Links on a Chain

Chapter 1

LINKS ON A CHAIN

Five Days in October

Jon V. Kofas

LINKS ON A CHAIN

Five Days in October

Jon V. Kofas

[United States Government Copyright Office TXu 2-164-056]

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

Published 2022

Index

Chapter I

Chapter II

Chapter III

Chapter IV

Chapter V

Chapter I: Valhalla Dreams at the Roadside Inn

(Friday, October 16, 1987)

Anniversary Nightmares

Early morning dew jolted me into full consciousness. Gazing out at the fog-covered backyard, my eyes fell on my dog Skoll scrounging for food in the chicken coop. Next to him in my sculptured animal garden, the cow ignored the chickens tirelessly pecking away at food remnants from the previous day. Taking a deep breath, I struggled to clear my head from early morning drowsiness. Ethereally gliding from the old wooden windows into the stuffy apartment the morning dew brought the latest nightmare into my consciousness.

So vivid were the images, they felt more real than my dreary life. In the Valhalla valley of the dead, the dream thrusted me into realm of myth and superstition. Out of nowhere, my deceased father was calling me home. Dressed in a Viking outfit and covered with the skin of a polar bear, he was holding a long rusty dagger with both hands. I asked if he was lonely in his ancestral land. He stared at me with blood-covered eyes. Before I realized what was happening, he grabbed my neck with his icy hands. Like claws on my warm skin, he was puncturing my flesh. “Dagfred, my boy,” he growled in his native Norwegian tongue. “Here in the Hall of the Slain, Odin delivers souls.”

Frightened and disoriented, I tried running away from the eerie apparition. The coal-covered air in the valley was chocking me. Chills down my spine froze on my skin. Held by a powerful magnetic force from beneath the earth, my body was hardly moving. As I struggled to lift my feet off the ground, I felt his blood-covered eyes following me around the valley. “The gates of nothingness are open for eternity, Dagfred. In death, you’ll understand the worthless life you have lived my boy.”

Inside my head, I was protesting, but lost the ability to speak. The grip of his clawed hands around my neck must have muted my vocal cords. Looking around the valley, my only thought was that death playing a chess game with the knight in the Swedish film “The Seventh Seal.” I signaled that I wanted to wager my life in a game of poker, the game in which I found my escape. If he lost, he would help me escape from the valley. Unmoved by my unimaginative ploy, he growled that I had failed as much in discovering my purpose as I had in enriching the lives of others.

Frightfully vivid, the nightmare did not awake me until the crow of the rooster accompanied by my dog’s persistent barking. After a big loss at the poker game the previous night, profound guilt about my nihilistic life consumed me. That Friday, the fifteenth anniversary of my father’s purchase of the motel, I dreaded the idea that the old motel was the only thing connecting me to the real world. Prone to superstition, desperation was driving me closer to an omen from beyond the grave about my gambling addiction. Bedtime stories about superstitions of our ancestral land my grandfather often shared with me and my sister had stayed with me. “Our forefathers believed the fox to be more cunning than any beast,” my grandfather explained. In the distant Nordic lands, the mystery of their lives carried greater fascination than the dreary reality of Apple Valley, Minnesota. My skepticism aside about the mysterious powers of devilish foxes, trolls, goblins, and gnomes, the fox lurking behind the henhouse was a premonition of more losses at the gambling table.

Against the early morning fog, the tree line separating the motel and the adjacent cattle farm, the yard resembled nature’s green wall protecting my motel from the outside world. Yielding to fate of the wind, the treetops reached for the clouds, collecting nourishing moisture. For a gambler surrendering to fate for the thrill of fulfilment, the calming force of the tree-line afforded tranquility. With every drop of morning dew, the angels’ teardrops washed away nightmares from the night before. Baptized in nature’s blessings, dawn was delivering another day of eternal renewal.

As a teenager, I often joked about angels gambling in Heaven to make eternity exciting. To set me on the path of the Lord, my mother chastised me for blaspheming. “It would take all the angels in God’s Heaven with the Virgin Mary’s blessing to cleanse your wicked soul.” Castigating me into embracing the Lutheran church was her way of sharing maternal love. The closest I came to experience ephemeral spiritual transcendence was in the solitude of the motel’s backyard near the animals behind the tree-line.

Upon opening the chicken coop, the turkeys and chickens fought their way around my feet to claim their share of the grain. Pecking away, they took turns at my mud-covered shoes sprinkled with corn kernels. The slow-moving turkeys lost ground to the chickens. Amid the commotion, the cow tilted her head toward my dog barking and looking toward the motel’s parking lot. Drenched with morning dew, the parking lot resembled a junk car lot. Just two weeks before Halloween, nature left traces of autumn’s brownish-yellowish brush. Thin layers of ice-coated leaves formed nature’s quilt over everything in sight.

Free of ambitions for riches, I isolated myself at the low-budget motel whose anniversary I needed to celebrate that day. Most of my former college friends had already traded in ideals of working for a better society for the race to greater wealth. Two horseshoes above the large oak door in the motel lobby adorned the rustic look of the original structure when it was a originally a barn. Converted into a motel in 1953, it served the spontaneous and planned needs of those who could not afford fancier places.

