden well cover. He was no expert, but the nuggets appeared to be ore, maybe silver. Norman stretched his arm back down inside the well. There was a second bag, and he brought it up also.

So, the MacTaggerts knew right where to look for two things, water and silver. They shared the water with everyone, and Angus shared the silver with Noah. Maxine told Norman that Noah was the last one out here. There were no other MacTaggerts. Norman could take the ore and see what it was worth.

Another thing became crystal clear to Norman. The town’s name might have changed over the years to Maxwell, but it didn’t start that way. It began as Mack’s well.

—————————————————————————————————————————————————————–

With a fresh supply of food, Lizzie was back to feeding the ducks, squealing joyfully as her favorite, the little white one, grabbed a piece for itself. She had plenty to share with the quacking throng.

Norman eased back against the park bench to watch the fun and soak up the late afternoon sun, relaxing as much as he could, though still fearing that it all might slip away again. That fear would probably be present for the rest of his life, but he had a new resolve as well. The vein that yielded Noah’s silver nuggets proved to be pure, and it gave Norman a new lease. Like Angus, he vowed to share it.

“I don’t know what brought you back to us, Dad,” Lisa told him. “I’m just glad you’re back! I don’t want to lose you again!”

And Henry’s wisdom was never far away.

“You don’t never get no do-overs,” Henry would say, “but life is funny. Sometimes it gives you a second chance. What’s done is done, but you can pick up the pieces and start over. And if you ever get that break, hang on to it!”

Norman knew he got one, and he hung on. It was a gift.

Once the sun was higher in the sky, Norman was out on the state highway with his thumb up. He hitched a ride with an eighteen wheeler to a county road, where he got a ride from a farmer, and then walked on a dirt road into the town.

That is, if you could call it a town. Small wonder that it even deserved a dot on the map. There were a few dilapidated buildings, most of them boarded-up, some scattered houses, but that was all. It was hard to tell if anyone lived in them. Norman didn’t see any signs of life. One of the better looking buildings had a hand-painted sign that read “Maxwell General Store.” It was a metal building with a small, covered wooden porch with a wooden bench by the door. The building’s metal sides and roof might have been a particular color at one time, but it had long since faded, and now the whole thing was the general shade of dirt. Norman climbed the steps to the porch, crossed a rubber mat with “Welcome” printed in fade red letters, and tried the door. It opened inward with a squeak.

Norman closed the door behind him. As it hissed shut, he noticed how much the wind was blowing. Until then, he hadn’t thought much about it, probably because it was so constant, but it never quit. The wind had an energy all its own, and Norman had to force the door shut with his shoulder. Even then, he could hear it whining around the edges. The light was dim inside, and Norman’s eyes had to adjust before he could see clearly.

It wasn’t much of a store, not very big anyway, but every inch of it was packed. There were a few groceries, clothing, hardware items, paper goods, toys and candy, magazines and paperback books, toiletries, and that was just what Norman saw at a quick scan. What wouldn’t fit on the shelves was hanging from the ceiling. In the far corner, there was a counter with an old time cash register, and behind the counter was a separate world altogether with cigarettes and tobacco, bottles of liquor, soft porn magazines, hunting knives, hand guns and ammunition, over-the-counter drugs, and God knew what all.

Amid all the clutter and paraphernalia, Norman didn’t see the figure behind he counter at first. The man sort of blended into the shadows with all the stuff. The light that came through the dusty window behind his shoulder shone on the page of the book that was spread on his lap. His sandy or gray-colored hair and his flannel shirt were all about the same shade as everything else. His eyes were bright, though, as they looked at Norman.

“What can I do for you, stranger?” he asked.

As Norman became more aware of the man, he couldn’t really tell how old he was, although he didn’t seem very young, and he didn’t seem very old, but somewhere in between. The only thing that moved was the man’s mouth. He never bothered to get up. He just sat there eying Norman, his chair tilted back against the shelves, his feet propped up under the counter.

“Well, I guess I’m just looking for some information, really,” began Norman.

Norman leaned forward against the counter, keeping his hands on the top in plain sight. That was the cop in him. He knew that you always wanted to see a stranger’s hands, and he noticed the man looking at his. That was all the man did, though. He said nothing, so Norman continued.

