HAWES ESCAPES

He was a regular, driving in from Hardyston for a Saturday haircut once a month.

I remember him coming into the shop that first day. I got a good look at him while I cut his hair. His expression was strange. Haunted, I’d call it. Something about his eyes.

He said it was a shortcut, but one look at a map showed me that was bullshit. Clinton road went from nowhere to nowhere. No, he drove it for one reason.

I got out of him, eventually. Children like wraiths, standing by the side of the road in rain or snow or sunshine. They said nothing, but he said he knew what they wanted.

At first he tried to resist, tried and tried to not go. But in the end, he had to take that drive again. Late at night. Alone.

Sheriff found his car with wallet and keys locked inside.

What Pegman Saw

My daughter Ethel is especially fond of this road, insisting on driving it whenever I go back to New Jersey to visit her (and sometimes backing out at the last minute).

One of her favorite places is the abandoned zoo Jungle Habitat, a cursed place if there ever was one.

The wilderness of New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut has a peculiar creepiness that you need to experience to fully understand.

The ghost stories of Washington Irving become much more believable.

The hills are alive with ghosts.

“Ah! There you are my boy!” The old gentleman smiles up from his table. “I hoped I would see you today.”

“Sir,” I reply. “How do you do this evening?”

“Splendid!” He claps his hands, gestures to the chair. “Won’t you join me for a glass of Sillery? It goes down well after such a hot afternoon.”

I  see no way out of it. He pours the sparkling yellow wine into a tall glass. “So tell me, young man. Are you a political animal?”

“Sir?”

“Do you hold opinions? A philosophy? Something about you that is more durable than your excellent manners and obvious wealth?”

His cold blue eyes pierce me. I realize now that he must know, must have seen us together. We have been careless. We cannot help ourselves. Her recklessness is an aphrodisiac for us both.

He expects an answer. A correct one.

I clear my throat.

What Pegman Saw

“IF I TRY TO FIND some useful phrase to sum up the time of my childhood and youth before the First World War, I hope I can put it most succinctly by calling it the Golden Age of Security.”
― Stefan Zweig, The World of Yesterday: Memoirs of a European

The European summer of 1914 was marked by especially fine weather, day upon day of glorious sunshine and warm afternoons. The spas of Bohemia were a favorite destination for the noble and wealthy.

By winter, the world left behind its innocence as the Great War began, killing or wounding a quarter million young men in a matter of weeks. Soon enough, Bohemia itself would cease to exist.