John Swinburn

Tuesday morning. Actually, Monday night. That’s when he made the decision to withdraw. He would slip out of his routine quietly, without fanfare. No announcement, no notice; nothing to call attention to his disappearance from the ether, the netherworld of the internet.

He realized his absence might be noticed by a few people who read his disjointed, stream-of-consciousness online blather; but, he reasoned, if they became concerned about him, they would contact him and he would reassure them he was safe and well.

He did not anticipate Tuesday morning’s frightful dislocations that would snare the world’s attention, diverting it away from his reflections or, rather, their absence.

The North Korean missile crisis drew the scrutiny of every media outlet and virtually every human being on the planet who had access to news of the country’s bellicose threats. He paid the news little heed. Instead, he focused his attention on his writing, a collection of words no one would read for a very long time.

The crisis lasted more than six months. North Korea’s missile test firings and subsequent nuclear detonations occurred almost daily, met by universal condemnation and threats from around the world. World governments responded to antagonistic sabre-rattling with menacing promises of their own, asserting they would use “any and all means at our disposal” to put an end to the possibility of nuclear attack by a deranged dictator. That defiant posturing—the threat of preemptive nuclear first-strike—was hollow, and the North Koreans knew it. And, so, they rattled their own sabres and danced to their own tunes of bravado, taunting the world with threats of a serpent’s strike.

Finally, though, the consortium of world powers listened and reacted with fear long enough to take bold action. Within two minutes of the dictator’s assassination by a missile-equipped low-flying drone and the simultaneous low-level nuclear strike in a desolate region of the country, the North Koreans knew the rest of the world was actually prepared to release a barrage of nuclear weapons on the state, guaranteeing instant and utter destruction. Behind the scenes, threats against the peninsula were so clearly articulated that the remnants of the dictator’s regime quietly but completely acquiesced. The crisis was over. The guaranteed dismantling of the regime’s nuclear arsenal would take months. During those intervening months, though, eighty-six nuclear warheads carried on thirty-five ocean-going vessels patrolling off the coast of the country assured compliance.

While the crisis was in full swing, he continued to write, but no one else read what he wrote. If anyone noticed his absence, no one mentioned it; people were so enmeshed in the crisis that nothing he might have said would have been sufficient to draw their attention.

Six months without “speaking” to the world was a new experience for Gunther Langley Positruska. He had been writing for forty years and, for the past ten, had been expressing his odd assortment of ruminations online for the world to see. His small audience and their rare comments had sustained him. Without that feedback, he sank into an old but familiar depression, one of his own making.

When Gunther finally began reading the papers and watching television news again, he felt a sense of déjà vu about the ongoing global nuclear crisis. It felt to him like something he had lived through before; not an imaginary experience, but something real, a substantive incident replete with visceral fears for the survival of humanity. The assassination and muscular display of nuclear readiness by a fierce band of angry nations finally brought it home to him. He knew where the sense that he’d been through it all before came from.

Inside a fireproof lockbox in his closet, a neatly organized cache of one terrabyte thumb drives prevented Gunther’s thoughts from disappearing. They might escape his brain, never again to be remembered, but if he had recorded them on his blog, they would be cataloged among his collection of thumb drives. When he finally decided he may have written about a scenario like the one that had just played out, he began searching. When I say his files were cataloged, I don’t mean cataloged in an organized way, making finding a specific piece of information easy. No, they were organized chronologically, so finding a specific article or post required either knowing its date of production or conducting a painstaking search of every drive, in order.

That’s how Gunther found it, searching every drive, trying various key words to find files that would trigger real memory, instead of the vaporous fog that enshrouded something familiar about the global terror of annihilation.

That’s how he discovered he had written—seven years earlier—about the events of that six-month span, exactly as they happened. Even a record of the assassination by drone and the concurrent nuclear detonation hid in Gunther’s odd conglomeration of fact and fiction, an emotional spillway leavened by stark, unemotional reason and logic unfettered with feeling.

