Back to Life

By James McDowell

Driving through the sandhills of western Nebraska, Charlie Hudson falls asleep at the wheel and rams the back of a pickup truck. The quirky smile of a young female passenger in the truck subconsciously triggers a forgotten melody and cryptic dream from Charlie's childhood. When a surprising clue to the identity of the passenger surfaces, he recruits his brother, Tom, to accompany him on an intriguing adventure to a small Nebraska town, in hopes of solving the mystery. Back to Life is a sentimental, humorous, and suspenseful read, with lots of twists and turns that will keep you captivated to the very last page. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: James McDowell
• Release date: Nov 15, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201558062

Book preview

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First off, I want to thank my wife, Dianne, who kept me going on this, even when all seemed futile. Knowing someone would be there at the finish line to read the damn thing was vital to its completion. And then, afterward, when the real work of editing began, for her willingness to share her own prodigious artistic sensibilities to enrich a description, clarify a passage, or simply to point out grammatical errors, I am eternally grateful.

I also want to thank my brother, Scott, to whom I first pitched the idea over a midnight campfire, and who then encouraged me to turn it into a short story. Also, many thanks to my two sons, Taylor and Mason, my three sisters, Laurie, Julie, and Marjorie, and my uncle Dennis, who read through many rough drafts and offered critical insights and suggestions that have brought this novella to life and helped make it so much more than what I could have accomplished alone. 

BACK TO LIFE

The Nebraska sandhills were lunar-like in appearance; each moonlit bluff forging an unearthly spectacle against the violet, predawn sky. It could have passed for Apollo footage, but Charlie Hudson wasn’t awake enough to notice.

On the road for nearly ten straight hours, his eyelids were feeling as if they were made of lead and his chin wanted to attach itself to his chest. He was now hunched over the wheel, preoccupied with one simple objective: to find an exit. He needed coffee and he needed fuel. And if he had any hopes of getting either, he needed to avert his eyes from the dashed centerline, appearing and disappearing with the rhythm of a hypnotist’s watch fob, slowly nibbling away at his consciousness. It pained him to think that Larry might have been right.

That’s insane!’ his boss had told him. There’s no way that piece of rusted plumbing you call a car is going to haul all your crap 2,000 miles. Flights are cheap these days. You can hire an eighteen wheeler to ship back what won’t fit on the plane. Who knows, he laughed, you might even live to tell about it!

Larry was an asshole, but pretty smart. And very good at calculating odds. Charlie didn’t care. For Charlie, planning for missteps took all the adventure out of life. He liked taking chances. And this was the summer to do it. Manhattan had been unusually hot. There had been a blackout, a transit strike, and even a garbage strike. The usual annoyances were magnified to the extent that all he could think about was getting the hell out. He didn’t care about odds. At thirty-five, he wanted to throw caution to the wind, take his rusted plumbing for a nice long drive on the open highway and live a little. With four vacation days coming, he figured he could leave Friday evening, drive straight through to Chicago, stay a night and then on to Denver, no stops, except for gas and coffee. Why not? He had driven it half a dozen times in his twenties, and several of those in one shot. Getting there would be half the fun. And the other half would be getting back by the following Friday to watch Larry eat his words.

Traffic was light when he set out and he made good time. With every mile he put between himself and New York City, there was a reawakening of his soul. The anguish of the breakup with his fiancé, Marion, was replaced by a wistful yearning to revisit his favorite haunts, walk through his old house, and see his brother, Tom, again. This nostalgic rebirth gave him a heavy foot, and he arrived in Chicago ahead of schedule. There, he made the bold decision to continue on to Iowa City where he rented a small bungalow at the Belmont Motel. It had a lumpy bed, under-stuffed pillows, and a flashing green neon sign that set a ‘Hitchcock’ tone to his dingy accommodations. Normally it would have kept him awake, but the scent of pines just outside the window over his bed more than made up for it, and he slept better than he had in ten years since moving to New York.

Leaving the Belmont, he felt refreshed, but by Sunday evening was beginning to feel the residual aftermath of pushing himself so hard on the front side of the trip. Making matters worse, the Interstate, no longer bound by the contours of the hills and valleys of the eastern part of the state, had straightened considerably. He was now a prisoner of the narcotic effects of Nebraska’s amber waves of grain, so that by the time he reached the sandhills he felt lucky to be not just awake, but alive.

Charlie’s chin dropped and the car swerved. Quickly jerking his head upright, he popped open a wing window to let humid air blow directly into his face. Without caffeine, Charlie had to keep pulling rabbits out of hats to fight the sedative effect of the highway, but he was running out of rabbits.

He eased up on the accelerator. On a bluff to his right, a large billboard displaying a preposterously jolly waitress holding a cup of steaming hot coffee glowed in the darkness. It read: Endicott Diner—Pumps open 24 hours—5 miles.

Charlie wasn’t religious, but he praised the Lord anyway and sent his rusty plumbing with great dispatch into the waning darkness.

It had only been a couple of miles when, in his mirror, a glimmer of light caught his eye. It was the first rays of the sun peeking over the horizon. A brilliant radiance began to flood the barren landscape and paint the September sky crimson. Far in the distance, a grain silo and barn were etched with startling clarity against the dazzling backdrop. It comforted him. It was the kind of landscape he had grown up with. He sighed as it jogged a childhood memory of him and his brother, Tom. They were playing with a marble track