Thundering Glory of Nothing

By Karl J. F. Runft

Twenty-two year old and alleged Hollywood actor “Lance Cruz” is suddenly and unwittingly drawn back to the place he swore he’d never return: his home town. Arriving in his silver Porsche convertible, Lance is forced to reckon with his past true identity as “Chris” as he navigates a haphazard reunion of high school friends who have just graduated college and are assembling for a wedding of Chris’s once high school girlfriend. Through several misadventures and schemes gone awry, Chris finds that many of his old friends are not what they seem, and he is forced to reveal the true reason of his improbable wealth and success, why it has drawn him back and why it now threatens to undue everything he has, if not even his very life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Karl J. F. Runft
• Release date: Oct 19, 2017
• ISBN: 9780991421725

Karl J. F. Runft

Karl J. F. Runft lives in San Francisco, and, when not practicing law or running and biking in the hills of the Bay Area, has written several short stories and novels. For further information on upcoming titles, please visit: www.karlrunft.com.

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THUNDERING GLORY OF NOTHING

By Karl J. F. Runft

Published by Karl J. F. Runft, Smashwords edition. Copyright 2017 by Karl J. F. Runft. All rights reserved. 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.

Chapter 1 – Heralded by a Thunderclap

Chapter 2 – The Whole Town Burned Down

Chapter 3 – Steel Eyes

Chapter 4 – Red Sequin Dress

Chapter 5 – Wizerfox

Chapter 6 – The Revelry Aptitude Test

Chapter 7 – Into the Nightly Ether

Chapter 8 – The Illicit School of Refinement

Chapter 9 – Horizontal Guillotine

Chapter 10 – The Jaw-Jaw Fighting Pits

Chapter 11 – The Good Life

Chapter 12 – All Cock and No Brains

Chapter 13 – Saturday Night Fights!

Chapter 14 – Safe Returns

Chapter 15 – To Get Even

Chapter 16 – The Black Book

Chapter 1

Heralded by a Thunderclap

One hand was on the stick shift, and the other was on the steering wheel. A cigarette was glowing in my mouth. Loose embers were taking flight and swirling in wide arcs and around the dashboard of the convertible. The smell of dusty sage filled the air, and the roar of the engine and rush of cool wind were nearly drowning out the Lords of Acid’s techno-beats pouring from my stereo. Its red equalizer dots pulsed in sequence with the veins of my bloodshot eyes.

I had been driving all night, driving hard and fast—a hundred and twenty miles an hour across a thousand miles of empty desert-highway. The white, lowerly moon was my only companion, following me and illuminating the open desert plains, casting shadows over the hidden places among the cracks and crags of the tall rock structures that punctuated the desolate landscape. They seemed like abandoned cites, long forgotten. The thunder of my music echoed off their crumbling walls, heralding my approach to nothing but only what my imagination could conjure.

I had traveled through these desolate places before, and now, coming back through them—every mile post bringing me closer to my destination—all I wanted was to proceed with haste and wait for oncoming day to reveal that no weather-wasted, blood-lusting monsters were lurking in the ruins for my return. I wouldn’t have to wait much longer.

I saw an orange glow blooming out of the eastern darkness. A reddish-orange veneer was rising behind the peaks of the mountains in front of me. The sun was coming over the mountains. On the other side was home….

If I stayed on the main highway, I would have to go around the mountains and unceremoniously crawl along this barren plain until the road dropped into the deep canyon that wriggled its way toward town. That’s the way most people went; that’s the only way most people knew. It was not for me. If I was coming back, I had to come in from above, descend in from on high, over the mountains from the north like an approaching storm—my arrival heralded by a thunderclap!

I lowered my speed to fifty, put my car in third and prepared to make the turn at the sign for the old logging road that went up to the top of the mountain range. Just as I swung wide to make the turn, the headlights of an oncoming car rushed at me. It stared honking its horn and then swerved onto the berm of the highway to miss me. I floored it and made the turn at seventy, my tires squealing and kicking up loose gavel. I liked that sound. I liked to hear the car work.

Unfazed, I sped up along the old mountain road, turning sharp and wide, going as fast as the angles of the curvy weatherworn blacktop would allow.

Reaching the tree line, the road leveled out and began cutting along the sides of the mountains, dipping in an out of the gentle creases in the tall granite range. Majestic ponderosas were lining the way, and my senses settled with the smell of old pine and the memories of high school ski trips and summer camping.