“I ran into a kind of strange situation last night during a bus ride.”

Norman didn’t know quite where to start, but he gave a brief rundown of the experience that he had the night before, including a description of Noah.

“The old guy had a funny way of talking, kind of double talk, like you were supposed to already know the people in the story,” continued Norman.

Norman hoped that the man would say something, anything to help him out, maybe pick it up and fill in some blanks, but he didn’t. He just sat there watching Norman with a vacant stare.

“And he had a funny way of talking about himself, too, like he wasn’t part of the story at all, but detached from the whole thing,” Norman went on. “It was never I or me, but always he or him.”

Still no help from the man behind the counter, but Norman thought that he saw a faint glimmer of recognition in his eyes. However, that was all, only a faint glimmer.

“The old guy might have just been loony, for all I know,” concluded Norman. “Ever know of a man like that around here?”

Norman was beginning to think he was wasting his time until the man behind the counter slowly folded back a corner of the page and closed his book.

“Sounds like old Noah,” he said. “He used to come in every once in a while, always carrying on like you said, but I haven’t seen him for a long time. I never paid him much mind, because he didn’t make no sense.”

The man paused, and Norman waited, hoping he would offer more.

“I don’t know too much about him,” he said, “but I’ll tell you. Theres a lady you need to see, name of Maxine. Been here forever. Just keep going up the road past the store. Hers is the last house before you get out of town.”

Before the storekeeper finished speaking, he had the book open again, and his gaze was back on the page.

“Thanks for the information,” said Norman.

Outside, a dust devil whirled ahead of him as he walked up the road. Everything was relative, thought Norman. The guy talked like Maxwell was a real town. The last house was really the only house, at least what Norman would call a house. It was about a hundred yards past the store. There were a couple of ramshackle huts in between that looked like they hadn’t seen life for decades.

What must have been Maxine’s house was a two-story place, and it was far and away the most notable dwelling in the burg. In Normans opinion, it was stately in comparison. It looked like one of countless other farmhouses built across the plains at the turn of the twentieth century. It was an L-shaped house with three gables and a high, peaked roofline. A porch stretched across the front side. The yard and outbuildings around it might have been the center of a prosperous farm at one time. There were two barns behind the house, one much larger than the other, and a barnyard in between. There was a small chicken coop surrounded by a chicken wire fence. Not far from the larger barn stood a windmill still trying to turn in the wind, although it only had two remaining vanes.

The house actually had two front doors, and Norman picked the one on the left. He stood on the porch and knocked at the screen door, careful to stay back far enough so that anyone could see him clearly from within. That was another cop thing, less threatening that way. No one answered the first knock, so he tried again, although he sensed being watched from a window, probably watched before he ever got to the porch. After a bit, the second knock brought the outline of a figure behind the lace curtain at the full-length glass in the door. A hand fumbled with the doorknob, and the door swung inward. The woman behind the screen was tall, nearly as tall as Norman, and Norman introduced himself.

“Are you Maxine?” he asked.

“Maybe,” answered the woman.

“I came to bring news about an old timer named Noah that I met the other night during a bus ride,” began Norman by way of explanation. “The man at the store pointed me in your direction. He said if anyone in town knew about Noah, it would be you. Said you’d been here forever.”

The woman was silent at first. She put her hand to a hair comb above one ear and fidgeted with it, seemingly uncertain whether to speak with a stranger.

“Is that true?” Norman asked with a slight smile. “Have you been here that long?”

The question caused the corners of her mouth to curve upward a little, and the skin crinkled at the corners of her eyes in what Norman took for a smile.

“Well, it probably is,” she said. “If not forever, damned near.”

She unhooked the screen door and pushed it open.

“Come on in,” she said. “I wondered if someone might pay me a visit about Noah one day.”

As Norman took the screen door, he had to hold it tightly in the tug of the wind, and as Maxine closed the inside door, the air hissed around the edges like at the store.

Inside, the house was full of large windows. All of the ones that Norman could see were hung with sheer lace curtains, and the place was full of sunlight. In the wall to the right of the left front door, the one that Norman entered, was a wide opening with pocket doors slid into the woodwork on either side that looked into the dining room. The other front door opened into that room, and besides a big dining table and chairs, Norman could see a tall grandfather clock against the far wall, its gleaming brass pendulum motionless, and the hands in its big face stuck squarely on twelve-thirty.

