Nelson DeMille - Spencerville

There were a few people on the benches, sitting under the ornate lampposts, a few couples strolling. Keith saw an empty bench and sat a moment. In front of him was the Civil War monument, a huge bronze statue of a Union soldier with musket, and on the granite base of the statue were the names of Spencer County's Civil War dead, hundreds of them.

From where he sat, by the light of the lampposts, he could make out the other war memorials, which he knew well, beginning with an historical marker relating to the Indian Wars, proceeding to the Mexican War, and on and on, war by war, to the Vietnam War, which was only a simple bronze plaque inscribed with the names of the dead. It was good, he thought, that small towns remembered, but it did not escape him that the monuments seemed to diminish in size and grandeur after the Civil War, as if the townspeople were getting frustrated with the whole business.

It was a pleasant night, and he sat awhile. The choices of things to do in a small town on a Friday night were somewhat limited, and he smiled to himself, recalling evenings in London, Rome, Paris, Washington, and elsewhere. He wondered if he could really live here again. He could, he thought. He could get back into a simple life if he had company.

He looked around and saw the lighted truck of the ice cream vendor and a group of people standing around. It had occurred to him that if he came into town on a Friday night, he might see Annie. Did the Baxters go out to dinner? Did they shop together on a Friday night?

He had no idea.

He remembered the summer nights when he and Annie Prentis sat in this park and talked for hours. He recalled especially the summer before college, before the war, before the Kennedy assassination, before drugs, before there was a world outside of Spencer County, when he and his country were still young and full of hope, and a guy married the girl next door and went to the in-laws for Sunday dinner.

This park, he remembered, had been filled with his friends; the girls wore dresses, the boys wore short hair. Newly invented transistor radios played Peter, Paul and Mary, Joan Baez, Dion, and Elvis, and the volume was low.

The preferred smoke was Newport menthols, not grass, and Coke was drunk, not snorted. The couples held hands, but if you got caught necking behind the bushes, you got a quick trip to the police station across the street and a tongue-lashing from the old police magistrate on duty.

The world was about to explode, and there were inklings of it, but no one could have predicted what finally happened. The summer of '63, Keith reflected, had been called the last summer of American innocence, and certainly it had been his last summer of innocence, when he lost his virginity in Annie Prentis's bedroom.

He had never seen a naked woman before Annie, not even in pictures or in the movies. Playboy existed in 1963, but not in Spencer County, and risque movies were censored before they got to Spencerville. Thus, he had no idea what a naked woman, let alone a vagina, looked like. He smiled to himself and recalled their first fumbled attempt to consummate the act. She had been as inexperienced as he, but her instincts were better. He had gotten the condom, which he'd carried in his wallet for no good reason, from an older boy who had gotten a box of them in Toledo, and it had cost Keith two dollars for one, a fortune in those days. He thought, If we had known what lay ahead, we would have tried to keep that summer going forever.

Keith stood and began walking. A boom box blasted somewhere, rap music, a few teenage boys sat in a circle on the grass playing handheld electronic games, and a few old men sat on the benches. A young couple lay side by side on the lawn, grappling in fully clothed frustration.

Keith thought back to that summer, then to the autumn of that year. He and Annie had become perfectly matched lovers, reveling in their experimentations, their discoveries, their adolescent enthusiasm and stamina. There were no books on the subject, no X-rated videotapes, no guide to the mysteries of sex, but in some incredible instinctual way, they'd discovered oral sex, the sixty-nine position, the erogenous zones, erotic undressing, a dozen different positions, dirty talk, and playacting. He had no idea where all that came from, and they would sometimes jokingly accuse the other of having long sexual histories, or watching illegal blue movies made in Europe in those days, or of getting information from their friends. In reality, they were both virgins, both clueless, but they were inquisitive and surprisingly uninhibited.

They had made love every chance they had, every place they could, and kept it secret, as lovers had to do in those days.

Away at college, they could be more open, but the dorms were segregated by sex and tightly policed. The motels refused that sort of trade, so, for two years, they made love in an apartment off campus that belonged to married friends. Eventually, Annie rented a single room above a hardware store, though they still lived in their dorms.

Keith wondered again why they hadn't married then. Perhaps, he thought, they hadn't wanted to destroy the romance, the mystique, the taste of the forbidden fruit. And there seemed to be no rush, no need, no insecurities, while they were in the cloistered world of college.

But then came graduation and the draft notice. Half the men he'd known then regarded the draft notice not as a call to arms, but as a call to the altar. It didn't get you out of the Army, but it made life easier if you were a married soldier. You got to live off post after training, got extra pay, and being married reduced your chances of being sent into the meat grinder.

Yet they never really discussed marriage. Ultimately, he thought, we had different dreams. She liked campus life. I was itching for adventure.

They had been soulmates, friends, and lovers. They'd shared thoughts, feelings, and emotions. They'd shared their money, their cars, and their lives for over six years. But for all their openness with each other, neither could broach the subject of the future, neither wanted to hurt the other, so in the end, he'd leaned over her bed, kissed her, and left.

Keith was nearly at the other side of the park, and he could see the Posthouse across the street.

He heard loud voices to his left and turned. About thirty feet up an intersecting path stood two uniformed policemen. They were shouting at a man lying on a park bench, and one of them was tapping the man on the soles of his shoes with his nightstick. "Get up! Stand! Stand!"

The man stood unsteadily, and, in the illumination of a postlight, Keith saw that it was Billy Marlon.

One of the cops said, "I told you not to sleep here."

The other cop shouted, "You're a goddamned drunk! I'm sick of seeing you here! You're a bum!"

Keith wanted to tell the young men that Billy Marlon was an ex-combat vet, a onetime football player for Spencerville, a father, a man. But he stood there and waited to see if the incident was finished.

But it wasn't. Both cops had Billy backed up against a tree now, and they were face-to-face with him, hurling verbal abuse at the man. "We told you to stay out of town! Nobody wants to see you here! You don't listen real good! Do you?" and so on.

Billy stood with his back to the tree, then suddenly shouted, "Leave me alone! I'm not bothering nobody! Leave me alone!"

One of the cops raised his nightstick, and Billy covered his face and head with his hands. Keith stepped forward, but the cop only hit the tree above Billy's head. Both cops laughed. One of them said to him, "Tell us again what you're going to do to Chief Baxter. Come on, Rambo, tell us." They laughed again.

Billy seemed less frightened now and looked at both of them. He said, "I'm going to kill him. I'm a combat vet, and I'm going to kill him. You tell him I'm going to kill him someday. Tell him!"