After the stand-down, Gunther began telling people about what he had written seven years before, but almost no one had any interest in premonitions from an old unknown writer who didn’t quite understand how they came to be, anyway.

The one person who expressed an interest in what he said about his fiction-that-became-fact was a Russian scholar of Asia, a highly-regarded specialist in Korean studies. Andrei Kamakordakov studied at Leningrad State University and later attended Pyongyang’s Kim Il-sung University. He then taught Korean history and language in Leningrad before accepting a teaching position in South Korea.

Kamakordakov read Gunther’s retelling of his earlier Korean story with fascination. He realized, of course, that Gunther could have been fabricating the story and that his supposedly old writing could have been produced after the recent crisis. But some of the references in the older story suggested otherwise. For example, Gunther had written about the allied nuclear strike of an abandoned city, Chonshung, in Sinhung Province. Four years after Gunther’s post, the North Koreans had abandoned that city; a fact virtually unknown outside of Korean scholars. All the recent literature continued to refer to Chonshung as if it still existed. How might Gunther have known about its abandonment, Kamakordakov wondered?  There were other such clues that Gunther’s writing represented an authentic premonition about North Korea. Kamakordakov was interested to know whether there were others.

Kamakordakov initiated an email exchange with Gunther, inquiring about other, later writings about North Korea. Gunther responded that he did not know; he would have to check.

And he did. He discovered that, four years later, he wrote about the reunification of the two Koreas. In Gunther’s writing, the reunification began, in earnest, twenty-six months after the assassination. He wrote that there were few doubts that reunification would be difficult, but almost no one anticipated the scope and breadth of the problem.

Gunther’s writing suggested an almost cataclysmic clash of cultures. North Koreans had virtually no exposure to critical thinking. Their skills were, by a large, limited to farming; even those skills were relics of a time when farm machinery was virtually unknown, so adapting to a new era in which productivity was based, in large part, on efficient use of highly sophisticated equipment, was mightily difficult for the North Koreans.

As he read the old writings, Kamakordakov became concerned that the polite generosity of the South Koreans could turn, if reunification became a reality, to resentment and, then, something far worse.

Kamakordakov read Gunther’s manuscripts and worried. He worried that Gunther’s words might accurately foretell of an impending genocide unequaled in modern history. And Kamakordakov wondered how that—not the story, but the need to tell—it might be averted.

After forty-eight consecutive hours of assessment, Kamakordakov reached a conclusion about how to avoid that catastrophe. As a sensitive, honorable, decent man, Kamakordakov hated himself for conceiving of the only solution that seemed possible. Gunther did not deserve to be repaid for his premonitions in such a way, but what was the alternative?

[Some of what I’ve written here could, if extracted properly and pared down to proper length,  serve well as a book “blurb,” the snare that gets people to buy the book. But this is not the whole story by any means. The story actually begins when Gunther Langley Positruska is a college sophomore. His erratic and troubling history would be revealed in the telling of this story and, frankly, I’m quite interested to know more about that history and how he came to, seemingly, foretell future events. I think I know, but it’s only an inkling at this point. If I get energetic, I might write the whole story; or I might not. I am coming to the inescapable conclusion that I must have adult attention deficit disorder; I can’t seem to be capable of focusing for the long-haul.]

I sat with my friend at the kitchen table, sturdy as steel but worn to bare wood from a hundred years of use by families in their own kitchens during wars and recessions, presidential crises and moon landings. I found the table at a thrift shop, the last stop before becoming kindling.

My friend and I sat and drank coffee, his sweetened with sugar and muted with milk, mine black and unadulterated. We spoke of the frailty of lives touched by defeat, the pain of losing love, and the rubble of broken marriages filling suburban streets. Our conversations were routine; we had only questions, no answers.

