Remembrance

On Valentine’s Day of 1975, old wounds are reopened and chilled hearts beat again. 

Transcript

[Darker Pastures Theme - Intro]

NARRATOR

Episode Forty-Eight: Remembrance.

(Sounds of old engine fading into distance)

NARRATOR

Gordon Gajdos sits in his red ’69 Chevy C/K truck, which he still thinks of as new even though he’s driven it for almost half a decade now. Parked atop a hill, he gazes down at his herd, grazing idly along the snow-flecked banks of little Scotchman’s Creek. Most of his neighbors have moved their herds to cornfields for the winter, but Gajdos is a traditionalist, and never moves his cattle off of grass, believing that winter grazing makes for hardier stock.

He lights up a Marlboro, and drains the last dregs of his Coca-Cola bottle. Satisfied that his herd is all accounted for and well, he starts up the engine, turns around, and begins to drive back across the pasture toward his lonely little house. It is almost three in the afternoon, and he has almost forgotten that it is Valentine’s Day – almost, until he reaches his front door and the only one to welcome him back is the old Border Collie, Rosco, batting his tail against the porch floorboards.

It's been over a year since Steph broke off their relationship, and the gift he never got to give her for the previous Valentine’s Day still rests in his upper left dresser drawer – a delicate chain strung with five silver blossoms, each sporting a center of blue tourmaline. He’d almost convinced himself that he was over it now, until February returned like a cruel scavenger and ripped open the cold grave in his heart anew.

He steps into the house, the screen door slamming loudly behind him, and fetches the seldom-touched bottle of Old Overholt from its place in the kitchen cabinet. Pouring himself a tall glass, he returns to the porch and sits on the creaking old chair beside the napping Collie, sipping and staring forlornly over the wintry grassland as a chill wind moans over the eaves.

[Short pause]

NARRATOR

The five o’clock sunset finds Gordon already asleep in his living room armchair, a thrice-filled and thrice-emptied old fashioned glass resting on the side table. He is roused from his unplanned nap by the chittering of the black rotary telephone. With a groan, he reaches over to pick up the handset, groggily toppling the empty glass, which falls to the carpet with a dull thud.

He tries, and fails, to keep the addled irritation out of his voice as he answers. His neighbor, a grizzled old codger named Lowell Sykes, growls in reply that Gordon’s cows have broken through his fences and are all over the road now. Curbing a profane oath, Gordon promises that he’ll get it sorted, and Lowell mumbles gruff acknowledgement before hanging up.

Gordon sits a moment, trying to collect himself. The residual stupefying influence of the rye, along with the disorientation of interrupted sleep, has made the darkening room around him unfamiliar and unfriendly, and the thought of braving the gathering night and the rising wind is hardly a welcome one.

Unbidden and cruel, the question of what Stephanie is doing at this moment flits through his mind, and jealousy momentarily flares in his veins as he imagines her sitting at the diner in town over a steak dinner, smiling and laughing with a faceless stranger, maybe even engaging in a game of footsie, as she once did with him.

Before he even decides to, he has picked up the fallen but unbroken glass and begun to walk back toward the kitchen and its nepenthean promise. He stops midstride, consciously turning from his preconscious path and setting the glass in the sink, then donning his work vest, coat, and brown cowboy hat. Opening the door with a sharp intake of breath, he steps out into the sharp February night.

[Short pause]

NARRATOR

The bitterness of the night wind, followed by the warmth of his pickup heater, and perhaps some lingering effect of the earlier whiskey makes for a drowsy drive, and his sleepiness is only exacerbated by the general lifelessness of the dark road illumined by his stark white headlights.

He has almost slipped into a doze when a large, brockle-faced black form looms ahead of him, the shock of its appearance snapping Gordon at once into panicked wakefulness. Stomping hard on the brake, he slides into a partial skid, coming so close to hitting the cow that he feels like his eyes will burst in their sockets. Knowing that he will never stop in time, he swerves into the skid, leaving the road and slamming down into the deep, weed-choked ditch.

For a few moments, he simply sits there behind the wheel and the idling engine, foot still jammed down on the brake pedal as he tries to quiet his rioting brain and calm his uncontrolled breathing. Slowly, as coherent thought returns, he puts the car into park and turns to look at the animal he almost hit. The cow, whom he now recognizes as one of his own, only directs the inscrutable bovine stare back at him before turning and retreating across the road, in the direction of the pastures from which she and the others previously escaped. Gordon can see the dim shapes of other cattle, faintly illumined by the backwash of the headlights, moving around him in the darkness.

