Rafferty’s
A man wanting only to ride his bike through the village of his youth finds obstacles everywhere.
Rafferty wasn’t the type who was bound to follow the news much. Certainly, he subscribed to a few online journals, as well as the hard copy of the beloved weekly paper of his early years, The Seizenscholtz Township Reporter. However, his attention to the day-in, day-out grind of disheartening events and commentary left much to be desired — at least in the view of those reporting and commenting.
His knowledge of current events was limited to those affecting him personally: Would he have to pay crazy amounts of money to fill his tank, would bombs soon be raining from the sky, would he be able to at the nearby store find his favorite brand of wheat germ (Boswell’s), etcetera. If a politician told a lie concerning a recent love affair, Rafferty didn’t want to know about or look into it. It wouldn’t have occurred to him. Let those people sort these things out, just leave me out of it, he might say if asked. No one did.
Nor would anyone, as he lived alone and, since the pandemic, had spoken to very few people about anything other than perfunctory transactions at the cash register. He lived in the small town of Hahira (pronounced, “Hey, Hirah!”), Georgia since his family moved there when he was 17. He’d missed the senior prom of his Pennsylvania high school, which suited him because he hadn’t planned on attending. Thirty years later, his family had, one by one or two, moved back to the Northeast, while he’d remained South for reasons that dwelled, well guarded, in his own head.
Hahirans tended to keep to themselves, and Rafferty liked it that way. His one outing per week — dinner at, you guessed it, Rafferty’s restaurant at I-75 — rarely thrust him into social situations. Now and then a server, eyeing his large, stooped frame, then the name on the credit card he used to pay for foods and services, would joke about his being a spy, perhaps a cousin or younger brother, sent by corporate. Rafferty never had a witty retort ready for this occasion; instead he usually blushed, looked at his soiled plate and muttered, “Well….”
The server would edge away, feeling as though she’d been the one out of line. Rafferty feared, however, it was him. Why was it so hard?
Although his mailing address was a Hahira one, he didn’t actually live in Hahira proper; instead, he lived ten miles outside it down a long, curvy driveway lined with craggy stickweed, beige crunchgrass and the occasional rattlesnake. Because of his secluded existence, he’d never had to answer inquiries about which church he attended. He attended none. Because he attended no churches, he suffered nary a barrage of political discourse or the rantings of an outraged bully standing behind a pulpit.
Nor did he watch the news on television — though he was aware a lot of people who did had a lot of opinions regarding pretty much everything. They used to be called know-it-alls, but that seemed an archaic term these days. He saw and heard them occasionally, at the store and at Rafferty’s, and set out to avoid and not be at all like them. If Rafferty had been a voter, he would have been classified as “undecided,” an ever-shrinking group, like Buddy Holly fans or cabooses. Now, in his stupefyingly hot garage, he hummed something to himself as he prepared his bicycle — a Schwinn, reputable and eastern Pennsylvanian — for his annual pedal across his old stomping grounds, though he’d never literally stomped. He wasn’t that kind of guy. He was the kind of guy more likely to mount and ride a vehicle uniquely slow compared to cars and fast enough compared to pedestrians, enabling him to avoid the human contact he abhorred. After a while Rafferty realized he was humming a Queen song, which he now began to mumble-sing. “I want to ride my bicycle,” he sang, an octave or two lower than the singer. “I want to ride my bike, I want to ride my bicycle, I want to ride it where I like.”
Rafferty’s and Queen’s request, reasonable on its face, would soon be tested.
Set in his ways at home, his ways on the road were equally set. He’d booked a room in the same hotel, a Red Roof in Lexington, Virginia. Once checked in, he took the Schwinn off the rack behind his Toyota and carried it up the stairs to his room on the second floor.
He’d done something a little different this time: He’d reserved the two rooms flanking the one he would actually sleep in. Last year the walls on either side of him could not sufficiently muffle the sexual sound effects that kept him up most of the night. As a result, he’d technically fallen asleep a few times the next day on the long stretch of I-81 spanning northern Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland and southern Pennsylvania. Somehow, he’d kept the car on the road. When he finally got to take his bike ride, his legs felt as though they were filled with wet sand. Nevertheless he’d completed it, but had to skip his customary beer at the Hereford Tavern for fear he’d pass out in his barstool. To complete the travel tribulation, his rental house in Shimerville smelled funny, like artichoke hearts marinated in motor oil, or something, and his sleep there had been fitful. This year he was taking no chances. In addition to his three-room rental in Lexington, he’d reserved a secluded house in Zionsville.
Someone befriending Rafferty might have twenty or thirty conversations with him before he began to understand how much his hometown of Kuglerscheitsville meant to him. That the village stood as a nearly perfect replica of the one he’d left almost forty years before seemed to him a miracle.
Its history was not inconsequential. During the Revolutionary War it had provided a brothel and hotel to military higher-ups travelling northward from Philadelphia and then back to that crucial city. It was somewhere to hang their wigs. Years later, after the Whig party had shut down the brothel, the town was known for its ice house, which served both Allentown and Philly. When Rafferty was a boy, the scandalous hotel had long since reinvented itself as a candy store where he vacillated, nickels tight in his fist, between the jar of pixie sticks and the prominent display of candy cigarettes, their brands matching the harmful, authentic ones. It was always a tough decision.
