Rate of Exchange

By Wayne Luckmann

“Waking from recurring dreams that sometimes troubled him, Felix Fist woke in darkness and the stillness of morning before dawn.”

Thus begins one man’s quest seeking peace, love, and understanding through searching lost times.

Receiving an unexpected letter by snail mail, Felix Fist with some reluctance follows his compulsion and returns to his origins where he attends an event that begins a summer of reunions forcing him to finally face who he was and what he has become after numerous troubling personal encounters and too many periods of addiction.

Attending a celebration of his high school graduation after sixty years, returning safely to where he now resides, he revisits a place he hasn’t been in thirteen years where once he labored for nearly five decades.

Meeting someone with whom he has exchanged emails for nearly two years after no contact for thirty years, he finally after fifteen years meets with someone he had considered forever lost.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Squirrel Haven Publishing
• Release date: Mar 28, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463894248

Wayne Luckmann

Wayne Luckmann, a student of life and of ideas, writes from the basis of what he has experienced over several decades and what he has learned through observation and through close and repeated readings in literature, science, philosophy, psychology, linguistics, languages, and art. After surviving service of over forty years as tenured faculty at Green River College in Auburn, WA, and eleven years in Glendale, Arizona fostering rescued dogs and feral cats, he now resides in Bremerton, WA, his days now focused on continued reading in all his chosen subjects, continued study of the classical guitar, and dedicated attention to Works in Progress.

Book preview

Rate of Exchange

by

Wayne Luckmann

Copyright 2017 by Wayne Luckmann

The cost of anything is determined by the amount of what I consider life that I have to give in exchange for it. Henry David Thoreau

All characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this work are the products of the author's imagination and used as fiction..

Waking from recurring dreams that sometimes troubled him, Felix Fist woke in darkness and the stillness of morning before dawn. He rose slowly in early morning quiet made more obvious by the stirrings of other creatures in the house and the soft, mellow light he used to move about with little sound slowly preparing himself for the journey ahead and the interval when he would be reluctantly absent from the comfort of his living space and his admittedly somewhat regimented customary daily routine. The world still slumbering, his favorite time of day of renewed expectations and since his retirement, he having no need for nor welcomed any device to rouse him from slumber, morning was when he found himself awake and there was a dawn in him offering the freshness of a new day when he felt fully aware, more conscious of all that he perceived through five senses while also feeling something more, but of what, he could not speak, so therefore he must be silent while he sensed as always the stillness enhanced by soft noises that enveloped and gave him comfort: the aging structure where he dwelled even older than he still settling, those stirring creatures he had rescued from arbitrary, certain death sharing his precious space still lost in the sometimes comforting void of sleep from which they would rise alive and refreshed.

And once he rose and took his waking slow, he moved just as quietly to purge himself of what his mortal flesh had gathered during the night, washed sleep from his eyes, brushed his teeth, and dressed, having showered the previous night to avoid delay and disturbing others, letting those creatures lie as he padded softly to the galley kitchen where he nuked coffee from last night’s pot, halting the appliance before it sent its shrill repeated squeal into the quiet dawn. He drank the black, bitter brew wondering why he did, rinsed the cup, placed it in the dish rack, shrugged into his light windbreaker, and left, locking the door, knowing his well-paid housefrau would soon rise and stand guard through typical regimented control.

Treading over a rain-drenched grassy lot to his well-used, aging Tundra, unlocking the door by remote then swinging it open, he hoisted his carry-on to the adjoining seat then climbed in after, settled, probing for the ignition somewhat blindly with his key, firing the engine, using the wipers to clear debris from towering hemlock and last night’s rain, belting himself in by conditioned response, putting the machine into Drive, he slowly, cautiously, despite the early hour, moved out onto the narrow, asphalt road that at times seemed more a speedway leading him to the wide, usually busy, nearly empty thoroughfare and then eventually the entrance to what some referred to as freeway but upon which he expected unforeseen typical obstruction, Fist journeyed through early morning darkness along the state highway he had traveled on for years in both directions, the quiet, constant reassuring sound of the engine, the soft dash lights his only companions calming his mild anticipation, the early hour traffic now somewhat sparse roaring by at intervals. He passed exits, locations, landmarks he knew well, arriving at the recently built, towering bridge he had never crossed that required a toll he stopped to pay by credit card, not having a good to go sensor, those tolls he knew necessary to redeem the enormous costs of five-year construction by a company headed by a former, federal government official.

Cautiously leaving the tollbooth, he entered a vast expansive plain of new concrete to accommodate increased traffic requiring the new bridge, and after a mile or two carefully avoiding merging vehicles, he maneuvered his way through a maze of overhead signs and arching, soaring ramps that merged into the interstate decades old but permanently under construction and expansion joining him with a massive flow of vehicles that despite early hour darkness seemed a swift torrent then at times appeared an endless parking lot, all lanes jammed in a slow, steady stream of glowing red tail and brightening brake lights, he with sudden amazement and mild stress keeping to the right lane, anticipating with mild anxiety the correct exit to take him where he would make his early morning flight, somewhat concerned, as always, about missing that exit and that flight, his movement slow but steady avoiding the frequent erratic passage of those less patient roaring by then abruptly halted at frequent, sudden slowing of the moving mass merging from tributaries of more concrete, every lane jammed in a surging flow of glowing tail and brake lights and idling engines until he with some uncertainty finally reached the exit he recalled.

Through memory and hesitation, Fist slowly negotiated his way through stop signs and left turns retracing the sinuous route he had driven before on similar occasions arriving at an intersection with the wide thoroughfare labeled as International Boulevard where he viewed from the crest of a hill the vast plain of concrete runway and heard the sudden roar of jet engine muffled by the insulating closeness of his vehicle as he turned away from the terminal toward the supposed location of the parking facility and finally after missing its small, derelict sign, he drove beyond to a convenient empty Safeway lot, turned back, retraced his route, then turning back again to the location he had missed where he finally found the parking facility attached to a run-down motel complex with an exotic name intended to draw in those seeking shelter. Did he really want to leave his truck here for the time he would be gone?

