Ashes Of Ohio

Story of two friends growing up in America during the 1970s - 1980s without a father, the bond they share, and the implications they face as they become young men.

Chapter One The Ashes

How could I possibly forget who Charlie Richards was? The pensive boy who was always lost within his own thoughts, the boy who had always seemed to be there, somewhere lingering, standing over me like an angel shaded in the background scenes of my deprived childhood and perplexing adolescence. He had always seemed know who I was better than I seemed to know myself. Yes, we are all deprived and perplexed in someway, but it is through these memories that I remember who Charlie Richards was. After all these's years, though we are no longer in contact, Charlie is still a thought of mine, and the memory of him, and how he was able to change me, is unlikely to fade.

Sometimes I wonder what he is up to, where he is or where he may be going. If he was ever able to somehow finally become an astronaut and leave his footprints on the moon. I haven't read of NASA taking part in many excursions recently, not since the Apollo 17 exploration that is. In youth this was his dream, his one and only love, to fly effortlessly over the stars leaving the world behind. To be like that of a commit that burns through the sky. I know he would have been able to do it, Charlie was smart enough - smarter than me.

Someday, someone will read these pages; my daughter, my wife. Although I am only in my fifties and in perfect health, I cannot help but wonder if my days are numbered in someway. Maybe I'm just a hypochondriac. Still, I have this feeling that the end is near. I can’t forgive myself for what I have done, the hurt I have caused them, the hurt I have caused him. How can I call myself a good person?

Sometimes I want to write Charlie a letter, but I can never think of the proper words to pen. Would he even read it? How would he read it? What would there be left to say? I am sorry? Then I burn what seems to be the nine hundredth letter I have written, watch the smoke dissipate through the air leaving nothing but ash. I few weeks later I will begin again as if the letters before had never been written. I think to myself about such things, and then I think that thinking about such things is pointless. Then the circle continues. Charlie’s voice is there again someone were in the background of my mind just as he once was as a child. Standing alone, waiting to be acknowledged, waiting excepted, waiting to be heard, somewhere in the background. I know he is doing well.

May 1st 1975

Charlie and I were aboard The Indiana train traveling to the state of Ohio. The state where we would bring his mother to her final resting place. I had never been to Ohio and it was unlikely that I would ever return. Yet this is where Milinda wanted to be, where she had wanted her ashes to be spread, the place she had never wanted to leave. She had made it clear, her remains were to be scattered in the vicinity of the states river, in a familiar small village park, under a large buckeye tree she use to claim sit and play on well into her late adolescents. This is where Milinda felt the most safe, this is where Milinda wanted to be.

The Indiana was a relatively small train. As it traveled you could feel and hear the separation each of the tracks as it moved second by second. The small of old coffee lingered the air of our cubical thanks to the various stains or morning brew that had never been scrubbed clean along the floorboards and carpet. The train attendants who occasionally pasted by with white breakfast trolleys along the aisle appeared to wonder obviously as if they had been lost transparent fog. It seemed to the majority of passengers that none of them took their jobs seriously, or they had simply had grown tired of it. Wearing dark blue uniforms made of uncomfortable fabric, each train attendant was female, each of average body size, each with their hair tied back in a brunette pony tail that just feel above the shoulders. On their uniforms was the recognizable gold pin of the India torch to show passengers who were aboard that this was in fact The India, and they were indeed traveling through the state. This was done to remind everyone aboard, just in case they were highly medicated or had simply forgotten.

“Can I offer you anything young man?” The women asked me, her voice sounding slightly brittle.
Made of purple velvet, the train seats were separated into cubicles of four. My mother sat across from me, her head barred in the morning paper paying little attention to the attendant offering a quick sneer as if the woman had somehow interrupted her reading. My mother licked her right index finger and turned the pages swiftly as if the paper itself was a shield from the attendant. With this, I simply shook my head and declined the woman's offer, I wasn't hungry anyway.

Then the train employee then directed her glance to Charlie who’s eyes were glued to the outside window.

“May I offer you anything?”

Charlie did not move. He’s eyes were silently fixated on the passing trees that looked more like one large atmospheric blur as the train moved at full acceleration. “I’m not hungry.”

To single out the train attendants would be unfair. I remember almost everyone aboard had appeared to be a little off that morning. There were the Graf’s, an old religious couple who had been married for almost 50 years aboard the train. The Graf’s had immigrated from Germany and lived across the street from my mother and I for years often attending our church every Sunday. Mother had known the two well. Wendy Graf was the gossipy of the town. A tall frail woman whose hair had mostly all fallen out by the time she was 70 thanks to her well-known thyroid problem. A problem she often went on and on about as if it were some turmoil illness.

