Down Jersey Drive-shaft

Chapter Three: The Smell of Memory

The radio is trying to kill you!

Benny wakes up in a cold sweat. Is he hyperventilating? He reaches over the narrow bed to grab a glass of water he had placed on the nightstand after one a.m. What time is it now?

Three-twelve in the morning. So that means, what, less than two hours of sleep? No rest for the weary.

Benny pulls his six-foot four farmer's body out of bed, a herculean task considering the three nights lacking in genuine sleep. He passes the huge oak Admiral radio on his way to the water closet, turning it on to the sweet sound of a war report.

...Allies continue push into Germany...

...race to reach Berlin before the Communist Army...

News of the day goes in one ear and out the other. Benny washes his face and relieves himself at the same time, wishing he was snoring. He scratches, yawns like a bear of a man and brushes his teeth better than any dentist, a fine-toothed combing.

The room is cold and the radiator refuses to compromise, so Haskins pulls on the thermal underwear before layering with a flannel dress shirt and gray trousers. He combs back and lightly greases brown hair tinged gray from one part age, two parts stress. A weary old bugger turns into a handsome middle-aged man for another day.

Out the creaky door he strides, long skinny legs moving a powerful upper body forward and to the double door outside. He grabs a long wool pea coat, borrowed from a kind fellow when they hit town three days back, and gallops out into the world.

The world he exists in at this point is Salem City, a corner of Americana nestled in the cow fields and corn rows of Salem County, New Jersey. Benny and his family still call it Down Jersey, a place much better than the northern part of the state due to its more down-to-earth people. They can have their cities; country air is what I need, even if it is cold and heavy.

He considers this with a great deal of self-denial, because Salem represents a foul memory in Benny's mind. He woke up here after the war, the first one to rock the globe, after a long sea voyage, a pilot suffering severe burns and broken bones at war's end. He came out of delirium to find he was no longer in Europe, but in Down Jersey, the Ford Hotel on Market converted to a hospital for returning soldiers. A colonial town with some pretty fine nurses, bricks and bombshells. Then the hell began, and dragged on forever.

But, that was the last war, twenty-five years ago. The boy had become a man since then. He could walk these streets again, no problem. After all, there was work to be done. His piloting skills were in dire need. The country had been invaded, and its citizens were completely unaware. Heck, even Benny couldn't believe the mess he was in, and he had seen it up close.

He had purpose again, one beyond raising poultry on Mister Harmon's farm. The sky was his real home, soaring in a metal bird spitting bullets at bad men, and now bad things. A few days ago, an Italian woman literally kicked in his front door, screamed for a pilot, and carted him away in her souped up Chevy Stylemaster. The kid's only good quality being she suffers from remarkable cuteness (well, okay, she's a mean mechanic too). At first, Benny was averse to the whole thing, until his eyes saw a new and terrible reality.

So, given three days to rest by the new group he had been inducted into, Special Technologies (with some military connections he deemed suspicious, but vital to the current situation), Benjamin Haskins tried to acclimate to Salem, to get rid of the demon that has rested on his shoulders for more than two decades.

He spent those first three days locked in his hotel room.

Today he finally broke free, more from agitation than bravery. The city is bustling with folks going their way to work, to gossip, to eat. Eating is on Benny's mind. Three days of confinement meant he ate nothing, and now the stomach roared. His old brown shoes clip down the notched red brick sidewalk that gives the city a modern Revolutionary War atmosphere. He half feels the Redcoats ready to jump out from the County Courthouse to nab him.