The Watchman

By Dennis Ford

Dennis Bright is an imaginative six-foot-four freckled and bespectacled redhead who lives in two worlds. In the public world he works as a watchman in the Scepter Roast Coffee Factory in Somesuch, New Jersey. In that world he avoids catching thieves and he makes the rounds, carrying a clock that doesnt keep time. In the private world of the mind he accompanies Robert Derrick, his handsome alter ego, on the grim progression that leads from North Carolina to the Gettysburg battlefield. The clash of worlds is complicated by a coworkers obsession with the inanities of professional wrestling, by the ghostly presences of generals Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant, by the emergence of a fictional character into reality, and by Denniss life-altering crush on the beautiful Julie Hanks. Looming over both worlds is the threat of the coffee heist of the century. It will take all of Denniss resources to guard the factory. And it will take all his resources to overcome competition from an unlikely source and land in the arms of a woman who, like divinity, supplies life in the same instant she takes his breath away.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Dec 21, 2017
• ISBN: 9781532036866

Dennis Ford

Dennis Ford is the author of nineteen books, including the recent novels Tracks That Lead To Joy and World Without End. He lives on the Jersey Shore, where he walks the beaches and thinks about ghosts.

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The Watchman

Dennis Ford

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THE WATCHMAN

Copyright © 2017 Dennis Ford.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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ISBN: 978-1-5320-3685-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-3684-2 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-3686-6 (e)

iUniverse rev. date: 11/28/2017

Contents

Chapter One Night Rise

Chapter Two In Two Places At The Same Time

Chapter Three The Man In The Booth

Chapter Four A Booth Not Made For Working

Chapter Five Making The Rounds

Chapter Six Who Watches The Watchmen?

Chapter Seven St. Christopher Of The Guard Squad

Chapter Eight The Fifth Notch

Chapter Nine The Judgment Bar

Chapter Ten To Cythera

Chapter Eleven At The Forney Farm

Chapter Twelve Re-Experiencing The World

Chapter Thirteen Back From The Beyond

Chapter Fourteen A Hill Of Beans

Chapter Fifteen Afterlives

Chapter Sixteen A Match Not Made In Heaven

Chapter Seventeen A Faith In Leaps

~ Also by Dennis Ford ~

~ Fiction ~

Red Star

Landsman

Things Don’t Add Up

~ Humor ~

Thinking About Everything

Miles of Thoughts

~ Family History ~

Eight Generations

Genealogical Jaunts

~ Psychology ~

Lectures on General Psychology ~ Volume One

Lectures on General Psychology ~ Volume Two

for N.H.

wherever she may be in the world

Love dances throughout the world, giving us the joys of happiness.

Epicurus

CHAPTER ONE

Night Rise

Thirty Fourth Street, Thirty Second Street! Thirty Fourth Street, Thirty Second Street!

He’s at it again, barking directions for the Midtown subway, which is good news for the commuters under Herald Square, but no great help when you’re across the Hudson River in Somesuch, New Jersey, on the corner of Thirteenth Street and Sinatra Drive.

Time to rise, Mr. Bright.

Call me in an hour for want of a better alias.

Thirty Fourth Street, Thirty Second Street! Charlie Trambolt shouted in a stentorian voice that grew in volume the hoarser it became. Thirty Fourth Street, Thirty Second Street! he rasped in a raucous scrape that surpassed the rumble of mistimed carriages riding coarse rails. Thirty Fourth Street, Thirty Second Street! he roared at a pitch able to pierce pillows pressed like fists against ears hidden under the covers.

Come on, Dennis—Mr. Bright—time to get up.

To a car, the subways stop with a start. They no sooner stop than they lurch to a start, leaving to riders the annoyance of resorting jumbled seats and stances. Serendipity rules on the rails—so does the train stalled at the next station. Some riders finish in the car, some finish outside the car, and some finish corseted in between cars in places where, flustered, they risk making a premature appearance at their particular judgments.

More cries of Getting off! are heard on the Midtown platforms than are heard in houses of ill repute.

Every rider wants to stand by the door. What seems a prized vantage point becomes a point position enviable only to the suicidally depressed together. Straphangers inside the car charge the doors as the train grinds to a halt. Commuters wanting to board charge the doors from the platform. A once prized position expressly switches to a booby prized position.

Riders stare and wonder, Are the hands in my pockets mine?