The road rounded the side of a mountain and turned sharply south into a deep narrow valley that cut through the range. Nestled in the middle of the valley was the local ski resort. I drove through the green, bushy valley and past the locked wooden buildings and planked walkways that made up the resort’s impersonation of an alpine village. I saw the ski lifts and their empty chairs, stripped naked of their seat-pads and hanging loosely from their flaccid metal wires. It was all empty and abandoned, shuttered for summer, I guessed. Few came here in the summer except for day hikes on the weekends. It was Tuesday.

I turned of the road and entered the resort parking lot that was at the southern edge of the valley. I went straight across it, and as I came to the edge, I didn’t let up on the accelerator even though the silver guardrail grew bigger and bigger in my windshield. My mind was tired and slow to recognize how fast I was closing the distance. The guardrail rushed at me, and my foot instinctively slammed on the brakes. The wheels locked. Chunks of gravel were kicked up and hit the undercarriage of the car. I slid for five feet before coming to a jarring stop. My head banged against the steering wheel and then flung back against the seat.

There was pain in my neck, and darkness closed in from the sides. I felt spent and awkward at coming to rest after driving so long at high speeds. I could feel a veil of sleep trying descend over my face. I leaned forward and hugged the steering wheel, resting there for a long moment.

I heard a plane pass far overhead, and I shook off my weariness, put on my silver aviator sunglasses and got out of the car. The sound of dirt crunching under my feet was reassuring. I looked around. The sun was just peaking over the mountains and light was beginning to fill the large valley far down before me. I stepped around the front of the car and looked at the bumper. It was fine. It didn’t hit. But it was close. There were just a few inches between my bumper and the hard metal rail that had guarded me from going over the vertiginous drop off in front of me. I shook my head and sat back on the shiny guardrail that was catching some of the sun’s early rays. I wondered what the sensation would have been like of going over the side, of hurling and crashing down to the end in a twisting cascade of burning metal. I wondered if anyone would have ever found me, or even bothered to look. I looked down at the valley, down at the town sitting three thousand feet below me and resting quietly along a winding river. That was where I grew up. That was home.

Home… I said to myself with a whisper and then with a forced laugh. The sound echoed across the parking lot over the empty chair lifts swinging behind me in the mild breeze. I pulled out a cigarette, put in my mouth and lit it. I took a long drag and looked slowly over the length of the valley and the houses and buildings that snaked along the river’s edge. A thin, pasty haze was hanging over the town, shrouding bedroom windows from the morning light and my prying eyes.

I couldn’t believe I was back. Four years ago I had left and not once had returned—not for my family, not for my friends, not for anything. When I left I had resigned myself from this place. I was never going to come back. But now being back and remembering this fact, I felt singularly and conceitedly distant from my home and all it had meant. And why not? I thought.

As much as I could see, as much as I could remember, it looked the same, the whole setting seemed the same—a medium sized town set deep in the American West, quiet, safe, fragile, protected by ring after ring of tall mountain ranges and vast deserts, insulated by the great interior wilderness, protected from rape. A place from where escape was all I could dream about when I was young. These mountains, these gnarled granite teeth that had forever scraped against the wide-open sky, were once an impregnable barrier to me, the wall to the outside world. Mysteries and dangers waited just on the other side, waited to be seized and experienced. These peaks were a choice: cross them and go out into the unknown or stay centered in this little enclosed world. I was eighteen when I crossed the mountains, and now I was crossing them again, but from the other direction. I was now one of the unknowns from the other side—a mystery, a stranger. I was a young man wearing a white linen suit, driving a fast car and skilled in sin. Would they arrest me, block my approach if they knew I was coming? I mused.

I flicked my cigarette on the ground, and turned to get back in my car. I saw the parking kiosk a few steps away and a large public notice plastered on it. I read it. It was a notice of foreclosure on the resort and public auction. Some things have changed, I thought. I got back into my car and pulled out of the parking lot. I found the sign that directed me to town. I began descending down.

For several miles, the road held fast along the south face of mountainside, carving a path through the ponderosa forest. The long, wide branches held the cool morning air and cast expansive, looming shadows across the hood of my car as I drove under them. I could get used to driving at such high altitudes.

