William Forstchen - One Second After

“I don’t need to hear this.”

“No, you don’t, Colonel.”

“Actually, I kind of prefer ‘Doctor,’ or ‘Professor.’”

“A doctor is someone who sticks things in you. A professor, well, they always struck me as a bit strange. Either rakes chasing the girls or boring, dusty types. Down here in the South, ‘Colonel’ sounds best. More masculine.”

“Well, I am no longer in active service. I am a professor, so let’s just settle for ‘John.’”

Jen gazed up at him for a moment, then came up to his side, stood on tiptoes, and kissed his cheek lightly.

“I can see why my own little girl once fell for you, John. You’ll lose both of them soon enough to some pimply-faced boys, so do hang on to her as long as you can.”

“Well, you sure as hell didn’t help, draping that gold necklace on her. What did it cost, a thousand, fifteen hundred?”

“Roughly, but then again, no lady tells the truth when it comes to her buying jewelry.”

“Until the bill comes in and the husband has to pay.”

There was a pause. He knew he had misspoken. If he had said such a thing around Mary, she’d have lit into him about a woman being independent and the hell with a husband handling the bills… and in fact she did handle all the family finances right up till the last weeks of her life.

As for Tyler, though, he no longer even knew what a bill was, and that hurt, no matter how self-reliant Jen tried to appear to be.

“I best be going,” Jen said.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean it that way.”

“It’s all right, John. Let me go up to the nursing home to spend some lime with Tyler and I’ll be back for the party.”

“Jennifer was expecting a ride in that monstrous car of yours.”

“The Edsel, my dear young man, was a generation ahead of its time.”

“And the biggest flop in the history of Ford Motors. My God, look at that grille; it’s ugly as sin.”

She lightened up a bit with the banter. There were half a dozen cars in her huge garage, several newer ones but also an actual Model A, up on blocks, and, beauty of beauties, a powder blue 1965 Mustang convertible. A lot of bad memories, though, were tied to that Mustang. When John and Mary were dating, they had conned her parents into letting them borrow the car for a cruise up the Blue Ridge Parkway to Mount Mitchell and John, driving it, had rear-ended an elderly couple’s Winnebago.

No one was hurt, but the car was totaled and Tyler had poured thousands into getting it restored… and swore that no one other than him or Jen would ever drive it again. And Jen still lived by that ruling.

“This Edsel will run forever, my dear, and just check on eBay to see how much it’s worth. I bet a heck of a lot more than that SUV thing you’ve got.”

He settled back against the stone wall as Jen maneuvered “the monster” around and cruised down the driveway at breakneck speed. The wall was warm from the afternoon sun. The Beanies were still there, and oh, that did hurt a bit; at least she could have carried Patriot Bear or the ostrich in.

Inside he could hear Jennifer and Pat chatting away about the necklace until the stereo kicked on. Some strange female wailing sounds. Britney Spears? No, she was old stuff now, thank God. What it was he couldn’t tell, other than the fact that he didn’t like it. Pink Floyd, some of the old stuff his parents listened to like Sinatra or Glenn Miller, or, better yet, the Chieftains were more his speed. He picked up one of the Beanies, Patriot Bear.

“Well, my friend, guess we’ll soon be left behind,” he said.

Leaning against the wall, he soaked in the view, the tranquility of the moment, broken only by the distant rumble of traffic on I-40 and the noise inside the house.

Ginger and Zach came back from their romp in the field behind the house and flopped down at his feet, panting hard.

The scent of lilacs was heavy on the air; if anyone wanted to truly see spring, they should live in these mountains. Down in the valley below, the cherry trees were in full bloom, just several hundred feet higher here at his home they were just beginning to blossom, but the lilacs were already blooming. To his right, ten miles away, the top of Mount Mitchell was actually crowned with a touch of snow, winter was still up there.

“When lilacs last in the dooryard bloomed…”

The scent always triggered in his mind Whitman’s lament for Lincoln.

It reminded John that tonight, the second Tuesday of the month, was Civil War Roundtable night in the basement of the Methodist church. It’d be another fun round of the usual raucous debate, the other members all needling him as their one and only Yankee, whom they could pick on.

And then the phone rang. He pulled it out of his pocket, expecting it to be Elizabeth. There was going to be hell to pay if it was. How she could stand up her kid sister on her birthday to sneak off with that pimple-faced, horny, fast-handed Johnson kid…

But the area code was 703… and John recognized the next three numbers… the Pentagon.

He opened the phone and clicked it on.

“Hey, Bob.”

“John, how you doing? Where’s my goddaughter?” He said it doing a halfway decent imitation of Marlon Brando as Don Corleone.

Bob Scales, now three stars, John’s former boss at Carlisle and a damn good friend, had stood as Jennifer’s godfather, and though Irish Catholic rather than Italian, he took the job seriously. He and his wife, Barbara, usually came down three or four times a year. When Mary died they had taken a couple of weeks off and stayed to help. They never had children and thus they considered Jennifer and Elizabeth to be their surrogates.

“Growing up,” John said sadly. “Her grandmother gave her a gold necklace that must of cost a grand or more, which counted a helluva lot more than the Beanies, and the stack of Pokemon cards still waiting inside. I even got tickets to Disney World for once school lets out that I’ll give her at dinner, but I wonder now if it will be the same.”

“You mean when you took her there when she was six and Elizabeth ten? Hell, yeah, it will be different, but you’ll still see the little girl come out down there, even with Elizabeth. How’s Elizabeth doing, by the way?

“I’m thinking of shooting her boyfriend later today.” Bob roared with laughter.

“Maybe it’s best I didn’t have daughters,” Bob finally replied. “Sons, yeah…”

His voice trailed off for a moment. “Hey, let me speak to Jennifer, ok?”

“Sure.”

John walked into the house, shouting for Jennifer, who came dashing out of her bedroom, still wearing that damn necklace, and grabbed the phone. “Hi, Uncle Bob!” John tapped her on the shoulder. “You take your insulin?” he asked.

She nodded her head; then chattering away, she walked around the house. John looked out the window across the valley to the mountains beyond. It was a beautiful, pristine spring day. And his mood began to lighten. Several of Jennifer’s friends would be over soon for a small party. He’d cook up some burgers on the grill out on the side deck; the kids would then retreat to Jennifer’s room. He had just opened the pool in the backyard over the weekend, and though the water was a chilly sixty-eight, a couple of the kids might jump in.

He’d flush them out around dark, go to his Roundtable meeting, and maybe later this evening he’d dig back into that article he was committed to for the Civil War Journal about Lee versus Grant as a strategic commander… a no-brainer but still an extra five hundred bucks when done and another vita builder for tenure review next year. He could stay up late; his first lecture wasn’t until eleven in the morning tomorrow.