If they were in a bedroom four stories above the decade-defunct Somesuch Railroad, they’d know where their hands were, cupped over ears and exercising a greater pressure than the malleus on a blistered incus.

R.H. Macy’s to the right, Madison Square Garden to the left!

It’s no fun to lie sweating under a winter comforter spread on a humid March night. It’s less fun—it’s a downer—to add goose feathers to the insulation plywood failed to supply. When Kinsey County refurbished the Yellow Flats on Sinatra Drive, they replaced wood with an impossible intimacy.

Mr. Bright, it’s nearly time to start your watch.

In spite of my reading, in spite of my writing, in spite of my rehearsing reveries as often as Charlie his subterranean directions, I could not help but gather a psychiatric familiarity with the particulars of the lives of my neighbors in the state-funded tenement. I knew when Mr. Judson drank himself atavistic. I knew when Mrs. Judson belted her husband into the epoch that precedes voluntary movement. I knew when Mr. Taylor last ate cabbage with his ham—I didn’t, but his wife took his gastrointestinal commentary for compliments. I knew the learning history of the hundred pound sheepdog Mrs. Carlyle bought to replace the late Mr. Carlyle. The discipline she applied to exchange the living room carpet with the public sidewalk made Brandy whine, the neighbors moan. I knew when Mrs. Mimosa refused gifts Mr. Mimosa adjudged connubial rights, but which she interpreted as favors for good behavior. I knew, as their bedroom was over mine, when she did not refuse.

Step to the head of the platform for connections to the BMT line! Step to the rear of the platform for connections to the IND line!

Charlie, for God’s sake, switch tracks! a neighbor cried.

You tell him, Ned, I said, raising my voice.

Sheetrock thin as paper failed to gag a pasta-projected voice that rivaled the mammoth machines propelled at forty miles an hour by a rolling plug slicing a hooded socket. Enough cotton to clothe a Confederacy of skulkers could not dampen gravelly inflections as grating to the ears as the sonic scratches of cars owning more cracks than mica schist the depth from Canal Street to China.

Let the passengers off before boarding! Charlie bellowed. Let the passengers off!

Charlie, call it a night! another neighbor cried.

You tell him, Mick.

Fingers stuffed in the ears of rent-controlled Roderick Ushers could not stifle Charlie Trambolt or get him to stop bleating us to death. Fingers pinched on the nostrils of tenants driven to leap to cement stoops from the diving boards of roofs five stories distant might be more effective in silencing iterations of little use in an afterlife charted to greater complexity than system maps no sooner plastered on platform signs than obliterated by spray paint.

Step inside the car!

Charlie, the train is out of service! I yelled, flinging the wooly raft of a comforter to the floor. My size thirteen oars followed. I sat on the gunnel of a mattress and yawned and raked the threads of sleep from my eyes. It was nearing midnight and it was time to start my workday. My shadow goes to bed at sundown—I stay awake the rest of the night.

It is true, Mr. Bright, that your neighbor is a bit, shall we say, out of sorts, but that is no reason to be disrespectful. He is your elder and there is no reason to raise your voice. You must always respect your elders regardless how they behave. You needed to wake up and start your tour of duty even if summoned in so unseemly a manner.

Leave the kid alone, Lee, General Grant said. He could have used a few more minutes of shut-eye.

My discomforted rest, broken by Charlie’s directions and by the neighbors’ responses to his delirium, was terminated by a gentle voice that announced that I should spend the night not walking abroad but myself amid the palletized perils of a coffee factory. The issues of sleep and waking were settled by a soft Southern voice that proved firmer in command than the conductor who, from two floors below, loosened the ceiling rafters with instructions no rider heeded.

I may as well get on with the day—with the night, rather, as I had reversed the ordinary rhythms of living. I rose when other people retired. I worked while the majority slept. I waded the wishing vat of dreams while other people playacted on a material stage. I stayed silent while other people, with less to say, tendered proposals. I withdrew within my creative cocoon when I ought to have risked the extraversion of romance.

I wasn’t mad at Charlie for keeping me awake when I should have donned hynagoggles and snorekeled the rapids of dreamland. If I were mad, it was because he failed to distract me by the noxious pendulum of repetition. Charlie may as well lift me from life as from fantasy’s lovely contemplation. He would stand a better chance, and stand for so long, to holler directions to the time of Kingdom Come than wrest me from thoughts of Julie Hanks. Julie had become my earth. She had become my heaven on earth. Though I could not bear to think of her in terms other than divine, she drove the elemental force of carnal want to become—please God, let it be for a short while—my hell on earth.

