Trespass Offering

By E.E. Tressler

Special Forces veteran Griff Calloway and his companions travel into a war zone to find what they believe is a scientific holy grail -- but they find something even more astonishing. What started out as an easy extraction of information turns into an odyssey of epic proportions.

• Language: English
• Publisher: E.E. Tressler
• Release date: Jan 30, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215010419

E.E. Tressler

E.E. Tressler is a husband, a father, and grandfather. His family is his first love and priority. Long retired from his day job, his imagination and creativity has run wild as evidenced by his first book, “The Cannibals of Chaufant.”  Home is California but he and his wife travel to France where they spend the summer months on their canal boat puttering around the small villages and towns along the vast French canal system. When he is not writing he is taking photographs. He enjoys painting, and fly fishing occupies his time whenever possible. You can follow E.E. Tressler on Facebook and Twitter.

Book preview

1 - Pledge of Secrecy

To honor a pledge of secrecy made to my friend Zeb, I’ve kept certain details of this story to myself for several years. Happily, time and circumstance have fulfilled that commitment, and I am free to bring the entire tale to light. As for Zeb, more about him later. I want to tell this story in a linear way from beginning to end.

It began with a naive decision we made as a group. Once it was decided, there was no turning back. There was no getting out of it. We were obligated to see it through to the end. When I reflect on this escapade, I can only characterize it as ‘unbelievable.’ Yet, in truth, it did happen. In some ways, the events felt random, and in other ways they felt destined. But as time goes by, I believe it was all more destined than random.

I am a firefighter. My name is Griffith Higgins Calloway. In proud recognition of their Gaelic ancestry, my parents thought my first name should be my mother’s maiden name, and my middle name my father’s mother’s maiden name. I go by Griff Calloway for practicality. They wanted to pass onto their progeny a strong dose of pride for their mother country even though their ancestors left Ireland long before the Revolutionary War. One of those ancestors, or maybe more, had to leave the Emerald Isle as a punishment for some sort of malfeasance. The details are murky because so much time has passed. The family legend says great-great-great-grandpa, Declan Calloway, was caught in an act of piracy. For his penance he was banished to what was then called the New England Colonies. In those days being cast away across the Atlantic was considered a punishment worse than death.

2 - Dave Ragsdale

Permit me to digress just a little to something that happened some time ago. One day, our four-man rescue team approached a car crash in search of life. This time, life had instantly departed the occupants of the crumpled vehicle. But duty required an attempt to bring life back, if we could, although we instinctively knew theirs had fled. We disconnected the seatbelts and slid the bodies out of the car onto the ground and began CPR. 

Paul Simon’s Graceland was playing in the background from the car’s speakers. Unconsciously, the beat of the song helped us keep time with our chest compressions. When one of us tired, we traded positions. Kneeling close, we watched for life to flicker back by flashing a light intermittently into the victims’ eyes, hoping that the irises would contract. Nothing moved.

By the time the medics arrived in the ambulance with their life-saving equipment, we had exhausted ourselves, and we handed off the CPR to them. 

The highway patrol arrived and pushed onlookers away and managed the gawking traffic. We surveyed the accident and assessed for other dangers. Gas had spilled and needed to be neutralized. Car parts were strewn over the highway.

Music from the car radio irritated our solemn mood. Graceland had given way to one snappy sixties and seventies tune after another. No one noticed the music until We’ve Only Just Begun by the Carpenters started to play. At any other time, I would have enjoyed listening to that song; but in this case, it sounded inappropriately out of place. I reached into the driver’s side of the car and pulled the cord from a phone connected to the car’s sound system. The silence was a relief. However, in retrospect, if there is life after death, maybe we’ve only just begun was meaningful.

Anyway, we didn’t say much as we cleared the scene. It was routine not to say too much. Debriefing and sorting out what we were seeing, and feeling, was better done at the station.

Hey, did you notice what they were wearing? Rags asked me. Yup, I said.

They must have been going to or coming from a Hawaiian luau or party of some kind because they had on Hawaiian shirts and they were both wearing shorts, Rags supposed.

I didn’t think much about it while we were working the scene, but I can’t get ‘Margaritaville’ out of my head. I could tell by their playlist that I liked those people, I said.

Me too. I know what you’re saying. You can tell a lot about people by their playlist. I knew I liked those people when I heard ‘The Road Goes on Forever’ by Robert Earl Keen, Rags said. 

Reflecting on those moments where life is there one minute and gone the next humbles me in a way that’s hard to describe. Life can be so fleeting and fragile. It makes me wonder what life is really all about. I marvel at our existence. 

Dave Ragsdale was the acting captain in charge that day. All of us have a call sign, a tradition carried over from our military brothers for camaraderie. His is Rags. Mine is Griff. 

