In Dreams

By Gary Sand

How do you free yourself from the guilt trip you earned when you broke a promise to marry your first love? Since your feelings have endured the decades, you go to her and hope that she can find it in her heart to forgive…and perhaps to love again.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wings ePress, Inc.
• Release date: Jul 10, 2023
• ISBN: 9781613090220

Book preview

Dedication

A STORY ABOUT PEOPLE could never be written without the author drawing from events in his own life, and thoughts of what if. What if you had never met that person who planted the seed that matured into a plot? What if one of life’s paths had veered in a different direction and you missed experiencing that one memorable moment? What if you had never taken the time to entertain your dreams?

An old Air Force buddy, Gino Bozzer, was one of those what if people whose unforgettable persona served to inspire much of the plot. Unknown to me, his health was failing when I began writing In Dreams, but I sent him a copy of an early draft and he was able to read it before he passed away. When I learned from his daughter that he had enjoyed the story, the entire effort became especially meaningful to me, so I’m dedicating this book to him.

Several people were a great help when I was conducting research. Colorado Internet friends and Forward Look enthusiasts, Bob Bush, John M. Quinn, Robert Huck and Mike Sutherland provided a wealth of information about long-ago and modern day Denver. Also, Ron Swartley, whose real world love affair with his 1956 Plymouth Fury was woven into the story fabric.

I can’t miss mentioning my wife, Judy. Every writer needs a sounding board, a cheerleader, a sympathetic ear, an objective critic, and someone to keep you grounded in reality. She does it all.

Finally, I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge the late, great Roy Orbison, whose gift of timeless music was the one special ingredient that helped me meld memories, make-believe, and a lifetime of dreams into a story.

One

Summer 2006

Northeastern New Mexico

This wasn’t God’s country , or if it was, he and God didn’t agree on the definition. It was monotonous rangeland and the only things that prevented him from keeping the speedometer locked on 70 were forgotten little towns with their patchwork of weather-beaten homes and the gas station/convenience store that was the town’s sole retail business. Rickety cedar fences, sun-bleached and listing from the prevailing winds, did little to hide neglected backyards filled with tall weeds and the hulks of abandoned, rusting cars that were too old to drive and too new to be collectible. Littered, pot-holed streets were devoid of human activity in the stifling heat of the afternoon, and except for an ingrained habit to follow rules there seemed little reason for him to abide by the speed limit signs that slowed his pace.

At the outskirts of town, a dust devil twisted its way across a vacant lot, lifted a fast food wrapper and a handful of grit from the ditch and hurled it against the side of his car, as if to hurry him on his way. He was happy to oblige.

With eyes bleary and reddened by the bright sun and hours behind the wheel, Greg Cole stared at the miles of patched two-lane blacktop that stretched to the horizon. He was fudging the speed limit by five mph, but the odometer still ticked off the miles at a frustratingly slow pace.

The drone of the air conditioner, together with the rumble of the old car’s dual exhausts, were hypnotic and he fought the urge to nod off. He removed his sunglasses, rubbed his burning eyes with one hand and arched his back to ease the cramps in his muscles. He yawned, transferred his left foot to the accelerator, loosened the seat belt slightly and folded his right leg beneath him. Driving in that position was awkward, but it temporarily shifted the numerous aches and pains to new locations.

He cranked his window open a few inches, but the roar of the hot air rushing past his ear made conditions even worse. With a sigh, he closed it again and flipped the noisy air conditioner fan to the highest setting, hoping the stale but cooler air would chase away the drowsiness.

On the road ahead, shimmering blacktop mirages formed like liquid ghosts, then faded the very moment they appeared to be within reach, only to reform a short distance down the road.

I wonder what causes them? he mumbled to himself. The sound of his voice startled him to wakefulness.

Good God, you crazy old man! Quit talking to yourself!

With drowsiness temporarily evicted from his mind, his thoughts returned to the reason he found himself crossing this uninviting corner of New Mexico. As with so many impulsive things men do, it involved a woman. A woman impossible to forget. He hadn’t seen her since they were teens, but now she seemed to occupy his every waking thought.

Fond recollections of that halcyon summer had nurtured his plan up to this point, but recently his thoughts had evolved into an emotional seesaw on which he had been an unwilling rider for days. Now, as weariness took its toll in the afternoon heat, the seesaw was tilting down from the high that had prevailed when he left Fort Worth early that morning, and growing uncertainty taunted him with logical arguments to turn back.

His plan was unquestionably bizarre, and friends had reminded him of that fact often enough, but society’s tolerance of crazy behavior by its senior citizens is like an earned reward for persistent breathing. Irrationality is accepted as just another symptom of impending senility...something to be pitied if you cared about the person, or ignored if you didn’t.