Mr. Bright, it’s time to be up and at them.

General Lee was right. A job is a job and I should be glad I had one, given the distressful economic situation of the nation. It was time to rise and to shine—to rise, anyway.

Thirty Fourth Street, Thirty Second Street! Thirty Fourth Street, Thirty Second Street!

Charlie, it’s not necessary, I said in a quiet tone of voice. I know what I have to do.

Always giving orders, ha, Lee? General Grant said, stepping into the doorway of my bedroom.

Need I remind you, General, that he’s committed himself to the midnight watch?

I ought to be committed for volunteering for the midnight shift.

He could tell his superior he overslept, General Grant advised.

Step all the way into the car!

We can think of something, General Grant said as Charlie’s directive contradicted his suggestion.

I retrieved my wire-rim Palomars from the nightstand. Once my bifocals were in place, I collected suffused personages scattered in the blur of myopia.

The figure nearer to the bed was a solidly built man with a ruddy face and shining gray-white hair that matched a shining gray-white beard. General Robert E. Lee wore a spotless gray uniformed buttoned to the throat. His jacket lacked a single wrinkle, quite as if perma-press existed in his day. His uniform and hair were darkened by a ballyhalo that surrounded his majestic form from brow to boots. The aura didn’t change with his moods. It remained a constant silvery hue.

General Lee was an intimidating presence and heavy with gravitas, but he was from the otherworld. I saw the second figure through him. General Ulysses S. Grant was thinner and shorter than General Lee—I don’t know, maybe they were the same height and General Grant looked shorter because of his bad posture. General Grant’s blue jacket was unbuttoned and wrinkled. His white shirt bled over the belt as if he were a heavy person. His hair was thick and black and combed carelessly to the side. Thin sideburns merged with a closely cut beard that looked to be thicker on the neck than on the jaw. His left brow was noticeably higher than his right brow. The slant of his lips matched the slant of his brows. The right side of his mouth looked straighter than the left side. He looked peeved, as if he were a skeptic short of patience, long on vexation.

General Grant held a cigar—Puncho brand—in his right hand. The cigar was unlit. My apartment was strictly nonsmoking. If he wanted to light up, he had to go outside and smoke on the public street.

General Grant didn’t inspire the same ocular awe as his Confederate counterpart. There was nothing reverential about his rumpled appearance. Still, an atmosphere soaked with blood followed him as it did General Lee. He had commanded at Shiloh and at Spotsylvania and at other hallowed places. Thousands of men died because of his decisions.

Like General Lee, he was one of the great captains of history. And he was a spirit. I could see through him into the living room. Three five-shelf bookcases stood against the wall. The shelves were tight with Civil War literature. I organized the shelves in order of battle chronology. The top shelf in the left case held books about First Bull Run. The last shelf on the bottom of the right case held a book about the battle of Bentonville, which closed the land war. The center case held thirty six books about the battle of Gettysburg, which was my favorite battle, insofar as a humanist type can have a favorite.

A glass vase atop the center case held minie balls purchased in souvenir shops on my tours of the battlefields. A second vase held acorns from the trees that stood at the Confederate High Water Mark on the Emmitsburg Road in Gettysburg. My original intention was to saw off a limb of one of the trees—at the least to break off a branch—but that turned out to be impossible. There were tourists in the vicinity the day I visited and the venerable trees were unreachable within a protective fence.

Each shelf held stones in front of the books. They were no ordinary ornaments, but a precious geology gathered from America’s sacred battlefields. One shelf held a stone fished from Bull Run—I had to shoo off crayfish to grab it. Another shelf held a heart-shaped stone from Culp’s Hill in Gettysburg. Another shelf held an oblong stone from Cheatham’s earthworks on Kennesaw Mountain. Another shelf held a flat black stone I took from the woods in Chancellorsville. Another shelf held a triangular stone from the site of the Battle in the Clouds in Chattanooga.

Two additional stones lay on the bottom shelf of the center case. Ordinarily, I wrote the names of the battlefields on Band Aids I pasted on the bottoms of the stones. Over time, the names of the battlefields had faded from the two stones and I didn’t recall their original sites. I was certain the two originated on battlefields—I wouldn’t make such a thing up. I just didn’t remember which battlefields.