But since he had already reserved a spot online because it required the least expense, he climbed from the truck leaving the door open, entered the office, quietly greeted the attendant whose apparel, manner, and speaking suggested ethnic origins, and presented a copy of the reservation he had printed out allowing him a discount. Then having signed the legal agreement he didn’t read because of its length and small print and his reading glasses buried in his bag in the truck, he was directed by the attendant toward an unpaved, sparsely lighted area of gravel and weeds where he shut down the engine, he curious as to where the designated spot he had reserved might be, locked the door by remote, and started back toward the office to board a shuttle once it arrived. But then he suddenly remembered his smartphone that had not been smart enough to alert him to leaving it behind, so he returned to retrieve it, retraced his crunching path of gravel and weeds through dim floodlight to the office where others had gathered in early morning darkness for the arrival of the shuttle and after what seemed too long a wait that mildly troubled him, he again wondering whether he would make his flight, he along with the others all subdued, one or two quietly exchanging comments, he finally boarded and was shuttled to the airport joining the heavy stream of traffic merging toward the vast terminal of towering glass walls, the shuttle descending suddenly beneath the massive, opposing parking structure with spiral ramps where the shuttle stopped, and he with others unloaded into the gray concrete cave and the gray, chill air still dark conveying a strong scent of jet fuel where he moved along behind as others hurried past rows of parked, empty autos toward escalators closed for repairs as on previous occasions, reached elevators that took them to the terminal level walkway bridge crossing to the check-in areas of service counters where despite the early hour he met long lines of slowly queuing bodies with well-conditioned resignation slowly sliding forward mounds or stacks of luggage.

Fist moved past service counters toward his designated concourse with his carry-on and printed online boarding pass, but quickly engulfed in a crushing horde, he prepared himself to patiently endure the hassle of a tediously slow move through intrusive security after he with others were ordered to another line supposedly shorter some distant from the first but that line just as long, so he slowly made his way forward again, eventually swept by wand, exposed by x-ray, patted down as if suspect for carrying something concealed, and finally with some relief allowed into an expansive area and another throbbing throng of bodies surging into a striking brave new world of chaos throbbing with neon signs for shops and eating places, coffee bars and cocktail lounges, all with colored banners or signs promoting services, issuing fragrances and odors, lights and sounds, some loud, others blaring, all at 5a.m. over a swirling, raucous flow of babbling, mingling voices.

Somewhat relieved having survived security, Fist now had to retrace his long way back to the concourse entrance from where he had been sent and then endure yet another long hike past more locations offering snacks, drinks, novelties, newspapers, magazines, books, souvenirs as he moved along with the flow of others to his boarding gate where checking his boarding pass to confirm that he had the right gate he discovered that instead of being one of the first to board, having selected online a seat nearest the entrance, he now would most likely be one of the last because his assigned seat had been changed without his being advised or asked or even notified. But once again what could he do? He accepted that change as yet another indication of what he might have to endure next, and he recalled when he at one time, now years ago, enjoyed flying always excited at the prospect he now had come to dread.

Suddenly sensing an urgent need most likely from all that had challenged him so early, or from the nasty left-over coffee, or most likely from last night’s spicy meal, Fist searched and located a public facility he found busy, but after returning to the boarding gate he discovered that he unknowingly had left his boarding pass in one of the stalls, so he returned in haste to the facility and impatiently waited until someone took his time to finish. Then relieved from having purged his need and retrieved his pass, Fist returned to his gate and resumed his wait in a numbered line designating seat assignments, his number the highest, so now he knew he would be one of the last to board.

While he waited, Fist assumed his typical attitude in a somewhat unfamiliar place and observed with interest those who arrived to join him in his vigil, he noting, as always, their dress, their attitudes, their manners that seemed somewhat correspondent to the number of the line into which they settled to wait, those in a queue of lower number decked in more formal attire with a knowing, showy display of jewelry, handbags, latest model smartphone with even more bells and whistles, all that they displayed most likely indicating first class preference; others in business class with appropriate full conservative attire, attaché cases, and electronic devices; he in coach along with so many others who were in varying stages of undress or casual wear more fitting for beach or playfield that allowed him at leisure to indulge his slightly prurient interest by surveying the colorful display of loose garments and exposed flesh offering him a somewhat more pleasant early morning stimulant than what for him at his age was usual.

At long last he now among a full gathering crowd witnessed the arrival of airline staff who disappeared quickly through a secured door by keying in code, the service counter opening with a sleep-fresh, well-groomed person in smart uniform with complementary colored accessories activating the PA system, and those waiting finally allowed to file on board to accommodate the slow typical settling of the cabin with the slow filling of seats, the halting, often awkward storage of carry-on items, some obviously more appropriate for check-in forced into overhead bins, and he slowly moving his way along the crowded aisle, waiting for others to settle, he wondering why those with seats in back weren’t boarded first, then he himself unwittingly holding up passage of others who waited patiently while he searched his bag more than once for dollar-store reading glasses arranging himself to fit into a cramped space until he noted the presence of others waiting, and he stepped into the narrow space before his small seat, allowing them passage.

