The Hiraeth Dialogues

By David Kirk

In the late 1960's, a young man returns to his childhood home and is confronted with something odd. He begins to suspect his earlier recollections and feelings are either idealized or may have never existed. His story is an exploration of the philosophical and psychological effects of leaving home, returning home, and coping with change.

• Language: English
• Publisher: David Kirk
• Release date: May 18, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311698889

David Kirk

David J. Kirk, a U.S. Navy veteran, earned his master's degree in personality psychology from Rhode Island College. He worked as a counselor and human resources manager. David then became an instructor at Rasmussen College in Fargo, North Dakota where he taught psychology for four years. An avid writer since sixteen years old, he has published three novels and one book of short fiction. He lives with his wife in Logansport, Indiana.

Book preview

THE HIRAETH DIALOGUES

David J. Kirk

THE HIRAETH DIALOGUES

Copyright 2015 by David J. Kirk

Smashwords Edition

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters and incidents depicted in this book are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of the author or publisher.

All rights reserved.

Fiction

For Dawne

ALSO BY DAVID J. KIRK

Novels

Particular Stones, 2011

Cornerstones, 2014

Short Fiction

In the Big Flood and Other Stories, 2014

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Linda Blakkan

R.J. Burroughs

Author of The Boys of '58, The Boys of '59

Sandra Perez Gluschankoff

Author of The Last Fernandez

Cover design by Kathleen Kelley

FaceBook: Kathleen Kelley Designs

T.C. Slonaker

Author of Amity of the Angelmen, Asher of the Angelmen

"If I had a disability, I wouldn't cringe at the sight of those

who used what I didn't have, but rather at those who had it and didn't use it."

-T.C. Slonaker

Prologue

A silent dark figure moves through the blowing snow. Laura Kensington trudges ahead with only her destination in mind. The sidewalks were long hidden, and she has no sense of exactly what is beneath her feet, concrete sidewalk or lawn. The swirling gusts of wind push her from side to side every now and then, but these are no match for her determination. Gone were the butterflies and anxiety experienced in preparing herself for this meeting. There had been too many hours spent in libraries, in county archives, and sitting before computer screens. She is close now. Just maybe this would mark the end of a long search that consumed so much of her young life. Just maybe. Just maybe he would be that guy.

***

He is filing in his office on the third floor over the library. The file folders, and the papers to go into them, stand in separate and high piles on his desk. There are curse words coming out of his mouth. He hasn’t refiled papers after using them, and consequently piles accumulated. It would take no more than a second or two to put the papers back in each folder, and refile the folders each time he took them out. He just couldn’t seem to do that, and when he did, it didn’t take long for him to revert to his previous bad habit. He is definitely old school. The university’s desire to become paperless is lost on him. He is oblivious as to what is immediately ahead.

He looks up when he hears a muffled Professor? and a knock on the open door. He sees only two eyes exposed under layers of winter wrap. She walks in, taking off her gloves.

Laura? He reaches across the desk and shakes her hand. Her hand is soft yet she gives a firm grip. She removes a heavy backpack and lets it slide down on the floor.

Yes.

Why don’t you take your coat off and have a seat. It’s awful hot in here. I can’t seem to get the thermostat just right. I’ll just be a minute.

She stands next to a coat hook on the wall and proceeds to unbutton and unwrap, and looks him over as he continues filing. He doesn’t meet expectations. She had pictured a tall, dark, dashing figure with piercing eyes and a booming voice. He is an old, gray-haired, near-sighted professor who doesn’t keep up with his filing. He is nowhere near what she thought that guy would look like.

She sits, and then so does he. He pounds the keys on his laptop to bring up her file. While the computer searches he chats, I see you didn’t do what most of my students did today, and skip class so they could get away for the weekend before the storm hit.

No. I work in one of the residence halls so I have to be here. I need the money.

He looks at her student file on the screen and peeks over at her. Her face is a bit pale and her blonde hair with the dark roots is thin. She sits bent forward and wears a hooded sweatshirt with the school mascot on the front, which was probably bought in the bookstore when the weather first turned cold. Hmm. You are Laura Kensington, a first semester grad student in Health Care Administration.

Yes, I went to a junior college, then transferred to a four-year and got my bachelor’s in sociology. That was in Michigan. I started here this fall.

He separates the two stacks on his desk to see her better. I got a call this morning from Dr. Coburn to, of all things, introduce you.

Yes, I asked him about you, and he said you two were friends. I wanted him to call you so you don’t think, you know, that I’m a wacko stalker or anything like that.

He gives her a quizzical look. He’s in the School of Business and I’m in Social Sciences. I see here that you’ve already taken what I teach, medical sociology, as an undergrad. You got an A too. I’m not sure what I can help you with.

It’s not an academic matter, Professor, it’s a personal one.

He laughs, Well, thanks for the vote of confidence in my ability to offer personal advice, but we have a very fine student counseling center over at …

You may need answers. I think you do. I need them from you too. We can help each other, but we can only do this if you’re that guy.

He’s intrigued, and leans forward. He begins to wonder if she is a wacko stalker. Please explain.

I’ve been searching for you for years. Or at least I think it’s you.

He leans in more, Do go on, Laura.

You tried your hand in the literary world, didn’t you?

I’ve gotten a couple of journal articles published, yes.

No, I mean fiction.

He smiles. Well, thank you for describing them as ‘literature.’ I wrote two novels, yes, a debut and a sequel. That was years ago.

They were coming-of-age stories, correct?

What’s the formal German name? he jokingly quizzes her.

Bildungsroman.

Correct! I see you didn’t sleep through English lit class. He smiles, but she doesn’t. Did you read them?

Yes.

What did you think?