A World War Two shell stood at the top of the bookcase on the left. The shell was six inches wide and eighteen inches long. I didn’t know whether the shell was live, so I erred on the side of caution and placed it as far back on the shelf as the wall allowed. The last thing I wanted was to set off an explosion in the Yellow Flats. I found the shell buried in the sand on Long Beach Island while sun bathing a few summers ago. I was supposed to turn it into the authorities, but I never did. I hid the shell in my beach bag and brought it home instead.

I regret having to perform so odious a chore, General Lee said. You must know it gives me no personal satisfaction to keep you on schedule. Whatever expedeviancy General Grant espouses, the service must be performed. We must honor our pledges. We must stand by our words.

That’s difficult to do, since most of the time I’m eating my words.

You cannot run an army, you cannot run a guard service, if you’re not prompt in executing your pledges. True, the Army of Northern Virginia had to make due with what we could scrounge in the constricted circumstances of the siege of Petersburg—

I saw to that, Lee, General Grant said.

—but we stuck it out, whatever the cost. God knows, the cost was great. We could not permit men to do as they wanted, or to come and go as the occasion suited them, no, nor to do what they wanted while on guard.

Not even to sleep? I asked.

That least of all.

On that unhappy note I need to do the responsible thing and keep my humble pledge and stay on schedule.

I stood and quickly proceeded to the bathroom. I hated to pass in front of the generals in my guinea tee and boxer shorts. I wasn’t particularly bothered walking in front of General Grant—he seemed like an ordinary guy who lounged in his drawers in private—but walking in front of General Lee in my underwear was like parading in front of God the Father in something other than a tuxedo. God made us and knows what we look like inside and out, but the bone-bending weight of modesty dropped on me in the few steps that led past General Lee to the bathroom door.

I shaved and showered and sprayed Old Rogue cologne on my forearms and neck. Women didn’t chase me along the streets of Somesuch like the advertisement claimed they would, but Old Rogue kept the mosquitoes away and that was worth the price of a bottle.

The Swagg Security uniform wasn’t Joseph’s coat, but it was an amazing garment. The pants were dark brown. Yellow stripes ran from hips to ankles on the outside of the pants. The stripes were raised a half inch off the pants and sown of a flannel material. The stripes were so thick I could strike kitchen matches on the threads without spontaneously combusting. The trousers had been let in, but they were too large around the waist and an inch too short. I had to pull the belt to the last notch to keep them from sliding off.

The long-sleeve shirt was several shades lighter than the pants. The material was soft and satiny—the material was appropriate to a marching band. My nameplate was pinned to the left pocket. The Swagg Security emblem was stitched on the right pocket. The emblem was a chalk-white clam wearing black sunglasses. The emblem portrayed Swagg’s motto—Security Is Nobody’s Business.

The company clam consisted of the same coarse material as ran along the sides of the pants. The shirt was snug at the shoulders and under the arms. Obviously, it was a hand-me-down from a different guard than from the one who provided the pants. If I had any, the shirt would serve to show off my muscles.

There was a black hash mark a rectangular inch in width on the lower right sleeve. This signified that I had been a watchman—a loss prevention engineer in the corporate jargon—for one full year. I should say for one full miserable year. Above the hash mark were the outlines of three additional hash marks in the traces of microscopic black stitching. The guard who wore the shirt before me had put in four full miserable years. If I reached his length of service, the threads would be sown back on and become rehash marks.

I closed the top button of the shirt and inserted the clip-on tie at the collar. The tie wasn’t regulation, but I wore it anyway. It lent a certain respectability to the uniform and it showed that I took the job seriously. So did keeping the cap on the peg behind the closet door. The cap was the only accoutrement I refused to wear. The cap was a sandy brown color different than the shirt and trousers. The word Swagg was embroidered above the visor. The bespectacled company clam sat above the company name.

Some people have secret selves they take pains not to share. Sometimes this secret side involves salacious motives—these people sneak peeks at the waiter’s fly as he serves the beer and pork chops. Sometimes this secret side involves malicious motives—these people contemplate slicing the waiter into bits and dipping the body parts in sour cream. My secret side involved the most ordinary of motives. But ordinary can’t be the right word when it concerned the single lustrous person on earth.

I wrote the name Julie on the fog on the mirror. I hoped she didn’t call in sick or take the night off. What is the point of dressing like a fool if not to see Julie at work in the fourth floor computer room? I may as well use up a sick day and return to bed. General Lee would understand, though he was a hard man. He must have been young once and consumed with the madness of infatuation.