The settling of the cabin complete, the expected directives from a flight attendant regarding safety ignored, Fist, after his fumbling attempt with the controls in his seat arm to shut down the video screen with its continuous breathless promotions on the back of the seat before him, he quietly appealed to the well-dressed woman in the seat beside him who graciously offered helpful advice that once offered seemed stupidly simple. But he swallowed his shame, adjusted his seat belt, and waited for their slow departure with the closing and sealing of the door, their airship pushed slowly back from the gate, the seemingly endless taxi to the runway slowly following other airships, some amazingly massive but real, until the sudden roar of engines, the quickening of the metal tube thrusting him back and hurtling him forward with others gathering momentum and then the gradual lift off, the engines roaring their screaming metal whine as they ascended above structures, trees, and roads he knew well, having negotiated them for decades, he gazing past others turned as well toward the small porthole windows at the swiftly passing scene below familiar from his frequent and recent passage now somewhat changed because of elevation, and he settling along with others as they climbed toward the captain’s announced cruising altitude to meet the now paling dawn.

The view from his aisle seat through the small window restricted, his attempt to read frequently interrupted by attendants dispensing drinks or snacks or ready to eat meals from cartons or by the steady parade of bodies in various apparel passing to and from the toilets aka restrooms (what rest did anyone get from such a cramped facility?), Fist especially studied young women in comfortable leisure wear, their fashionable costumes displaying well-known logos proclaiming the wearer’s apparent stylish, contemporary elegance or taste, while their apparel revealed and enhanced the rhythmic movements of their thinly concealed bodies as they made their way slowly down the confining aisle. (Oh, to be once more so secure in such confidence of youth!) Finally settled and somewhat resigned to the tedium of being belted in his seat within a large metal tube packed with others similarly restrained, having tried reading his Kindle, but with little focus, he abstained and forced by circumstance began considering what he had just gone through, and suddenly he grew aware how all that he had thus far endured had started from an unexpected envelope on which he had studied the return address neatly set out on a stick-on label with a name somewhat familiar from other envelopes he had received previously over the years and for some odd reason had buried in an antique file box, that name on the label suddenly conjuring images of years long gone, Fist’s name and most recent former address partially covered by the yellow USPS sticker for his present abode.

Why another? he had asked himself. That person who had sent it certainly was persistent. But even though suspecting what he might find, he had slowly unsealed the envelope, unfolded the single page, and read. And just as he had surmised, he found yet another appeal for him to attend a reunion, this one the 60th (Had it actually been that long?) urging him and any others to attend since this one could be the last because most who were still upright and able to move weren’t getting any younger or any more active. (How true, indeed!)

But Fist recalled how he had preferred not attending any such previous events: not the 50th nor the 55th, nor any of those others apparently held every five years since that auspicious occasion that had launched them all into the yawning abyss of decades. How many such events had he preferred to avoid? The math was simple enough for anyone to compute. But what had been the point of any of those gatherings? And for what purpose this one soon to be held in the area he once had fled seeking fresh fields and pastures new? Whom from those now distant times could he even clearly recall? Could he clearly recall any, including the person who had persistently sent similar appeals? Even conjuring with difficulty an unclear image of the person whose name he studied again on the return address sticker on the envelope left him in doubt. Not even the name of that person who had somehow found him and had sent the message he held in his hand revealed the blood and bone, veins and sinews of life endured. Where on the Internet had that person discovered where Fist had successfully concealed himself until now?

Yet, somewhat on impulse, moved perhaps by the appeal of this most likely being the last such official gathering, he had used the email address enclosed to ask what he felt were pertinent questions: What did people do at such events? How many people did they recall with any clarity? Why should he attend such an event when he unashamedly confessed to not really having that many friends way back then? And those he could recall were always somewhat suspect since they had always seemed somewhat distant or simply had other interests that weren’t his.

To his mild surprise and with a mild sense of warmth, he soon had received a reply by email quietly claiming that the purpose of the planned event was to renew old acquaintances and to make new ones if anyone in attendance hadn’t managed establishing such connections at the time of their first sharing their lives. But Fist wondered how enduring had been any of those connections after all these years. He was also urged to survey the class reunion website through the link offered where he could find reference to anyone he might have known, especially those who would likely be attending the upcoming event. So prompted by what he viewed as a gracious response, he did, indeed, check out that website, and what he found there soon enough gave him sufficient pause:

Under a category labeled Missing he discovered the name of someone with whom he had hung around with throughout their years of adolescence in high school and a year or two beyond after which they had lost contact when Felix had left for California to begin study at Long Beach City College, and Fist recalled how that now missing person had surprised and thrilled him by a sudden unannounced arrival in Long Beach.

One day out of nowhere his friend suddenly appeared — just like that. And when they rented an apartment together near the ocean in Belmont Shore, Felix had what perhaps he might have thought at one time the fulfillment of a dream: He leading the way, they roamed the places Felix had explored alone longing to but unable to share his exciting discoveries with someone he knew well and had left behind and suddenly with his friend’s arrival he could share a late morning stroll along the nearby beach with its long stretch of bright sand beside the vast blue expanse of ocean, its constant froth of surf and tumbling pebbles, scores of sandpiper suddenly retreating from the hissing foam; the afternoon harbor with anchored Navy fleet, the large ships real, impressive, shimmering in hazy sunlight off the vast blue ocean; the Long Beach Pike and the coffee house on The Pier in the warm night (neither Felix nor his friend knowing such a place as a coffee house even existed. Was there such a place in that cultural backwater of Sunfish where they had lived unthinking through their dull, mundane lives?). Viewing Hollywood and Vine mostly deserted after midnight swept by a chill wind that scattered soiled paper scraps, they explored Union Station in a typical Los Angeles dawn already heavy with heat and smog, the rising sun burnishing the towering buildings and tall, royal palms, Felix all the while so acutely conscious of being there with his friend, so vastly removed, from the limited, bounded world through which they had moved together through their years of naive adolescence.

Involved in study and classes, Felix sometimes would pretentiously read to his friend while they ate their meager meals, Felix excitedly sharing with his friend his recently acquired knowledge and insight, just as his new acquaintances had shared theirs with him. And his friend appeared to accept without comment Felix reading to him, although Felix sensed that his friend seemed a bit uncomfortable in feeling a bit out of place.