His family didn’t farm, and for that they were outcast from most of Kuglescheitsville’s residentry. Rafferty wasn’t aware of his own freakish, non-farming reputation until, on a school bus, a farmchild slammed him on the head with his Land of the Giants lunchbox. Eventually Rafferty recovered from the concussion, at least enough to make his assailant pay — not literally, but symbolically—by refusing to acknowledge his existence for the duration of their time together not only on the bus, but in the hallways of the school. Sweet revenge.
Over time, he expanded his indifference to different people who made no difference to him. His schoolmates, no longer mattering, mostly left him alone, with a few key exceptions. The same held true for his Hahira High experience. In that respect North and South were the same.
He did show himself, his personality, to one adult figure, and what a figure: Mrs. Perrineau, his fifth grade teacher, and his first and perhaps only crush. He hated that word, because what he felt for her, he felt at the time and long afterward, was far more significant than a crush. He literally idolized her.
Her flashy clothes were always a little uncoordinated, but as with the finest-looking people, it worked in her favor. Her shoulder-length hair, just unkempt enough, was something a ten-year-old boy could get lost in. “Have you ever tried starting your stories with talking instead of action?” she asked him one time, leaning over him as she pointed out parts of his short story he could liven up a bit. Her perfume made him dizzy.
All the boys in the class were under her spell. If she spent too much time with one boy, the others would burn inside with a feeling they later identified as jealousy. No one was able to talk about it.
But Rafferty felt he could reach her like the others couldn’t. He could reach her with his writing! Before Mrs. Perrineau, he had little interest in putting pen to paper to create things in other people’s minds. In fifth grade it became his obsession. She’d direct the class to write compound sentences. While all the others sought only to “get it right,” ending up with results like, “The men were at the war, but now they are home from the war,” Rafferty labored for hours before coming up with, “While most women allowed others to dictate their choices and tastes in attire, Sherri drew from more sophisticated sources, like New York fashion designers and Vogue magazine.”
It seemed to work! Mrs. Parrineau began regarding him differently. One time, when he was at his desk crafting a report on Steinbeck’s The Red Pony, he looked up and saw that she was looking at him. His head spun!
Then the schoolyear ended, he went to middle school, and eventually moved away. He found work in Journalism, editing copy. He never saw her again.
As his pilgrimage northward wound down and the mountains gave way to the flat terrain of the Carlisle (PA) area, Rafferty unconsciously replaced the hills with the contours of Mrs. Perrineau, the terrain of her body; and then his thoughts drifted from her to a farmer’s daughter joke he was told in school but never understood; from there to things in life that couldn’t be understood, like popular songs on the radio; to the oasis of public radio; to a recent story he’d heard on NPR (via the Valdosta affiliate, for Hahira had no NPR station) about a near-death experience. The subject of the piece had undergone an induced coma as a result of COVID. While unconscious, the man entered a warm, loving place where all the people he missed were there to greet him.
The story was intended to provide comfort to those fearing the mystery of death, but Rafferty missed its point.
Following the logic of that NDE (near-death experience), Rafferty mused, when I die I’ll feel just as uncomfortable there as anywhere else, whether bathed in warm light or molten lava. The last thing he wanted in his personal Heaven was to be surrounded by a bunch of bossy ghosts eager to “show him around.” That sounded more like Hell. When he’d been shown his Hahira house by a realtor, Rafferty told the well-dressed middle-aged woman with the clipboard that he’d like her to exit the house so he could look at the place by himself. Her smile became strained, and she went stiffly back to her car. Solitary and satisfied after the self-tour, he offered exactly the price the realty had asked for it.
Heaven to Rafferty, Rafferty thought to himself — because that’s what one does when he’s driving and there is no music, talk radio or podcast playing — would be him driving a decent car on this very highway with no other cars in view. Or maybe an alternate type of existence wherein he’d never left Kuglerscheitsville and had led some sort of life there, a nice house down some long dirt driveway off a dirt road. Who would he have been, if not himself and for all the things that had happened all around him?
The closer he got to Burkes County, the more familiar things looked, and the more he liked the looks of things. He liked the cut of the farms’ jibs, with their unassuming yet somehow majestic stature, silos and corn stalks pointing appreciatively at the sky. There stood houses, like his first one, built from stone. Every direction he looked, in the distance there lay a soft blue mountain range. How anyone could not be content in a place like this was beyond him.
Now and then, from the highway, he’d notice big blue flags hanging from otherwise perfectly aged structures, all hailing “Trump.” Rafferty didn’t live in a vacuum; he knew who Trump was. He knew he was something annoying, brash and trendy. As with Madonna, knee socks, dipping dots, parachute pants, Kardashians, the Lambada and the Rubicks cube, his method had always been to ignore it until it went away. “TRUMP FOREVER” seemed like some kind of passing craze that he could merely wait out until it fizzled. He’d been waiting a while now.