Rags and I are good friends. He is the type of person I want to be like. He has his flaws, as we all do; but minus those, if I could develop his worthy attributes, I think I would be my best self. I am envious that he was once recruited by the CIA. He’s taller than me, almost a head above me. He’s in a little better shape and one step ahead of me. He’s a better leader than I am. He thinks better than I do, and he is only a year and a half older than me.

We are two of the more senior firefighters in the squadron and getting close to retirement age. Like him, I also am a captain. Rags and I are in charge at different stations, but on the day of that accident, we were working together, taking shifts for other firefighters who were mandatoried to a wildfire strike team near Los Angeles.

I became a firefighter through Dave Ragsdale’s council and advice. We both came out of Iraq after serving together in the same special forces unit for two tours of duty. He came over from the CIA, having worked in Afghanistan, and I was one of a platoon of special forces assigned to work with him. We hunted bad guys and eliminated them.

On returning to civilian life, we both floundered, trying to find work in various jobs. He consulted with a veterans’ hospital psychologist who suggested firefighting. A couple of years later, I followed him to Oakland, California, and went through the training program they called the academy. We came to the academy a little older than most, but we were in excellent shape physically, and our military experience helped us rise through the ranks. After ten years we both are well-established on the force.

Rags and his lovely wife, Elaine, have two kids, who like Deborah’s and mine are no longer at home and making their own way in the world. Elaine is an attorney and is busy working at a well-respected law firm. At the outset, she didn’t go with us on the aforementioned escapade and held down the home front.

3 - Deborah

Ithought I married Deborah for love—in truth, I did. But as time passed, my love for her expanded. As I grew to know her better, there were subtle attributes she had that filled in some empty spaces in my heart, like blowing foam insulation into the walls of a house. Before I met Deborah, she was a freelance copy editor, and even as I write this, I feel her leering squint.

Deborah took over a little antique and consignment shop downtown after her best friend Betty, who owned it, died of breast cancer. I should say, the little store took her over. In the beginning she helped out by watching the store while Betty convalesced from rounds of chemotherapy. At the time, our kids had reached an age where they could fend for themselves. 

After Betty died, Deborah couldn’t let the business go. She had invested too much emotion, time, and effort. She learned the business so well that, in a sense, she had been shanghaied and kidnapped by it, in a good way.

She says she does it as a hobby, but it fulfills something more basic in her soul. It has brought her a deeper satisfaction, a lasting sense of accomplishment, and a more profound appreciation for life after the death of her dear friend. And, although it brings in extra income, it frees her from the drudgery of being chief cook and bottle washer at the house. It rounded out our kids too. They became more independent and self-reliant. 

She used to take an annual trip with Betty to England to buy a bunch of antiques, chairs, cabinets, tables, and knickknacks. All kinds of stuff. They would put it all in a big shipping container and send it to the Port of Oakland. 

Now, in Betty’s absence, she takes her sister, Tammy, on these trips. Every year, in late fall, a truck delivers the big container to the store, right in front, on the street, and she opens it up to her regular customers by invitation only. Whatever doesn’t get sold that week she puts in a warehouse behind the store, and she works on repairing and refinishing the treasures before putting them out on the floor to sell. She has an employee named Bob who helps her. Bob is somewhere on the autism spectrum and takes orders well. He loves to fix and finish furniture.

Deborah has improved the store in a hundred ways and increased the business since she took it over, but the name of the store has remained Betty’s Antiques. 

Deborah also plays tennis—a lot. The tennis club is another getaway for her. I play, too, but not as much as she does. Deborah grew up playing tennis. As a teenager she went to a tennis camp in Palm Springs and ended up playing tournaments all over California. She was a ranked player in high school and college, as high as fifth in collegiate play at one point.

Like a chameleon takes on the color and texture of its environment, she wears various white or pastel-colored, sometimes patterned, tennis dresses—every day. It is mostly out of convenience because she plays tennis most mornings. She remains in her tennis dress as she shuttles to and from the antique shop, grocery store, and other errands. She changes when she needs to, but otherwise, she is most comfortable in those lovely little tennis dresses.

I should also point out that she always wears the little ankle socks with the puff balls at the heel. They bounce about from the back of her tennis shoes. Even when they went out of style, she kept wearing them. And I swear it is Deborah who single-handedly is trying to keep them in vogue. When she couldn’t find them in the stores, she went to the fabric store, found and bought the puff balls, and sewed them on plain socks herself. The tennis dresses and those socks are her signature and separate her from the herd.

I freely admit to a deep emotional dependence on Deborah. If I could put it in my will that I die before she does, I would. I don’t want to be left in this life without her.

We met each other on a tennis court when I joined a health club fifteen years ago, after the divorce from my first wife. A tennis tournament brought us together, and we’ve been mixed-doubles partners ever since. She plays quite a bit better than me. She is patient with me but relishes beating me.