So one day Felix arrived at their studio apartment that had seemed exotic with its pull-down bed, its contemporary furnishings, its closeness to the beach and found his friend gone. At first he was stunned, then saddened, but finally not too surprised when he found the note on the table telling him that his friend had gone south to San Diego where he had a distant relative who might help him find work detailing vehicles at a car dealership, and Felix finally surmised that his friend’s lying around in strange surroundings and not finding work while Felix was so busy with a part-time job and with school, so involved in something so foreign to his friend that Felix’s studies and his new self-conscious awareness had made his friend restless. Then, too, perhaps Felix’s attitude and involvement in an exciting, new world of ideas so foreign to the life they once shared most likely had put his friend off.

Felix had seen his friend again when he went back home for a short visit the following summer. Felix found his friend back at his old job as a day laborer digging trenches for sewer lines, the job in San Diego having been brief, California a dead end. Felix and his friend went out together one night shortly after he arrived home, their evening ending at a country brewhouse where Felix became engrossed in a lengthy discussion on the nature and purpose of life and the role of Divine intervention with one of his friend’s former female interests. And when the brewhouse closed, Felix discovered that his friend had left in disgust hours before, the woman with whom Felix had been so involved leaving with another man, and Felix resigned to walking the five miles back to the city alone thinking all the while he was having a grand adventure.

The last time he had any sort of contact with his former friend Felix had returned from where he had finally settled on the West Coast, his return one of the infrequent visits ventured over the years, that time to attend the ritual of memorial for his mother in whose cooling bed Felix had slept the night he arrived. That time the closest Felix came to contacting his former friend was through a printed phone book with vivid, black letters displaying his friend’s name appearing as respectable and as solid and as distant as Fist’s most likely would have seemed should anyone have ever made an effort to look up Fist in some bound paper directory existing at the time and had considered calling. But no one, as far as Felix knew, had ever done either, and to be honest, while he had found his friend’s name in that directory, he had never called.

Having roused himself from reverie, Fist had surveyed the class website further, and under another category labeled Deceased he lingered even longer when he found among a long list the name of a boyhood companion who through the last years of grade school and then through high school had lived in the same neighborhood of Sunfish Lake Felix had moved to from the nearby city. Fist recalled that compared to his own house Felix had considered Andy’s house elegant. That house always seemingly void of parents during the day due to their jobs in the nearby city, the two boys spent languid summer hours building model planes or playing cards or using the large adjoining lot for baseball or for launching what they had so laboriously with such great care successfully assembled.

The house that Andy’s father had built on a lot a bit distant from the lake that gave the town the name Sunfish from the indigenous word for the lake with the eponymous fish, the house set in an area considered at the time modern and elegant, one of several houses of the same design in a development more recent than the summer cottages and cabins that had been there for decades scattered among ancient oak. When Felix first moved there from the nearby city and allowed to explore, he found the names of the roads emanating in a web from his house truly exotic: Hiawatha Drive, Redman Drive, Forest Drive, Wildwood Circle, all eventually leading to Sunfish Drive and the narrow, two-lane SR24 that ran from farmland through town and back out to farmland and forest.

Andy’s house was of the prevailing storybook design with gabled roof and large front window framed into small squares, the faux-colonial furnishings of Andy’s house equally elegant in their newness and appearance, part of a set where the pieces complemented each other by design. In contrast, the furnishings in the Fist house consisting of cobbled pieces, comfortable, neat, but made up of various parts, a piece from here, another from there, handed down from one generation to another from those who had to those who didn’t, those pieces fitted into place by virtue of need from lack of wealth.

How long ago all that had taken place yet seemed somehow only yesterday or last week, while the years between seemed a void. Well, what more might he find if he continued? So he again had scanned the long list of deceased and found the names of several he recognized and faintly recalled, but one name held Fist’s attention, that of a person who had always for some reason along with cohorts had persistently pursued Felix, harassing him with threats, challenging Felix to a fight to settle their differences. What differences and why the challenge and harassment Felix never knew or Fist had understood. Now all that seemed so much adolescent male posturing. And what had that person gained in exchange?

Returning to the class website home page and searching again under Biographies, Fist discovered with some surprise a link to a posting by someone with whom as an adolescent struggling with urges brought on by increasing hormones Felix had been so involved that it had ended in despair and regret to a degree Fist now considered absurd. (Why had that relationship and others Felix had endured always ended in regret? And how much of what had happened or taken place issued from his innate unmet need? Need? What need?) Fist reading that bio learned that she had attended the 50th reunion, had enjoyed it fully, and offered a more recent photo as a matronly, well-appointed women with only a token of her former self: her perfect teeth in an open smile the same as depicted in her graduation photo displayed along side the most recent.

Studying those photos and that bio, Fist became aware that she had been someplace where he had missed her again, and he curiously found himself considering whether she might possibly attend the 60th. Yet, why, he counseled himself, had he even begun to consider her attendance as likely? What, indeed, might he expect from that brief imagined encounter should it take place? He shook his head in mild amazement and uncertainty. Did he ever learn? Most likely not when he reconsidered what he now considered those former adolescent tragedies.

How long had it been since he had last seen her? He groped back from one incident to another to the first vibrant moment of what he considered recognition: She had struck something within that had immediately attracted him, and apparently something about him had attracted her. So as he thought more of her, thought more especially of how they met, he felt his attitude ease perhaps just a little, at the same time he became aware and consequently surprised at how intermittent their involvement had really been. Yet he hesitated in fully admitting the depth of his youthful trust in having allowed himself to be taken for the ultimate fool more than once.

