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[center] [img]https://i.imgur.com/MEf0T10.jpeg[/img] [/center] 

[color=00aeef][center][b]Interacting with[/b]: none [b].     Mentions[/b]: Callie, Dallas, Valen, Anna Lou (Lucas – NPC) [b].     Location[/b]: His House, Downtown Pines Holler, Huskers[/center][/color]


The copy of “Of Mice and Men” had been a gift, one that had unintentionally haunted him for years.

Lying in his bed, wrapped in an invisible blanket of morning heat, Elias stared at the leather-bound copy of Steinbeck’s classic. Sick in a hospital bed, his ailing father had given it to him one week before his passing, and still, years later, the book evoked feelings that Steinbeck had never imagined, a weight that Elias couldn’t seem to shake.

Sitting up, Elias reached out to the white IKEA Billy bookcase standing beside his bed and tugged the novella free from its resting place between a hardly used copy of The Elements of Style by EB White and William Strunk Jr., and the twice-read The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas, one of too many books banned here in North Dakota schools.

Opening the front cover, he read the words his father had carefully penned. He huffed silently, knowing Thomas Petterson had never read the book, never remembered the quote his son tried too often to explain. “The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.” It was ironic that that famous quote from his favourite book in high school had become the words which would exemplify his life, maybe even one day be engraved onto his own tombstone and final resting place.

Eli knew that the casual observer who might read the inscription would judge his father to be a good man, proud, loving, salt of the earth.

[quote][color=00aeef]My dear son Elias,

When faced with the choice of being a mouse or a man, you have always been a man, making me proud in everything you do.
Your father, in life and death,

Thomas Rowan Petterson[/color][/quote]

But it was the lines he had scribbled onto the carefully folded paper tucked somewhere in chapter three that usually left Elias angry, sad, or filled with a range of emotions somewhere between one and the other.

[quote][color=00aeef]Elias, I am truly proud of you and respect your decision to go to college. You will become the first in our family to graduate with a degree and the first to avoid both the mills and the mines. I have always tried to be a good man, but like so many men before me, I have failed in private much more than in public. You have always been there for your mother and your sister, especially when I was unable, and when I am gone, I want you to be there for them, the man I could never be. I pray that when the time comes, you will do better than me, for your mother, your sister, and the family that you will one day have.[/color][/quote]

Elias held the paper between his fingers and brushed his thumb against the crease lines that had worn soft with time. The words read like an apology but felt more like an expectation, a sentencing to an unseen prison that the young teacher would read time and time again.

Exhaling softly, Elias cursed the heat that filled the room, and although the temperature in the yard hadn’t reached 70ºF yet, the temperature inside was hotter than outside. The old AC unit, which came with the rental, had died a few days earlier, and although Amazon Prime promised next-day delivery, nothing had shown up on the porch, and the last delivery update said the unit was on its way from Asheville, the same as it had said two, then three days before. When the power went out, the stand-up fans stood like stationary flamingos, doing absolutely nothing to remove the stale hot air from his place.

Flipping over his phone and looking at the time, Elias saw the text from the head coach.

[color=00aeef]Football practice cancelled.[/color]

Then another.

[color=00aeef]Coaches meeting Huskers 2 p.m.[/color]

Expected temperatures were too high, and without power, there was no way for the players to cool off. Without refrigerators and running freezers, there was no ice to cool off the water, no ice packs for injuries, and the expensive cold gel packs were saved for games.

Inhaling deeply, Elias closed his eyes and felt his chest tighten. He had been back for months now, the prodigal son returning to Pines Holler, but he had been lying low, trying to avoid the people he had seen before he had left for college, every person to whom he had declared he would get his degree and move to the city. Maybe Raleigh, maybe Bismarck, who knows, maybe even somewhere out of state. He sighed softly and shook his head. “Yeah, the best laid plans of mice and men.”

With the mid-year retirement of Ms. Hilda Jenkins, the principal’s wife and lone English teacher at Pines Holler, Elias had come home to the town he thought he left forever when his mother’s arthritic bones had started acting up and his younger sister, Lila, had buggered off again and was spending more time on someone else’s couch than she was at the family home. The vice-principal had reached out to his mom, asked if Elias would be coming back, and although he was reluctant, the promise of a salary for a new teacher without a job was something he couldn’t turn down.

