Driftless Afterlife: Afterlife series, #1

By Jess Thornton

Wade Hawkesworth receives a visit from an old friend. Pete, his young friend, had ridden over on his bicycle. He was 10 years old, just as Wade remembered him! 

The only problem was that Wade himself was 35 years old. That, and the fact that he also knew that his old friend Pete was dead... 

Wade set off in his old Ford F100 pickup truck to travel down to Pete's old house in Illinois to see what was going on. He loaded up the truck with his golden retriever dog Charlie by his side, and they set off on the backroads of southwest Wisconsin, heading to Illinois in search of answers, and to check up on his relatives.

Then a wheel-less Big Rig showed up behind them, driven by a demon Hell Trucker holding an emerald that blasted beams of sorcerous doom- intent on blasting the old truck into pieces. Luckily, Wade had brought a big bore pistol along- but, would it work against the supernatural? 

Perhaps it would- in the Afterlife...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Moos Publishing
• Release date: Jan 10, 2020
• ISBN: 9781540113665

Jess Thornton

Jess Eden Thornton is the author of several books on family, the post office past and present, and Americana.  His writings espouse traditional family values, while displaying the underlying humor in the family, neighborhood, and of working life. He also has written a few fantasy stories, one in collaboration with Robert E. Howard, the inventor of Conan. He resides in the driftless region of Wisconsin, deep in an isolated coulee.

Book preview

Chapter 1

I die

Idon’t really remember just when it happened, when I died. I know it wasn’t a long time ago, but it wasn’t recently either. I just knew after awhile that, although I felt pretty much as I always had, better actually, things were subtly different.

I mean, it’s not as if I really thought about life being a little odd; I mean we all kind of go about our lives as if on some sort of automatic pilot until something really important and different happens to us. And really, most lives just don’t have that much really different that comes up, at least nothing out of the ordinary. My extraordinary moment came about when I saw my old friend, my best friend really, Peter Hughes.

Hi Pete, I said happily. I couldn’t remember the last time I had seen him, but when we were really young I remember seeing and playing with him almost every day of my life. He had the same red hair and freckles that I remembered, and the same gap-toothed smile. He smiled back at me, and waved. That’s when I remembered that he was dead.

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This was my wake up moment if you will. Up to then, I’d just been coasting right along, enjoying what I thought of as my life, in good health and wellness, happy to be alive, but really just taking it for granted. I was only 35, right? Almost everyone feels immortal at that age, since for God’s sake, your life is probably at most only one-half over. I knew who I was, what I liked and did not, who my friends were, what I’d make for supper- everything about my life!

I finished my conversation with Pete as if nothing was amiss, and finally he looked down at his watch and said he had to go, his brother Larry and him were having supper with their parents, and he had to go. I’ll see ya real soon, Wade, he said. He always had kind of a raspy voice, ever since we were little kids together on Harnew Road West. Call me, huh? he said as he walked away. It’s been a while! And he got on his bike, and rode away down the sidewalk.

Once again, I don’t really know why this moment shocked me into a sort of wakefulness, but it did. I started thinking about what I always thought of as my totally ordinary life:

I worked as a writer, and had ever since I could remember. I wrote novels, and books on exercise and nutrition, which were sold online as ebooks, and published into paperbacks. I have many, many friends, acquaintances and neighbors, a little church I love going to, lots of pets- I’d say my life is full indeed! Nothing to complain about, or unusual there.

Maybe I’d been working too hard- sometimes when I was writing, I would forget to eat, and just get so caught up in the discovery of the story of my characters that I’d just go on and on, in a fever of inspiration. It really is true that a fictional universe can seem just as compelling and real as the one all about us, I mean anyone who has been caught up in a really good book or movie has experienced that.

Perhaps my characters had become so real to me that I had not been paying full attention to my regular work-a-day life. But that still did not explain why I had suddenly thought that my good friend, whom I was talking to, was a dead person.