Those times had been truly absurd, Fist readily admitted now. Yet he blanched recalling again how Felix had felt such a sense of shame. How shocked and serious he had been, how wonderfully, deliciously hurt. Yet for some odd reason, Felix had seen her one last time the one summer he returned from California by way of Oregon when he had also met his former friend who had suddenly visited him in Long Beach, and one day while Felix was visiting his mother, the young woman had surprised him again by phoning to invite him to see her, and he, as always, for some odd reason, had agreed.

Well, given all that, Fist upon considering further what he had discovered under all three labels on the class reunion website, he somewhat curiously found himself searching the Web for information on prices for round-trip flights along with rates for rental cars, reasonably priced motels within reasonable distance and driving time to the event and to Franklin, a suburb of Milwaukee, where his older only surviving sibling lived in a Seniors-only complex with his son now eligible for such restricted residency. And after Fist’s search resulted in finding costs that seemed affordable, he made reservations for what he would need to undertake the trip and maintain some semblance of security and comfort during his stay.

He was, of course, not surprised that his negotiations for and confirmation of those reservations included expected common difficulties from misinformation offered, misleading prices, overstated benefits, and a Senior moment on his part when upon reserving both the motel and rental car he posted the wrong dates and then had to undo all he had done and repeat the complete process he just had gone through adding another day.

Then thinking again of Andy, Fist had surfed the Web searching for current information on the area he had lived during his teens and came upon a Google map with the jigsaw outline image of Sunfish lake, the blue so deep, the image sucked him in as if he were traveling in time, whirled down into a sink. But when he switched to satellite view, he studied the pixeled brown of real lake water tinged moldy green, and he suddenly summoned up with faint recall a ripe stew of odors from floating weed and algae, dead fish, alluvial mud slowly deposited in the gouged glacial kettle now filled with greenish brown brackish water in which Felix had so often frolicked.

Fist gazed out the small window past others beside him to consider again the decision that had led him to where he found himself now in a seat too narrow, the space too short for his legs too long to fit the convenience of commercial design for profit. Well, he consoled himself, having second thoughts now was obviously without merit, so he would have to see if what lay ahead might offer some compensation for what he had gone through so far and for whatever he now would have to endure, and he settled himself for the long seemingly endless approach above landscape now more visible, the large airship descending slowly over what appeared an endless expanse of structures, roads with moving vehicles, and then the sudden jolt of runway, the roar of reverse thrusters, the quieting of engines, and the practiced cheerful greeting of the flight attendant welcoming them to the City of Big Shoulders and the great city’s airport then offering the typical, mostly ignored instructions for passengers to remain seated while the ship slowly taxied to the gate, and he waited patiently (They also serve who only stand and wait) while others rose and groped or reached toward overhead bins and finally, he one of the last to board now one of the last to leave the plane, quietly thanking the crew and attendants (for what, he wasn’t sure) who with practiced demeanor observed his passage as he stepped from the metal tube, regained his long legs, and climbed with his bag following others up the carpeted gangway to the gate area and lines of people waiting to board as he moved out onto the concourse into the surging horde that swept him to the massive main terminal with its throb and pulse of people, endless announcements, warnings or admonitions from booming loud speakers, banners hung from the towering walls of girders and glass, where mildly confused by the somewhat foreign but all too familiar scene he began a search for that one wall phone that would allow him to reach the car rental agency.

But once finding that phone with relief and using it to access the agency, he received unclear and unspecific instructions about where to find and board the shuttle, so he moved on impulse and intuition, exited the terminal beneath the concrete cover of the roadway between the terminal and the massive parking structure opposite, then stood there waiting, searching for the car rental shuttle but saw only lines of idle taxis until he spotted the shuttle slowly moving along the outer throughway. He hurried cautiously across the wide driveway to the uncertain safety of the pedestrian island and waved to the driver who slowly eased the shuttle along side the island where Fist stood with others who had gathered around him with their luggage. Fist was the first to climb into the shuttle and settle on the middle bench seat while the driver climbed out to help others store their bags in the back of the van as they climbed in to take seats behind or in front of Fist leaving him alone on the bench between.

Slowly easing into traffic, the shuttle crept along with the thick flow that slowly passed other stations where other shuttle vans and large shuttle buses eased and edged their way into the halting crush of vehicles, his shuttle finally reaching the exit road where it accelerated to meet traffic now speeding past, and he surveyed the expanse of airport that roared and throbbed with the noise and movement of vehicles around him joined by the frequent roar of departing or incoming jets as he viewed the apparent endless construction expanding this already massive airport with more runways, adjacent roadways, more exits to interstates continuously under construction adding more lanes for HOV traffic, and someone in the shuttle commented on these obvious signs of progress by mocking the accent of a former US president from Texas exclaiming the greatness of America, the chaos and confusion due to construction increased by the frequent barriers of orange and black plastic barrels, plastic guide poles, orange detour signs and frequent mounds of debris, piles of dirt and broken concrete, all made more immediate by the stop and go, hurry up and wait creeping passage of his shuttle past structures housing auxiliary airport services and hotels to finally arrive at the car rental location that appeared more like a stockyard with chain-link fence and large covered shelter area with corrugated metal roof under which the shuttle entered, stopped, shut down, and the driver hurried to unload bags, while Fist took up his carry-on, slid from the bench seat to the cracked concrete pad sprouting weeds, and moved to the glass doors of the rental office.

Fist waited while he observed the clerks all sounding foreign and appearing of ethnic origin serve others while continually pausing to answer the phone and offer hurried instructions similar to those Fist had received, until finally he, too, could step forward to the counter and offer his printout of the reservation he had made online. But then he had to endure the typical conditioned indifference of the man assigning him a vehicle and he signed without reading what seemed endless forms after reluctantly agreeing with already weary resignation to an upgrade for a larger vehicle with only slightly adjusted fees, and when he asked for directions to the interstate north, he received a very small map depicting an area covering a very large portion of two states.

