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The Greener Green Book I
Where does the Circle begin?
By Peter D Sowatskey
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Greener Green Book I - Where does the Circle Begin
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Copyright 2011 by Peter David Sowatskey Senior (Author)
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any manner of form by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, without the express written permission of the author. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or any other means or method, without the permission of the author is illegal and punishable by law. If we are to steal content there could come a time where no new content existed to steal.
Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials.
I have spent many hours of hard mental effort to bring this book to you. Please enjoy it with a free mind.
Acknowledgement
I am grateful for the input of the members, past and present, of the Beaver Valley Writers Guild, Beaver County, Pa
By presenting new material every week over ten years, I was able to adjust my writing efforts to result in the following story.
If I still made a mistake(s) it’s on me.
If you would like to comment, you can reach me at the address below.
[email protected]
About me. The Author
I was born Oct 1939--Libra--on a farm in a coal mining area of Westmoreland County (east of Pittsburgh). I was the oldest of six children--two checked out so far. Poor and carefree, we ran the hills and woods in our bare feet all summer long.
When I was about six years old, my father-in his fifties--a life long miner, had several strokes and lost most of the use of his right side along with four Slovak languages. That left our unskilled mother, in her thirties, to provide for the family. The carefree part of our lives went away.
In 1951, we moved to Greensburg, Westmoreland County seat, across from an old polo field, Route 119 N. Never saw a horse there.
At fifteen, I quit school to work on a dairy farm, $80.00 a month room and board, to buy groceries for the family left behind. Eventually my younger brothers stepped up, and in 1958 I enlisted in the Army, Military Police, ending up in West Germany, Bavaria, Munich, Augsburg area, 24th Infantry Division for two plus years. I could see the Alps on a clear day.
Discharged Jan, 1961, in Germany, I stayed in Europe for ten years selling encyclopedias and correspondence courses to the military.
Looking back, I can see my writing efforts started doing patrol and incident reports--never enough space on the unmentionable forms.
In 1971, I returned with an English wife and three children to the USA--a different USA than the one I departed from. If you lived through those years you'll understand. If not, it's in the history books how drastically different the country was from 1958 USA. We lived in Tampa Florida and Los Angeles before returning to PA in 1973. There's a local saying, born in PA, die in PA, which may have truth to it.
During the seventies I did three years at The Community College of Beaver County earning an Associates Degree in Administration of Justice (1976). Two years later, I transferred to the University of Pittsburgh and continued my studies in the same field until 1980 finishing the credits required for a Bachelors degree. During that time my wife decided to return to England with her two children. I raised my oldest son--from a prior marriage--myself. Shortly after high school he enlisted in the Army ending up in South Korea.
The local economy--based on steel--went south in the early eighties. Beaver County lost half of its population. I worked with an unemployed committee to help people over that hurdle.
Then I spent seven years as a hermit, continuing my life-long study of meta-physics, which I began at age thirteen after seeing the people in the strict Protestant religion I'd been brought up in, not walking their talk. I initially ran across an ad about the Rosicrucian Order in a magazine I read at the Greensburg Greyhound station--before the manager ran me off. He complained that he wasn't running a library branch for the Sowatskey brothers.
I’ve studied every area of Meta-Physics I've ever run across. I reaffirmed my conclusion--during those years--that you'll walk that last mile to your final destiny alone, so you'd best be on good terms with yourself.
I supported myself doing various blue collar jobs, using the skills I learned in High School Vocational Agriculture class. The fifties farmer, which I'd planned to be then, needed to be self sufficient in any problem area, mostly because farm income--especially in PA--was marginal
In the late nineties, I started writing seriously using old typewriters. Then I ran across the Beaver Valley Writer's Guild and was gifted an old Radio Shack computer. I joined them, presenting something new at every weekly meeting for 12 years plus. To date, Nov 2011, I've published two novels on Kindle and will list three more with them in a few months, four, military sci/fi and a western. There are lots more projects in various stages of completion. I find Asimov's idea of working on more projects than one at the same time flows for me, also. Try it. It might work for you.
If you have any comments, or are a starting writer with difficulties, contact me at [email protected]. I'll be glad to hear from you. Pardon the web site, it's being worked on.
When one dares to dream about the impossible, the very act of dreaming robs impossibility of its absolute strength.
Don’t ever let anyone or yourself, restrict your dreams.
Chapter 1
The beginning was the beginning--or was it?
Rafe
Rafe Berger, Plantation owner--farmer--ex Confederate Army Colonel--gunman--gambler--security person--October 1880-- Colorado Gold Country
The ball of light I’d been looking at in the sky came nearer, growing bigger all the time, bigger and brighter than the setting sun. Everyone and thing in the street stopped.
