!Woodsmen
 ---
by Anna @ 2024
 ---
Chapter 8: Nearer my God to Thee
 ---
Vigilant days turned into careful weeks. Mike
partied with Tracy and her friends. He got drunk at
Blue Moon, wings at Madison Gardens, laid while 
Tracy's mom watched her two kids.

Mike compartmentalized his life neatly. Tracy knew
stuff like his depth of feeling about his dead
sister but not his thoughts about the coming fight.

Mike went to church with Shirley Chester exactly
once for three hours on a Wednesday night. He went
to the hospital with Mr. Chester. Shirley's son was
heavily sedated. Soft velcro restraints hung empty
from the hospital bedframe, close at hand for the
next time the need arose.

He had a bone infection in his left lower leg. The
room was loud with beeping equipment. A nurse hung a
bag of antibiotics off the same pole from which
fluids ran into his arm.

Back in Mr. Chester's pickup Mike asked Mr. Chester
what he knew about troops under UN command, European
troops; might be deployed in the United States. The
videotape called them FINCEN. Mr. Chester hadn't
heard of it.

We took field trips to Eastern Europe to sleep in
the cold in our sleeping bags, Mr. Chester said. 
Mike, like I told you and stuff, Army for me was
about doing my best to stay out of the quaaludes and
frauleins.

I wasn't well-liked for trying to fly straight and
keep my nose in the Bible. I also didn't die in a
wreck, get a dishonorable discharge, or leave a baby
over there. I don't what to tell you, Mike, except
you think too much.

At the Richmond library Mike read the papers and 
looked at the globe. When he remembered to he 
kneeled by his bed before sleep or prayed before he 
ate for Shirley Chester, her husband, and her son, 
the only good people he guessed he knew.

Mike drove out three times that September, but each 
time Floyd Chester's houseboat was closed up tight
and looked emptied out of most everything. Mike
asked around. He guessed Floyd was on a Harley ride
out to Missouri or South Dakota by himself. No
telling when he'd be back.

He worked, partied, compartmentalized, and it
started to get to Mike that nothing else bad seemed
to have come from the bust. He wasn't relieved any
more, he was on edge. He missed his guys. He 
wondered if it would be safe to go to the October
machine gun shoot at Knob Creek; whether he'd see
anybody from Michigan there whose number he'd 
burned.

One night Tracy slept over she said he couldn't 
stay still while he slept. She said he scared her to
death in the middle of the night---he sat up sudden,
stared out, didn't react to anything she said, then
laid over and went back to normal sleep.

In his dreams a dog barked sharp, once. The man
rapped on the Tercel window.

Now, the man said.

The smell of bloody thigh filled the car. A truck
engine revved. A shoe pulled off and dropped in the
bed of the truck with a clunk.

Awake, he opened a letter from Memphis, Tennessee
giving notice his Nissan pickup was impounded. Which
meant he knew where I was.
====================================================
STILL TYPING THIS ONE UP                      --ANNA