Once out of the tress, the road turned off the mountain and started snaking along the backs of dry, yellow foothills that slumped off the mountainside like lumps of buttery doe that shimmered in early morning sun as if they were under the oven light. Further down, many of the higher hills had been flattened, landscaped and set with concrete gutters, paved street, culverts and sidewalks, but no houses. Construction on the vacant, sandy lots had ceased, and the ubiquitous, forgotten for sale signs stood like headstones to a graveyard of residential development that was slowly being reclaimed by the desert.

The road eventually came off the hills and dove down into a long, narrow gully that opened up onto a vast lawn dotted with manicured trees. It was a country club. It was green, beautiful, wet and moist, a place where the dust and brush turned into soft, tender grass—a counterpoint to the abandoned developments above.

I drove onto a residential drive that ran along the course’s edge. I parked my car and got out. I was the only one around as far as I could tell. I stepped down onto the course green, onto the slick grass recently watered from the morning sprinkling. It smelled like cold tea.

If there was one thing that mattered to these Western towns, these supposed middleclass strongholds, it was their country clubs and water. I remember ten years ago this golf course was nothing but a cracked, dirty gulch, filled with snakes and tumbleweeds. It had been that way since the continental drift put it there. But now it was a lush garden, tended to by sucking out the underground reservoirs that had been stored up by a thousand years of trickle down from the mountain snow packs. Places like this were an exercise in futility, a flash in the pan, destined to dry up as the climate changed and the snowpacks grew smaller and smaller by the year. This whole town was like that—built for the convenience of the moment and soon to whither when it finally got too hot and too dry. One day the sun would kill the green grass and turn it all back to dust. But that wasn’t my problem.

By the second hole, I came across a water dispenser and poured some water into a waxy paper cup. I took a thin drink and walked slowly into the middle of the course. I could feel the cold water fill in the cracks of my dry throat. I took another sip and let it trickle down the back of my tongue. It was enough water, and I poured the remnants on the ground. I crumpled the cup and tossed it onto the grass. I pulled out a cigarette and watched the sun slowly rise higher into the light blue sky. The sunlight was beginning to dissipate the thin mist that was lingering up range among the pine trees near the first hole. I knew this golf course well. After they finished building it during my last year in high school, we’d come here in the summer nights and hang out in the soft grass, lay under the stars with girls, sometimes our clothes coming off….

Hey! someone yelled. Get off the course!

I emerged from my morning reverie and looked around. Up around the first hole I picked out two morning golfers. They were teeing off. I stood and looked at them. One of them was wearing a hat with a white shirt and shorts. The other was wearing a red shirt with pleated, tan pants that had cuffs. How awful, I muttered to myself. The golfer in white raised his driver and shook it in the air, warning me of his shot. I didn’t move. I wondered, What would they do if I just stood here, if I didn’t move, if I acted like a lost blind man in a white linen suit?

I took another drag from my cigarette and made a slow turn in my place, pretending I didn’t notice them. Get off the goddamned course! one of them yelled.

I came round and looked at them again. I threw back the side of my jacket and rested my hand on my hip. One of them began raising and lowering his arms, flapping them at me several times. He looked like a flightless, helpless bird. I slowly tilted my head, nodded twice and turned away. With an exaggerated stride—throwing my legs far out in front and thrusting my arms high up in the air—I walked off the course toward some steps.

The steps led me up out of the course and into the club parking lot. But for two cars, the black top was mostly empty. I walked past them and over to the pro-shop that stood alone from the clubhouse in its own quaint exile. Its windows were covered with pictures of supposed pro-golfers holding supposed pro-golf equipment that aside from golf looked useless unless it was to bludgeon somebody. The pro-shop hadn’t opened yet. I looked inside anyway. I didn’t see him. But then I wasn’t sure if he worked in the pro-shop or in the club lounge.

I stepped around the side of the pro-shop and walked to the steps up to back patio of the clubhouse. At the top of the steps, I walked through a gate and then stopped.