Like the clock, the house had the same feel, silent and frozen in time, as if Norman had just stepped through a time warp. Everything in it was from a by-gone day. Every wall was papered in faded floral prints, and the furniture as well as glass pieces and what not that were scattered around on tables looked like what you might see in a museum. In the corner of the room toward the center of the house was a freestanding metal furnace with an isinglass door to keep things cozy during the winter.

“I don’t get too much company anymore,” Maxine said.

She sat in an overstuffed armchair near the door, and she waved Norman to another chair facing hers that was next to a bay window. She plucked a cigarette from a pack that lay on a smoking stand next to her chair, and she looked at Norman.

“Care for one?” she asked.

“No, thanks,” he answered.

She lit the cigarette with a lighter that was set in green carnival glass that had its place on the top of the stand. She drew from the unfiltered cigarette and tilted back her head to blow a plume of smoke toward the ceiling. To the rear of the smoking stand was a pipe rack, full of half a dozen pipes, each bowl and each stem nestled in its place. On the bottom shelf was a can of Sir Walter Raleigh pipe tobacco, an open package of pipe cleaners, and an assortment of other pipe smoking tools. It was a long time since Norman had seen a fully equipped smoking station. Smoking a pipe was a lot of work. He was aware that Maxine watched him closely, and she followed his gaze. She tapped the ash from her cigarette into the ashtray that matched the cigarette lighter, and she held the cigarette to the side of her face to keep the smoke from her eyes.

“That was Daddy’s,” she told him. “He used to sit here after lunch, after he came in from the fields, and smoke those pipes. He would get one going, and he was usually asleep before it was done.”

As she spoke, the smoke from her cigarette exhaled gently from her mouth and nose, and she tapped the ash again in the green ashtray.

“Now, what was it that you came to tell me about Noah?” she asked.

Her voice trailed off at the end of the question, almost like she was not finished speaking, as if she had something else to offer, but she was silent. She watched Norman closely, and he shifted in his chair, unsure exactly how to begin the story.

“Actually,” continued Maxine before Norman had a chance to start, “I had a dream about Noah. Night before last, I believe it was. I had to think about that dream for a while, trying to figure out what it meant, but I finally arrived at the conclusion that he came to tell me goodbye, you know, in his strange kind of way. Old Noah was a little different. His brain didn’t work like most peoples’, but you probably already know that, if you talked much with him. I’ll let you go ahead. Sorry to interrupt.”

Norman started the story right at the beginning, at the point when he first became aware of Noah. His mind went back to the bus ride, and he described the events of the late afternoon and evening.

“I didn’t pay much attention to him at first,” said Norman, “but I knew someone was there that was getting on people’s nerves, the way the other riders kept moving away from him after each stop. That just gave him a fresh ear to bend. After a while, I looked over there to see what was going on, and I saw him, saw the paper bag that he kept tilting to his mouth. I could tell what he was doing. Been there, done that, and I knew.”

Norman paused, but Maxine just watched him.

“Noah was a drinker,” she said. “He always was. We just kind of looked out for him around here.”

Norman continued and moved the story into the nighttime and the dinner stop. He told about helping Noah back on the bus and riding next to him, about listening and talking to him.

“Noah never talked about himself, not directly, anyway,” put in Maxine. “It was always like he was somebody else. He’s been like that ever since I first knew him.”

“Yes,” said Norman. “That’s how he talked to me, too. I had to listen to him for a while, kind of step outside the box and get into his wavelength. Then, he started making a little sense.”

Maxine nodded.

“You kind of had to throw out the normal way you think about people, and start over again with Noah,” she said.

“He talked a lot about Angus,” said Norman. “Did you know anybody by that name?”

“Well, now you’re going back a ways,” she answered.

Maxine fumbled for the pack on the smoking stand without looking, picked out another cigarette and lit it from the end of the first one to start a chain before she stubbed out the the first and continued. Norman’s question had made her pause, and he could sense the wheels of her mind churning, like her thoughts had been thrown into reverse.