Put up with the loony old man and his stupid ideas for a while. He’ll be gone soon enough.

He’d never heard anyone actually utter those words, but he could read it in their eyes when he related what he wanted to do. What others thought about him or his ideas didn’t much bother Greg, but dealing with his own recurring doubts was another matter, and he wished his earlier optimism would reappear before something convinced him to abandon his mission.

He yawned, stretched, tilted his head back and rotated it slowly from side-to-side. The resulting crackle from his neck sounded like popcorn in a microwave.

Damn, I hate getting old!

The longer he brooded about what might await him in Denver, the more his confidence waned. Maybe he really was losing his mind. He’d been reduced to talking to himself...a certain sign of a deranged mind. He wondered if crazy people actually realize they are crazy, or if they merely inhabit an imaginary, blissful world, unaware that others find their conduct peculiar.

On the other hand, what was so odd about a sixty-four-year-old man driving a fifty-year-old car 800 miles in the midst of a late summer heat wave, obsessed with the notion that he could regain the affection of a woman he hadn’t seen in nearly half a century? She likely didn’t even know he was still alive, and if she did, she’d have all the reasons in the world to hate him. If he ever made it to her doorstep, odds were that she’d slam the door in his face the instant she saw him standing there.

Then there was the likelihood that he was simply a victim of too many warm memories and not enough good sense to accept the fact that age might be playing cruel tricks on him. Maybe his feelings were nothing more than the desire to be seventeen again...to relive the vacuous intensity of a youthful love affair. Perhaps the passage of time had changed everything...changed him too much to recapture that incomprehensible state of mind romantics refer to as love.

Love. How do you explain the effect it has on people? Maybe he wouldn’t even be attracted to her any more, but he couldn’t make himself believe that. He was certain he could accept any physical changes that time might have made, since it wasn’t only her beauty that had made him fall for her. It was everything about her. Intelligence, personality, gentleness, a sense of humor. She had it all. She had been too special in every way...too big a part of his life for far too short a time. It was much more likely that she’d feel nothing for him. Maybe she had forgotten him entirely. In moments of lucidity, he knew that was a strong possibility, considering the way he had treated her during those last months before their breakup. All the questions and doubts should have made him come to his senses, yet his obsession with her remained.

The out-and-out absurdity of the entire situation produced a wry smile and he could feel some of his earlier confidence returning. He’d always been a sucker for quixotic challenges.

You’ve gotta keep the faith!

He stifled a self-conscious laugh at his foolhardiness as he straightened up in the seat and yanked the lap belt tighter.

Checking the gas gauge for the hundredth time in the last hour, he mentally calculated that the next stop for gas would be Raton, New Mexico. His most recent stop had been Amarillo some three hours earlier, but the dual four-barrel carburetors sucked high-octane gas as if it still cost twenty-five cents a gallon. That alone should be a good enough argument to abandon his quest and return to Fort Worth, and it would surely be the sensible thing to do, but he knew that sensibility and love are far too often strangers that are never introduced.

Pushing aside his instinct to cede to reason, he eased the accelerator down a little more and struggled to clear the unwelcome doubts and nagging sleepiness from his mind.

The car needed gas and he needed to recharge his body to combat the numbing effects of highway boredom. His mind visualized a steaming, fragrant cup of black coffee, and thoughts of another box of Chicken McNuggets were seductive. He’d earlier devoured a nine-piece order in Amarillo during his last fuel stop, but it hadn’t entirely satisfied his craving. He could already taste the fat-laden little globs of ground and breaded chicken parts smothered in barbeque sauce. His mouth began to water.

He snorted with disgust. Despite his learned self-discipline from more than three decades in the military, and an inherited streak of stubbornness, bad habits were difficult for him to break, and the older he got, the more some of those unwanted habits were affecting his life. The most recent failing was a growing affection for certain fast foods. It disturbed him that his willpower seemed to be weakening with the passage of time. It was so unlike him and he didn’t welcome the change.

I’ll have to work on that. I think I’ll order a salad instead. Coffee and a salad...and maybe one of those little cherry pies. Or maybe apple. Something with sugar. Something to keep me going.

As the miles dragged on, listening to the same old topics endlessly rehashed on the fading talk radio station did nothing to keep him awake, but he was paying little attention to the radio, and the scenery didn’t help matters either. Countless outcrops of black basalt rock and stunted, dark junipers jutting from the crackling, dry prairie grass, gave the land the geological equivalent of a three-day growth of beard. He wondered what attracted people to settle there, though the scarcity of human life made it apparent that few had done so.