Finally rolling out of bed, Elias scrolled through his phone, checking his social media accounts and avoiding the emails that were usually nothing more than spam or alumni news. After the obligatory text to his mom and her standard reply, “Go have fun, don’t worry about me,” Elias dragged his feet, poked around the house, and finally pulled on his faded jeans and his favourite gray T-shirt. something other than the briefs he had worn to bed the night before.

Not thrilled with the prospect of a midday meeting at Pine Holler’s favourite bar and grill, Eli took his time. It wasn’t Huskers itself that bothered him. On a Monday night, when the establishment sat half-empty and quiet, he might have gone without thinking twice. But this was different. Huskers in the middle of summer, with the power out? The whole town would be there, everyone he had spent months avoiding.

And Elias didn’t want the questions.

[quote][color=00aeef]Why’d you come back?

Thought you were getting out.

Didn’t you say you were done with this place?[/color][/quote]

He’d said all of that and meant it, too. After shaking the dust off his boots like it was something symbolic and final, Elias had said goodbye to the town, his family, and the friends he had grown up with since birth. He had promised anyone who would listen that he wasn’t coming back. And now here he was, back on the same street, in the same heat, driving the same roads like nothing had ever changed… nothing except him.

Driving through town in his dad’s old, battered black Dodge Ram 1500, Elias couldn’t help but notice the emptiness, the lack of movement, with only waves of heat shimmering upward off the hot summer road. Heading down Main Street and glancing forward, then right and left, Elias breathed in and something caught in his chest. Nothing had really changed, not in any substantial way. Since last summer, one or two stores now stood vacant, empty buildings with competing signs pasted on the windows: For Rent or For Sale. Take Occupancy Now. Pines Holler residents were always hopeful someone might set up shop, some fool might take interest in the town that was slowly dying, but other than real estate developers or surveyors, it seemed no one was coming. No one except him.

Slowing down for the two locals crossing the road, he gazed out the truck window and recognized the law office where Callie Shaw was working. Other than a nod and a quick wave from his pick-up truck, he hadn’t talked to her since his return, but the woman was unmistakable ... hippie goth, flowing skirts, jewellery dangling from her neck and wrists, and rings on her fingers. While her father was trying to find housing for souls in heaven, Callie was more practical, helping locals find affordable housing here on earth, mainly around town.

Nearing the bar and grill, Elias took a look at the parking lot as he drove closer. Most of the spots were already taken, and the only ones left were farthest away from the doors. Recognizing some of the cars from school, he could see that most of the coaching staff had arrived, and Mr. Robert Jenkins, the principal, must have already been there for hours; his car was up front, only a couple of stalls from the entrance of Huskers. Having seen the way Jenkins schmoozed and worked the system, Elias was surprised the principal and coach hadn’t had his name painted on the concrete with “RESERVED” written underneath.

Parking far from the entrance and out near the chain-link fence at the back, Elias stepped out of the car, and the hot air surrounded him again. It wasn’t more than a couple hundred steps, but in the midday heat, each step felt like two, and if he wasn’t used to the heat after close to thirty summers in Pines Holler, he was sure he’d be sweating.

Pulling the door open, Elias felt a gust of cold air slap at his face, and for the first time in days, he took a deep breath and felt a sense of cool relief. Standing inside, Elias glanced at the faces at the tables and the others serving them food. He knew Lucas from around town but had never really gotten to know him. He frowned when he saw Dallas’s ex-boyfriend, Valen. He had heard the rumours going around town about the Cop, but it was his own history with Dal made it hard to like the guy. When he saw Anna Lou standing near the bar, Elias actually smiled. He remembered her, dark hair, big brown eyes, one of the few people everyone liked back in high school. He’d been no different.

[color=00aeef]“Coach,”[/color] a loud voice boomed, interrupting his thoughts. And when he looked to the sound, Principal Jenkins was calling him over with a nod. With Jenkins sat the four other coaches, and even though he was out of the midday heat, Elias felt like he had moved straight from the frying pan and into something worse.