“That would be Angus MacTaggert,” she said, after she sent another plume of smoke at the ceiling, her cigarette again held behind her ear. “Angus took Noah in as an orphan. You see, Noah wasn’t a Mac Taggert. Noah was older than me, closer to my parents’ age, and Angus passed away when Noah was a young man. I was just a tiny girl, and I probably don’t remember the man at all. I seem to have a recollection of him, but it might be from things I heard my parents say. I’m not sure memories begin that young.”

She paused again, and Norman did not want to disturb her reflections. He waited for more.

“I know from the dates on the tombstone out in the cemetery that Angus lived to be eighty or ninety,” she went on. “There are some other Mac Taggerts out there in the cemetery, too, a couple generations of them before Angus. The first one had to be one of the earliest settlers in these parts.”

Norman was doing the math in his own head and putting together dates. That put things back to right after the Civil War.

“In other words, Angus was like me, older than dirt,” Maxine said with a smile, “and he lived here a long time ago. I’m the last one in my family, and he was the last one in his. There ain’t no more Mac Taggerts that I know of. Noah has been out there living in their cabin by himself ever since. Noah’s mind was probably just going back to the Mac Taggerts as his light was getting dim, if you know what I mean.”

“What did Angus do here?” asked Norman.

“Well, I imagine it took most of his time just to stay alive,” she said. “He probably took Noah in for the help. This would be a pretty tough country to live in before the days when you could go to the store to get what you needed. Some winters are real hard. There isn’t much out there except that cabin. I don’t really know how he managed.”

Maxine brushed stray ashes from her lap and turned her head toward the window, although she didn’t appear to be looking at anything in particular.

“Some say Angus found a treasure in that old mine out there that was dug into the hill behind the cabin,” she said, “although nobody’s ever saw any evidence of it. I think it sounded like a good story to make up. God knows Noah didn’t live like a king, if Angus gave him any of it. Noah lived off something, though, and I’m not real sure what.”

Whenever Maxine stopped talking, it was silent in the house, except for the whistling of the wind around the corners.

“So, I guess I’m not much help with your question about Angus MacTaggert,” she concluded. “Far as I know, there isn’t much to tell.”

“No, you’ve been a big help,” said Norman as he rose from his chair. “Do you think anyone would care if I went out there to look around? I’d kind of like to see where Noah called home.”

“Feel free,” she said. “I don’t think there’s anyone left around here to object. Most everyone has had their looks out there anyway, without finding much, certainly not any treasure. If anyone did, believe me, I would have heard about it. After all, I’ve been here forever.”

The “forever” part made Norman smile. He thanked the woman, and she saw him to the door. Norman could see her standing inside the screen and watching as he walked away, leaving her alone in the house with the clock that always said twelve-thirty. 

Norman thought the old guy might sleep the rest of the way, but no such luck. He soon stirred.

“He figured as much,” he mumbled.

The man reached inside his rumpled jacket for the paper bag, fumbled with the cap, and tilted the bottle to his mouth. He gulped softly before lowering the bag. Norman watched, curious to see how the old man would act and what he had gotten himself into. He sensed the guy knew he had done him a favor, and the feeling was fortified when the man paused before replacing the cap. He slowly pushed the bag in Norm’s direction. Norman put his hand gently on the man’s forearm and shook his head. The fingers screwed the cap back on the bottle and pushed the sack back inside the coat.

‘That’s what Angus would do,” he mumbled further. “Angus always shared with him. Angus always knew what to do, even if he didn’t.”

Norman looked at the whiskered chin and listened to the fuzzy words. No wonder everybody had moved away from the old guy at the first chance. His whiskey talk would drive you nuts, but the night was long, and Norm needed something to pass the hours, something better than fitful dreams. Besides, the old timer’s eyes were bright under the silver brows. The light was on in there. You never knew what went on in another person’s head, and Norman had nothing better to do than find out.

“Angus was smart, too,” the old man continued after a short pause, wagging his finger at no one in particular, “smart like a fox. Angus knew right where to look. After all the rest of them gave up, Angus could find it. And Angus was good. There was plenty to go around, and Angus shared it with him.”

Norman humored the old guy.

“Who’s Angus?”

The man stared at the blackness outside the window, but Norman could still see the reflected face in the glass.

“Angus shared it with him,” he mumbled.