This problem had somehow impeded her from doing regular daily activities like running for basic errands. Every two weeks or so, when only my sister and I were home, Mrs. Graf would come to our door from across the street and complain how about tired she was. Her thyroid had been acting up.

“Justin dear.” She would always start off by saying. “I need bread, milk, butter, eggs and some honey. I’m making a cake so it is very important that I have these things. Would you ever be so kind to help an old woman out?”

“My name is James!” I would say abruptly The first time I had ever spoken to her, I must have been about five. To her, I was always Justin, Jack, John or some other name of a J initial, but never my own.

“Why do you need bread when you are trying to make a cake?” I would question her again as a teenager years later. “And why do you only come by when my mother is gone?”

“Jerry, I’m making breaded cake!” She would say swiftly. More and more each day she was slowly growing out of the synthetic affection she had towards me and I could sense it. “I will send you some of my cake later after Alan has had his share!”

Yet Mrs. Graf’s infamous cake never came, and I was always glad.

Mrs. Graf’s would ware various wigs day after day that never seemed to fit her head quite right. Sometimes I would catch her at the supermarket or near by bus stop smacking her head uncontrollably with the inside palm of her hand or moving it around in a frenzy so it was positioned just so. Gritting her teeth, I thought Mrs. Graf had been going mad. Often dyed the colour of red, the wigs appeared to be made from very thin material that looked as if it had been constructed from farmers hay. Charlie and I would often joke that she must have robbed this wig from Ronald McDonald, or that the popular restraint clown was in fact her illegitimate child from a secret affair with her cousin.

“That would explain a lot!” We would often joke while passing her home.

Alan Graf, Mrs. Graf’s husband, sat beside her a few rows down. From the moment he had entered the train Mr. Graf being the gentlemen he was, always allowed his wife the window seat. As the two made their way down the train’s aisle together he held on his wife’s shoulders in close proximity as if at any moment she would fall over and die. Despite the fact that she was in prefect health, Mrs. Graf allowed this, shooting him a smile that was only temporary.

After sitting down, making sure his wife was safe by the window, I studied him from a far as he unbuckled a strap from his belt. This allowed the lining of his paints to become a little more baggy, and the gut from his stomach to become a little more wide. It was as if his abdomen had seemed to fall upon itself as Mr. Norwood let out a sigh of relief. Rubbing his eyes for a moment in a circular motion with his callous covered hands, he asked one of the attendants for a coffee.

Across from Mr. Norwood was another man who caught my attention. Though the man, now in his mid-thirties, seemed familiar to me, I knew it would have been impossible for us to have met before. At the age of eleven, I had rarely traveled aboard the Indiana train. The only occasions had been for the odd wedding, or distant family funeral. Yet there was something about him that made me wonder about his life, and the type of man he was. Besides my family and I, he had been the only other passenger aboard to be wearing a formal outfit.

Wearing a dark suit and tie, he had glanced up at Charlie and I for a moment. Turning my gaze to him, he quickly turned his head back down and read the morning paper. Everyone on the train that morning seemed to be reading the morning paper.

Looking at the mans face there was something remarkably sad about it. He would sip on his morning coffee, eat his breakfast of processed pancakes, and read the morning paper like the rest, yet there had been something different about him, something significant that the others passengers did not possess. It was more than his clothing that set him apart, it was in the way in which he carried himself. Unaware that I had been observing him again, the man seemed depressed and yet remarkably strong at the same time. It was the way he flooded his large hands together as if were about breakdown and pray, to the way his eyes closed settling in what seemed to be a deep form of meditation, it seemed as though he would breakdown at any moment. Yet the man didn’t.

Taking out at tissue from his front pocket he blew his nose and whipped nostrils clean. He then took the same tissue, wrapped it up and placed it in the empty stained mug before him. I could not tell if he had been upset or simply had the cold. Again, I wondered what it was like to be this man, and know his story as close as the waves know the sea. Reading his paper, he seemed to be the only passenger who was truly moved by its headline.

THE END OF AN ERA: THE FALL OF SIGON

If you ask most youth today in the United States who won the Vietnam War, the ones who have never picked up a book or cared to read, the ones who spend hours upon hours gazing at the television, or now I guess in most cases their phone, they will tell you; “Well, we did. American has never lost a war, and will never lose a war.”