Escorted to his rental by the clerk who inspected the silver vehicle to note any existing damage, Fist deposited his bag in the trunk, the lid opening and rising by itself when the clerk clicked open the driver’s door by remote, and Fist settled into his seat noting the new car aroma, adjusting the seat for his long legs, briefly inspected the unfamiliar silver instrument panel that appeared undecipherable and designed to appear something from the future, responded indifferently by habit and custom to the clerk’s indifferent have a nice day, and drove off cautiously trying to follow the directions given him by the clerk he had mostly not heard or understood, Fist slowly making his way back toward the airport through zone after zone after zone of construction.

But when he reached the intersection to which he had been directed, he found his passage blocked by orange barrels, so hoping he would find another exit that would surely take him to the interstate he needed, he drove on past that exit urged forward by those impatiently crowding him from behind. And when he readily enough found another exit to the interstate he wanted, that exit headed him in the wrong direction toward the center of the city, and he again found himself in long lines of slowly moving vehicles creeping through more zones of construction.

Summertime, oh, summertime, the season of endless construction, he crooned softly to himself as he patiently crept forward vehicle length by vehicle length until finally, at long last, a red, white, and blue shield posting the number of the interstate he needed heading him in the right direction, and finding an entrance, he quickly reached cruising speed barely avoiding a monster pickup roaring by him on the right, and finally joined a rushing flow of vehicles swiftly heading north along a tollway he couldn’t recall from previous trips, stopping at the first toll booth watching others race by, surprised when he was waved on through without paying, not knowing why until he noted the good to go sensor at the top of his windshield and surmised that toll fees most likely were included in the charges for the rental.

Settling again into the steady flow of traffic, he noted landmarks and locations that reminded him of when he once lived here, the swift drive through country that seemed somewhat familiar now transformed by warehouses, self-storage complexes, distribution centers for online merchants sprouting from what once had been verdant farmland, and despite his swift passage he studied one notable site with immediate access to the interstate tollway and its curious but memorable name — an Amazon.com distribution center still under construction.

Viewing again lush country landscape that still appeared to be remnant farmland with scattered red barns (Why always red?) gray, concrete tubes of silos, and then a distant dome that had always intrigued him, church or school, he had never been sure and had never learned. Perhaps he might stop on his way back, if he happened to think of it when he would most likely suffer from travel fatigue, his journey not yet over, and then at night.

He thought of other trips he had taken headed in the direction opposite from which he now traveled: Prom night and that late-night trip to the after-hours wicked city he had just escaped where Felix and companions still in their teens (one, the missing friend on the class reunion website) had found a place for pasta and wine in what was known as Little Italy, rumored as supposedly gang turf controlled by the mob, and they had all ordered adult drinks with impunity while still underage (Why had all that seemed so important and grand at the time?) and how the host and waiters appeared to eye them in their obvious prom apparel making them all somewhat uneasy, especially the young women, and his fantasy at the time about their being held hostage and Felix and his male companions had to watch while the young women were ordered to slowly strip and then violated repeatedly by all the restaurant staff and he and his companions ordered to use the young women themselves to teach them a lesson on being in the right place at the wrong time. Imagining again that fantasized event, Fist sensed a slight stirring he hadn’t felt for some time. Dirty old man. Pervert. But he savored that sudden, long-dormant feeling that no prescribed, accidental, endlessly promoted wonder drug had revived. And what was it with those twin bath tubs? Wouldn’t sharing one be more erotic? Yet, he had to admit that those twin tubs did compel him to recall the product promoted, one that he had tried only briefly because of the expense but mostly because it only gave him a headache with no eagerly anticipated firm results.

One time on a trip to the city that now fell rapidly further behind, Felix had attended a convention of some fraternal order as his reward for winning a contest singing in a Boys Club chorus, Felix the coral lead because of his strong, soprano voice from singing in a church choir before his voice cracked and deepened with his ripening gonads that forever after had caused him endless trouble until recently.

The day trip from Sunfish grade school to the Museum of Science and Industry (remnant of the 1893 World Exposition Fist recalled studying at Berkeley in a graduate seminar on the Mauve Decade of the American 1890’s conducted by a professor who had used Fist’s seminar paper as the basis for a chapter of an acclaimed book on that era, citing Fist’s work and later guiding him the second time through the oral exam required for Fist’s advanced degree, then offering to write a recommendation for Fist’s file, thus initiating Fist’s nascent vita.

Fist recalled Felix first leaving this area decades ago (So many years?), that time traveling south by interurban train he now saw as MetroLink, Felix arriving at some unremembered most likely now demolished hotel once considered posh in the city that now was lost behind him and his then taking a bus to the older, original airport from which he rose with excitement on his virginal flight to Burbank by DC-7 (the most up-to-date, advanced four-propeller airship at the time), then by bus to LA and then by yet another bus to Long Beach. Or had he taken a Red Car? That now long defunct trolley line dismantled years ago due to a conspiracy among corporations (Big Auto, Big Oil, Big Tire — now judged persons) promoting the demise of public transit replaced by individual autos most with single occupants such as himself that now surrounded and crowded him, sweeping him along in an endless wake on an endless wide flow of concrete at least or more than a foot thick. How many other corporations had profited from that exchange?

Road signs, exit signs flashed by overhead, locations he barely recognized but once knew well, noting readily those that had entered his life at times and lingered now only in long-term memory still vivid despite his years.

Great Lakes Naval Training Center where Bob, a younger brother, now defunct, and David, a cousin, now vanished, had trained when still in their teens and where Felix had spent one night outside its gates trying to hitch a ride north after having been let out there while hitching rides from someplace in Iowa where having run out of fuel at the same time he had run out of funds he had left his car at a small, private service station, the private owner without a word of protest or without demanding a fee allowing Felix to park his vehicle behind the station, something Fist surmised now would no longer be possible.