Norman thought the man was falling asleep, but the voice started again.

“Everybody liked Angus. Angus was good. He didn’t like everybody, and everybody didn’t like him, but Angus did. Angus gave them all they could drink.”

It sounded like he was talking about two things at once. Maybe Angus was a drinker too.

“Blue ten down. And it never ran out. There was always more. Angus made sure of it, and Angus shared with him. Angus was always good for a drink, too. It never ran out. None of it did.”

More of the same.

“Colder than a well digger’s ass!” declared the old man, slapping his thigh and laughing.

He didn’t really laugh like normal. His breath just wheezed from his throat in short bursts. He didn’t have much breath in the first place, and the wheezing that passed for laughter soon ended in a hacking cough that started deep in his chest. Norman didn’t like the sound of the cough. A cough like that usually came from people with tombstones in their eyes, just about like this old guy. He soon recovered, though, to continue the joke he had made.

“A well digger’s ass!” he repeated, still laughing in his funny way. “That’s what Angus always said. Angus joked with him about it.”

Norman began to see some sense in the he and him stuff. It sounded like “him” was the old timer. He always referred to himself in the third person, like he was detached and watching himself from a distance.

The old timer patted Norman on the forearm.

“You’re good, too, just like Angus. You helped him. You didn’t have to, but you helped him. Everybody liked Angus, because he was good, and he always gave them a drink. They liked Maxwell. ‘Cause there was always more to share. Angus knew right where to look, even after the rest of them gave up.”

And so it went as the Hound motored through the night, blurry talk about Angus and” him”, about sharing and being good, about a well digger’s ass, about always having enough to go around. As the minutes passed into hours. Norman only half listened, since the old timer repeated the same things over and over. It helped Norman to stay awake.

After a long time, the old man was quiet. It was late, and the whiskey bottle was empty. Norman thought the old guy was asleep until his bony fingers grasped Norm’s forearm again.

“There’s plenty to go around,” he said softly without opening his eyes. “Help yourself. He doesn’t have anybody. You helped him. Help yourself.”

Soon after that, the old guy was snoring softly.

Norman tried to sleep, too, but when he closed his eyes, he saw Lisa frowning at him. She didn’t speak, but she didn’t have to, either. He knew she was unhappy with him. Everyone was always unhappy with him in his dreams, unhappy, or disappointed, or something. The help group at his AA meetings said it was because he was unhappy with himself, and he figured that was probably right. Some even said that the people in his dreams were merely different parts of himself. Maybe that was right, too. Anyway, the dreams bothered him deeply.

He awoke with a start. Outside the window, he could see the slightest hint of dawn, the palest pink at the edge of the flat landscape, barely enough pink to define where the land stopped and the sky began. He looked over at the old guy beside him. He thought about trying to wake him, but decided against it. The man was sleeping too soundly. Instead, Norman watched the pink deepen at the horizon until he could make out the shapes of trees, houses and barns. The sun would soon be up.

Norman looked again at the man beside him.

“Hey!” he said softly. “We’ll soon be at the next stop.”

The old guy didn’t rouse, so Norman took hold of his wrist to give it a gentle shake.

“Hey! You should be waking up.”

The wrist was cool to the touch. Norman raised it, and then let go. It dropped limply back to the old timer’s leg. He felt without success for a pulse at the wrist, and again at the man’s neck. As a cop, Norman had seen death enough times to recognize it.

Norman walked quietly to the front of the bus and spoke with the driver who seemed to be a seasoned veteran of the road, maybe in his late fifties. He listened calmly to the news and responded as if he had dealt with that type of thing before. He said that they were nearly to the morning stop, and that he would call ahead to have an ambulance team ready. He thanked Norm and asked him to return to his seat without alarming the other passengers, which Norman did.

Norman knew of nothing else he could do, so he sank back into the cushion. Some time during the night, during his own fitful dreams, a life had slipped away beside him. He watched the peaceful expression on the old man’s face as the sun rose, sensing his own mortality, and wondering at the fleeting existence that we lived, fleeting, yet timeless, multiple lifetimes rolled into one, less difference between any of us than we could wrap our minds around.

