SADDLEBAGS, Trunks, and Tombs

Chapter 7

The Watcher: 

I vaguely remembered the previous night.  I had meant to read the letter again but as I reached for it I had become filled with a dread so deep that I had snatched my hand away as if the letter were a rattlesnake.  Later, as the year moved on, I would recall feeling as if the bite of the rattler would have been like the caress of a woman compared to what would become of my life.

My neck and back were stiff from falling asleep sitting straight up on the couch.  I slowly stood up and stretched long and hard, hoping to stretch the stiffness away, and began to make my way to the small bathroom in the back of the flat.  On my way in, I grabbed a pair of my older, more worn Levi 501 button flies, a navy blue polo shirt and a couple of towels, dropped them on the sink and made my way into the steaming shower.  

I stayed in the shower longer than was my normal, almost aware of the wrinkling of my skin.  I truly believe that I was trying to wash away the last two days of my life. It didn’t work.  I turned off the water and stepped into the steamy, cool air of the bathroom.  I started to dry off and get dressed.  As I was slipping on my jeans, somehow I knew.  My life had changed last night.  

I cleared the condensation from the center of the bathroom window and pushed my, as my mother would say, too long, unkempt, deep brown hair, out of my face.  I was just beginning to brush my teeth when I was caught off guard.  For a moment, the dark blue eyes staring back at me were not my own.  It was him!  I shook my head as if it would truly clear my mind, and the vision of the gunslinger disappeared.  

Not here too!  Setting my toothbrush down on the sink I continued to stare at my own reflection wondering what was next.  Though I was planning to go through my normal daily motions in my heart I knew that everything had changed and nothing would ever be the same again.

As I was padding into the living room the phone began to ring.  Wrapping the towel around my neck, I picked up the phone.  “Hello?”  “Hey, it’s me.  What’s going on?  Have you had your morning coffee yet?”  It was my agent, Ken, on the other end of the line.  Ken Fountain was a man whose name definitely fit him.  He was a fountain of conversation, a fountain of life and a fountain of ideas on ways for me to keep making us money.  I’ll tell you what, I ain’t mad at him.  Neither of us were out in the cold or starving.  

“Hey Ken, I was just on my way out the door,” I said, still trying to sound normal. “What’s up?”  “You are, from the word on the street, my man!  Look, I know you have your novels that are collecting dust in the corner, but I just finished reading the reviews on the last article you wrote for the Oregonian.   You’ve got my phone ringing off the hook!  It looks like you’re the hottest coal in the fire right now!  I’ve gotten messages on my answering machine requesting you and your magic pen!!  Look, go ahead and do what you do to get your morning going and give me a buzz when you’re ready to make another dollar or two.”  “Alright, Fountain, give me a few and I’ll get back with you.  Later man, and thanks.”  

I hung up the phone, pulled my shirt on over my still wet hair and slipped my mildly damp feet into the Birkenstocks that sat next to the front door.  That call would have normally sent me over the edge, over the edge for a type B personality anyway.  This was huge!!  It was the call that every freelance writer desired but very few ever got.  I had tried to resonate with the excitement I should have been feeling but my mind was where it was at and nothing in my normal world could touch that right now.  For those of you who may be wondering, yeah, it’s all about me right now.  I really need my coffee! 

After grabbing the keys off the counter, I slipped out the door and down the back staircase that led outside.  I just couldn’t deal with my landlords this morning.  I could barely deal with myself!  I made my way to the coffee house, got my coffee, a pineapple danish and a copy of the Oregonian and made my way back home.  As soon as I was in the door, I put the danish and my keys on the counter and tossed the paper on the coffee table.  

This ended up being one of my final “normal” acts for the next year.  So much for being a creature of habit.  My mother would be pleased.  She had always alluded to the fact that though I was an easy child she wished she saw the spirit in me that she had seen in my brothers and my father.  If she only knew or if she had only taken the time to figure it out, she would have realized that what my father and brothers had shown on the outside was housed inside of me.  To this day I don’t believe she has read one piece that I have written.  Oh well, as I was saying, there would be no more normal days for me until the story in the window visions was finished with me.

It would turn out that it was a good thing I had purchased the newspaper, which consequently remained unread.  It would be the only thing to let me know exactly how much time had passed from the bewitchment of the window to the completion of the novel.  It would let me know exactly how much of my life I had lost to the story. 

I called Ken after chugging down half of my coffee. He ran down the list of offers we had received as I stared out at the boats on the Willamette.  There was an offer from the National Geographic that sounded promising. Ken and I ended up choosing six of the ten offers for me to focus on and I began to gather up my pencils and paper to get started. Pushing the window into the back of my mind, I sat down at the computer and began to do the research needed for the first article having to do with the indigenous peoples of Japan and their plight to survive while maintaining their way of life.  Strangely, I was beginning to know the feeling.  You never know, until it is threatened, what you will do to preserve your life and what you know it to be.