A Trilogy

By John A. Richter

Western walker
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. Its 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 Viet Nam 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 or 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.

Diamond in the night
The tale of friendship of three different souls-a Dapper Englishman, a young Midwesterner and even young easterner who represent a classic California mix. Each has story to tell in his quest for spiritual wholeness-to belittle one while enhancing another only coaxes irony to dictate surprises with truth stranger than fiction.
Someone like you
In the modern-day world of shattered dreams, two people meet and struggle to defy the odds. Can they live out what they never had or is their struggle just another chapter in Too-soon-old-too-late-smart?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Oct 8, 2013
• ISBN: 9781483656649

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

Book preview

Copyright © 2013 by John A. Richter.

Library of Congress Control Number:     2013911160

ISBN:                  Hardcover                        978-1-4836-5663-2

                            Softcover                           978-1-4836-5662-5

                            Ebook                                978-1-4836-5664-9

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.

Rev. date: 10/04/2013

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris LLC

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

[e-mail]

135029

CONTENTS

Western Walker

Chapter I

Chapter II

Chapter III

Chapter IV

Chapter V

Chapter VI

Chapter VII

Chapter VIII

Chapter IX

Chapter X

Chapter XI

Chapter XII

Someone Like You

Chapter I

Chapter II

Chapter III

Chapter IV

Chapter V

Chapter VI

Chapter VII

Chapter VIII

Song List And Credits

Diamond In The Night

Chapter I

Chapter II

Chapter III

Chapter IV

Chapter V

Chapter VI

Chapter VII

Chapter VIII

Chapter IX

Chapter X

Chapter XI

Chapter XII

WESTERN WALKER

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.

CHAPTER I

1

T his 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 sandbar from a Huron Lake cottage. The second sandbar was yet to come in his life then, for then was a time of tag and skinny-dips on full-moon nights. He could faintly see but not really see when he opened his eyes underwater—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, naïve, sensitive, empathic 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. He kept staring at the animal’s eyes, and while his fourth-grade schoolteacher rushed the class along, he knew there were worlds beyond 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 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 waited for the start 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 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. He 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. He prayed from his gut—to some vast pulse in his bowels that it would be the best he had to give.

Crack! the gun fired and shook his bones. One was off in the race for his life.

The general plan was simple: take a racing start of thirty high-rate power strokes, drop down to a strong steady beat for the body of the race, and then pick up the rate near the finish and take her home. Coordination with one’s body was the challenge, and coordination with seven other men was the essence—a feat that grew harder as one tired and his will began to cry, Grip, fingers, grip! Move, you wrists, move! while the body resisted like a rock. Time crawled, always like some insistent eternity in the beginning of a race. How few sounds there actually were! How strangely quiet it was as the boat surged through the water while each man strained his gut, intense with concentration. A minute would pass by—two—or was it three? Only the cox knew for sure.

And suddenly, Seth was shaken by the cox’s sharp cry between the rhythm of strokes. Halfway, guys! Power-twenty! Ready-all! Hit it! Twenty strokes with all the strength each man could give!

Halfway through the race and, already, each man was beginning to feel like dead weight! Like a powerful constant, the wind fought the boat relentlessly, kneaded it and held it back, as if to remind the crew of their frailty and allow them no intrusion. Muscles ached to bring the oar blades out of the water. Fingers were getting numb, veins popped off the arms, and beads of sweat and water danced on each man’s face. The race was on guts now.

Just then, number-two man spit out in half breaths, Goddamn! Stand on it, you assholes! Let’s go home!

And with that cry, the boat picked six inches out of the water from the following stroke. The rhythm clicked faster, and the metal swivel oarlocks squeaked at the point of snapping. Muscles pulled as goose bumps rushed over one’s body: one’s time for pure nerve had come. It was the decision here that often determined a race. It either happened or it didn’t.

Come quickly, human! Come ever so subtly.

Heart, stop! Soul, stop! Time, stop!

Yah-h-h! Seth was losing himself. He loved these guys, his senses were caught up in it all, and suddenly, his heart gave him strength beyond what he knew he had! He could feel it now, this consummation of the raw from each, this base, this bottom life-flame of each man. Precious it was, oh, so precious!

Stand on it, you assholes! I love ya! number-two man yelled out again, and again, goose bumps rushed over one’s body.

Ya-a-a-h-o-o! Seth cried out to the others and to his soul.

Power-twenty! the cox screeched. The crew went wild, and the boat surged forward! I want your balls, you assholes, I want your balls! I want your… The coxie’s voice rang over and over to a high-pitched crescendo.

