Third Time To Start Again

Trigger warning: violence, mentions of concentration camps

“I don’t remember.” 

I chuckle to myself as I hear the words coming out of my mouth. Easy for me to say that. In all honesty, I don’t remember much at all. Pretty much just my name, age, and the address on my drivers license, which I haven’t lived at in years. 

I focus once again on the man in front of me. He says he knows me, says we worked together. He says “worked together” in a manner that sounds...off. Like we were partners in crime. But I don’t know him. I don’t remember him anyways. It’s been three years since I lost my memory. I’m forty two now. That’s thirty nine years of my life I don’t remember. Lost it all in a car accident. The doctors said I was hit by a drunk driver. Was comatose for a month. Woke up and now, three years later, I can’t remember a thing. Problem is, I don’t want to remember. Apparently I was successful before I lost my memory. In terms of money at least. I have enough to last me the rest of my life if I’m careful with it. Found that out when I got out of the hospital. So I spend my time driving around in a beat up old red van I bought. Traveling around the country. Doesn’t cost much to live when your just one man. Sometimes I’ll just buy ahead on canned goods and drive off down some old highway or up an old country road and after a bit pull off and camp out for a week or so. Watch the sunrises. Reds and yellows and oranges thrown up over the horizon in streaks. Watch the sunsets. Purples and pinks and sometimes even greens and blues smeared across the sky. Drink strong black coffee. Build campfires and watch the flames devour the wood and the shadows dance like puppets. During the day I’ll hunt. Or sit and read those fifty cent paperback mysteries you can buy at some gas stations or out of the way book stores. The kind of book with the greasy antagonist that always catches what’s coming to him in the end and broad shouldered good looking protagonist who gets the girl. Other times I’ll go into a little city or town and spend a week drunk at some sleazy downtown bar where cigar smoke is thick and alcohol is thin. Or go to a theater and watch a play. I’m a fan of plays for some reason. Shakespeare especially. 

I do it cause I enjoy the life I live. Nature and towns and people and life. If you can call what some of the people I meet do living. And because I don’t want to remember. I don’t want to remember my past. I know some terrible secret lurks in it. And I don’t want to know what it is.

Guess I’m a bit of a modern cowboy. A modern drifter. Like John Wayne in all the old movies. The black and white ones that sometimes play on the small cracked TVs in the corner of a hotel lobby or that play on the TV of the lonely old man sitting in a nursing home waiting out his days in a thin gown and surrounded by steel and white and death. 

Anyways. The man in front of me. 

He wants to know something about someone. Another name from the past. Another face I can’t remember. Or maybe I can. I don’t know. Faces all become the same after a while. I shake my head at him. “Sorry. I don’t remember.” I say again. I turn back to the bar I sit at. Ignore him. Look at the drink in my hand. Bourbon. Swirl it around in the cup. Set it down without taking a drink. There’s laughter in the background. A girls laugh. No. A woman. Anyone in this kind of environment , no matter their looks, has the mind of an adult. Years of seeing things no human should see. Growing up in places no human should grow up in. The mans questions have stirred something in me. My drink no longer appeals to me, and I stand and make my way out of the bar. I payed beforehand. 

I step out into the night air. It’s raining. A light rain, the kind that catches the moonlight and dusts the street and throws the streetlights soft glow back up at you. 

Memories start moving in my mind like a nest of snakes. There’s a reason I live the life I do. A reason I travel the way I do. Never the same place twice. Yet somehow always the same faces. When you travel like I do, everyone starts to seem the same. People just stuck in a never ending circle. The Circle of Life. You come and you go and when you go if your important or big or a politician or something then you might get your name in a paper or book or even a movie about you. Although of course the books and movies never show the whole story. That’s just how we are. If your not a politician or some big important person you probably don’t get anything except a little epitaph on your grave. A few sad mourners standing around as they throw the dirt over your coffin. From dust to dust, as they say. Either way, big or small, important or not, when you go you make just a little ripple in the world. A little ripple. That’s it. All the years of your life spent meeting people and working and achieving goals and dreams, and when you go it’s just a drop in the ocean. Like the rain as it falls around me right now. A drop of rain.

A memory pops into my head. 

A boy. 

He is standing next to a woman.

The background around them is fuzzy.

“Mom?” He asks, tugging at her hand. “Hm?” She looks down at him. They are both dirty and their clothes are dirty and thin. 

“Mom, where’s dad?” The boy asks. He can’t be more than eight. 

The woman’s face shows the answer. 

The dad is gone. Not coming back. 

“Your father is dead honey. I’ve told you this.” She says, her voice betraying itself. Cracking with grief. 

The boy starts crying. 

The memory ends as suddenly as it sprang to my mind. I know without a doubt that the boy in the memory is me. The woman is my mother. Another memory worms it’s dark little self into my head. 