Signs of human presence were sparse and there were miles between gravel-covered roads that presumably led to ranch buildings hidden behind the rolling hills. The only indications that life existed nearby were the occasional rusty wrought iron replicas of cattle brands hanging above the entrances, accompanied by the obligatory grated cattle guard traversing the access road.

A few head of mixed-breed cattle wandered the hills, or stood quietly beside round, metal water tanks, waiting for a breeze to turn the windmill fast enough to lift a trickle of cool water from the depths of a well. Their heads were drooped in deference to the relentless sun, their ears and tails twitching half-heartedly in a losing battle with the hovering clouds of biting insects that tormented them.

The rangy animals reminded him of those his grandfather had raised, and Greg’s thoughts turned to his childhood on the farm. He had hated farming. It wasn’t a calling that came naturally to him, and he knew he would never be good at it. From the time he was old enough to recognize the jet fighters flying over their farm, he had reveled in the excitement created by their thundering silver presence as they raced from horizon to horizon on some exciting mission he had shaped for them in his mind.

When his long-awaited day of freedom arrived with a high school diploma and an Air Force enlistment contract, he shed the millstone of guilt that tied him to the land.

Family members were upset to learn he had enlisted in the Air Force, leaving his father to run the farm alone. They all assumed that his generation would take over the farming responsibilities the way men from previous generations had always done, but Greg knew he wasn’t destined to live in one place forever, as nearly everyone else in his family had done since the day they were born. He had a restless nature and a desire to see what was happening in the rest of the world.

He had no regrets about leaving home and choosing a military career, but he wished he could say the same about other life-altering decisions he’d made when he was young. Like those thoughtless decisions that had destroyed his relationship with Sandi.

Another long, straight stretch of highway drew his mind back to the present and the siren’s song of driving boredom beckoned him once more.

Even the plentiful Pronghorns resting in the meager shade of the roadside scrub brush failed to provide enough distraction to keep him alert and interested. With another 40 miles to go before he reached Raton, he only hoped to stay awake until he could dismount and walk around to stretch his legs and relieve the bone-deep weariness that afflicted him. At least it should be getting cooler by then.

Two

Raton, New Mexico, huddled against the southern flank of the Sangre de Cristo Mountain range that divides New Mexico and Colorado, was a welcome sight to Greg. The cramps in his back were intensifying and his sweat-dampened clothes were sticking to his skin. He desperately needed a break to stretch, and to breathe some fresh air, even if that air was hot.

He stopped in the shade of the canopy next to the gas pumps in front of an aging Phillips 66 station and turned off the engine. The sudden silence following hours of drumming road noise was surreal and he basked briefly in the quiet, but the temperature inside the car quickly began to rise without the air conditioner operating. He climbed out, stretched and inhaled the pine-laden fragrance that hung on the heavy, unmoving air. Despite the oppressive heat that was already bringing beads of perspiration to his forehead, it was a relief to fill his lungs with air that hadn’t been recycled a hundred times, and to stand on his feet again, even if the reprieve would be short lived.

He walked around the car for a visual check of everything, then ran his credit card through the pump reader and began filling the tank with premium gas. With a grimace, he noted the posted price on the pump. He’d picked a hell of a time to take a long trip with his thirsty old car.

The thermometer on the bank sign down the street read 98 degrees. Still too hot for comfort, but an improvement over the sweltering 105 in Amarillo. If the Weather Channel maps were accurate that morning, once he crossed the mountains into Colorado, it should be getting even cooler.

He popped the hood and checked the fluid levels, then busied himself scrubbing the sun-baked remains of luckless grasshoppers from the windshield. With a cadenced series of pings, the pump filled the old Plymouth with 91-octane fuel, and he cringed as he watched the price wheels spin like a runaway slot machine.

From a luxurious motor home parked alongside the service station, a man several years Greg’s senior climbed down and paused at the foot of the steps. He drew a plug of chewing tobacco from his breast pocket, gnawed off a large piece, worked the wad into one cheek and shuffled over to where Greg was filling the gas tank. He nodded a silent greeting that Greg returned.

The old man’s purple-veined cheek bulged, and damp spider webs of brown decorated the corners of his mouth, the juice staining a few white whiskers missed by the razor. He tucked shaky, liver-spotted hands into the back pockets of his jumpsuit and stalked around the Plymouth, intently studying every feature.

Nice old car.

Thank you, sir.

Saw you drive in. The old woman is making sandwiches for lunch, so I thought I’d drop over and take a look while I have a chew. She gets ticked off when I chew in the motor home. Doesn’t like me spittin’ in a coffee can, he groused, but I can’t kick the danged habit. After fifty-seven years together, you’d think she’d be used to it, but you know how women are.

