Western Walker

By John A. Richter

This is a story of the coming of age of a young man, a story of hope, a story that is meant to amuse, to move, at best , to enlighten. It's about a young man who represents us all as we seek to find ourselves in life. He graduates from college yet declares himself a conscientious objector against the Vietnam War and serves his time. He experiences the loss of his father and other loved ones. He also experiences good and wonderful times in his travels. While he can cry for all the pain that he nor the rain can never cure, he still finds a way to remain hopeful. He can still find something to dream about while he takes out the trash.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Mar 15, 2010
• ISBN: 9781450055376

John A. Richter

Has a varied background with a love for the arts and science. Received various writing awards in his youth. A graduate of Purdue University. Has lived East and West coasts for several years and traveled to Europe several times. Has a 25-year-old son from a 22-year-old marriage. Continues to work as a home improvement contractor in the New England area. Enjoys playing trumpet and primitive camping. Presently resides in Connecticut with his fiancé, Julia, who share their time in the States and England. Enjoys writing when he can about the human condition

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Copyright © 2010 by John A. Richter.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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Night Bird in Field

Give me the sweet sound of silence.

Don’t bridge the gap, don’t try.

No crescendo, no human intervention,

no display.

Just listen to the air molecules bounce

in your ears with the quiet rush of clouds

over a radiant moon.

Love is like that . . .

it takes a piece of you when it comes and when

it goes.

How deep the sigh.

—John Richter

Contents

Chapter I

Chapter II

Chapter III

Chapter IV

Chapter V

Chapter VI

Chapter VII

Chapter VIII

Chapter IX

Chapter X

Chapter XI

Chapter XII

Chapter I

1

This is a book about the quick and the dead. Now it all might sound like nonsense, but that is because most of us are fools. It began when he slipped on algae-covered rocks heading for the first sand bar from a Huron Lake cottage. The second sand bar was yet to come in his life then, for then was a time of tag and skinny dips on full-moon nights. Faintly seeing, but not really seeing, as he opened his eyes under water, that thick fierce darkness of the senses. The moon mirrored the water surface, making his soul blind to the world underneath. Imagination was the demon and the delight, while goose bumps told him he was real. The run to the cloth towel made all the difference—that fresh, dry towel smell, one of warmth, amidst the night’s cold, silvery world of rawness. The sand was always like ice when it caked on his wet feet. But Seth looked forward to it. And this and other sensations were the beginnings of an innocent, youthful Steinbeck-Faulkner type who ate Rice Krispies for breakfast high on a bluff above the shore in a beveled-windowed dinette.

The game of tag with his cousins continued and Seth was simply it. But there were subtle, nonverbal seconds in his life. Just how or why a person’s fate can be decided in such times is hard to say. He never talked about them as days passed, but they were there, along with a certain feeling he had. What was it? All he knew was that it was like the time he saw a wolf at the zoo. The wolf paced up and down in a cage, ignoring the people in front of it. Seth kept staring at the animal’s eyes, and while his fourth-grade school teacher rushed the class along, he knew there were worlds beyond those than what humans allowed themselves to see.

2

Bow, hit it! yelled the coxswain.

Seth was the bow oarsman. He pulled his blade one quick stroke through the rough water to bring the boat in line. Again! cried the cox. The cox was the boat’s eyes and ears.

In six minutes the race would be over, but funny how Seth’s mind wandered to more pleasant times than to what he was about to face. He dared not let his mind wander too much. He would need all his concentration now as he waited for the coxie’s commands and the gun to start. How different each race was for him and how each seemed a lifetime!

With an overcast sky five boats awaited the gun like slender pointed sticks transfixed on the water surface. The wind rippled their sides and changed the water’s blues into fuzzy greys. The rocky bottom became opaque to the eye. The race would be more grueling against the hard wind.This water contest called rowing was more than just a sport for some, for it often asked one to row on pure nerve. The choice was up to each oarsman. And as the boats sat fixed, tense with explosion, Seth hoped, he prayed he would have the nerve when his time came. No one expected him to kill himself; it was more of a personal thing each man had to work out for himself. What mattered would be the best each man pulling his own. And when each did, everyone knew it, just as when everyone knew when one didn’t. There was no getting around yourself or the others. Some unspoken feeling traveled through the boat and was never mentioned. Everyone suffered, but it was more than that. Seth had been smelling these guys’ sweat for three years, they had ached together, they had laughed, they had cried. He had no choice now; he loved them.

So time stood still, as Seth and seven other men with cox waited for the start. Images flashed in and out of his mind—the hot days of long miles rowed up river on blistered hands and sweat stinging the eyes, the warm shower after the race when one’s body was torn, a happy torn, and the hearty dinner for everyone, especially for the overweight oarsmen who had starved the night before weigh-in. His nerve endings were beginning to tingle and his heart pounded. Seth prayed from his gut—to some vast pulse in his bowels that it would be the best he had