If I lived here, he thought, I’d be too busy looking at beautiful things to hang flags. Why telegraph to all what one likes or dislikes? How is that an advantage? Where would one obtain such a flag, anyway? Then he saw a billboard for Stable Genius Fireworks Outlet and its postscript: “We have Trump flags!!!!!!!”
Rafferty was hungry, but plowed ahead. His habit was to take 22 east to Fogelsville’s Starlight Diner, where he knew exactly what he’d get: a cheese steak, hold the marinara, with mushrooms and onions. Pierogies on the side. A Yuengling lager. A 73-year-old waitress with a bouffant hairdo and a crepe pelican corsage. No nonsense.
He was fairly tired by the time he did make it to the diner. It was Thursday evening, usually not a busy night, but tonight every booth was taken. Rafferty found a spot at the bar between a leather-clad fellow who smelled like shoe polish and a heavy woman in a tank top who laughed hysterically for the first two minutes he pretended to look at the menu. He ordered a lager, but also a coffee. He just wanted to smell it while he waited for his food. “More coffee, Hon’? Oh!” remarked the overly made up, emaciated woman serving all the bar customers.
“I’m fine, thank you,” he said, and felt good saying it as he lifted the cup to his smiling nose, if noses could smile. He was fine. He was home.
The plate set before him a few minutes later was, to Rafferty, a work of art. He suddenly realized why people liked to photograph plates with food on them. It was the circular format, the arrangement of color and mass, the spaces in between, but also the realization that the halved cheese steaks and seven pierogies seemed to comprise some kind of family; Rafferty felt as though he could burst into happy tears. If he let himself go in such a way, however, he may have had a lot to answer for. He felt it was true.
He bathed in the sound, the aroma, the intermingling taste of his idealized and now realized idea of eastern Pennsylvania. While this happened, a different man replaced the leather-clad barfly. This man wore overalls and seemed to be aware of Rafferty. The man pulled a cell phone from his front overall pocket and began texting, an indication no conversation would be taking place.
Relieved, Rafferty paid and walked to the parking lot, seeing that there was still plenty of light. He could ride today. He pinched his still-hard bike tires.
“Georgia, all right!” yelled a man in black tube socks and sandals crossing the lot toward the entrance. “It’ll rise again, right?”
Rafferty waved his hand towards the well-wisher and hoped that would be enough.
“Y’aren’t from Atlanta I hope!” continued the man, pausing at the door. “Or Antifa, I mean!”
“Hahira,” said Rafferty, who then saw the man’s left eyebrow dart upward.
They stared at each other for a moment.
“Hahira,” repeated Rafferty. “Not Atlanta.”
“Oh. Haha! Good man!” said the man, visibly relieved, and entered the Starlight.
That meant Rafferty, belly full and stranger placated, was free to embark on his drive southward to Kuglerscheitzville.
He wound his way down, using his odd combination of memory, the map on his lap and posted signage. He drank in the scenes that passed, turning his head left and right. Some things had changed, while others hadn’t. The Yocco’s hot dog stand was still there, the big sign — with the large, crowned hot dog holding a smaller hot dog with a fork (his child?) and a shit-eating grin on his “face” — recently touched-up, while the old bridge over the train tracks between Emmaus and Macungie was not. It had been replaced by a new one. He passed the sub/ice cream place on the right, knowing that would be the site of his last meal (a cheese steak and pierogies, again), dietetically bookending his trip before returning home to Hahira.
Already he was dreading the trip home, a full three days away.
He turned on the radio and tuned to 640 AM, what used to be WAEB, which played the hits when the hits were things that people wanted to listen to. A man was complaining about something. Why did Rafferty hold out hope that the station would revert back to its old ways, Fleetwood Mac, Billy Joel and Minnie Riperton? Men complaining was where it was at now.
Queen’s Road, which veered off rts. 100/29, circuitously transported Rafferty to and through contours and vistas that made sense to him. Somehow things were still intact. The blue flags and banners, the occasional rebel flag did not mar what he thought was to this day the most beautiful region he’d ever seen. And he’d gotten to grow up here!
He hardly had to brake during the winding, mile-long descent to the village of Kuglerscheitsville, whose limits sign was dwarfed by a hand-made DRAIN THE SWAMP AGAIN!!! sign dangling from a nearby tree at the edge of the yard which led to a 1800-era stone farmhouse. Two Chevrolet Monte Carlos, circa 1975, rusted barely off its driveway. Rafferty looked too long, and crossed the double-yellow line, nearly colliding with a tractor travelling the opposite way. Through the rear-view mirror he saw its driver turning around in his perch, taking a long look. No matter. The poor guy was probably used to people straying from their lanes, transfixed by the beauty of the pastures and properties.
He took a left at the former candy store/brothel, putting him on Stauffer Bridge Road, which he easily navigated, as he would if he were a caterpillar sojourning across his hand, passing the Riordans’ old place, Berry’s Mill and the Shelly farm, finally reaching the bridge and parking at the end of Baumanns Road, still comprised of dirt and gravel.