No American, myself included, likes to speak about the Vietnam War. In fact it is because of this war, among other things, I no longer like to consider myself an American. Today when I travel to other countries for business or leisure, I tell others who are curious to ask that I was born in Canada. This of course is a lie, but I've found that if I ware a hat that displaces Canadian flag, and keep to myself for the majority of the trip, most of my fellow travellers are unable to tell the difference. I now naturally say pop instead of soda, try to practice patriotism instead of nationalism in my everyday life, and go on and on about the wonders and mysteries of how I am able to have and drink bagged milk from my refrigerator. Even still, when I communicate there will always be some American tendencies that me away.

No America likes to speak about the Vietnam; it is America’s dirtiest elephant, their biggest mistake, and their largest pile of shoot that has been swept under the dark rug. A rug that has now always appeared a little lopsided from a distance among the others. A rug that bores the American flag.

How could we possibly forget the Vietnam War? Or, a at least been miseducated on it. A war that is still know by the North Vietnamese as the Resistance Against America, or simply titled American War. Depending on who you ask, everyone has a different interpretation of it, everyone has a different title. Just as there are two sides to every coin. Some even believe that unless you thought in the Vietnam War, you should not be talking about it all. Yet regardless of what you hear, or what you believe, make no mistake, America did not win the Vietnam war.

War is and will always be senseless in my opinion, but there is something extra powerful that still resonates with me about what that took place in Vietnam. A war that America had no business or sense involving themselves in to begin with. I’m not sure if powerful is the correct word to use, everything from the infamous My Lia Massacre of 1968, leading to the deaths of more than four-thundered innocent civilians, to the Christmas Boomings of 1972. No war is ever something that should be seen as powerful.

In 1968 I had only been four years old, there for I had been too young and too politically inclined to understand the totality of this event. At the age of four, I'm don’t think even I knew what the word war meant. Yet as I grew, and my young mined began to mature and became inquisitive, I asked myself the question. How could so many people turn a blind eye to this genocide? Did their lives not hold any significance at all? These were real people, with real soils, and now there lives meant nothing. Only to be swept under the dark rug.

And again in December 1972, when Operation Linebacker II commenced, and US Army dropped their missiles on North Vietnamese soil; destroying homes in the cities of Hanoi, Haiphong, Thái Nguyên, Lạng Sơn, and Bắc Giang. How could so many people in America feel content as they sat near their the fireplaces and unwrapped gifts on Christmas morning. Knowing yet seeming to forget what their government had been destroying to the lives of many on the other side of the word.

Nixon deemed the Operation Linebacker II a success. In its wake the North Vietnamese returned to the negotiating table, and the Paris Peace Accords were signed less than a month later. I’m sure no one would argue, the Paris Peace Accord were also found be was quite the success.

Yes, there will always be those famous anti-war protesters, the ones who matched the streets and stereotyped the 1960s in history as a time of peace, love, and prosperity. Some of marchers not even sure what they had been matching for. I can erasure you, the 1960s were nothing like this. There will always be this idea in the minds of man that when you fight a war people die, get blown up, and become nothing but ash. Valuable assets are destroyed, and this is nothing new. Ignorant men who say this, can only say this because the war didn't take place in their own country, the war took place in Vietnam instead.

One evening in July, a year or so after the war, I remember coming home from a day at the river. It was extremely humid that day, and I started to feel the turnings of my stomach. My skin was sunburned, with circular dark blotches on my back were already beginning to peal a dead white. As I raced home, sweat dripped down from my for my forehead, hitting my lips. Tasting the bitterness of my perspiration, the mussels in my legs started burn and swell as if they had been touched by fire. I was never a fast runner, my body was not built for it. Stocky and had always found the act strenuous on my body even as a young lad. Gasping for breath, I tried to chase Charlie who was already meters ahead.

Off in the distance I could see the suburban home I had spent my life in. Made my of brick and standing two stories high, the house was surrounded by apple trees and various flowers my mother had planted; tiger lilies, daffodils, tulips, roses. These various plants created what a colourful quilt outside the homes perimeter, carefully stitched and plotted to the earth with precision and care. The combination of these various smells bled from the flowers created that of a surgery aroma that was extremely potent. This sent reminded me of my youth in Madison Indiana. Located in Madison Indiana.

Author's Note

Ignore grammar and some spelling mistakes. This is only the first 3000 words of my novel, the first drapht, and simply looking for feedback on the story. If you enjoy it so far, if there are some elements you think I should change etc.