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crumpled
form. “I even brought you a present. Can I stay?”
    The silence hung in the three sided
room like stale sweat. No one moved. No one even seemed to breathe.
Then Jocco broke the spell --- or perhaps deepened it.
    “Yes, my friend, you can
stay.”
    The smile on Pussbag’s face would have
warmed all but his mother’s cold heart. “Thank you!”, he sighed,
then he knelt down and kissed Jocco’s muddy boot.

 
    Chapter 7 : HOME
    Mt. Hawthorn
    Lake Champlain, NY
    June
23
    Once past the interstate, 9N continues
east towards Lake Champlain, that great, hundred mile long slash in
the land between New York’s Adirondacks and Green Mountains of
Vermont. As you approach the lake the land flattens and farms begin
to appear. The odd deer is replaced by herds of cattle. Tiny,
sleeping villages give way to hustling, bustling towns.
    Only now the hustle was over and the
bustle had dried up and blown away.
    As he drove, Josh glanced over at his
son. Jessie had been silent since they had stopped at the I-87
underpass, the useless cell phone still clutched in his hand. Now,
turning south at Westport, they began to see the wrecked cars. Josh
had to swerve around several crashes. Stopping at the first, he had
looked inside. He did not stop again.
    Five miles past Port Henry, they
turned west towards Hawthorn. Built on a small, wooded mountain,
Hawthorn, once a quiet little ski village, was now a suburban
bedroom community to the bigger, busier college town of Crown
Point. Ten minutes later they were home.
    The human mind is a wondrous thing,
having within it the capacity to hope when all hope is gone; to
cling to an idea when all the evidence points to the contrary. Some
say it is that ability alone that separates humanity from the other
creatures. Without that spark of hope we are all just wanders blown
on a dark wind.
    Several hours after arriving home,
father and son sat alone on the front steps, silently watching the
shadows lengthening all about them. Hope’s eternal spark was
flickering in a very dark wind indeed.
    They’d just buried what remained of
Ann Williams in her garden. Josh had mumbled something about heaven
and a ‘better place’. Jessie had stood as one turned to stone. The
cell phone was gone now, replaced by a trembling fist. Then, as the
rich, dark earth began to cover the ‘thing’ rolled in the sheet,
Jessie had fallen to his knees, great wracking sobs filling the
silence.
    Josh had joined him, and together they
had mourned.
    Now, sitting on the front steps, both
silently watched the sun going down. Slowly, reverently, Josh took
something out of his pocket. Holding it up to the dying rays, it
flashed warmly. Gently he placed it in his son’s cold
hand.
    “It was your mother’s, Jess. I think
she’d want you to have it.”
    Jessie looked at the ring, its yellow
gold worn and smooth. His father still wore the mate. He dug Uncle
Bob’s ring out of his own pocket and held them up together. His
uncle’s was bigger, newer and less yellow. Through eyes red from
weeping, he looked at his father.
    “Is that all we’ll ever find, Dad?
Dead people’s rings?”
    Josh felt his breath catch in his
throat. “No, son. God wouldn’t be so cruel.”
    Jessie stiffened, his young face
suddenly old. “’God’?!”, he screamed. “There IS no God! God would
never let THIS happen! And if He does exist, then... then I HATE
HIM!”
    Josh moved towards him, but Jessie
turned away, dry sobs shaking his shoulders. Josh let him be,
knowing that words at this point, even kind ones, wouldn’t help.
Jessie was hurting, not only for a mother that he loved dearly, but
for everything he had ever known. Dead. Dead. The whole bloody
world was dead! Inwardly Josh himself railed at a Creator that
could allow his finest creation to be so casually
destroyed.
    As the day darkened, father and son
sat clinging to the one thing they had left --- each
other.
    Jessie came into the kitchen, one hand
rubbing the sleep from his