Only the coxie knew when they actually crossed the finish line. His crew had won the Midwest championships, a boat length ahead of the others in what the clock judge described as one of the longest, strangest crew races he had witnessed. Winning time was a minute longer than what was normally expected for any race. The elements had gotten their say. The cox and eight-man crew had brought her home, they had brought her home, but the only thing that remained in Seth’s half-fainted brain at the finish were the words: I love ya! His eyes flashed with white stars while his arms, legs, his entire body dropped limp into the gunnels of the boat. His being was soon oblivious to everything, except the soft soothing sound of oar blades skimming the water surface.

Ah, but he had a smile on his face.

3

The nurse said he seemed to be grinning when he woke. It took him a while to figure out where he was. He was in the Sierra County Hospital.

You’re lucky, young man, said the nurse. If those other backpackers hadn’t come along, you might not be alive now.

Where was I? asked Seth, his mind still foggy.

Half passed out in your truck with your body turning blue.

He thought, and then he remembered. That’s right, I was… I was camping in the mountains.

And you’re lucky you made it back to some shelter. That’s one hell of a snowstorm out there! You’ll feel better when you get some solid food in you. The nurse left the room to fetch her patient his meal.

CHAPTER II

I n a North Beach bar toward the quiet end of San Francisco’s Powell Street, Seth sat peacefully on a stool sipping his beer. He was counting his blessings and asking himself the question, So what have I truly loved till now? He drew his glass up to his lips, paused, and then lifted the glass up a little more in a toast to what he was feeling: Those nights on the beach as a kid and those crew days! His eyes grew teary.

Two days earlier, he had been hanging for his life on a granite ledge in the Sierras. Originally, he had gone up into the mountains to celebrate—to celebrate the first time in his life he honestly felt free, free from alternative service under Uncle Sam, free from college pipe dreams, free from everything, except the never-ending battle of trying to stay sane and to rest, just rest. The death of his father was still heavily on his mind. Seth accepted the chances he took with nature, but he couldn’t deny how nice it felt to hear the rain from inside under shelter. He was learning how to live with death yet still too young to learn how to die. He was back in the city, his body warm. But he could have been at the bottom of a one-hundred-foot ravine with a broken back, gargling icy stream water. A little shrub rooted between the granite cracks was the only thing that kept him from sliding down the cliff face. He remembered how he dangled from the ledge by one arm, how in complete disbelief he was, until his heart seemed to burst in his chest and adrenaline rushed through his veins. Miles from civilization, his gear lost, he took a full day’s rest before he made his move—at least he could make a fire. He wondered how he made it back to the road. He honestly couldn’t remember. Now as he watched the rain streak down the small window in the bar door, he thought to himself, One is born alone, and one dies alone, aye, Pops? It was his father who had introduced him to nature as a kid—the smelt dipping in the lakes, the walks through the duck marshes before sunup, prancing through the birch and pine woods when they picked the site for their river cabin, and, oh, that beautiful ribbed wooden canoe! It wasn’t the first time he had been near death, but it was one that made him think even more of his dad, of people he loved, of times he loved.

Looks like you got something on your mind, interrupted the bartender, causing Seth to break his stare. Have another?

Seth looked up rather slowly, still in sort of a trance, then said, Yah, sure, filling his glass with the little bit of beer left in his bottle.

Been around here much? asked the bartender, who was bored with the weather and wanted to talk.

With an honest look without malevolence—as if he were realizing something for the first time—Seth replied, Not too long but long enough. Then he continued, As a matter of fact, I’ve been living just around the corner from here about a year.

"What you mean by long enough?" The bartender seemed interested.

Seth felt old at twenty-six, but he hadn’t grown cocky as so often happens to young men who start feeling old at that age. He just felt he was too old not to put out what he honestly felt, like being self-conscious at the age of thirty. It was a little ridiculous. So when he looked up at the bartender and saw a man who might have a sense for the absurd, he spoke without reservation. "Well, I’m basically an outsider, like so many who come to California but just can’t make the great getaway I see so many doing, you know? I mean, last year, it was straight fuckin’, and this year, everyone’s plugged into their EST. Can’t put it together nor can anyone take it apart. Why, the land is beautiful, no doubt about it, such contrast. But people? Well, seems funny how so many consider everything east of the Sierras as foreign country. But then, for some folks back in Indiana, doesn’t even go beyond the city limits. California’s the Coming of Age in Samoa for a lot of people. Nothing wrong with that, but sad thing is so much just turns out as another chapter in the, the Winning of the West, if you know what I mean."

Well, answered the bartender, who liked the young man’s openness. I didn’t quite catch all that but sounds like you be sensitive about things!

"Oh, sure. But the whole social deal? Well, not really. I gave it up. Guess I’m one of those who wanted to save the world once, but no one wanted me to try. I was never qualified enough. Now all I can say is thank God!"

"Well, I tell you, I think