Goddamn, he roars in the cab, smacking a palm against the steering wheel in an outpouring of his inner tumult.

Then he grabs the powerful handheld spotlight from the seat beside him, opens the door, and sets to the unpleasant chore of herding the cattle back the way they have come as the northerly wind whips and bites at him.

He has just managed to turn them and get the last of the escapees that he can see back through the fence when his spotlight beam illuminates the small white crucifix, made and painted by hand, planted on the far side of the ditch only about twenty feet from where his pickup sits. On the patibulum, in a delicate, spidery hand, are painted two first names and a date: Will & Josefina, Feb. 14, 1966. Recognition floods into Gordon’s mind as he gazes at it, and he is struck now by the oddities of this small memorial – the single cross for both victims, and the lack of birth years.

In 1966, Gordon had only just begun building his herd, being only a few years out of high school himself. At that time, he was too busy for dating, too single-mindedly focused on eking out his living, and for those reasons his thoughts had also not lingered too long on the old lovers’ lane not far from his property, or on what happened there after dark. Only after the Valentine’s Day accident had he really become aware of it, like so many people in the community, touched by the tragedy of the high school couple killed after a collision with a drowsy truck driver. But, like so many small tragedies that only affect one indirectly, it slowly faded from his mind over the years.

Now, as his eyes pore over the wood whose coat of white paint has begun to flake and chip, he is struck by the coincidence of the date, and of his own drowsiness and near accident on the way here.

Almost unconsciously, he glances at his watch, moving it close to the beam of the spotlight in the other hand to make out the time – 7:08 PM. For some reason, the hour unsettles him, though he is making good time in recapturing his renegade herd. A glacial gust draws him out of his reflections, and he returns to the task at hand, turning and casting the spotlight carefully over the wintry pastures once more. Satisfied that he has found all the cows he is likely to find in the dark, he makes his way back to the still-idling pickup, climbing inside and carefully negotiating his way back out of the ditch and onto the shoulder, angling his headlights so that they illuminate the broken strands of wire in his fence. Then fetches the roll of 12-gauge barbed wire, the fencing pliers, and the fence stretcher, and sets to splicing the snapped strands.

It is unpleasant work, and the wind steals his breath, makes his labored inhalations taste of metal and ice. By the time he is finished, he is exhausted in the way that only exertion in the cold can make one. All thoughts of the roadside memorial have left his mind as he clambers into the pickup cab, looking forward to his warm house and his bed.

For the first time since he got behind the wheel tonight, another set of headlights blooms in the darkness ahead of him. Shifting gears, Gordon is about to pull back onto the gravel and make his way home, but pauses, perceiving something strange in the hue of those approaching lights. They are a cold electric blue, not the color of any headlights Gordon has ever seen, and there is likewise something odd in their motion, as if they drift upon the wind rather than rolling along the road. And as it draws near, he notes with an icy thrill rolling down his neck that there is no rumble of an approaching engine.

(Unsettling music)

[Long pause]

(Unsettling music)

NARRATOR

A ’59 Plymouth Fury materializes on the dark road, its coat a pale color that Gordon cannot definitely place. His truck’s headlights fall strangely upon the oncoming car, as if the beams cannot quite touch the metal and glass. Despite the apparent speed of its initial approach, the wheels on the gravel road top barely seem to turn, as though the Plymouth has slipped into slow motion.

Languidly, the car rolls past him, and peer as he might into the cab, Gordon cannot make out even the silhouette of a driver. Just as it appears the Fury will continue down the road, it slows and then stops, about twenty feet behind his Chevy. He watches in the side mirror as the passenger door inches open. A slender hand, pale as snow, emerges and beckons for him to approach.

Gordon swallows hard, a second chill shuddering down the back of his neck. The gesture is repeated, and after a moment’s hesitation, he pops open the door and, taking the spotlight with him, begins to walk toward the car. Halfway there, he stops, straining his eyes to penetrate the unnatural gloom of the car interior – utterly in vain.

He calls out to the strangers in the car then, asking if they are okay, if they need help. There is no answer, except for a third wave of that white, graceful hand. He takes a single step forward, switches on the powerful light in his hand, and directs it toward the Fury.

For an instant, a searing beam knifes through the wintry night, arcing toward the silently idling car. Then there is an electric popping sound from the spotlight’s innards, and the beam dies.