He stepped out of the car. A little wary, and little giddy but with purpose, he unstrapped his bike and pedaled away from the bridge. It felt the same as ever, and if he closed his eyes and his short-term memory and smelled the honeysuckle and heard the rustling creek, he could really be back. He was pedaling down an unpainted, patchy road with green cornfields on either side. He could smell the corn, and hear the breeze wheezing through its rigid yet somehow swaying stalks. He saw a man in denim step out from the cornfield to his right, wielding a hoe that he held in a batter’s stance, check-swinging as Rafferty veered past him, lightly clipping his rear tire.
He pedaled on. Probably a farmer strung out on opioids, he figured. But geez.
Although Rafferty was intentionally nondescript, and wasn’t wearing anything that made him stand out, he noticed he was being conspicuously peered at by everyone he happened to pass, whether they be pulling groceries out of a trunk or adjusting the rope that secured a TRUMP, OUR FOREVER PRESIDENT flag. No one else rode a bike or walked down this idyllic roadway, which suited Rafferty just fine, until an oncoming pickup truck veered from its lane and headed directly for him. He felt he might have to dive from his bike into a gutter of clover, but in the nick of time the truck driver recovered from whatever malady seized him and righted his vehicle. Close one.
Although Rafferty in his youth had never suffered a serious bike accident, he had once lodged his flared pant leg into his chain pulley, rendering the bike unable to accelerate or slow down, the latter of which was the more vital as he careened down a steep, rocky hill. Though he survived, that was the day he gave up bell-bottomed jeans and became a boot-cut man.
That’s why he didn’t worry like he did for the days and weeks that followed the Flare Incident. His chain and its pulley would, through this ride, remain free of fabric. Not so much when it came to corn stalks, however.
Through his youth, he’d heard about hijinks perpetrated with corn stalks and the corn cobs they held. Hosensack, a nearby farming village, hosted and tolerated The Hosensack Gang, a gaggle of five or six adolescent boys whose mischief included gluing mailboxes shut and uprooting corn stalks and forming an array of them during the night on Schultz Bridge Road. A car approaching such a display would stop, contemplate the meaning of a familiar road abruptly ending at a cornfield, figure that was not possible, then slowly drive over the stalks, crunching and crushing all the while. He’d heard a few kids talking about the escapade in the cafeteria of his middle school, and remembered thinking what a surprising sight that must have been, and how insufferable those perpetrators probably were.
Even more surprising, however, was the overalled man who sprang suddenly from a cornfield Rafferty was now riding along and thrust an uprooted corn stalk into the spokes of his rear wheel. His bike skidded and he almost fell off his seat. Lifting his leg over the frame, kicking down his kick stand and turning to face the man, he saw a well-worn, lined face under a doffed cap not unlike what Henry Fonda wore when he portrayed Tom Joad in the movie. Both stood and looked at each other, breathing heavily. Rafferty saw the embroidered Confederate flag on the chest of the man’s overalls. The man seemed not to know what to make of Rafferty’s Neil deGrasse Tyson T-shirt. Then Rafferty ran at him and shoved him back into the corn field. The man grunted in alarm and pain. Rafferty yanked the stalk from his spokes and continued on, his bike wheel thumping a bit but still serviceable.
Rafferty was flustered. Yet it seemed the worst of the unforeseen attacks was over until, just past the second bridge over Stauffer’s creek, a combine made its way around a curve. Its circulating blades, shiny and yellow, gleamed in the early evening sun; if Rafferty continued on, they would surely dismember him, or worse. The machine didn’t appear to be leaving room for Rafferty to pass. He thumped to a stop, then, as it dawned on him the driver of the combine was out for blood, turned the ten-speed around and headed back, annoyed and alarmed, toward the previous scene of confrontation. What else could he do?
He pedaled, standing up now, up a slight hill and around a hard turn to the right, which, as he was going rather slowly, was easy to negotiate. He put it in “overdrive” then for the 100-yard stretch to the next turn, this one 90 degrees to the left. In spite of Rafferty’s efforts, the combine kept pace. Technology had apparently granted combines ten more miles per hour than those he’d seen in his childhood. Now he was nearing the place where he’d shoved the man, and then he saw that same man, who emerged again from the cornfield, this time holding a rifle of some sort. Rafferty bent forward and bellowed a deathly wail as a shot went off, barely missing him, and he drove directly at the shooter, who dodged him and ran back into the field.
The altercation slowed him down a bit, but he had gravity on his side as the road began to descend toward the bridge near which he had parked. Still, as he neared that landmark, he didn’t feel as though he could stop and dismount before the whirring blades reached him and turned him into a gory statistic, another fatal farming accident.
So on he raced over the bridge, down a steeper hill, past the Fretz dirt road outlet and then up a hill toward the Berky barn and its glorious hex sign. (Rafferty noted ruefully that now he knew for what the sign had warned him about all those years.) He peeked behind him and saw that, gloriously, a tractor had pulled out from Fretz Road right in front of the combine, whose maniac driver had to brake suddenly as a result, losing all his momentum. Rafferty let out a “battle whimper,” but his triumph was short-lived, as a hail of gunfire exploded from the Berky barn. He looked and spied a crude window carved out just below the hex sign. Two gun snouts sprouted from it, each emitting a tuft of smoke after every blast.