Chapter 2

My dead friend

Iwent back to my house, a two story frame house that I had lived in for my whole adult life. I loved my house, having bought it from an elderly couple who had built a brand new house across the street, up a steep hill. My wife lived there too, or had until she disappeared, oh, a few years back. I never really thought about it, although I did miss Marie. Some things just worked out that way, I guess.

I remembered painting that house, how it had taken me my whole vacation, and most of a summer to do it. I had changed the color of that 100 plus year old farmhouse and changed it from dark, peeling brown to a deep green body, with light green trim, and a coral color for those gingerbread features from the Victorian age. Exhausting, but worth it in the end.

Opening the door, my cats swarmed all over me! My gosh, I must have six cats by now, all of them in their prime. ‘Kind of crazy," I thought, as I passed through the kitchen to the cupboard where I kept their food. I opened can after can, and put out dry kibble as well, as the menagerie crowded around my legs, purring and pushing their heads against my legs.

I had never really been a cat person, my family had never had cats- that was all Marie’s doing. And so what was I doing with all of her cats? I shook my head, in kind of a fond bewilderment: I really had become very fond of the cats! I reached down to pet a big black tom cat that Marie had named Jack, and then petted the big white head of another named Ty. The male cats had always taken mostly to me, and I to them.

Now- to the Pete problem- but then, I saw the dogs! Oh, how could I have forgotten- they were all out in the fenced in yard where I had left them to roam. They had plenty of water from a stream that ran in the back, and I also had a big trough that filled automatically from a hose as they drank it. But they were clustered at the back door of the house, wagging and wiggling to get into where I would feed them!

I laughed, happy as always to see all of my dogs, knowing that the neighbors must think that I’m crazy to keep so many animals, but I also knew that I didn’t care- I loved all of my dogs and cats.

The next 20 minutes or so was a hectic, yet fun reacquaintance with all of my critters, mostly quietly since that is the kind of animal I like best, (no little noisy yappy dogs for me!), as I petted and stroked them all, squatting down to be more on their level as they all ate. I did have to keep the dogs in a hall off of the kitchen so that they would not eat the cats’ food, but the dogs were all respectful of each other’s food bowls. They were all beautiful golden retrievers, well trained, and with quiet and gentle natures. One female, Molly, and then Charlie, Ben, and August. I knew they were not from the same litter, but they certainly could have been, since they were all of an age.

I changed the cat litter boxes, all five of them, two upstairs and two down, and finally got myself a beer from the kitchen fridge and sat at the big wooden table. I enjoyed that nice old table, and it had been needed when our daughter Nel had been little and Marie and I had fed her there, and entertained when our various family members had come to visit.

I still used that table lots, since nowadays I hosted many visits, dinners, and get togethers with family members, like Marie’s parents, and her elder sister. They came by often, and seemingly bore me no grudge for my wife’s leaving, who was of course their relation. Well, as I’ve said, there had never been any ill will between any of us, my wife included. I guess it had just been time for her to leave.

Chapter 3

I call Pete

H ello, is Pete there? I asked over the telephone.

I had to get to the bottom of all this. Pete, my good friend- he wasn’t dead! I’d just seen him, and he looked the same as always. The same jeans, the t-shirt; the same little bicycle…

Hello, is this Wade? asked Pete’s mom. I said that it was, and waited. The same bicycle!? That’s when it really hit me- my best friend was a little boy, about 9 or 10 years of age! And I was 35, grown up and independent- what was going on?

Hi Wade! said the boy-voice of my friend. I’ll come by tomorrow, let’s ditch our little brothers and go by ourselves to the prairie- I want to start building that fort we’ve been talkin’ about- my dad says the carpenters doing those new houses will probably give us scrap lumber.

He went on and on, but I could barely even listen. I knew for a fact that we were the exact same age! So why, all of a sudden, was he still just 10 years old, and I was grown up? And didn’t he notice the difference himself?

