Willms Road

Michael R. Häack

Description

Within these pages you will find short stories that embody fact, fantasy and humor, drawn from the experiences, imagination, and reflections of the author’s life. From humorous episodes teaching band, to a grim nightmare in a concentration camp, from a whimsical visit of a dumpster king, to the torture of riding a bike at midnight on Willms Road, this book runs the gamut of Michael’s passionate imagination.
This is his fifth book following Sanitarium, a fictitious WWII drama, The Navy, an autobiographical account of time spent on an island 78 miles from Russia, Passport, the story of a horrific chain of events set in New Zealand, and The 21 Mile House, set in 1886 in which death stalks the halls of an abandoned way station.

Sujets

• Fiction
• Suspense
• Thrillers

Informations

• Publié par: AuthorHouse
• Date de parution: 25 octobre 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781665571593
• Langue: English

Extrait

WILLMS ROAD
COLLECTED SHORT STORIES
 
 
 
 
 
Michael R. Häack
 
 
 
 

 
 
AuthorHouse™
1663 Liberty Drive
Bloomington, IN 47403
www.authorhouse.com
Phone: [phone]
 
 
 
 
 
 
© 2022 Michael R. Häack. All rights reserved.
 
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.
 
Published by AuthorHouse 10/21/2022
 
ISBN: 978-1-6655-7160-9 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-6655-7159-3 (e)
 
