Jack B. Rochester
editor, publisher, and author of Nathaniel Hawthorne Flowers literary fiction trilogy, other fiction, and over a dozen works of nonfiction, including the national bestseller The Naked Computer and the international best-seller Pirates of the Digital Millennium; wrote hundreds of newspaper and magazine articles, as well as short stories and poetry for literary magazines; winner of the 2016 Independent Publishers of New England Award for Best Literary Fiction
ME OR THEM, January 19, 1965, 5:45 a.m.
I stood outside the Chicago Loop bus terminal with my mother, huge, sopping-wet flakes striking the umbrella I held above us like mallet blows on a kettle drum. Icy water cascaded over its edge, soaking my shoes. I hated getting wet feet. I hated the cold…. I hated everything about being here, waiting for a bus that would take me to San Antonio, Texas, to begin my four-year prison sentence in the United States Air Force.
Dozens of abject strangers my age stood around in a tableau that reminded me of nothing so much as a dark, bleak, miserable, chiaroscuro version of my favorite painting at the Chicago Art Institute, Seurat’s A Sunday on La Grande Jatte. I looked at a tall fellow in a tan private-eye overcoat, darkened across the shoulders by the wet snow, who glared back at me. Near the terminal doors a guy jabbered loudly into a pay phone, his free arm swinging in wild arcs; he was loudly sobbing, “Lauren, Lauren.” Embarrassed, I shifted my gaze to those who paced incessantly in and out of the ice-cold rain without benefit of umbrellas. A sleazy hood in a black leather motorcycle jacket, his hair carved into fins on each side of his head and a cigarette dangling from his surly lips, sneered at everyone who walked near him. I caught a look of utter dejection on a long-haired, pimply-faced kid who stood next to a stocky older man, their hands and forearms covered by a thick neck scarf.
I sighed, loudly, in an unsuccessful attempt to get my mother’s sympathy. I couldn’t stand this, waiting in the cold, gray darkness. I just didn’t want to think about where my life was headed once I embarked upon the impending bus ride.
A powerful gust of bitterly cold, damp wind blew off Lake Michigan through the bus tunnel. My mother, Adele, although bundled up inside her thick wool coat, shook, shivered, and shuddered. What a jerk I was, I thought, causing her anguish—more anguish, anguish upon anguish, just when she was beginning to get over the loss of my dad and now me, flunked out of University of Chicago. Fired from a construction job as a mere laborer. A draft notice from the Army. Then that little talk at the kitchen table.
“Nathaniel,” she’d said, “I think it’s time you go in the service.”
The military. The service. Serve my country. So that was it. No discussion, no alternatives. The service. That was the only option left for someone like me.
from Wild Blue Yonder by Jack B. Rochester (Wheatmark)
Latest Release: Bridge Across the Ocean (Brilliant Light Publishing, September 2021)