Unscathed, he didn’t stay and study the sight. Instead, he raced down a straightaway, around a curve, then up a slight hill. And then he was at the end of a driveway. It was that of the house in which he’d spent most of his first sixteen years. Just before his family moved out, it was purchased by the Diefenderfers, whose name was still on the elongated mailbox. He’d gone to school with Dean and Deanna, fraternal twins who sometimes bullied Rafferty.
But he had no time to think about them now, even if they were inside the house. Tossing his bike into the cornfield across the road from the house, he sprinted up the short driveway, around the garage and to the backyard where long ago he’d taught himself to juggle, draw pictures of dignitaries and authors, do a little sculpting, and to throat-sing like the Tibetan monks. The barbeque grill his dad had built with Hocking blocks still stood, but the willow tree providing it with shade was gone. He crossed the yard and, on a kind of whim, or maybe a hunch, climbed up the maple tree in which he’d singlehandedly built a treehouse in 1975. Some of it was still there.
With a middle-aged man’s effort, he reached the rickety wooden stand, which he remembered was a perfect vantage point from which to view the road. He knew this because he’d often crouch there in the morning to finish his homework and look for the school bus whose yellow flash he could see from about a half mile.
He waited, wondering fleetingly what he’d do if any of the Diefenderfers had seen him run up their driveway and around the freestanding garage. He would have to explain. But did he himself know what had just happened? Farmers seemed to be after him, coming at him from all directions, vehicles and structures. But why? What had he done? Sure, he’d shoved the man in overalls, and later threatened to run him over with his bicycle. However, there was much more to the story. Could he tell it convincingly? Would he get a chance?
Looking at the back of the garage he saw the strike zone spray-painted on the cement block siding long ago by his dad, who’d hoped he could impart his baseball wisdom on Rafferty. His dad, also named Rafferty, had pitched through his own childhood, but failed to convince his son it was a meaningful pursuit. Rafferty had given it a try nevertheless, and even got to where he could throw pretty hard, but lost interest after fracturing a boy’s hip at his first baseball practice.
Just to the right of the strike zone lay the tattered remains of the tarp he’d used as an adolescent to cover a sculpture, the only one he’d ever completed, after each work session. It had been a secret project, and still was.
He heard a motor, and peered through trees to see the combine making its way over the hill by the Berky barn. In front of it, he could make out a platoon of gun-wielding farmer-soldiers in overalls and red caps, walking in a kind of loose formation.
The redcaps were coming. Could they know he was here, in this little backyard sandwiched between a pine forest and yes, another cornfield? Behind the garage which stood next to the little stone house that once functioned as a one-room schoolhouse and Rafferty’s childhood home?
What was their goal? Was this just a twisted version of a neighborhood watch organization? Rafferty pondered this as the full combine finally came into view.
“Excuse me, what the hell are you doing up there?” asked Deanna Diefenderfer.
Rafferty looked down and saw what looked to be Dean and Deanna Diefenderfer’s mother, whom he’d read had died in a tobogganing accident in the late 1990s.
“Mrs. Diefenderfer?”
“That’s my name,” she said, her withering stare making him feel guilty of several crimes, mostly imagined. “Don’t wear it out.”
“Uh, um, I built this,” said Rafferty, flustered. By now he’d realized this must be Deanna, not her mother. “This is my treehouse. What’s left of it.”
“I don’t give a flying fuck if you built it,” said Deanna. “You need to come down and get the hell out.”
“But…they’re after me,” protested Rafferty.
“Who’s after you?”
“The…the farmers.”
Deanna stared at him, and Rafferty thought for a second she might burst into laughter. “Okay, you need to come down.”
“I’m Rafferty.”
Deanna’s eyes widened. “Gerry Rafferty? Gerry Fucking Rafferty?”
“Um, yes.” He tried to stand up, but his pants pocket (Hosensack) caught on a nail head he hadn’t quite banged in all the way in 1978. He pulled against it, the fabric gave way, and he lost his balance and fell out of the tree and onto Deanna. Luckily, she was overweight, and his fall was adequately cushioned. “Deanna. Deanna?” he asked, shaking her, and after a while she began coughing.
“Get off me,” she coughed, and Rafferty obliged and ran into the cornfield. On his way there, he grabbed a loose Hocking block from the old barbeque. The barbeque promptly collapsed in a heap of Hocking blocks. He stared at it for second, paying tribute to the grill that helped create some of his favorite hamburgers. Deanna screamed, “You motherfucker! That’s our grill!”
Rafferty didn’t have time to rebuild it; nor did he have time to explain how his father had built the grill and he had, in a way, a right to destroy it. He ducked into the corn and was gone.
It was getting dark. He could still see where he was going — though when one is running through cornstalks taller than himself, his destination is decidedly sketchy at noon, much less in twilight.