Fist recalled his younger brother Bob as quiet as their mother, featured like her, growing to look more like her especially as they both grew older, closer together in years. His quietness suggested introspection. His stillness came, however, from life experiences that had led to the one event when his spirit suddenly, violently broke. His quietness also came from the medication that he had taken as regularly as food for all the many years that followed that event which had led to his psychic collapse.

Enlisting in the Navy when only seventeen to escape the confines imposed by the family home and patriarch (How different and manly he had appeared after the ceremony Felix had attended at the completion of his brother’s basic training), his brother had spent ten years serving as a cook. His working closely and continuously with food exacerbating his heritage, he had ballooned to huge proportions. Stationed at Guantanamo during the time when U.S. relationships with the U.S.S.R were the most intense, he broke under the stress, went berserk, had to be subdued.

After that singular incident of madness, he spent years in a veteran’s hospital sedated, undergoing therapy, refusing to talk to anyone but his therapist about what had led to his breakdown. His parents, his father especially, trying to cajole him into revealing the source of his weakness and aberration were always denied access to his memory and his mind. Fist’s brother kept his own counsel. (Later Fist had speculated that his younger brother’s mental breakdown might have been prompted, at least in part, by Fist’s older brother’s predatory inclination toward young males.)

Retiring from the Navy with a disability, discharged on medical grounds, he worked several decades as a custodian in public schools, his size increasing further, enabled, perhaps, by the woman mimicking his size whom he married, surprising everyone. Always quiet, always withdrawn even in the midst of frequent, frenetic family celebrations, he had seemed uninterested in social intercourse, let alone showing any interest in women. Yet, suddenly he turned up engaged to a distant cousin.

After their marriage, Bob and his wife bought an antique house with bare-raftered attic and pillared porch on South 24th up the block from the house Fist’s grandfather had established early in the previous century, Fist’s brother’s house directly across the alley from where his parents lived before his father’s death.

Denied a license, unable to drive because of his condition, he and his wife depended on others to chauffeur them from one family event to another, but they most often used public transportation. One time, before Fist lived there, they traveled to Arizona to visit her relatives, hauling their large bodies up onto buses, sitting for days, watching the passing scene. They talked now and then of moving out to Arizona for the climate, perhaps to break the ties that had kept them in a house in the same neighborhood where he, the same as his father, had lived all his life save for his time in the Navy.

Later, his continual eating and the prolonged use of medication to control his psychic condition led to heart problems requiring surgery and unsuccessful weight loss to save him. So his inherited physical conditions continued to plague him all his life. At one family gathering while he was absent, a sister-in-law remarked to others on how terrible he looked.

Then one day while he stood in the kitchen of his antique house, as he gazed across the garden he had kept to quiet his mind, gazed across the alley to where his parents lived, gazed across the backyard fences to where he once played as a child with his brothers in the lush backyard of his grandfather’s house, suddenly, a single terrible pain in his chest dropped him like a sack. By the time his wife reached him, he was gone.

Images arose for Fist who saw his brother in bibbed overalls, a huge, quiet man who seemed old for his years as he slowly moves down the dim hallway past the rows of metal lockers while mopping the vinyl tiled floor, his mop head swishing back and forth, back and forth in a slow, steady rhythm that seems as quiet and as meditative as the medicated man. He stops now and then to allow some young, vibrant, female person pass. Between classes he stands aside squinting in characteristic fashion at the throng of pubescent bodies, the thrum of voices, the swirl of color and fragrances whirl around him. Then the bells clang; the halls clear; he returns to his slow, steady routine, swishing away footprints.

And not one of those young bodies, not one person who passes him in their hot pursuit of life notices him; nor does anyone have an inkling of what he has endured through those years that have led to his present station as he now commands the handle that moves the mop head slowly over the vinyl tiled floor.

Another distant diminished dome of some institution — church, basilica, or parochial college for women — raising fleeting images of former colleagues who had attended summer workshops there, that dome promoting another fantasy about his visiting as guest lecturer conducting a summer seminar or workshop and his living day and night among all those young women, most just out of secondary school, many still pure and steadfast in their innocent faith, his observing them and they always so close, so young, so forbidden.

Clearing such stirring thoughts by stopping at the last toll booth to ask how far he was from his destination, Fist was offered only general, vague information, but as he drove away gaining speed, he suddenly saw an approaching exit sign with the name of the town where his motel was located, so he veered off what was no longer tollway but could not locate what should have been the obvious sign for the motel he had viewed on the motel chain website. Fist proceeded with caution, slowly cruising the area searching without success for the sign of the motel, wandering without direction through the supposed designated area of the motel’s location until he found himself only more confused and apparently lost. Finally compelled by frustration to stop alongside the road, he tapped in the motel number on his smartphone that much to his surprise worked, since it never seemed to do what he wanted when he wanted and instead only ordered him to log onto the app store, and he listened to a recorded message offering directions that included citing the specific exit that would offer him direct access to the motel, and he finally understood that he had taken the wrong exit, he wondering why those directions indicating the correct exit had not been included on the motel chain’s website.

Was all that he had endured so far an indication of what his whole excursion would be like? He should have surmised as much from the very start after his trouble getting a direct flight that he had endured for three plus hours, having rejected a less expensive flight of twelve or more hours with two layovers of two or three hours and two changes of planes and then also reserving a rental car along with reserving a motel room both at an affordable price when, after all, he was on a fixed income.

Returning to the freeway and taking the very next exit, and seeing immediately the large, towering sign for the motel, he swung into the motel lot where he parked twice, the first time in a spot reserved for handicapped that displayed no clear indication of it being reserved other than faded yellow lines, the second time parking in a spot distant from the office entrance, an area only partially paved.