Beautiful Julie struck a flame in my loins, but it was more than the ache of unfulfilled sexuality that ate me up. Passion traveled on twisted sinews up the chimney of my spine in a cranial direction and singed every organ and organ system. My creative life. My intellectual life. My emotional life. My memories. My hopes. My plans and dreams. Everything that I was, everything that I could become, belonged to Julie. She owned me, bawdy and soul. Dennis Bright had become a charred timber on which a sign had been nailed. The single word on the sign became invisible as the glass dried.

I was burning up inside, but my larynx must have been made of fireproof protoplasm. My love for Julie went unvoiced except in dream dialogues. My erotic devotion to her pleasure went unrevealed except in narratives privately rehearsed on neuronal ream paper. I had Julie constantly in mind, but that little mattered. I failed to speak up and tell her how often I thought of her and how much I wanted to be intimate with her. I didn’t as much hint of my affection with any of the thousand metaphors written with the ink of desperation on the unlined paper of a parched soul.

When it came to Julie Hanks I had two choices—go all the way and become her exclusive guy or belly whop the poisonous Hudson. At this point I was considering taking up swimming lessons at the community pool.

General Lee waited at the other side of the bathroom door. He looked grayer and more serious, if that were possible. If he wore a wristwatch, he would be tapping it as he tsked disapproval.

I know and I’m sorry. I’m running a bit late. I should say I’m meandering a bit late. I started for the living room when General Lee called me back. I knew what he wanted—I had to pass inspection.

He looks good enough to pass, General Grant said, self-consciously tucking his shirt in.

There was no sense contesting the polite Tidewater drawl, none in opposing a command disguised as a suggestion. I could as much defy divinity as defy General Lee. Like the Lord’s, General Lee’s will was done. I dropped my hands to the side and reversed my slouch, straightening till I reached my six-foot-four height. I stood a head taller than General Lee—I could eat melons off his gray-white head—but, strangely, we saw eye to eye.

Don’t pick on the boy, Lee. Your Army didn’t look like much at the end.

We stymied you people long enough.

That’s because it took President Lincoln so long to appoint me commanding general of the Federal Armies, if you don’t mind me bragging on myself. If I sound off, you can call me U.S. arroGrant.

I wish only to point out that a man’s appearance demonstrates the pride he takes in his reputation. As he spoke, General Lee slowly walked around me. Appearance determines what a man’s superiors make of him and what his underlings construe. General Lee stopped behind my left shoulder—I hoped he didn’t find a flaw. Appearance determines the judgment of a man’s peers, who are his competitors, and of his posterity, which serves as his jury.

General, I’m a watchman. It’s no great deal how I look.

That is the point, Mr. Bright. If a man cannot do right in the little things, how can he do right when it comes to the great things? If a man cannot keep to the epauletter of the law when he is of lowly rank, how can we expect him to comply when he is of advanced station?

General Lee came full circle and faced me. Maybe he didn’t find a flaw. Or if he found one, maybe he realized I wore Swagg brown and not Confederate butternut.

A man can never know beforehand when he may be called on to participate in important deeds. If a man is not ready, ready, yes, at this hour and at all hours, he may be judged unfavorably for cluttering destiny with his ill preparations and for making a slob of himself at a great moment in history.

If you’re referring to me, I didn’t expect to receive your surrender at that moment. General Grant raised the stogie to his lips. He lowered it when he remembered it wasn’t lit. I was dressed in a pur-suit. If I had known, I’d have taken a dress uniform out of the locker and sprinkled on—what’s that you’re wearing?

Old Rogue.

Anyway, I’d have taken a dress uniform out of the locker.

You can proceed, Mr. Bright. General Lee didn’t smile. I don’t think he ever smiled. And he didn’t say, Congratulation. I don’t think the word was in his vocabulary.

I stepped into the kitchen and grabbed my lunch bag. It held a turkey sandwich, a few butter cookies, and an orange. I took my windbreaker from the hall closet. It was sky blue and had white lettering beneath the outline of a plane—Max Pruss School of Aeronautics, the letters read. I hadn’t made a success of myself in aviation—I hadn’t made a success of myself in any field. But I had graduated with passing grades and I was proud of my affiliation. When it came time for the annual alumni fund drive, I always sent the school a donation.

I closed the notebook in