Deborah keeps her straight blonde hair cut in a short pageboy for the convenience of not having to style and set it every day. She knows how good looking she is, which attracts some whistles now and again. There is a healthy streak of vanity that runs through her in an endearing sort of way. I haven’t minded because I trust her loyalty to me, but she’s not blind to the wake she leaves. She enjoys being looked at. She sparkles when she sees men, and especially boys, noticing her. On occasion we will be on a street somewhere and she will get out ahead of me. Following behind, I have watched how she attracts attention. 

Our kids are off on their own ever since our youngest entered university two years ago. So we are adjusting to being empty nesters. The combined packet of five children always came first. We had no children together. We tried extra hard to equally portion out our love and care, making sure we were doing what we could in their lives without being too intrusive to our respective kids. From their point of view, we probably overstepped that boundary at times. But it wasn’t egregious enough to need intervention. Nobody is complaining that we spoiled them whenever possible. Somehow, they survived the shuttling to and from their other parents. We managed to keep a lid on the bubbling black pot of troubles and hard feelings potentially simmering between us and our ex-spouses. 

As the stepfather in this scenario, I was careful not to interfere with Deborah’s parenting, and she was equally sensitive to mine. I grew up with an overreaching stepfather and was determined not to tread where it wasn’t appropriate. It was a constant topic of discussion between us. Sometimes there were clashes, but we all survived somehow.

4 - A Great Secret

Staring at the ceiling , my mind skipped from one crazy thought or worry to the next, so I tried to force my thoughts to more pleasant things. I had the next four days off. As my mind wandered, the name Philo T. Farnsworth, the inventor of television, popped into my head.

Some time ago, when my friend Oliver Hancock Rebelle came to visit, I went to the Oakland airport to pick him up. As he came through the arrival gate, he was walking with an elderly woman with whom he was having an animated conversation. She was doing all the talking, and Ollie was listening intently until I came into view. He waved and brought the woman over to introduce her to me. She was Pem Farnsworth, Philo T. Farnsworth’s widow.

Ollie and Pem had been sitting next to each other on the flight and were now friendly acquaintances. She was old and sweet. Ollie and I helped her get her bags and waited with her until her family came to get her. They had been held up in traffic and were a few minutes late.

As we waited, she continued to expound on her husband’s illustrious and amazing career in science. I will never forget what she told us while we waited for the baggage conveyor to start. 

She said toward the end of her husband’s life, he was experimenting with his fusion reactor, his invention to create nuclear fusion, in his own laboratory at their home. He called his invention a fusor. One evening, he came into the house with a worried look on his face.

She pulled us into a close huddle to tell us a great secret. She whispered, He told me, ‘I need to stop working on this. The world isn’t ready for it.’ Something he had discovered frightened him, and whatever it was would have endangered the whole world in some way. 

That was the last thing she told us. Her family drove up to the curb and we said goodbye. 

Ever since that day, I have wanted to know exactly what it was he discovered that frightened him enough to stop experimenting. My imagination ran wild. I envisioned something powerful like a nuclear fusion bomb. One that would destroy all of us in a horrid and painful way if it got into the wrong hands. Maybe a chain reaction that would turn the Earth into a sun and destroy every living thing instantly. After all, isn’t nuclear fusion the force that fuels the sun?

Ollie had been my friend from the beginning. Pals since elementary school, we were like brothers. We were much older now, but we have remained friends through thick and thin, and we have been over some bumps in the road.

It was routine for him when he came to the West Coast to call ahead and ask us to put him up for a couple of nights. We called the guest room Ollie’s room because he was the one who used it the most. He could have checked into any one of the nicest hotels, but he liked to come to our house. What was I going to say? He was my friend no matter what. He was part of the family. 

Somewhere along the way, in his adult years, it seemed like Ollie had sold his soul, or at the least, maybe just part of it, to Mephistopheles. I didn’t notice it right away, but in time, little by little, I began to pick up the clues, and it was only by reflecting on certain things he said and did that I thought he had almost totally wholesaled himself over to the dark side. 

He was always prone to letting himself fall prey to the devil as a kid. When he wasn’t creating the mischief, it was easy for him to follow others into it. He couldn’t stop himself. Ollie was my Eddie Haskell, the personality who got everyone around him in trouble but was otherwise always polite and obsequious with parents, thus avoiding blame or consequences for the things he instigated.

Impoverished and neglected by alcoholic parents, Ollie overcompensated by becoming a comedian and jokester to mask the painful psychological struggle happening inside of him as a youth.

Ollie learned his street smarts from his dad’s brother, his bachelor uncle Lex who was a police officer who spent a lot of his leisure time at Freddie’s Place. Located on the corner of Main and Lander, Freddie’s was a combination