My two helpers, (bouncers/part time gamblers), and I were sitting with our ladies on the bench in front of the Emperor's Rest, the fanciest gambling hall and restaurant in this part of the Colorado gold country, just about to start our shift.
The light held me; and everyone I could see fixated. It pushed me back into the past. Jason, Ike, and I, came through the Civil War fifteen years ago, mostly in good health because we’d been in a deep scouting company and we were careful. We’d lost the war, our families, our lands, but had each other. I knew that whatever was going to happen, I couldn’t have been in better company.
The light kept getting brighter; so bright that I had to close my eyes. A weakness came over me and I couldn’t have moved had I a mind to. Thelma slumped against me. Through a slit of a barely open eye, I saw that my men and their woman had no sign of life in them. Even with my eyes closed I saw the light. Then I
lost track of everything.
A moment passed, or a lifetime. Then I became aware. I struggled upright and opened my eyes. Thelma was gone from beside me. I looked across the porch and saw my two men and their ladies beginning to stir. We weren't dead, yet.
I looked out from myself expecting to see the street. No street, no buildings--just rolling grassland--as far as the eye could see. Most remarkable, there was no noise in the massive five storied building behind me, total deafening silence.
I moved my legs and they appeared whole but there was not a feeling of much strength in me. Slowly I stood holding onto the wall with my left hand. With my right, I drew my Walker Colt and cocked it. I didn’t see where shooting was going to overcome much, but the familiar movement added to my clarity. Not trying to see if I could raise my revolver to waist level, I inched along the wall to the door and glanced inside past the wide bat-wing doors--nobody--no sound.
Slumping down on the bench again, I tried to think back to a time when I'd felt so useless. The only time I could think of was after the war, when I rode the last mile to my plantation and found only ashes and three grave sites. In the days after that month long drunk I’d felt like this.
I looked across the doorway to where the four of them were sitting. Ike and Jason had their guns out, but were holding them loosely staring out onto the endless grassland. It almost looked like a Kentucky horse farm - Hell of a big one. They were waiting for orders.
I motioned them to hold their places. My wits were slowly returning and I remembered my name, Rafe Berger. Oddly that fact, a name, didn’t seem awfully important. It was like I had been washed out down to my basic soul and afterwards someone had hung a label on me.
I turned and walked the length of the front porch to the corner of the building and looked around it. In Pillstone there had been a general store and its warehouse on the street behind the saloon. It was so here, too. There was no movement. Much further out behind the Rest had been a livery barn. It was here, too. There were horses milling around a corral. I made a note that they would have to be let out, and went back past the door to the other end of the porch. Now, I could see the Bank and the assayer's office and way, way out beyond them, was the butcher shop, with its’ stockyard of beef cattle waiting to be slaughtered. Seemingly we weren’t going to go hungry. Hunger and thoughts of food was a good omen. I’d heard that dead folks didn’t eat much. But of the rest of the town there was no sign.
I walked back to my companions and haltingly told them what I’d seen, and that there were hills off in the distance.
Then I said, “I think this whole mess calls for at least one drink.”
I was the last through the door and up to the bar. Louise was behind the bar pouring. We all put one away and were looking at the refills when Louise said, “Maybe we should talk before we get too crocked to care.”
Ike said, “Well, the patrol report goes like this. We’re here, wherever here is, in good health, as far as we know. We got food, water, or not. Louise, draw some water.”
Louise let water run into the bar sinks.
“To continue: we got water and horses, if we wanted to go anywhere, a roof over our heads and plenty of beds, more whiskey than we should ever drink, if nobody emptied the store room, and good company. I’d guess we arrived in Heaven, or that other place and we should give thanks.”
With that, he sipped on his second drink, after saying a short prayer.
I asked, “How is everyone feeling?”
Jason answered first, “Like a new born kitten, but I’m gaining strength quickly, and I’m hungry as hell.”
Marilyn said, “From what I can remember from Nurse's School, we should eat a lot. It seems to be advised after times of stress. Myself, I’m not vaporous, and it seems our minds weren’t disturbed.”
Louise said, “Food, and then if we keep it down, we’ll take a look around, if that’s all right with you, Rafe.”
I said, “Ike, you feeling any stranger than usual?”
“Nope. Let’s get to the kitchen and see what’s for dinner.”
Jason spoke reflectively, “Ain’t we a bit past sundown?”
I answered, “Good question. Maybe here has no sundown. My watch says nine thirty one. What about you boys?”
Everyone looked at their time pieces and I looked at them, steady gaze, no extra squinting, they stood, or sat, alertly, and when they agreed with my watch it was with steady voices. I concluded we were over whatever had befallen us, so, I said, “Kitchen it is Ike, lead on.”