Still, he was in familiar terrain. The lay of the land surrounding the house of his first sixteen years might as well been the contours of his own body, or even those which lay in his own mind. The corn itself may have been completely different corn from that which he had run through in his youth, but it sprang from the same soil. Did this give him an advantage over the farmers of that land, crazed and weaponized as they were by what they’d seen on television? Rafferty’s memories of his early years were untainted by the adult years that followed, the years that may as well have been epilogue. He ran down a row, then switched over a few rows, then ran some more. But every row was his friend, in a sense. The rows were all part of a conspiracy, but one of survival. It didn’t matter that Rafferty didn’t know the motives, the particulars; he may as well have been running from those he’d ambushed with the cow corn he’d shaved from a dozen cobs….
That uncomfortable memory, showering a passing hayride’s passengers with cow corn when he was twelve, made Rafferty stop in his tracks. Should he amass his own artillery from the very corn through which he ran? Was an offense comprised of corn the best defense from the offense posed by weaponized farmers?
He still had the plastic bag in his pocket that had held the salted filberts his therapist had given him for the trip north. He pulled an ear of corn off a nearby stalk, shucked it and, with the heel of his right hand, began shaving the corn into the bag. The task was tougher than he’d remembered, and midway through he had to switch hands. He looked up as an airplane, rare in these parts, flew low overhead.
Once Rafferty had filled the bag, he resumed his flight through the stalks. Then he remembered the Hocking block; he’d left it by the cornstalk he’d yanked, shucked and shaved. Would he really need it? Deciding it was more than likely he would, he doubled back and, after looking down a few empty rows, finally spotted it, dark and brooding under the yanked stalk.
He heard another motor and realized the combine had reached his old house. Could it be going up the driveway? If so, Deanna Diefenderfer might “spill the filberts” on him and his whereabouts. Would she even hesitate?
The combine’s steady hum was suddenly drowned out by the return of the airplane, this time moving in the opposite direction. Surely the farmers wouldn’t dispatch a crop duster for someone as insignificant as him. Would the pilot be in contact with the combine operator? It seemed farfetched.
He crouched low and covered his head in case the duster was, this time, dusting. Fortunately it wasn’t, but then Rafferty heard the unmistakable sound of rustling stalks. Once the airplane’s noise had subsided, he heard something else: a walkie-talkie.
“Looks like the bastard’s in the southwest quadrant,” sounded the voice in the radio. “About 60 degrees by… I’d say fourteen.”
“Copy,” said a voice, and the rustling intensified. Rafferty ran. He ran almost like he did when he was twelve, up to the top of the field’s gentle slope, then down towards the old skating pond, the one he’d slapshot a hockey puck, back in the seventies, to the end of, after which the puck jumped the bank and smashed his eight-track player (which sat on a sled) to smithereens, D batteries and all. He sure could use those batteries now.
Before the edge of the cornfield met the pond’s bank, he stopped and listened. The rustling was still close behind.
Rafferty took his Hocking block and flung it towards the sound. It plopped into the earth and the rustling stopped. “I think I got ‘m,” said the voice, and after a several crunching footfalls Rafferty heard a thump, then a bigger thump, then a “FUCK!”
“Rick!” rang the voice from the radio. “What’s up?”
“I turned my fucking ankle on a…a fucking Hocking block!”
The plane neared again, and Rafferty knew to sit still until it had passed. He surmised one or two of the farmer platoon members had given chase into the field, while the rest had formed a perimeter around it. Was he trapped? Could he wait them all out until it was fully dark out?
While he weighed that judgment, the combine’s hum seemed almost upon him. The top of the cab had come into view. He heard an ungodly scream, and knew then the man who had turned his ankle on the Hocking block was being crushed under the combine, whose motor and Fox News broadcast in the cab were too loud for the driver to be able to hear much else. Surely he felt a human kind of squish as the front and rear blades and wheels turned the man into corn mash. Maybe he didn’t care; maybe it was a “next man up” situation.
Rafferty had few options. In fact, the only one he could think of that made sense was to wait, cow corn kernels in his ready right hand. By now he could see the front rotating blades through the stalks. Then he caught sight of the driver, who saw him just in time for Rafferty’s hurled cowcorn swarm to hit him smack in the face. There was a scream, and Rafferty dove to the right just as the combine missed him by a few inches. “My fucking eyes, you fucker!” he yelled at, Rafferty could only assume, was Rafferty, and he turned and watched as the combine exited the field, mounted the bank, leveled for a few seconds, and plummeted downward into the pond. The television in the cab, tuned terminally to Fox News, shorted, then imploded, causing a huge bubble to burst from the pond, which sparked a Fox News outage throughout the township.
And that sucked for devoted viewers of Friday night’s Malignline, a weekly, hour-long rant hosted and ranted by Benton Grahanahan. Grahanahan had recently dethroned Tucker Carlson as the most must-watched master of muster.
One armed man, then two, converging from different directions, followed the combine into the pond, evidently thinking they could save it, or at least its driver. Soon their legs and then their guns were fully immersed in the dark water. They both realized it simultaneously, and with a “fuck” and a “shit” and an “etcetera” they tested their rifles, both of which failed to fire. One of them did emit a small frog, however, which plopped into the water and swam away.
By now the combine was fully covered by pondwater, and its driver, the cow corn-blinded man, surfaced, spitting and cursing.