Library of Congress Control Number: 2022917853
 
 
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
 
 
Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
Willms Road
Thanksgiving in the Deep
The Girl in The Drive-thru Window
Midnight Feast
Sin in A Spray Can
Thoughts of a Dying Swimmer
J1951
The Tenth Frame
Band Practice Mayhem
Getting Plastered in The Halls
A Wanderer’s Guide to God
Maxine
Streets Paved in Bloody Gold
“Sorry, you missed the boat…”
Out of The Canyon
Waiting for Edith
The Third Hole
Napa Dumpster King
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Dawn Gardner: Content editor
Josh Nagtalon: Book cover photographer
Warren Haack: Book cover graphic designs
Kregg Miller: Business management
Christy Mantz: My daughter who encourages me to write
WILLMS ROAD
W illms Road; a piece of black scratched onto the landscape, stretches south and east from Knights Ferry, California toward Turlock Reservoir. To her glory one could say of Willms that she is mostly straight. You can go to sleep riding down Willms and for certain arrive at the end…but safely? Well, perhaps not. The lay of the land is horst and graben. The narrow county maintained road has a finish akin to the back of a Wild Boar: tough, rough and unpredictable. There is nothing to see along the way that will interrupt your thinking. You can think safely but stay alert; it’s primitive!
On a good summer day, with the temperature about 120F on the asphalt road surface and the air dead calm, it’s a harsh place to drag yourself and your bike; a place to pant and gasp. I do it if only to avoid the awful realization that otherwise I might never suffer in such a way in this lifetime. On a good day, in the thick of summer, I have taken my bike along Willms and met no one. I will not say I met nothing. That would be a small lie.
Things exist along Willms, things I suspect that God could not fit into other applications on the earth; therefore He parked them along Willms and happily forgot them. Small things abound: tarantulas, coral snakes, turkey buzzards, scorpions and the bleached bones of…other things. There are no fences on Willms. Why bother? Any ill-fated livestock had met a sudden last round-up at a dried-up watering hole. On a scorching day I have spotted, on distant dried stubble hillsides fuzzy-brown hides, fly blown and stretched over brittle bones. Under nicer circumstances they might have passed for cattle. Facing the east as I passed, they left no droppings, passed no water and ate nothing. Nothing exists to eat anyway. The ground, hard as obsidian, has never grown a stick, a twig, or a leaf.
I digress.
On a midnight past, in a fit of traveling fever, I was moved to gain the higher ground. Bent on a bike ride into the bush, I happened upon Willms. No friend about for company, I set off alone. I ventured into moonless black to match the inside of any cow around. There were none. The night lent a new meaning to onerous. I placed the black of tire rubber against the black of asphalt and pressed against the black of night and the onset of time. Ahead, far ahead, rested the other end. Between us, time, tension, and unknown darkness.
Daytime on a bike is for the light of heart and the free of spirit. Nighttime, on the other hand, is a crazy way to wreck the cycle, maim the body and scare life away. I was well experienced with all three. In blackness past I cycled over Monitor Pass, Luther Pass, Kit Carson Pass, not to mention Sonora Pass and Tioga Pass, many times each. Mines Canyon twice survived my tires in dark of night, also Devils Gate, Walker Creek Canyon, Coulterville to Smith Station, and Annie Green Springs to Yosemite.
In the blackest of nights on a west-side descent of Monitor Pass a group of us on bikes hit a porcupine. The bikes survived; the tires and the porcupine, not so well.
I have cycled in a blinding late afternoon downpour from Zermatt, Switzerland to Saint Gilogolph, France. Several times I have climbed and descended Old Priest Grade in full darkness. Willms, however, would teach me a new blackness.
A song is good for a start. With the passing of the first miles and the air white-hot even in the black, I became inspired and broke into hymns. Ironically, the best I could do was Nearer My God to Thee . Perhaps not the bravest choice. Later I digressed to, Up From the Grave He Arose . My final selection, just prior to hitting the first dead animal was, We Shall All Be Together By an d By .
Thump! And then C rash!
Well, it hurt and for sure scared me. But more than that, there was something scurrying about underfoot! If it bites, I’m dead, if it spits poison pus or emits a killer stench, then ditto. Calm did not exist. I made a muck-up of locating my bike and ran with it in my arms down the road for about 100 yards.
Now understand, in daylight I don’t typically break into terror and thrash about on a public road; act a bit odd, well yes, but this was out and out blubbering. I was petrified. I might never know what I hit that night. However, the matter that clung tenaciously to my tires was neither plant nor animal. In the interest of getting ahead of what it was, I continued, but slower now. Small hills appeared like ghostly ramparts and blocked my view of the black road ahead. I would drop off the bike, lean it against my leg and stare hard into…the coal pit before me.
Above, all was well with the heavens. Each star was in place, the black background went well with the earth below and the moon…oh no, I had picked the final waxing of the moon. No warm lunar glow would strike a path for my each step tonight. I was to wander, lost, a mortal awash in his sins, his fanatics, his self- made plight. The festering black encroached on my spaces. I moved on, but slowly, more slowly.
There, now, do you see it? I say, Do – You – See – It?
A movement in the black, like the curtain of coal has shifted ever so slightly and in its place has left a blackness even denser than before. My eyes ached with straining to see…what? I had seen something ahead, out there.
Perhaps the depths of my spirit had at last grown tired of being brave and had given up the struggle. Perhaps this is how it ends: Brave men the last wave by, they did not go gentle into that good night . (Thank you, Dylan Thomas) I had lost any “brave” I might have ever possessed. I had joined Shakespeare’s “St. Crispin’s Day” brigade and was one of his … sorry gentlemen yet abed in England might think themselves accursed that they were not here, and hold their manhood cheap … Yep, that’s me, cheap manhood, and oh I wished I were abed in England, or Bangladesh, or even Delhi. There, again, now I know for sure…something huge is out there, and it’s moving this way, slowly!
I do not have much hair on my body, just enough to pick up a breeze, clutch some sweat or under circumstances such as these, to stand straight up and tremble. Perhaps the hair shook; perhaps the body shook the hair.
None the less, I had to hold tight to the bike for fear of setting off the big 8.1 we in California all await in dread.
Now I gave up on the image of a real man and just plain burst into tears of fear. At first they simply joined my facial contortions of aghast driven by gravity to earth below. But in the later stages I had a much hardened stare of horror on the facial portion.
Shelly stated in Ozymandias , … yet remained these characteristics chiseled on his visage, the hand that mocked them and the heart that fed …
I suspect the horrorstruck look was chiseled into the mud God lent to my mug at creation, and the tears of fear had washed away any likeness of the human visage that had once been. The remains weathered now into a piece of naked, bleached driftwood; adrift indeed, in the seas of time, space and emotions.
After a few years on a bike, (I had been on bikes doing extended rides since 1959), a person becomes rather used to what happens on any road at any given time. As you go along, hit bumps, cushion for them, shift gears for hills and leaps, change seat positions and handlebar positions for climbs and descents, one tends to make such changes which allow one to suffer less as time goes on.
In the first hour on a bike it’s usually bliss and laughter. Later on it’s work and tedium. Further along the day is stressful and one approaches anger at each bump and climb. Then will come that famous leap when you descend and get a wind-assisted rush downhill. At last there is a dreaded drip-stage when all energy is gone, the legs become vacuums, the mind weeps for comfort and parts of the body drop off and are instantly captured in the rear wheel and are driven to ground. These are the strange smudge marks y