We had been talking for almost two hours when I spied something move in the periphery of my view. I turned to see what had captured my attention. Outside the window, stuck to a broken and dangling twig attached to a branch swinging in the soft current of air was a feather, twisting in the steady breeze. The tree bent gently in the soft wind, hunkering down with each slight gust. My eyes could not withhold their gaze from the feather; my friend looked outside to see what commanded my rapt attention. He asked me what held my gaze. “The feather, the twig, the swinging branch,” I said, nodding to the world outside the window.He cocked his head and looked at me with questions in his eyes.  “The feather? What feather?”

“That one, the one hanging from that twig,” I said, pointing out the twig and the feather.

“Right. A twig. You been drinking all the sudden?”

“Jesus! Are you deaf in the eyes? It’s right there,” I said, turning to point my finger toward the tree.

But when I turned, I saw no tree. Outside, there was just the scrub of the desert, the same scrub that’s kept the cabin company for forty years. There were no trees, no twigs, no branches. Muted shades of straw and brown and grey danced among the cold, parched ground; no tree in a hundred miles. A flat, desolate desert filled with low-growing plants desperate for just a sip of water.

I stood and walked to the window, almost afraid to say a word to my friend. What have I been thinking to allow myself to venture so far from reality? I heard myself think. I stared out into the barrenness, wondering what I had seen, if not a tree and a branch?

“Shit, I must have been in a daydream, but I’ll be damned if I know what it was about!”

I turned back to face him, but saw only my chair and my cup of coffee at the table. The table’s leaf hid beneath the tabletop. My friend’s chair was back in the corner of the cabin, its usual resting place when I had no company. I was confused. Had he gotten up and folded the leaf down to fool me? Did he have time to move the chair back to the corner? I turned around quickly, hoping to catch him in the act of trying to play a trick on me.

There, outside the window, was my tree, along with a hundred others, all covered in thick, green leaves. Cardinals and blue jays chattered among the branches; I could see and hear them. The path from the front of the house was steep, dipping along the edge of a precipice, below which were more hills and, in the distance, terraces of cultivated fields.

I spun around again, my head reeling and my senses trying to comprehend the changing scenery. But confusion reigned; I could not understand what I was seeing; could not gather which scene was real and which was imagined.

Another turn to the window revealed yet another vision; rolling hills, covered with desert scrub as far as the eye could see, but there, close to the house, a tall, crooked, almost barren tree. A rope hung from the highest branch, culminating in a noose, tied tight around my friend’s neck. His slumped body twisted, slowly, as if his corpse was unwinding the spindly rope.  I could barely see his face because the sun was setting behind him.

As his body made the next revolution, I saw the face come clearly into view, illuminated by the rays of the sun. It was my face, the face I see when I look in a mirror. I grabbed the mirror off the dresser, just two steps from the dining table. I looked into the glass and saw nothing but the reflection of the wall behind me; that, and the kitchen window. The reflection wasn’t clear, though; I could not tell what I was seeing through that reflected window.

“Goddamn! What is wrong with me?!” I screamed at the empty mirror. That voice was not mine, although it escaped from my mouth. That scream was my friend’s voice, his unmistakable voice, like hissing gravel bouncing and reverberating inside a bass drum, questioning my sanity.

I spun around, facing the window again. The flat scrub desert was back, but this time the road leading away from the cabin was awash in dust spraying from the back wheels of my friend’s truck as it sped away. I stood, silent, watching as it disappeared. The dust began to dissipate; eventually, the road was clear and the dust had settled.

My coffee cup sat on the kitchen table, alongside the half-full mug of milky coffee in his mug. The weekly paper, spread out across the fold, lay across the table in front of the chair where he had been sitting. A black ballpoint pen sat at an angle on top of the page. As I moved closer, I could see a heavy line of ink drawn around a half-page article. My picture, an old black and white portrait, featured prominently at the top of the article. The headline read: “Suicide or Murder: Resident’s Death Remains a Mystery.”

