A Little Bit of Jigsaw Men

A quick break from poetry for an excerpt from my novella

I began this novella in 2007 and wrote off-and-on for several years, before and after work at my full-time job. I self-published it, to no fanfare, in 2012…then lost my nerve and promptly removed it from circulation. I decided to republish it in 2022 because elements of the story echoed recent events, including the Covid-19 pandemic and the accelerating deterioration of the environment. Here’s the back cover copy:

Will Stark returns from war to a broken society struggling to make sense of defeat, a civilization in decline, an environment in ruins.

After receiving a call from a stranger who has news about George Stark, the father Will never knew, Will drives to a distant suburb to see what, if anything, he can learn about his past.

As Will pieces together his father’s life, he creates a new life for himself, and an active role in the life of a struggling community, only to become a soldier once again.

Jigsaw Men is the story of a broken past, a precarious present, and a future of worthy struggle.

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It was a two-ply afternoon for sure.  Although I’d been wearing a mask on and off for a year or more back home—in the city, where things had never been quite habitable—there was something particularly disheartening about the requirement here in a place like Glenden, the point of which had always been health and hygiene, thick hair and a rosy complexion.  To wear a mask here was to turn one’s back on a dream.  Stubbornly, I left mine in the glove compartment and hurried up Nate’s front steps.  As I pressed the doorbell, I could feel my throat catch as if I’d swallowed a pushpin. 

Waiting with my back to the door, I could see the land pucker and fold in three directions: to the west, woods and stone fences boxing the hillsides; to the east, shingled roofs and a white steeple in the distance; and just across the road, through a stand of waking trees, a small farm: a greenhouse and a couple of tool sheds rotting in the haze, a few acres of yellowy stalks and straw, the husks of last years crops still lying fallow on the ground.  All of it foreign to me, the way the past is foreign, but welcome too, a sight for sore city eyes.  Very sore all of a sudden. 

No one came to the door so I knocked again, louder this time, and listened for the sounds of motion inside.  What I heard instead came from somewhere behind me, a sinister grind lifting out of the silence.  Headlights were oozing through the branches a quarter mile off, creeping around a bend and coming straight for me. A police car, black and white.  I panicked as if I had something to hide.

It stopped on the shoulder of the road opposite Nate’s house and a young man, a scarecrow wearing a holster, slid out from behind the wheel and headed into the fields.  I watched him as he walked the perimeter and then along the crop rows.  He was wearing a paper surgeon’s mask and, despite the fading light, sunglasses, and was using a flashlight to search the deeper shadows.  From where I was standing, I could have told him he was wasting his time.  There were no thieves lurking in the darkness that evening; there were no crops to steal. 

           The door clicked behind me.  A pair of dimly lit eyes studied me from a narrow opening.  “You’re here?” he croaked, pulling the door wider.  He was wearing an ancient cardigan, maroon and pilled, against a crisp white shirt and khaki pants ironed to a razor crease.  His hair, salt-and-pepper, was combed flat and rigid with teeth marks.  Freshly shaven, he had missed a spot behind his jawbone where a little hillock of whisker lent some character to the otherwise bland, pleasing contours of his face.  He stood bolt upright, his shoulders back, almost sprightly in his attention except that he was staring at my shoulder.  And he kept staring as he heaved and hacked into a yellow handkerchief he pulled from his pants pocket. 

           “Pardon me,” he said after clearing his throat.  “I’m susceptible on nights like this.  Just not myself.  But it is nice to finally meet you.”