I didn’t care for them. She puts her hand to her mouth, afraid she has insulted him. I mean, they are not something I would normally read.

This time he laughs out loud. At least you agree with most of my reviewers. I wrote them under the pen name, Terrence Remy. How did you know it was me?

Lucky guess. It is anything but. What I find odd is why an accomplished medical sociologist would be writing about teenagers.

Laura Kensington seems odd to him. She is a grad student, certainly, and appropriately more mature, but there is a marked difference. He notices it right off. Every sociology teacher has to do a class of the introductory course at least once an academic year. They all hate it, a lecture hall with 200 some students, speaking into a microphone, and clicking through an endless number of PowerPoints. The mostly freshman class would sleep, text friends, or update their Facebook page. Lifelong friends would sit next to each other and whisper about everything except sociology. Half would fail the class. Laura has the usual characteristics of a student: a young face, big bright eyes, and a modern hairstyle. But she lacks that stereotypical obliviousness, that detachment, and one of those iPod cords wrapped around her neck. She doesn’t slouch in her chair and wrap her arms around herself. She sits forward, forearms on his desk, and looks him right in his eyes.

You wrote a third book too, correct? This one. She reaches down in her bag and pulls out a copy of Theory of Love Poems. The paper cover is creased and stained, the pages dog-eared here and there.

He’s getting a little nervous now. Oh my gosh, how did you get that? Amazon told me I only sold three of those. My sister bought one, and me the other two. I did recently publish that, but wrote most of those poems in my teens and twenties. At college, I had edited up a few of those and handed them in as an assignment for poetry class. Damn professor gave me a C! I guess I should have taken her advice more seriously. How did you get that book?

She, for the first time, smiles. Lucky find, I guess. Again, nothing lucky about it. Then, seriously, I found one poem in here interesting. It’s called, I Left It on the Train. May I ask, sir, what it was that you left on the train?

He quickly leans back and puts a hand up to his mouth. She is getting personal now and the stalker suspicion comes to mind again. He tries to avoid the truth, Isn’t a poem whatever it means in the reader’s mind, like a Bob Dylan song?

Then she floors him, Do you know a Morris Welsh?

And that does it, Okay, Ms. Kensington, unless you have an academic matter to discuss with me this conversation is over. He stands up and pulls his stack of file folders towards him. Please be careful walking back.

She also stands, but leans in toward him. Sir, the only thing I’m looking for here is some information. And since I have the same for you, it is nothing more than an exchange. I have no one to share this with, no axe to grind, but something to prove. I’ve been putting a puzzle together since I was fifteen years old, and I have some pieces missing. But before I can, I am asking to hear your story.

And what makes him the angriest is that he has an unfinished puzzle too. She knows who he is, and at least some of the details. He certainly understands his reaction since this young girl is asking him to casually discuss a subject he’s spent forty years trying to conceal.

Both sit back down. He leans backward into his chair and ponders her request, and for the first time is giving it consideration. All the reasons for keeping up this charade are fading away. He is in his sixties now, he has tenure. There are no more pre-employment physicals to take or licenses or certificates to apply for. These were the things he most feared, the reason he kept his secret tucked away for so long. What was this information she had for him? How could a twenty-something college student help him with a forty-something problem?

He needs to express some parameters if he agrees. This is a deep story, full of lots of details. It’s complicated. It’s also, to use the clinical term, weird. They both smile.

Dr. Coburn can vouch that I’m a good listener.

No one can know about this.

I’m the only one who has to, the only one who needs to.

He thinks of a connection, You say you’re from Michigan? Know anything about Indiana, Ms. Kensington?

I know a heck of lot about Indiana, sir. There is no doubt of her determination.

What convinces him is the look on her face. She is pleading. It appears she has put a great deal of time in on this. He gives in, I have some requirements.

Anything, Professor.

Be here tomorrow, 9 a.m. It’s near finals so the building will be open. Bring just yourself, a notepad if you want, but no recording equipment. Do you like coffee?

I bleed coffee.

Good. In the basement, below the library, is a café. Get two large coffees, black for me. And get the premium kind, dark roast, not that cheap crap. He tries to hand her a twenty-dollar bill but she refuses to take it. This is a long story, so be prepared to spend most of the day.

***

It had snowed all night and there is no indication it will quit anytime soon. The Chicagoland area looks to be in for another long winter, and it is only mid-December. While he walks the short two blocks to his office, he hears the frequent beeps of salt trucks backing up. He is almost looking forward to this event today. While falling asleep last night, he had tried to trick himself into believing he was going to get all her information and then clam up on her. But deep down he knew he had wanted to tell this story to anyone outside his immediate family who was the least bit interested.

At 8:45, at the top of the stairs, he sees her already there holding a cardboard tray with three large coffee cups. He smiles again; this girl is serious about this meeting.

I didn’t know if the two coffees were for you, or one for me and you. So I bought three.

Well, I meant one for you and one for me. But that’s okay; we’ll split the third one.

They enter the office. She says, Why are you over here above the library?

They are renovating our offices over at the social science building, so I’ll be here for a year. I don’t mind, no bosses and only a short walk to work. They both remove their polar gear. The professor pulls his desk chair over next to a small table by the window. Laura does the same with hers. They sit; she sets out the coffees and pulls out of her backpack this overstuffed manila folder crammed with papers. Then out comes a yellow pad of paper. Today she wears a Detroit Redwings hoodie.

She yawns and he asks, Noisy dorm?

No, I couldn’t sleep thinking about our meeting. Thus his last resistance for spilling his guts fades away. She’s ready for this, and surprisingly, so is he.

"It was many years ago, smack during the heat of mid-summer. The country was looking for ways to get out of this war we were in, and