When the bus slowed to a stop, the medical team was waiting. They checked the old man as the riders stretched their legs, going for breakfast at the restaurant. The EMT’s confirmed the death, and loaded him into an ambulance. Two sheriff’s deputies questioned the driver and Norman. Norm gave what information he could for the official report, and the officers thanked him and left. There was little to question anyway.

The old guy’s name turned out to be Noah. Norman thought about the whole thing over sausage, eggs and coffee. There was something that didn’t quite fit into the standard just-another-dead-drunk, no-big-deal explanation. Was that all there was to it? A small, nagging voice in the back of Norman’s brain said it wasn’t.

“Nothing in this universe happens by accident,” Henry used to say. “Everything has a reason. You just got to find it.”

The more Norman thought about it, the louder the nagging voice became, and the more he thought no, that was not all there was to it.

“There’s plenty to go around.”

Noah’s words rattled in Norman’s head.

“He doesn’t have anybody. You helped him. Help yourself.”

Maybe the words weren’t so crazy after all.

By the time the eggs, sausage, toast and coffee were gone, Norman’s mind was made up. The least he could do was pass along the news of Noah’s death to whoever might be alive to care. Maybe Angus was really a person. Or there could be some family. A personal visit would be better than a letter in the mail from the authorities, if one was ever sent. That was Norman’s logical reasoning anyway.

But then, there was also some illogical reasoning that drove him on. The old guy’s crazy ranting had planted the seed of a mystery somewhere deep inside Norman. Noah mentioned Maxwell, and a look at a map showed a town by that name that was directly north. Norman decided to find out what was there.

The little hand tugged hard to be free of his, and he let it go, even though it seemed that a little piece of him slipped away with her. There had been a time when he feared that he would never hold Lizzie’s tiny hand again, and that fear still persisted, like now when she gave her full attention to reaching into the bag for a handful of feed, oblivious to his caring and doting, unable to wait another second to share the food with the quacking, splashing throng in the water, and it gripped him harder, especially in the middle of the night when he lay awake, his demons dancing in his head, the ”what if” committee standing firmly on his chest, hashing and rehashing his guilt. It was then that his past played in agonizing torment, like the phonograph needle hitting the scratched spot in the record, bouncing back over and over again to repeat his pain. It was a fear that would probably never leave, gone, perhaps, for brief respites, but never forgotten.

“They’re so hungry, Grampa!” she exclaimed.

“Feed them what you have, babe, and we’ll get some more.”

Elizabeth seemed like such a proper name for the tiny, dark-haired, brown-eyed angel that she was, so he called her Lizzie. It seemed more fitting, even though her mother hated nicknames. He rationalized by saying that it wasn’t a real nickname, just a shorter version of her given name. He would have given her anything he had, and he often did, even if it meant getting chastised for spoiling her. She squatted by the bank, tossing bits of food to the ducks, laughing and smiling when their bills got too close to her fingers. He stayed within arms reach and watched intently in case she might slip toward the water.

“See the white one, Grampa? He’s my favorite. I’m trying to throw him some food, but the others keep gobbling it all up before he gets there.”

“I think he got the last one. I saw him duck his head in the water for it.”

She tossed the last of the pellets and turned to him, her face beaming.

“Can we get some more?”

“Of course we can. As much as you want.”

She took his hand as they moved away from the water’s edge and walked toward the feed dispenser.

“I want to give all I can to the little white one!” she cried.

He nodded, eager to prolong their fun.

It was late afternoon. The people walking in the park, and the trees and bushes cast long shadows across the grass that reminded him of another afternoon, in many ways not too different from this one, miles and perhaps lifetimes away, yet closer than he cared to admit. Funny how the mind can skip from one experience to another, triggered by the simplest things, and transport you to another time and place in the blink of an eye. In fact, the memory was always on the edge of his consciousness, and he was there as vividly and clearly as the day it happened, not really wanting to, but unable to stop.

—————————————————————————————————————————————————————–

It was true that the shadows lengthened in that other afternoon, the same as this one, and it too was a warm one in late spring, but that was where the similarities ended. It was not a happy one like this one with Lizzie. That afternoon, he was riding a steel Hound as it rolled across the plains. The flat landscape streamed by outside the bus windows, mile after mile looking much the same as the one before. He remembered very plainly the angry voices in his head during the ride on that afternoon, and he could still hear them, the ones he had heard for years leading up to that point, the ones that had gotten angrier as he persisted on digging the hole that was his life deeper and deeper into oblivion.

