Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. Vol. 40, No. 6, June, 1995

He hmmmphed, then gave me a look over his shoulder. “You in ’Nam?” he asked.

“I was there,” I told him.

He nodded. “Khe Sanh, ’68-’69.”

“Saigon,” I told him, not really wanting to talk about it, “ ’69–72.”

He sighed. “Long time ago, eh?”

Not long enough, I thought.

The mountain road was slippery with frozen patches of snow, so he had to slow down. He was quiet most of the way, and I really hoped he didn’t want to talk about the war, but once we were close to the lodges, he said, “Never got over how hot it was, y’know? Like a steambath, sometimes, you remember?”

“It was hot,” I agreed.

He turned onto the road that led up to my cabin and said, “Stupid bugger, probably didn’t know what the cold could do.”

“I’m sorry?”

He pulled to a stop, then turned in his seat. “You know,” he told me. “Walkin’ around in the middle of the night, up on this mountain in the dead of winter.” He shook his head with surprising sadness. “Comin’ from over there, he probably had no experience of such cold before. He sits down for a rest, and before he knows it, he’s asleep — and that’s all she wrote.”

“Maybe you’re right,” I said.

I paid him his fare and got out of the cab.

“Stupid bugger,” he said again.

I was dead tired by the time my head hit the pillow, but sleep was no easier won that night than the night before.

In fact, that night I had the worst nightmares of my life.

Rippling the fabric of my unconscious, bad little memories, tiny nut-hard guilts that harbor mostly quietly in my mind’s dark alleys, careless cruelties half-forgotten that wait like thumbtacks in a pile rug waiting to jab when I didn’t expect it, things I’d done and wished I hadn’t — I don’t know why they picked that night to attack me, but they did and tossed me every which way, and I didn’t get the sleep I needed until nearly dawn.

But then, thank goodness, I did sleep, and it was midafternoon before I woke up.

To a brilliantly bright day — and, for some reason, my head was clear, my mind sharp, and as I started out on my run down the mountain, I felt really good.

Despite some sombre thoughts.

About young Charley White Hand, and his bad, bad choice; and Loretta and the second guessing she was now probably putting herself through; and Tuyet Le and her children and the quietly desperate lives they’d lived so far and had before them; and Long Van Doan.

My snowman.

His own life ended as coldly as it had been lived.

R.I.P.

I jogged past the lookout, feeling strong and good, and around the turn that would take me to the ranger station, a little girl of eight or nine standing in the driveway of a large white house on the mountain side of the highway waved at me as I went by, so I smiled, waved back, and kept moving, thinking I’d better slow down or I’d never have enough for the uphill leg...

When a snowball hit me smack in the back of my head.

Surprised, then amused, I skidded to a stop and looked back at the little girl, who’d been joined by a littler boy and who both stood together in the driveway, semihiding behind a mailbox, giggling.

Their eyes looked wide and excited and a little scared.

I waggled a remonstrating finger at them, then grabbed up some snow, made a ball of my own, and threw a perfect strike at the mailbox, which sent both children laughing up the driveway.

I watched them run, casting half-worried, half-happy looks back at me, then I laughed myself and started to run again.

Down to the ranger station, then back the way I’d come, thinking about the steak I was going to reward myself with that night, thinking of the wine I’d have with it, and thinking about my life and how I was living it — and I came to a few decisions, not the least of which had to do with the new me I’d started to create.

I decided to stay off cigarettes, moderate my meat and liquor intake, and keep running.

Not to be young again but to be everything my age can be, and for the first time in a while, my discontent had less of an edge to it, and I was feeling pretty smug...

When a squad-sized unit of children, aged five to ten — including the little girl and boy who’d assaulted me earlier — rose up from behind bushes and trees on either side of the highway and let me have it from all sides.

It was a short, noisy, happy snowball fight that ended when I caught one on the side of the head and fell spread-eagled and laughing into a drift on the side of the road. I was too exhausted to defend myself any longer, so after I’d taken a few more hits but didn’t return fire, the children got bored with me and ran off, and I stood up, hearing their noise grow fainter, deciding I’d just walk the rest of the way — and feeling, for the first time, glad to be where I was...

When the whole thing exploded in my mind like a starburst.

Which is how it happens sometimes.