I let him rattle on, as kids will do, and agreed to play with him the next day. It was summer vacation, after all, as Pete had pointed out, so we were totally free to do anything we wanted! My mind said, ‘Sure, Pete old buddy- you can do whatever you want, after all, you’re DEAD!’ I felt sick.

---

I finally hung up the phone, saying so long to my long dead friend, and sat down in my easy chair. All of my animals clustered all around me- cats on my lap and shoulders, dogs at my feet- it was nuts, but I liked it. I stroked Charlie’s golden head, his soft red-gold fur shining in the light of my reading lamp. He looked up at me with his deep brown eyes, and, as only golden retrievers can do, I swear he smiled up at me. The cats just purred contentedly like little motors all around.

I was surrounded with vibrant life, all about me- but why was my long-dead childhood friend also still around?

I remembered, with an effort, when he had died. We had both been 10 years old, and had been building a fort next to my parents’ garage with scrap lumber. We had really put in a good day’s effort, using old bent nails we had scrounged up around the construction site on the prairie, which was a really big, totally flat piece of ground that was being developed to house the burgeoning families of the post-war baby boom generation.

The young men that built those houses seemed amused to see us kids coming around, asking for lumber and old nails, and really went out of their way to oblige us. Our fort was built of two by fours cut at an angle at one end, and straight on the other, and held roughly together with nails that we laboriously pounded out to be kind of straight on the sidewalk. We even had a big, crooked piece of plywood to serve as a roof, and to us that fort looked fantastic!

My brother Jeff, and Pete’s brother Larry helped us, and they were both just one year younger than us two big kids, as we called ourselves. We let them help, but made a point of ordering them around as much as possible. We really liked that fort, and thought we were amazing builders.

That evening, when Pete and Larry’s mom rang the big bell that signaled that supper was ready on their ranch-style 1950’s suburban home, I looked over at Pete and smiled. He really was my best friend, and I was so looking forward to going to 4th grade with him the next school year.

We gotta go, Wade, he said. He swung himself through the roughly triangular window of our fort, and turned to me with his gap-toothed grin. He put his hand under his chin, and waggled his fingers at me just as Curly from the Three Stooges did, saying Soitenly!!

Then he and brother Larry took off, running across the street towards home. That was the night they both died, both of them, along with their parents, and their sister, in a tragic car wreck as they drove out to the Dairy Queen after supper.

And now, somehow, they were back.

Chapter 4

Writing

Iwent to my typewriter. That may seem strange, but writing is my job, and when I am putting words down on paper, my thoughts seem to become orderly and logical. At least, more so than when I’m just thinking to myself, when my conscious mind just seems to become more and more confused the more that I tax it. The writing forces structure.

So, I began writing things down, a chronology of my life; trying to make sense of what was obviously just one strange aberration in an otherwise completely normal life. I wrote about my early childhood, all that I could remember, of my parents, and my many brothers and sole sister.

I wrote about my grandparents on my father’s side, and my grandmother on my mom’s, since her father had died quite young. All of my aunts and uncles, my cousins: it was as if I was affirming my own place in the natural, real world, since if I was seeing an old dead friend from my childhood maybe I was not… well, altogether sane.

The writing calmed me, made me see that I was part of the real world; I had a history, just like anybody. I had been planning to write a novel about my parents in their youth, and this would be a nice start- I estimated I had written about 4 pages, which was a good evening’s work, actually a good day’s work. Your average person has no idea how much sheer work and determination goes into writing 1,000 words, which is about 3 pages in a book. I had written about 2,000, which was double my usual daily quota.

I got up, stretched, and fetched another beer from the fridge. Those cats and dogs were everywhere underfoot, swarming along with me as we all went from the study into the kitchen.

I popped the top on a long neck, and then went over to the counter to open more cans of cat food, and pour more dog kibble into bowls- those animals were always hungry! But then again, they always made me smile. And smiling, I thought of my brothers.