“This is it, Dad! I can’t take anymore! You’re driving me away just like you did Mom!”

It was Lisa, his daughter.

“You’re screwing up my life and Elizabeth’s, and God knows your own! You’re killing yourself! You need help.”

He could see her pushing her hand up her forehead and back through her hair, the way she did when she was very upset.

“I can’t depend on you anymore, can’t trust you. All you had to do was pick her up from school! That’s all I asked! They called me at work, wanting to know if anyone was coming for her. She cried all the way home, Dad, and you know it breaks my heart to see her like that. She’s just a little girl. She doesn’t need this crap! And I don’t either!”

“And where were you? I don’t even have to ask! I know! You were getting drunk somewhere, sitting on a barstool, probably, until you fell off, talking to your new best friend next to you, or behind the bar, or wherever! Well what about me, Dad? I’m your best friend, too, aren’t I? I’m about the only one you have left, and you’re trying your damnedest to drive me away!”

The words couldn’t have hit him harder than if she used her fists.

“Can’t you even talk to me? Oh! Excuse me! I know why you don’t talk to me! It’s because I won’t drink with you! I won’t sit there while you drink yourself to death!”

“Good old Norman, always ready to buy the next round, always ready to give away his last dime, even though he has mouths to feed at home.”

She leaned her elbow against the wall, put her face in her hand, and sobbed, but only for a moment. She was tough, like her old man in that way, at least when he was sober. She sniffled, but stood up straight and ran her hand through her hair again.

“Well, I can’t do this anymore. I’m done. I won’t allow you to drag me and your granddaughter down with you.”

He dreaded the next words, dreaded them more than death, more than anything.

“I can’t let you see Elizabeth anymore, Dad. I don’t want you around her. It’s tearing her apart. She won’t understand, but I can’t let it go on. Letting you tear me apart is one thing, Dad, but her…. She’s too tiny, too fragile, too defenseless. Until you can quit drinking and get your life back together again, if that ever happens, I have to walk away.”

And that was exactly what she did. It was another way that she was like her old man, at least when he was sober. She made up her mind, and that was that.

Across the aisle of the bus, a man’s voice rose and fell, getting louder and more animated as he jawed at the person next to him. He was an old guy, and Norman had been watching him from the corner of his eye. Norman didn’t know him from Adam, but he knew what he was doing. Norman had been there too many times. He knew what was in the sack that the old guy raised to his lips between speeches. It didn’t matter who was next to him. It could have been anyone. He just needed someone to listen. The guy would probably be sitting by himself before long.

Norman’s own voices weren’t done with him, though.

“Christ, Norm, don’t you ever learn?”

It was his sergeant at the Precinct, looking tired and gray across the desk.

“How many times do you think I can cover for your sorry ass, anyway? I’ve done it time and time again, and you know it. It’s not like this is the first time, or even the tenth time! I quit counting. Hell, I’m the stupid one for letting it go on this long!”

Norm knew it was bad. His sergeant wouldn’t even look at him.

“Come on Sarge. Give me a chance. I’ll make it right. It isn’t that bad. I’ve done worse.”

“It IS that bad! And if you’ve done worse, it’s nothing to brag about!”

The sergeant clicked the button on the end of the ballpoint pen so much that it stuck, and he tossed it aside, only to pick up another and start fidgeting with it.

“The crazy part is that I’ve become a player in this thing, too. Yeh, I’ve written you up and put you on probation more than once, but then I’ve turned my head and looked the other way, I’ve joined the cast. There’s a name for that. What do they call it, an enabler? I’ve become a goddamn enabler, just like the shrinks talk about all the time! I’m not doing you any favors, or me either. I’ve got a family of my own, and a retirement to think about.”

“We’ve known each other too many years for this not to be hard, Norm, but I’m going to have to ask you to turn in your badge.”

All those years on the force, and it had come to that. All those years of being a good cop, of protecting the law-abiding public, of watching out for everyone but himself, and it had come down to losing everything he had worked for.