Climbing with relief from his silver rental after his long drive, he stood beside the heated beast, stretched his cramped limbs, and surveyed the surrounding territory, the lot of the motor hotel within sight and sounds of the local metropolitan airport proclaiming itself as an international designation on that poor imitation of a map he had been offered, the surrounding countryside with its peculiar mix of lingering prairie and burgeoning construction, as he watched in lingering childlike wonder frequent departing flights, the roar of a jet engine revving toward full power, a corporate jet climbing fast and soon gone. Then another engine with an even greater thunderous roar made him gaze in wonder as the giant white airbus so huge he found himself marveling at its ability to even lift off, the huge engines taller than himself or his even taller brother straining in a high pitched scream of whining whirling tortured metal as the great ship slowly lumbered into the air, so huge it appeared to hang suspended above him as it struggled with its enormous bulk and weight to remain moving aloft as it slowly climbed, he studying its seemingly slow progress, imagining all the bodies and the luggage packed inside that enormous tube, amazed that it moved at all toward the clear, blue heavens until it too disappeared from view.

In the brief silence that followed, the soft, warm, late summer breeze caressing his face, Fist recalled what this area had been decades ago (How young he was at the time!) when the now nearby international airport was only municipal (yet bearing the same name commemorating a notorious local celebrity of national honor). How quaint, antique, rural, and insular that former airport now seemed once surrounded by ranging farmland, not even secured by chain-link fence, Felix gazing from the mohair rear seat of the vehicle that would now be considered antique as young Felix thrilled in wonder at watching infrequent, hazardous take offs and landings of a bi-winged, dual seat plane a decade or two after Kitty Hawk and Lindberg the first person to fly across the Atlantic alone.

Some of the area he now surveyed appeared much the same with large areas of remaining prairie or cornfields, but apparently from signs of lingering debris and new, unstained concrete, the road had recently expanded to four-lane boulevard. The parking lot he stood in surveying the scene appeared as if it had been claimed from a now demolished structure, the lot indifferently paved and bordered by loose gravel of an adjoining lot with scattered vehicles that seemed abandoned, that lot providing parking for a tavern at one time out in what he once had viewed as country.

Finally moving from his inspection to check in at the motel, he entered the office, studied with habitual, mild interest the young woman in casual uniform of chino slacks and green polo jersey with motel logo to whom he offered a mild complaint of his difficulty in following the unclear, incomplete directions offered on the motel chain’s website, his complaints quietly accepted with indifferent regrets, followed by her informing him of his having to pay the fee he thought he had already paid online. But he filled in the registration card without comment, accepted the plastic key card, and slowly climbed to his room over bare wood steps past a sign offering an apology for the inconvenience by explaining that the stairway was under repair because its carpeting was being replaced.

Arriving at the door to the room conveniently located at the top of the stairway, he used the plastic key card with surprising ease since the door opened on his first try, and as he pushed into the room darkened by heavy maroon drapes, he inhaled the scent of cleaning products, used the light switch beside the door to illuminate the self-standing sink outside the small adjoining room with toilet, tub, heavy plastic shower curtain, and carefully placed towel and washcloth along with small bars of soap in wrappers with motel logo but no shampoo, no conditioner, no after-bath body lotion or powder, prompting him to thank himself for having foresight to have brought along travel-size plastic containers of each.

He turned to unpack, and from his small bag he arranged all he had brought into the large, empty drawers of the dresser supporting a large screen TV, the mirror on the wall above the dresser reflecting the bed fit for a queen with flowered, quilted spread. Then he moved to the window, opened the heavy maroon drapes enough to allow natural light but keep him sufficiently concealed while he stripped from his clothes, stood at the window scratching his sack relieved after its long confinement, and surveyed the neighboring structure, another motel of a different national chain.

Suddenly he recognized it as the one he had stayed in during one of his former, brief, infrequent returns, that time with yet another significant other of insignificant duration. He thought then of the eventual agonizing tedium from his long wait wandering indifferent but curious some outback Kansas town in Osage country where that significant other had spent most of the day bargaining with a distant relative for a new vehicle, then his having to wait for that vehicle to be detailed to her complete satisfaction before they departed, she following his dust in her new, exactly detailed car.

Yet, he had to admit now that he had viewed in wonder that drive along narrow, sinuous country roads with the vast existing Osage prairie expanding in all directions, the grass on both sides so tall it seemed to form a corridor through which he swiftly maneuvered his recently purchased, pre-owned Porsche 912 with newly rebuilt engine, that one white, the next (as he moved through midlife and beyond) another newer one — that one red — of course.

Fist moved to shower, and once showered, still naked, dried, smeared with his own lotion, and dusted with his own powder, he used his smartphone contact menu to reach his older brother, wondering how his brother might likely respond if his brother were to see him bare-assed naked and available. Fist’s brother expressed surprise when Felix identified himself and his present nearby location, even though he had emailed his brother his intentions on visiting the area to attend the announced reunion, he asking if his brother had room to put him up during his visit, but his brother advising that Felix would be better served finding someplace else because persistent bladder problems roused his brother during the night and because of the shortage of space now that his brother’s son shared their Senior-only residence.

Hi, Henry, Felix said in response to his brother’s greeting. It’s me!

It’s you? Who is this?

Your brother? Remember him?

Sure. Sometimes, his brother said.

Well, I’m here.

You’re here?

I have a room at a motel near the airport.

Oh, really? How come?

You know. That reunion I told you about in that email I sent asking if you had room? I thought if you’re up for it, we might have dinner together.

"Dinner together?

Maybe you’ve already had something.

No. I haven’t had anything.

So you ready to eat?

Well, I guess we could do that. What you have in mind?

"We