We still had our guns out, laying on the bar, ready to be surprised. We hadn't been, so we holstered them. The broad expanses of connected stoves tops were cold but Jason soon had a stove which sat separate heated up. I remembered it being used for special desserts. The entrance to the employee break room was near the small stove. We went in and sat and Jason soon had steaks and fried potatoes at a table which gave us a view of the kitchen and the rear door to the break room. There was no sound but what we made. I was getting used to only us, but the others often strained, trying to hear something from somewhere else.
After eating, we went up to the fifth floor, where employees had rooms, to change into less fancy clothes. I didn’t think the roulette wheel would be spinning anytime soon. Our rooms were the same as we’d left them to go on shift. We looked into other rooms. The furniture was there but no personal effects. We tried the water faucets in the different bathrooms, they flowed. It was only natural that they would with the water tanks being on the roof.
Once back down to ground level, we went as a group to the general store. No one could see any difference in anything. Marilyn helped herself to some hardtack taking a paper sack out from behind the counter. Louise went a distance away to get herself more sturdy clothes, while Jason, Ike, and I, helped ourselves to a rifle and a double barreled shotgun apiece, along with much ammunition. Our experience with trouble made each of us believers in that old saying, ‘Trouble not dealt with fast soon grows beyond dealing with’. We gave small .36 caliber pistols to Louise and Marilyn.
On our way to the livery stable we saw a building some distance away with a lot of fences around it. At first no one knew what it was but then Louise said, “I know, that’s the Hickson chicken ranch.”
I said, “We’ll worry about the chickens later. Let’s first get most of these horses out of the corral. We won't have enough hay for the whole bunch of them. We’ll keep ten of them in case we have to leave.”
We let go of about sixty horses but they didn’t go far. They tried the grass and liked it. Making sure the ones we’d kept had grain and hay and the water troughs were full, in and outside the corral, we went along to the slaughter house.
Marilyn said, “I looked into the meat freezers at the hotel. There’s enough there to feed us for a month at least. That’s if it don’t all thaw out. I don't know where we'll get more ice”
"Let's worry about that later." I said, “Get these corral gates open. The steers won’t go far from the water troughs. If the freezer meat spoils and we need fresh later, they'll be here”
There were about two hundred head on hand. A mining town goes through a lot of meat.
The Bank didn’t yield up any solutions. There was paper money, and a shipment of freshly smelted gold bars which hadn’t left yet. Next to it was the assayer's office with bags of gold dust in an open safe. The bank’s safe wasn’t closed either. Well, we couldn’t do much about any of it except to take notice.
We went back to the hotel and strangely enough were hungry again. So we had more to eat. After the meal I said, “Let’s face the fact that we’re going to be here a while, most likely we’ll get tired and need sleep. So, Ike, you, and Louise are Team One, and Jason and Marilyn are Team Two. I’ll fill in where it’s necessary. We’ll schedule 12 hours on and 12 off to start. The High Roller's Room has four doors to it, so we’ll use it to prevent getting boxed in. We can see the main door to the big room from there. Just stretch out on the couches to start.
We’ll move them so we get a view of the main door. Bar and lock the other doors. Let’s do it. Team one is on 'stand down' now.”
I watched Ike and Louise make themselves at home while the rest of us moved a table over along the walls to where we could look at all the entrances.
About nine hours passed and I was up about $40,000.00 and change. Then I noticed it was getting somewhat less bright outside. It became less and less bright; I’d call it early twilight, when the light quit changing.
Walking to the batwing doors and looking over them I observed, “This must be what passes for night here.”
Jason mused, “Sure ain’t night to my rights.”
“Guess there isn’t any rights here. Just more to be learned.”
Later Ike and Louise came out of the H. R. Room.
Louise said, “My rest wasn’t like sleeping, but I feel more like myself now. I’m starved.”
Looking outside she observed, “It became night, didn’t it?”
Marilyn answered, “About three hours ago. This is night, I guess. We’ll see later. Coming Jason?”
“Yeah, what about you Rafe?”
“I’m going to put some cushions up against the wall here in the bar room. We’ll get this more organized by and by.
I lay down on my carefully arranged cushions. Like Louise said, it wasn’t sleep but my body relaxed and for that I was grateful. One can go on, for only so long, waiting for something to happen, which doesn’t.”
Ike shook me awake, and said, “Night lasted ten hours, but you won’t believe what I spotted with my glass.”
“What, the 10th Virginian.”
“No, Thelma, on a big black horse. She’s approaching from a distance at a walk.”
“For sure? Let me have the glass.”
Greener Green I: Where Does the Circle Begin Page 1