Sunday Serial Story: Spiced Cider Sunday...New Episode Posted Weekly

 Sprawled on his back in a motel room bed, Jensen moaned in his sleep and rolled on his side, the dream that held him in its grip a squeezing one he couldn't escape from. 

Weathered headstones in crooked rows, a sunburst of red-gold hues brightening the gray. Flecks of quartz in black granite, a newly placed grave marker sparking in the midday sun, out of place among several that had begun to crumble.  like a beacon, drawing Jenson ever closer to the words Doug Johansson July 17, 1984 – October 31, 2019 A flame snuffed out before its time. Not that he needed a reminder, those words and that date, Halloween night, would be burned into his soul until it was his own time to be laid six feet deep in Wisconsin soil.

The crunch of leaves beneath his boots was especially loud today, or maybe it was just that his nerves were jangled and frayed, leaving him extra sensitive to damn near everything. Might be for the best, him leaving town, two of his now former neighbors had already been subjected to blistering tirades about the volume of their music or the constant yipping of one particularly vocal miniature Schnauzer.

Staring down at the grave never felt right, so he knelt and raked all the leaves he could reach into a mound big enough for him to lay in. Hands pillowing his head, Jenson watched the jet stream of a lone plane mar the picturesque view of fluffy cumulus clouds drifting through an azure sky while struggling to marshal his thoughts into semi-coherent sentences.

It shouldn’t be this hard. Not now when Doug couldn’t pitch one of his epic fits and make Jenson feel like he was the lowest form of pond scum for proposing whatever it was that had set Doug off. This would have produced a tantrum to end all tantrums, but maybe if he’d done it sooner, Doug could have flipped his lid and Jenson could have headed off down the road regardless of the hard feelings between them. Better that than knowing with one hundred percent certainty that staying had contributed to Doug’s life coming to a sickeningly bone jarring end.

“I know I said I’d stay, but I never should have made that promise,” Jenson muttered, still struggling with all that he longed to say. “You couldn’t help being who you were and you sure as hell never tried to hide it. We were a wrong fit from the start, but for whatever reason I still haven’t worked out yet, I refused to walk away, even when you pushed all the wrong buttons and at times left me wishing I’d never laid eyes on you. Hell, I doubt we’d have even been friends if we hadn’t been dating, how fucked up is that?"

On the bed, Jenson moaned and rolled again as the dream morphed from a graveyard to a mangled and dripping motorcycle moments before Jenson sat bolt upright in the bed. Panting, he looked around wildly and brushed a hand through his sweat damp hair. The numbers on the alarm clock read 6:18, too fuckin' early to be dragging his ass out of bed and into the bathroom, but that's where he headed, first to unleash a stream into the toilet and then to step beneath the steamy heat of a hot shower. 

The water heater in the place was amazing and he'd been shocked by how comfortable the bed had been when he'd flopped across it the night before to watch television. It had been easy to sink into it then and lose himself to late night episodes of Family Guy and American Dad until he drifted off to sleep. Unfortunately, the echo tumbling around in his head wasn't of Stewie's secret stash of inventions and gizmos...it was of that smashed up bike that had cost Doug his life. 

He could still remember the first visit to the graveyard and the headstones half buried in leaves. He couldn't help but feel like this was the place good intentions came to die. Here lies the death of his good intentions, prepackaged in soil, dotted with leave, and stamped with a gleaming granite tombstone. Remembering the last time they'd laid out like that and stared up at the sky, Jenson recalled feeling restless and stifled then. Itching to end things with a partner who'd becoming stifling and demanding, or maybe it was just that he hadn't known Doug well enough when they'd gotten together to have gotten a glimpse of some of the less appealing traits of his personality. 

Was a hell of a lot warmer then. Gathering armloads of leaves to him, Jenson had inhaled the scent of fall, there was no other word for it. Mounding them into a bed beside the grave, he'd let the crackle crunch give the illusion of activity, so the stillness wouldn’t get to him so bad. Still, he couldn’t play in the leaves forever, and soon enough, was stretched out on his back, the leaf nest at least keeping sharp rocks from digging into his shoulder and thigh. Somewhere off to his left a squirrel chattered and scampered through the leaves to a nearby tree. He stared at the roving clouds so he wouldn’t have to look at the rows of stone bearing dates and names, face and poems, and recipes....or the devastation on the faces of Doug's father and sister when they'd been lowering that coffee into the ground. 

Shaking himself out of that memory, Jenson turned the water off and reached for a towel, impressed with the plushness of it in comparison to the typical scratchy white of overly bleached hotel towels. Everything about this place seemed like it was meant to feel more like a home than a temporary stop in a long line of nights away from home. 

He'd had the foresight to book the room for the next three nights to give himself time to nose about and learn more about the job situation in the area. He'd left his name at both the feed and hardware stores yesterday, and posted up handwritten advertisements of his skills and the jobs he was currently hiring out for. He'd left his cell phone number on the bottom and hoped for a bite, otherwise, he would be pressing on when his stay here ran out, and eventually, he'd wind up heading home the way Pacey wanted, even if he wasn't ready to tell with his close knit and often overbearing family just yet. 

He'd deliberately withheld the information about Doug's accident until after all of Doug's affairs had been squared away, not wanting his folks and siblings to descend on him with their mix of worry, pity, and suggestions of what he should do. 

Like come back home with them. 

Clothes, keys, wallet, phone, vape; he chanted that in his head until everything was in his pockets and his boots were on. The motel was a short walk from the cafe, so Jenson shoved his hands in his pockets and took off at a slow walk, head down agist the wind. It had really picked up overnight, but at least it wasn't a cold one. Cool and carrying with it the sent of dust and fertilizer, his early start still considered a late one within the farming community. Trucks rolled back and forth on Main Street, some carrying cattle, others piled high with grain, the same as they'd be doing back home. The name of the place might be different, but farm towns were farm towns and Jenson had never been to one where someone wasn't looking for a temporary hand to help with calving or their plum harvest. 

Someone here needed help, even if it was only for a season. All Jenson had to do was keep on putting feelers out until he found them. 

There’s a lot of things Jenson can fix. In fact, if it’s got coils, springs, hoses or gears, it’s a surefire bet he can get it running again. Too bad he’s never been able to say the same thing about his relationships. Leaving the city was supposed to be about making a new start and laying the ghosts of the past behind him, and yet, on a small Wisconsin Dairy farm he finds ghosts of a different kind, and Luke.

Having to hire on someone when he could barely keep his head above water was a bitter pill to swallow, and every repair Jenson makes only serves as a reminder to Luke of the things he’ll never be able to do again. Nightmares keep him up most nights, but it’s worry for the family farm, and more importantly, what will happen to his mother and sister if it should fail, that was a constant gnawing ache in the pit of his stomach. If having Jenson there will save him from an ulcer, then he’s all for it, but what he’s not in the mood for are the desires Jason’s presence is slowly making him feel.

With both stubbornly refusing to see what’s right in front of their faces, it just might take an ornery cow, a drunk cowboy, a sabotaged orchard, and some motherly intervention to get them to see that they could be stronger together than they’d ever be apart.