Ernest Hemingway broke into my house on my birthday in October 1960 when I was seven years old. The media reported at the time that he was in hiding with Mary, in New York; clearly he was not. No, he was in Corpus Christi, Texas, living temporarily on a sailboat moored in one of the downtown marinas, one called the “L Head.” Mary was, indeed, in New York at that time, but Papa was not.

He left Cuba just three months earlier for Spain, the purpose of which was a photo session for a Time magazine cover story. He departed Spain in early October, ostensibly bound for New York. That’s where the media got it wrong. He was bound for Corpus Christi, where he busied himself making plans for a return to Cuba. He reasoned that he would be too readily recognized if he headed to Miami or the Keys or, in fact, anywhere in Florida. But in Corpus Christi he could be just another quirky old man in love with life on the water. In Corpus, his plans for a return to Cuba would go unnoticed.

Why he picked our house I guess I’ll never know for certain. My guess, though, is that the smell of bacon cooking drew him in. You see, each morning my father got up very early, as I do now, and he cooked massive amounts of bacon. The scent of cured bacon lured Hemingway to us, though a few miles separated us from his boat near downtown. I can understand why. Heat transforms bacon from a flat, slippery pink and white ribbon—an odd salamander no one would want to find in the kitchen—into a rich, sensual piece of culinary joy awaiting its destiny: teasing the human tongue, pleasuring the palate. I know, without question, the fragrance of bacon being transformed in my father’s skillet was impossible to resist. And Hemingway, in his sailboat in the marina, simply followed his nose to our house.

On the morning of my birthday, Hemingway followed the scent of bacon grease to our house. I suspect he had smelled the bacon for several days. It must have occurred to him that the reliability of that morning ritual meant that, if he followed his nose to the source of the aroma, he would find a significant stash of salted pork, the ideal companion for a voyage across the Gulf of Mexico and into the Caribbean. And so he did.

My father thought he heard something at the front door, so he turned the gas burner down to the lowest level and left the bacon sizzling in the giant cast iron skillet. He went to the front door and turned on the porch light, but he could see nothing. He waited quietly and listened for the sound; nothing. But just as he turned off the front porch light, he heard scratching at the back door, the door leading from the kitchen to the car port at the back of the house. He rushed back toward the kitchen. As he walked through the doorway between the dining room and the kitchen, he heard the screen door pop open, then saw Hemingway slide in.

Their gazes met; my father and Ernest Hemingway stood like statues, staring into one another’s eyes, poised to respond should the other move in a threatening manner. I watched from the hallway, not quite sure what to make of the situation. But I could tell my father was calm, so I remained quiet, though seeing a stranger in my house was an unusual surprise.

Hemingway spoke first. “I’m not here to do harm. I simply need provisions for my voyage. Meat that will last the trip. Can you spare some? I was lured by the bouquet of bacon; surely a man who can turn lard and muscle into ambrosia will help?”

My father’s blue eyes illuminated Hemingway’s face with an otherworldly glow. “Of course, my friend, but first you must put your knife down on the counter and slide it toward me. I’m generous, but not stupid.”

Hemingway had used a large, heavy-bladed knife to pry open the back door. At my father’s words, Papa looked down at his hand, his eyes awash in surprise at seeing the knife he was holding.

“Of course, I’m sorry. It’s not my intent…”

“I know,” my father’s words cut him off. “Here, take this,” handing Papa a freshly-wrapped package of bacon. It must have been three pounds. “This will get you part way there, if you’re frugal.”

Hemingway, the gruff old man, looked at my father with moistened eyes. “You’re a gentleman and a scholar. When I get to Cuba, I will remember you as the man who saved me.”

As Hemingway turned toward the screen door to leave, my father called after him. “Vaya con Diós.” Papa looked back and smiled, then walked off toward the “L Head.”

I don’t know where he went after he left us. The next we heard about him was that he died at his own hand in Idaho. I do so wish he had found his way back to his beloved Cuba. But even a gift of bacon wasn’t enough to take him to place he called home.