The woman is being dragged away. By the men in uniforms. A crooked X marks their jacket.  No. It’s a swastika. The boy watches from the shadowed corner of the building he cowers beside. The woman fell that morning. She fell and she couldn’t get up. So the big men with guns came and are taking her away. Taking her to a place that will make her “better” they say, grinning as they do so. Sharing some dork secret. Some dark joke. The boy continues to cry. 

A blank space. 

The boy is strong. Physically and mentally. That’s why he has survived. They make him work. His mom worked with him but she fell and couldn’t get up and the soldiers with guns took her away to a place to get better and she never came back. That was a year ago. The boy is nearly ten now. And he plans his escape every day. Dreams of murdering the German swine who are responsible for his mother’s death. But he waits. He bides his time. 

Another blank space. 

This time is a year later again. The boy is in a truck. A German truck. There are four Germans in the truck with guns. And the driver. They are saying something. The war is over. The prisoners must die. There are two prisoners in the truck. One is the boy. One an older man. Maybe fifty. He is not related to the boy. He appears older than he is to the young eyes of the boy. The boys jaw clenches. He fingers something. It glints in the poor light. He lunges forwards. The Germans scream echos in the tight confines of the truck. 

I’m sweating. Or is it rain? I’m soaked. The rain is running down my shirt and face and hair. It’s in my shoes. I remember now. Some things. Things I hadn’t wanted to remember. The German concentration camp. My fathers death. My mother’s death. My escape. I don’t know what ever became of the old man who had been in the truck with me. Did he die there, in the back of the truck with a crazed eleven year old boy who killed five grown men with a kitchen knife he had secreted away? Or did he escape with the boy and die somewhere along the long hike to safety? He is like a glitch in my memory. I remember nothing about him after that quick flashback glimpse of him in the back of the truck. No matter. I don’t wish to remember. I stumble across the street. Alcohol once again sounds like a sweet release. Better to drown memory in fire. Maybe I’ll wake up and not remember anything again. I enter the bar I exited a few moments ago. A few people look at me. Not surprised to see me again. Wondering why I’m soaked. I ignore them. Make my way back to the bar. Order another bourbon. Drink it. And another. And a third. Someone says something to me but I don’t pay them any attention. Flashes of the few memories I just re experienced are like fireworks behind my eyes. 

The boy.

The woman.

The soldiers.

The truck.

The boy.

The knife glinting as it plunges towards the German soldier. 

The screams.

Gunshots.

The boy, staggering out of the truck. 

My hands are shaking. The alcohol is not working. Not really anyways. I can’t forget. 

My hands are at my head. Grabbing it. As if holding my head in my hands and leaning my elbows on the table will somehow disconnect my brain and I can stop remembering. A girl is sitting next to me now. Asking if I’m okay. I don’t answer. Manage to stand. Blunder back out of the bar. My van is on the street corner. I make it to it. Fumble my keys out of my pocket. Open the door. 

Somehow I’m behind the wheel. The car is running and I’m driving. 

I laugh. 

I’m drunk. And I’m driving. How many times was I told never to to drink and drive. And I don’t even remember when I started driving. Wasn’t I hit by a drunk driver? Isn’t that how I lost my memory? The road is very curvy. Or maybe it isn’t. I can’t tell. 

Why is there a tree in the road? That’s not right. That shouldn’t be there. 

The red van sits against the tree. Or the tree sits in the van. The front of the van is wrapped around the tree. The man inside is unconscious. 

Sirens. Flashing lights. Voices. Bad jokes. Cops. Paramedics. The man is lifted out of the car. Put on a stretcher.

“He’s lucky to be alive,” the nurse says. She is speaking to a paramedic. The one who brought in the man. A Dixie cup of lukewarm coffee is in her hand.

“Tell me about it. Drunk as a skunk. Broken arm. Broken leg and ankle. Concussed.” The paramedic responds. They are standing in a hallway, just outside the mans room. 

“Yeah. He was lucky someone saw him wreck too.” The nurse says.

“Mhm. The paramedic grunts. “Older man. Around eighty. Said he knew the wrecked man from a long long time ago. Said he saved his life, and he was glad to repay the favor.”

“Oh?” The nurse questioned. 

“Yeah. Said the man saved him when he was just a boy. Said he saved him in Germany. From a truck full of German soldiers.”

“Huh.” The nurse wonders aloud. “Well, it’s too bad.” 

“What is?” The paramedic asks.

“The man in there won’t remember.” The nurse muses.

“Won’t remember what?” 

“Anything. The old man who saved him. His past.  Nothing.”

“What?” The paramedic says curiously. “Yeah. The wreck concussed him so bad he’s lost his memory. He woke up and couldn’t remember a thing. Not even his name.” The nurse explains. “And, according to his medical records, this is the second time that’s happened. Poor guy. First time was three years ago.” 

“Huh.” The paramedic mutters. “Guess he gets a third chance to start again.”