This was the most action the Kuglerscheitzville area had seen for decades. In July of 1972, Hurricane Agnes turned the roads into rivers. Someone thought it hilarious to take his young son out hydroplaning on his motorcycle; its tires slid on a curve, and both were thrown from the bike. The father was decapitated on a metal culvert; his head was swept away by the torrent and never found.
The son, Martin Kunkleweiss, survived his father, Barry Kunkleweiss, and was now proprietor of Kunkleweiss Garage on Palm Road. The shop had actually worked on the now-submerged combine two months ago; it had had a bad catasaqua rod, and Martin had had his son, Thelmo, replace it.
The rod, like the rest of the machine, would sit at the bottom of Kolby’s Pond for more than a decade before it was pulled out by a crew filming a documentary called Rafferty’s Bikeride for PBS.
For the excursion to be documentary-worthy, however, Rafferty had to get back to his bike, then his car. Still crouching near the edge of the field, he scanned his short-term memory to figure out who was left who could still kill him.
Because the pilot had poor night-vision, he’d called it an evening and steered the airplane from the area. It eventually crashed into a stone church, killing the pilot, the minister of the church, and a small boy not related to the minister.
Two of the five men on foot were drenched and demoralized. The combine’s driver was a poor swimmer and had trouble getting out of the pond.
The man who had turned his ankle on the Hocking block was now part of the soil and would aid in making this coming harvest the most successful in a decade for the owner of this land, Wally Hildebeitel.
That left two men who could still possibly make Rafferty’s day end fatally. He began to run. Making himself as thin as possible, he ran stiffly down a row that he knew would take him back to Stauffer Bridge Road. He thought of his bike, and whether it was still rideable. Either way, it wasn’t Rafferty’s style to leave something of his in a field. (The Hocking block and the fistful of cow corn were not technically his.)
When he finally emerged, he saw exactly where he was, which was only seven or eight feet from where he’d thought he’d come out. To the left, near his old driveway, right in the middle of the road, sat a dark, rectangular haze with a light glimmering inside. Rafferty read it as a black Chevrolet Camaro, and the light glimmering within as that of a lit marijuana cigarette. Next to it stood a dark figure.
Rafferty dropped to his belly and began to crawl across the road.
“HEY!” yelled someone.
Rafferty stopped crawling.
“Stay down, motherfucker,” said the man, who approached cautiously.
Rafferty got up and turned to run into the adjacent cornfield. A shot rang out. Rafferty’s shoe disappeared. He stopped, waiting to feel the flash of pain from his right foot. It didn’t come.
He darted into the field and quickly found his flung bike. When he came out again, he was already pedaling. A shot rang. Rafferty began zig-zagging, but with purpose. Three more shots ignited, but Rafferty’s route was too circuitous. He plowed into the shooter, and went on his way. A scream and two sharp curves later, he heard the Camaro’s engine start. He would have to pedal hard, like he’d never pedaled before, except for that time when he’d just barely beaten a train crossing the road down which he raced from the church in 1973. Currently his bike rose over the Berky barn site; he flew down the hill past the Fretz Road outlet and up the rise to the bridge. Bathed in headlight from behind, he saw his own shadow hop off the bike and fling it to the road before darting onto the dirt road, where his car awaited. The Camaro ran over his bike and burst into flames. Just after, a flaming man emerged from the car, screaming, and jumped off the bridge into Kuglerscheitzville Creek.
Although his bike was mangled, Rafferty was not the type to leave a loyal friend behind. The Schwinn had served him well, and maybe in Hahira he would fashion some sort of shrine to it, something to commemorate this harrowing but ultimately satisfying bike hike. He carefully picked up the twisted frame and pretzeled wheels, carried the heap to his bike rack, which he knew how to use with his eyes closed, which was good, because the car sat in pitch blackness.
Once the bike was secured, he found his keys in his fanny pack. Had I not told you he was wearing a fanny pack? If I hadn’t, it’s because I never see Rafferty without it. I’m used to it. It’s a kangarooic extension of his waist.
He unlocked the car, which had not been locked, and slid, exhausted, into the driver’s seat. For the first time since rt. 22, he let out a long breath, then a whimper. “What’s the matter, fuckface,” said a voice behind him. “Gonna cry?”
The only person who’d ever called Rafferty “fuckface” — and he’d done it many times, not so much in elementary, but in middle school — was Dean Diefenderfer, Deanna’s fraternal twin who’d completed his childhood — if it had indeed ended — in Rafferty’s childhood home.
“Ugh,” replied Rafferty.
“That’s right. ‘Ugh.’” Dean Diefenderfer laughed as he thrust a pistol’s muzzle against Rafferty’s neck. “I’ve missed hearing that ‘ugh’ out of your stupid mouth.”
“You were waiting for me in my car.”
“Yep, that’s right. Nice in here.”
“Thank you.”
“Besides, Fox News is out. Thanks, asshole.”
Rafferty had no answer to such an insult.
“Yeah, I’ve missed that ‘ugh’ from you, asshole.”
Rafferty, realizing stalling might be his best hope, began making conversation. “Like in Civics class?”
“Civics? Seventh grade? Yeah, that old bitch, Mrs. Grider,” agreed Dean, who then checked himself. “You probably loved her, didn’t you, asshole?”