But he wasn’t done, yet. He still managed to get security jobs, making enough money to feed his habit. And he never ran out of someone to blame, as long as it wasn’t himself. He blamed anyone that he could for a long time. Bitter and angry, he drank even more, and dug his hole so deep that he couldn’t see the top anymore.

Norman always figured it was his old sergeant who sent a friend to save him. The friend’s name was Henry, and he literally saved Norman’s life. He drug Norman out of a rat trap hotel, took him home and kept him there until he got him dried out. It wasn’t pretty, and Norman didn’t help things at first, but he had sense enough to hang on to the hand that reached for his. Henry got him into a support group.

The meetings helped, just like Henry said they would. Things had gotten so bad for Norman that they couldn’t get much worse, and, for the first time in his life, he actually started listening, listening to the other drunks talk about their problems. At first, he didn’t want to believe that he was like them, but deep inside, he knew it. He began to hear their stories, and along with the listening to story after story, mistake after mistake, excuse after excuse, as difficult as it was for him, he began to accept the fact that he was the same. At least he had that much sense left in his thick skull. Henry had said as much.

“Believe me, I wouldn’t waste my time on your sorry ass if I didn’t think you was worth it!”

And it was in the accepting and admitting that Norman turned on to the long road back. He quit drinking ten times, or however many, before he actually did, but he got there. Henry told him he would. It didn’t take days, or months, but years, close to five of them, before he could function again like a normal human being.

Henry died not long after that. They said it was a massive heart attack. At least, it took him quickly. Norman always knew that Henry was an angel sent by a compassionate universe.

But the guy across the aisle on the Hound definitely wasn’t functioning like a normal human being. Again he brought Norman from his reverie. By then, the man had gone through three people in the seat next to him. Each time the bus stopped, someone new took the seat, and each time, the partnership was short lived. The old guy got louder and sloppier each time he raised the paper bag to his mouth. Norman could hear his slurred words clearly from where he sat, which was a third of the way further back in the coach. From the frustrated comments that Norman heard from those around him, he could tell that many of the passengers were fed up with the man by the time the Hound slowed for another stop. This time, it was a major rest stop at a place with a diner.

Norman got off for a bathroom break. Then, he went in to the restaurant to get a burger and fries. It was probably half an hour or forty-five minutes before he reboarded the bus, and another fifteen minutes before the driver got back in his seat.

“We’ll be driving for quite a ways, folks, so sit back and relax,” he said over the speaker. “Is everybody back? We’ll be leaving in a couple of minutes.”

“Everybody but that drunken bastard!” came a voice somewhere over Norm’s left shoulder. “Let’s get rolling before he wakes up!”

The comment brought a few laughs. Others voiced their approval.

Norman might have been the only one with any sympathy for the old timer. He walked to the front of the coach and spoke to the driver.

“Do you know where he was going?” Norman asked.

“His ticket was for a few stops down the road,” the driver answered. “If you help him back on, you’ll have to take him under your wing and keep him quiet. Otherwise, I’m leaving him. He’s causing too much trouble. You never know what someone like him might do, and I’ve got a bus load of passengers to keep safe. I don’t want to chance it.”

“I understand,” said Norman.

There was no good reason for doing the old geezer a favor, except that Norman had a soft spot in his heart for a drunk, and it took one to know one. So, he searched first in the bathroom, and then in the restaurant. He found him slumped forward on the table of the rear booth, his unshaven chin nestled on his folded arms, snoring softly. Norm roused him from his slumber.

“Now, what the sam hell?” he began with a start.

His speech was slurred, and his eyes were glazed, but he was docile enough. Norman hoisted the man’s arm over his shoulders, and half carried, half dragged him. The old man weighed practically nothing, so it wasn’t difficult to maneuver him through the restaurant, out the door, and up the steps of the coach. The door hissed shut behind them, and voices grumbled as the two jostled down the aisle to a rear seat. Norman pushed the man in ahead of him to the seat by the window, and sat on the aisle to pen him in. The coach shuddered to a start as the driver ground through the low gears, steered out of the parking lot and rolled back onto the highway. The glow from what few streetlights there were in the burg shone through the windows before the night engulfed the riders, save for a few overhead reading lights. Those too were soon extinguished as most tried to sleep, and the Hound was silent and dark as it sped into the night.