All I could see were rows of empty white deck chairs and clean white deck tables with clear glass tops that held neatly furled white umbrellas. It was white on white, a blinding white storm that spanned the whole area between me and the clubhouse. There was no way around it, and I plunged ahead, weaving my way among the continuous stands of umbrellas and chairs. I lost sight of the clubhouse and my sense of direction, and I feared I would have to wait for some deck boy to come along and discover me as he tried unfurling me like another white umbrella. But my eye caught something in its corner—a hint of something blue off to my left. My nose picked up a fresh, familiar sent, and I was drawn toward it. I rounded another table, and the white plastic jungle opened up to the edge of a placid blue swimming pool. It was huge and inviting, and the water looked clean can cool—its surface smooth as glass. I estimated it at about fifty yards in length and about fifteen-feet deep at most. I could see the bottom, and immediately wanted to get in it, get down deep into the purest waters before noon, before on every chair would sit every doctor’s wife laughing with every lawyer’s wife as she reached for her cold drink that perspired in the sun while the women’s fat children rolled around in the water like indecent beasts. I pressed on.

Across the pool, I saw the clubhouse. I walked over to it stepping along the edge of the pool and avoiding the white jungle. I came to the large, dark tinted windows and put my hand up the to glass. I saw someone behind the bar wiping off a countertop. He had the black hair and the light build, and when I saw his face I knew it was Sam. I stepped back and watched him.

It was Sam who asked me to come back. How he had gotten my number, I didn’t know. But he called me yesterday and told me about my high school girlfriend Analease’s impending wedding, told me that this was the last great gathering of all our old friends, told me I had to come up for it. I didn’t say I would. I said I might, that is until he let slip something that ensured I’d have to come back. He had run into Max.

Sam stopped wiping the counter and looked up cautiously as if he sensed someone was looking at him. He saw me standing there in the window. He didn’t move; he just looked and studied me. I smiled a little smile, and he put down his rag and approached the door. He didn’t know who I was. But when he got to the window, he gave me a closer look and laughed.

Wow! Sam said, unlocking the door and letting me in. The air in clubhouse was cool, air-conditioned. Here you had to start the air conditioning early to keep cool in the summer.

Chris! Sam said. Man! What are you doing here? I can’t believe it. I didn’t think you’d get here until tomorrow or something. Did you fly here? I hardly recognized you. What’s with the white suit? What kind of suit is that?

It’s linen, I said, putting out my cigarette in an ashtray on a nearby deck table.

Come on in. Come on in, man! Sam said waiving at me as I walked into the club lounge. It was filled with black leather chairs and dark varnished tables that sat on a red carpet. Despite the air conditioning, the room felt warm. Sam moved back behind the long clubhouse bar, and I sat down on a barstool and took off my sunglasses.

It’s the only suit that goes well with my light blue shirt, I said.

Whatever, man. I’ve never seen anybody wear a white suit before. Is that how everyone dresses in LA?

Well… I started, but then decided to tell him something he’d like to hear. Yeah, you got to dress the part, I guess. Everyone tries to dress the part on a daily basis. It’s the way to get noticed, I said. Is that how people dress in college? I asked, taking note of Sam’s saggy jeans and faded grey t-shirt.

Yeah, I guess. I don’t know. But you, man. You look… I don’t know? Older.

Looking at the mirror behind Sam and all the bottles of booze, I saw myself. My jaw looked sharp; my bleach blond hair was unkempt and wild, almost roughish; and my green eyes looked vigilant but weary. But, maybe, I did look older, or at least more experienced. Sam looked exactly the same. His jet-black hair, pasty white skin and face, which still transformed into a child’s face every time he smiled, were exactly the same, exactly how I remembered him. He still looked too fresh, too eager.

It’s been fours years, I said.

You haven’t even been back once in four years? Sam said staring at me with wonderment.

No…. I said flatly.

Wow, man… Sam replied and looked away as the fact of my long absence settled on his mind. He didn’t ask why; he always avoided the hard questions. This is going to be crazy! Sam then jolted. Everyone is Back! Everyone is coming back…. Crazy!

So I see your parents still make you work, eh? Sam parents were well off, but they always required him to work some menial summer job to teach him to the value of work.

Yeah… but, you know. I’m headed off to graduate school in the fall, he said cheerfully.

Really? I said with light apathy, deflating Sam’s enthusiasm about his future. Got a drink? I asked.

A drink? he said as he looked cautiously around the room. Yeah… sure. What’ll be?

Got any bourbon? I asked half-joking. I was curious to see if he’d do it.

Sam turned and rustled around the stacks of booze, pulling out an ornate, white-labeled bottle filled with a languid, brown liquid. He poured two careful shots. I gently put my hand around my glass but let it sit for a few seconds. Sam grabbed his drink and with excited fingers took a little sip. I watched him try to repress his facial contortions at the punch of that old Southern fist. I lifted my shot, slowly raised it to my mouth, and quickly tipped the cold glass back on my lips. The glass became empty.