“I didn’t, actually. She made me feel bad about myself.”
“Me too!” chimed in Dean, before he could help himself. “God, she was such a, such a —”
“Stickler,” said Rafferty.
“No, not that. Asshole,” said Dean, who then thought a while. “It’s just that she…uh, hell, nothing was ever good enough for her.”
“She made you work,” agreed Rafferty. “That’s for sure.”
“She worked my ass off. Then finally I just said ‘fuck it, nothin’s gonna please her.’”
“Really?” Rafferty looked at him in the mirror as he spoke. “That never occurred to me. I thought I was supposed to keep trying, and I did, and I made a B in that class.”
“Wow,” gushed Dean. “Like, I mean, you fucker. You suck-up mother fucker.” He jammed the gun more forcefully into Rafferty’s neck. “You probably love HRC, too. Grider was just an early version of Hillary. She flunked me. She sucked.”
Rafferty noticed, aided by the light emitted by the car fire, Dean’s face had reassumed the fragile belligerence of his youth. “Yeah, maybe. She probably made a fool out of me in the end.”
Dean was suddenly at a loss for words. It made Rafferty uncomfortable, and he filled the space with something else they shared.
“So, you’ve been at the old house for a while now.”
“No shit, Shamrock.”
“Did you ever go down in the basement of the house?”
“Uh, duh, what do you think, asshole?”
“You know that part, just past the washer-dryer area, the cement block wall that stops at around five feet up, about two feet from the ceiling?”
“Yeah,” said Dean warily.
“You ever look in that space?”
“No,” he whispered, before recovering. “I mean, of course, jerk.”
In the reflection, Rafferty noticed Dean’s aggressive comeback couldn’t quite hide the fear in his eyes. “Did you see anything?” he asked.
“Yeah. I only got a quick glance. It was dark. I don’t remember. Why? What did you see?”
“I don’t know if I can say.” A pause hung in the darkness. This was already the longest conversation Rafferty’d had in two years, and it wasn’t over yet. “Did you ever tell anyone?”
“No. Wait, yeah, I told Deanna.”
“Well, I know what it is.”
“What? What is it?”
“I can’t describe it. At least — not with a gun at my throat.”
Dean eased off the pressure a bit.
“It was an old blanket. A quilt,” whispered Rafferty.
“What? No way.” Rafferty could tell Dean was impressed.
“Maybe from early 20th century. Maybe Amish.”
“Man alive. So…did you, like go in?”
“I did, a few times. It became, sort of, my refuge. My parents weren’t getting along. And then, when we were moving, I left something there. For you, I guess.”
Dean, again, could not find words.
“When I knew it was you who was moving in, I wanted leave something that, I don’t know, showed how much I…well, cared about the place.”
“For me? Why for me?”
“I suppose I would have left it for anyone moving in. I certainly couldn’t take it with me. But you were my age. Even though we’d had our problems, the bullying and all, I knew you’d…get it. Eventually.”
Dean choked up a little — like on a baseball bat, but the hand seemed to be on his own throat. “You did that for me?”
“Well, sure.”
“Can we go see?” said Dean, not successfully hiding his excitement. “I mean, drive us there.” He put the gun on Rafferty again, but this time almost…well, lovingly.
“No,” said Rafferty, even though part of him was dying to see his house again, and to not die.
Dean was flabbergasted. “No?”
“No,” he repeated. “It’s yours now. No one else should go in there.”
“Oh.”
“I don’t mind running you by there,” Rafferty said, relenting a little. “But then I got to get going. This bike ride I took, well, it lasted a little longer than I thought it might.”
“Yeah, I heard. Assho…I mean…yeah, that was probably pretty tough.”
Rafferty hadn’t heard sirens. This was way out in the country, after all, fifteen miles from Allentown, and, as it turned out, only Deanna had had the ability to dial 911. Had she? Maybe she figured the farmers would handle matters. Besides, all the area police were likely dealing with the plane crash.
He didn’t ask, but merely started the car and drove the quarter mile to Dean’s house. He stopped.
Dean cleared his throat. “Well, okay man, you take it easy,” he said.
“I’ll try.”
Dean paused, seemingly to say something else, but then shut the door and walked briskly up the driveway.
Later, as Rafferty drove to his rented, secluded house in Zionsville, Dean conjured the nerve to take a flashlight to the basement. “Where the hell you goin’?” asked Deanna.
“Never mind.”
He descended the squeaky staircase and hung a left.
Standing on an upturned joint compound bucket, he leaned into the cavern. It was cool, earthy and musty. There, about five feet in, resting on old soil, was the Amish quilt. He pulled on it and realized the blanket was wrapped around something. Unraveling it, he slowly unveiled a ceramic sculpture, a human form not quite life size.
Pulling it out of the cavern, setting it upright in harsh light, he saw it was a nude, but not like those Dean had seen online. Those girls were dirty, leering at Dean, as if to challenge his masculinity. This, however, was a tribute to beauty and, in spite of the nakedness, dignity.
He set it down on the concrete floor, stood back and beheld the perfect likeness of his own first crush, Mrs. Perrineau.