The hand grasps the side panel, as though to pull the rest of the body out of the car. Then its twin emerges – then a third identical hand, and a fourth. And slowly, something else emerges, something that Gordon dares not accept as a face.

Dropping the spotlight in the middle of the road, he turns and runs back toward the Chevy, jumping in and slamming the door closed, almost spinning out as he shifts gears and accelerates homeward. He cannot muster the courage to look in his rearview mirror directly, but he is aware from his peripheral vision that there are no lights reflected therein.

When he reaches his driveway, he cannot stop himself from racing across the yard to his door, like he did after evening chores when he was a young boy, afraid that unknown horrors of the night were lurking in the lengthening shadows and pursuing him as night fell. Only after he is inside, the door firmly shut and locked behind him, and he has fetched the Winchester Model 70 from the rack above his fireplace, does he begin to feel somewhat safe.

It was nothing, he tells himself. Just whiskey, and nerves, and the tricks of the dark.

The sharp wind shrills against his window panes in mocking reply.

[Short pause]

NARRATOR

Morning brings relief, even though Gordon has slept poorly. The Winchester lies propped in the bedroom corner, within easy reach, and his bedroom door remains firmly locked. As he rises, the morning sunlight streaming through the window, Gordon almost laughs at himself, at the childish folly that so unsettled him the prior evening.

And yet, when he moves down the hallway toward his little kitchen, he cannot help but replay those moments of the opened passenger door, of the beckoning hand, in his mind. As he approaches that final moment, his thoughts go black, as black the road when his spotlight failed, and when next he is aware of himself, he is lying on his right side on the living room floor, curled tightly in a fetal ball. A thin line of drying spittle has run down the right side of his chin.

Picking himself off the floor, he waits a few moments, steadying himself on the back of his armchair until he is certain he will not collapse again. He abandons all thoughts of morning coffee, his stomach already feeling too sour, and instead moves into the bathroom and takes a long hot shower.

Afterward, he sits on the edge of his bed, half-dressed, still feeling unclean and unsteady. He imagines what Steph would say, if they were still together: how she would insist he visit the doctor to make sure nothing is wrong, how he would refuse, how it would become a slow burning battle of wills.

Another image flashes through his mind, one whose reality he cannot doubt.

He finishes dressing, then drives into town – not toward the doctor’s office, but to the little public library, coated in pale stucco. Walking inside, he is struck with a sense of grey unreality, of growing listlessness. His body feels impossibly light, totally lacking in substance.

It takes Gordon an embarrassingly long time to locate the correct issue of the February 1966 Hawkes Tribune, and a few minutes more of poring through articles to find the story about the fatal accident of William Iretton and Josefina Vadillo. He reads through the sparse details, the destruction of two lives rendered in a brief collection of monochrome characters, his hands growing cold and his heartbeat seeming to have paused in his chest.

When he reads the estimated time of death – near seven o’clock in the evening – he cannot control the shivering that seizes his body, which is so intense that the assistant librarian pauses in her reshelving of returned books to ask several times if he is alright, before reluctantly accepting his affirmative answer.

After she has left, he stares again at those words, feeling certain that he knows the exact time those two hearts stopped beating, down to the minute. And as his vision begins to blur, the printed page becoming a dead winter forest of mingling black and white, he sees again that unthinkable face emerging, which is actually two faces, horribly disfigured and impossibly fused in, or perhaps rather beyond, death. That amalgamated face swims on the page before him, then begins to rise, mist-like, toward his own.

The assistant librarian comes running as Gordon falls spasming to the floor, her voice shaking with terror as she asks, over and over, what is wrong. As she turns and bounds toward the phone on her desk, calling for an ambulance, he knows that no examination or test the hospital staff might run will ever explain what has happened – what is happening – to him. And he knows, worst of all, that the loneliness that once felt like a burden has been ripped away from him forever, a comforting illusion shattered in this world that teems with unacknowledged and unnamed remembrances.

(Eerie music)

[Darker Pastures Theme - Outro]

NARRATOR

If you enjoyed today’s story, please rate, review, and share. If you’re feeling particularly generous, you can support the show on our Patreon page or at darkerpastures.buzzsprout.com, and for only three dollars a month, you can unlock special subscriber-only content. Thank you for listening. We’ll meet again… in darker pastures.

[Darker Pastures Theme - Outro - Continues]