Greg smiled knowingly, though he could muster little sympathy for the man and the habit he sought to defend. He also couldn’t relate to being married fifty-seven years. His own marriage had lasted less than half that.

The old man leaned over and peered inside through the open driver’s window.

"My brother Albert had one exactly like it...fifty-six model, isn’t it?

Can’t forget those tailfins...but his was a four-door, and two-tone blue, not white with all that fancy gold trim like this one."

Yeah right, my friend...’exactly like it’...except Furys only came in one unique color, and they were all two-door hardtops.

Greg was tempted to correct the man, but instead bit his tongue and forced a smile. It wasn’t worth the effort to make it an issue, and it wasn’t important anyway.

The man turned and spat an amber stream into the trash-filled garbage can perched on the island between the gas pumps. He cleared his throat and wiped a hairy forearm across his mouth, spreading a smear of tobacco juice across his cheek.

Does this one have a six cylinder?

No sir, it’s a V-eight...the biggest one Plymouth offered in nineteen-fifty-six.

Humph, I never understood why anyone would want a big engine that burned high-test gas.

He jerked an arthritic thumb in the direction of the gas pump.

Just look at how much it costs you to fill up. You should have gotten the six cylinder...they were damn good engines, had plenty of power and got good gas mileage too. Albert’s car had a six ...manual transmission with overdrive. Got great gas mileage. He musta’ owned that car for...hell, I guess it had to be fourteen, fifteen years or more.

As Greg listened politely, the old man launched another stream in the general direction of the garbage can, stared blankly at the ground and scratched what remained of his snowy hair.

No sir, come to think of it, it was probably closer to sixteen years. Yep, at least sixteen years. He still owned it when he got his self killed back in seventy-three. Oil field accident up in Wyoming. Near Riverton. He was too damn young to die. The old man shook his head with sad disgust. "Barely turned forty...way too young to go. At least he didn’t have any kids. A wife, but no kids.

Huh!...some wife. She wasn’t worth a bucket of warm piss! Collected his life insurance, and before Albert was even cold, she moved into a run-down mobile home with a roughneck half her age. Shamed the whole family. Don’t know what ever happened to her...not that I give a shit, you understand.

With a practiced movement of his jaw, he shifted the wad from one cheek to the other.

Don’t think Albert ever had a speck of trouble with his Plymouth either...other than tires and batteries, you know, the usual stuff you gotta do on all of ‘em. Damn good car. Wish they still made ‘em like that. Seems Detroit forgot how to make good cars. I had to buy one made in Germany. He nodded in the direction of the Mercedes SUV hitched with a tow bar to the back of his motor home.

That’s a damn good car, too, but it cost me a goddamn fortune, and to be honest, it don’t get no better gas mileage than Albert’s old Plymouth, but it’s a helluva lot plusher. The wife likes that. Leather seats and all. You know how women are.

While Greg went about his business, the old man rambled on, punctuating every other sentence with a stream of brown spit. Greg finished topping off the gas tank, replaced the pump nozzle on the hook and carefully noted his mileage and fill-up information in a pocket logbook.

Normally he enjoyed discussing cars and could do so for hours when the mood struck him, but today his thoughts were miles away. His distant manner and unenthusiastic responses apparently discouraged the older man, who, after a final hacking expulsion, transferred the vile gob from his mouth to the garbage can and, with a halfhearted wave, shuffled back to his motor home with a disappointed look pasted on his face.

Greg breathed a sigh of relief to see him go, but he also felt a twinge of guilt. It wasn’t his nature to be rude to people, but the last thing he wanted to do was to get into a long-winded discussion with anyone about cars or anything else. He only wanted to be alone with his thoughts, and he had to get back on the road soon if he hoped to reach Denver by nightfall. He was anxious to leave, but first things first, and he needed a cup of coffee and something to eat before hitting the road again.

The Raton McDonald’s stood next door to the gas station...the exact reason he had chosen to refuel there. The building was old and weather-beaten, but a crew of sweat-drenched and sunburned construction workers was busy renovating the structure. The old, gaudy architecture would soon be replaced by the new gaudy architecture that was the fate of fast food outlets everywhere.

Greg parked in the shade of a small maple tree, cracked the windows open and locked the car. Once inside the restaurant, he visited the rest room, washed the grease smudges and gasoline odor from his hands and splashed cold water on his face. Looking around, he discovered there were no paper towels in the rest room, only a noisy air drier that produced a meager, ineffectual flow of lukewarm air, and lacked the option to direct