The original owners named it Strassen , the German word for ‘Roadside’ . Amber, the voluptuous middle-aged manager often joked that ghosts of guests with tragic lives had cursed the place. Those staying more than a week were usually running away from debt collectors, marriage, some wretchedness they invited into their lives, or whatever calamity life threw at them unexpectedly. Most were hoping for an unsolicited visit from Lady Luck that rarely knocked at the roadside motel.

The only one flirting with Lady Luck was Abdi, a recently paroled black man. After I realized he had already left for work, I breathed a sigh of relief. Every time I passed by his room, I prayed he would not encounter Elmer, the trucker, who worked for the same company. Along with a variety of white-power bumper stickers decorating his truck, Elmer had pasted the effigy of Jesus just above the g*n rack on the cabin’s rear window where he displayed the confederate flag. Right below it, magazine pictures of n***d models facing Jesus made it difficult to determine where Elmer’s taste for carnal temptation ended and religious convictions began. Hardly the first guest whose Holy Trinity included Jesus, guns, and n***d models. Elmer’s cultural smorgasbord displayed on the truck was deliberately provocative.

As soon as Amber saw me walking toward the lobby, she turned down the volume of Christian evangelical radio. Sitting behind the counter petting her dog, she kept flipping pages of a tabloid magazine and making the appropriate grimaces depending on what was in the magazine. For a woman in her late fifties, she was more alluring than women half her age. Taking small sips of coffee, she waited for me to say something -presumably about the motel’s anniversary.

“Sweetheart, I ought to do something special for you today,” I assured her. “What did we do last year? Hey, all things considered, we’ve held up pretty well since the old man left us. As long as we keep these rooms filled and our expenses under control, we’ll be just fine. It’s all about your magic touch with the guests. Sometimes, when the light hits you just right, I believe you can even bring my father back from the dead.”

Pleased with the compliment, she smiled and ran her fingers through her long light brown hair. Appreciating that I admired her as much as my father, she kept our Platonic relationship as close to a marriage as either of us cared to experience. “You’re awful nice to a lonely old lady this morning. Are you going to ruin it by asking for gambling money? Alright, how much did you lose last night?” Too embarrassed to complain about my losing streak, I looked away. Sipping coffee, she flipped magazine pages with her right hand, while using her left to gently stroke her dog sitting on the counter.

After she turned off the “no vacancy” sign, she reminded me that even in tough economic times the motel made enough money to support my gambling hobby. “If my nightmares are an indication, lady luck won’t even flirt with me. Unless I win tonight, I may spend the weekend watching TV and eating chocolates with you. I thought of borrowing a few bucks from my sister, but I’m just superstitious about asking for money on the anniversary.”

Puffing on a freshly-lit cigarette, she asked how much I needed. Instead of confessing about money anxieties, I murmured that we could not afford room vacancies. “Baby, don’t you worry about the vacancies. Before the end of the day, I’ll have these rooms rented out. There’ll be gambling money in your pocket tonight. But you better turn to Jesus for your salvation and do it before it’s too late. It’s the only way your luck will change. There’s sure as Hell no salvation at the poker table.”

Against the background of a blast of morality from Evangelical radio, cigarette smoke seemed less harmful. Between preaching the word of God and asking the faithful to send money, the radio preacher was admonishing listeners about Armageddon. Excited at the prospect of mass annihilation, he warned of inescapable divine punishment. Religious doom and gloom on a daily basis filled the void in Amber’s soul. She dusted off cigarette ashes on the countertop next to the dog and emptied the ashtray. Rhetorically, I asked if removing sins was as easy as emptying an ashtray.

Comforted by a copy of the Bible next to the dog on the lobby countertop, she pointed to the glam magazine photographs of models wearing expensive jewelry covering delicate parts on their sculptured bodies. As much as she was devoted to Evangelical radio, she lived vicariously through tabloid magazines. “Look here, baby,” she singled out the photograph of an heiress sitting in an expensive car wearing designer clothing and expensive jewelry. “This here is what fame and fortune look like these days. Who can afford this stuff in this town? Well, maybe old man Gretz’s family and that’s about it. One thing for sure, nobody staying at your roadside motel.”

In honor of my father’s memory on the motel’s anniversary, she was wearing a new dress adorned by a cross and a long gold chain around her neck. As the years were taking their toll on her voluptuous body, her spirit had rapidly drifted between Jesus and glam magazines. Appeasing her demons through faith, her sense of belonging in Christianity kept her going. Not wishing to dampen her enthusiasm, I made no comment either about religion or about her flowery perfume making me dizzy.

Lifting her sparkling brown eyes ornamented by long fake eye lashes, she asked if she looked festive for the motel’s anniversary. I nodded without saying anything, prompting her to call my attention to her wrinkled-free face. “Baby, the glow you see comes from deep inside my soul. Now, be honest. When I look this good, don’t you feel too? I know it makes our guests feel good. Some of them are nice enough to pay me a compliment. A few try to see how far I’ll go to accommodate their stay. The cheap ones try to get free dessert during their stay. Real men treat me like a lady. They know there is nothing free in life.”