I picked up the handle of the telephone, and started spinning the rotary dial. I remembered Jeff’s number like it was yesterday, although I couldn’t recall the last time I’d talked to him, or even seen him. Only one year apart, we had always been close, even though he still lived in suburban Chicagoland, where we had grown up with Pete and Larry. I dialed, and then took a long pull of beer as I waited.

That call cannot be completed as dialed at the present time. Please try again later, said a tinny sounding female voice recording.

Now that struck me as odd. Cannot be completed? Oh, well, I did live in the rural wilds of Wisconsin, after all. Technology was always a little dated- why, just a few years ago we’d still had a party line!

---

I took the telephone receiver handle from the wall mounted brown phone in the kitchen, and dialed Marie’s parents instead: Duke answered the phone. There’s nobody here, he said. Duke was always a kidder.

I heard my mother-in-law Marge in the background. Oh, Duke, who is it? she said, laughing.

Always, I was amazed at how these two never aged! I could have sworn that they were both about my age, although of course they couldn’t be. Both had really dark hair, thick and full, and were as healthy and vital as could be. Mine was just beginning to show a little gray, like my mom’s.

Aw, it’s just Wade, said Duke, and then continued talking. How’s it goin’ there in the wilderness, boy-o? We are just watching the golf, and then the Cubs- whooo-eeee, that’s gonna be fun times!

I could just imagine the scene; the two of them in their snug ranch house in downstate Illinois, a fire in the fireplace, the sports on television, and having just finished a meal of steak, salad, and baked potato. Some things never changed, thank God.

Hi Duke, I said. I’m thinking I might come down and visit your way, if that’s alright?

All right? It’s G-r-e-a-T!! said my father-in-law, imitating the Tony the Tiger commercial from TV. I heard my mother-in-law giggling in the background over the television sounds. I had always gotten along great with them both, even after their daughter Marie was no longer living with me. How good natured could you get?

I said my goodbyes, and hung up. I really liked my in-laws, and would enjoy seeing them. Maybe they would have some insights about that crazy little kid, my old best friend Pete, showing up as a kid. I thought I could stop and see my family on the way down, too, and query them about it.

I was feeling more normal and grounded by the moment. I’d figure this out. I always figured stuff out, I just needed to sound off to other reasonable people from my life. The trip would do me good!

Only one more thing: I’d need to call my neighbor Jerilyn tomorrow- she would love to take care of my animals. Just about my age, she lived alone, just down our shared rural road a ways with her dog. I’d leave all my cats and dogs with her confidently, but I’d take Charlie along with me- for company.

Chapter 5

Driving South

My alarm clock radio went off early the next morning, the dulcet tones of Bob Edwards of Wisconsin Public radio going off at 4:30 AM. Those days that I purposely got up at that early time were always my most productive, by far. Whether I needed to write, or if I was doing anything demanding, I always set my alarm for 4:30.

Today was the day of my journey, and since I am not a traveler, preferring by far to travel in my armchair within the pages of a book, or by following a really good movie, I knew this would be taxing on me. Some folks just can’t wait to plan their next trip afar, wanting to check off every far-off place on their bucket list- but I just preferred little day trips of maybe an hour or so away at most. That’s what Marie, Nel and I had always done, and now was what I did myself.

Part of it was the animals- cats are not badly traumatized, although they don’t like it if you are gone for more than a day or two. Dogs are different. Dogs are like little children that never grow up, and they need to be walked, and fed, and watered, and petted, and talked to, and otherwise be made to feel they are part of a pack.

My own dogs were doubly fortunate here, since Jerilyn would care for them along with her own dogs, and she’d feed my cats too, and even pet them all. Jerilyn is a treasure. I remember she too used to have a husband, but he’s gone, along with my wife Marie. Life is so full of changes and unexpected turns.

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I worked out for about 30 minutes, making sure to stretch thoroughly on my floor yoga mat,