Damn, man! Sam said, wiping his lip. How can you drink this stuff? I could never drink this stuff.

I raised my left eyebrow and smiled. Sam poured me another shot.

Don’t they teach you how to drink in college? I said. Isn’t that part of the ‘core curriculum’ or something?

Maybe, Sam said. More like Natty Light. Lots and lots of shitty, cheap beer. I laughed; Sam laughed in response. I liked Sam. I always did. He was always glad to see you, glad to see anyone. It was easy to see him again. He always did what you said.

So you left last night? Sam asked.

What day is it? I asked.

Tuesday.

Yeah.

What time did you leave?

I looked at my watch. Oh… about eleven or so.

PM? he asked. I nodded my head. Jesus Christ! You made here in less then ten hours? You’ve must’ve been driving all night. How fast were you going?

I kept it over a hundred most of the way.

Goddamn. What kind of car you driving?

A fast car, I said, feigning disinterestedness.

What kind? Sam continued.

A Porsche.

What? Sam yelped. I got to see this.

I laughed and shot back my second drink. If it wasn’t the white suit, it was always the car. I looked at Sam for second and then asked, So, who’s here already?

Sam started down the list of names. They were names of old friends, names of old acquaintances, names drawing my memory back to a place and time. He mentioned the name Lisa, his old kind-of-girlfriend, who I knew—and he always suspected—had eyes for me. I smirked. He saw, but didn’t react. He kept up his recitation, but by the end, he didn’t mentioned Max. It wasn’t what I wanted to hear. I would have to probe, but be sure not show my hand so no warning would reach Max that I was back and looking for him.

When is Analease getting in? I asked.

Tomorrow, I think.

Do you know who she’s getting married to? I asked, shaking my head in disapproval.

No. Some guy from back East she went to school with, I think. You ever get an invite to the wedding?

No, I said with a little incredulity over the obviousness of the answer. When you told me was the first I heard of it.

Really? I thought you’d maybe have gotten one by now. I’m sure you could go, man. I mean, you two went out for years.

At that, I laughed. Yes, Analease and I dated for most of high school. But, like Sam, like everyone else from that time but Max, I hadn’t spoken to her since I left.

I guess… I said skeptically. We’ll have to work it out as we go, I said. "You have any idea why she’s getting married? Getting married now?"

No, Sam said, shrugging innocently. I have no idea. She was your girl friend, he said.

Sounds insane, I said dryly, taking a deep breath, looking off, out the windows to the blue water of the pool.

I guess, Sam responded.

At that, someone walked into the room and looked at us, looked at me, looked at Sam. He was a short round man in his twenties in a green T-shirt that had some horrid looking white crest ironed on it. He said something about getting the rest of the chairs down and wiping off the rest of the tables. Sam said he’d get right on it, and the man looked at me and then at the bottle. As he left, he kept his disapproving eye on us. He couldn’t hide the fact though that he was balding on the back of his head. Once he was out of the room, Sam shook his head and quickly cleared the counter of the shot glasses and the booze.

Your manager? I asked.

Yeah, Sam said. He’s cool, I think. I hope…. Jesus, that was dumb.

I shrugged my shoulders, and Sam looked at his watch and then back to the doors his boss came from. Hey, I’d really like to see your car before get I back to work. Cool?

Sure, I said, and I got off my stool.

We went out the back together. We started walking around the pool. I took out a cigarette. Just as I was about to light it, something by the pool caught my eye. I pulled the unlit cigarette from my mouth.

Across the still waters, there was a woman stretched out on one of the white chairs. I tipped my sunglasses down and looked at her with my two tired, but hungry eyes. She was an older woman. She sat still and exact. Her legs were perfectly parallel, one extended the full length of the chair and the other pulled up in an arch up with a ninety-degree angle between her calf and her quadriceps. Her toenails were shiny red as were her fingernails. Her arms were set next to her legs. There was no hint of inexperience or sloppiness. She knew how to lie out under the sun, how to make her self look relaxed yet self-composed, and her skin said as much. Its dark brown texture struggled to stay taught on her long, thin arms and legs. Her whole body glistened from the oils and ointments she applied. She had a ridiculous wide brimmed hat on and white