Against the Wind. Jim Tilley

      First Edition

      Published by Red Hen Press

      www.redhen.org

      ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

      As I made my foray into fiction from writing poetry, I participated in several fiction workshops at Bread Loaf both in Vermont and in Sicily. I would like to thank the participants in those workshops and the various faculty, too many to name individually, for their combined insights, critique, and guidance on excerpts from early versions of this novel. My wife, Deborah Schneider, has my undying gratitude on many levels—as my literary agent, but more than that as someone who could get through to me her opinions on what was working and what was not in various drafts of the manuscript. Although she does not like to read a manuscript more than twice, she abandoned that rule many times over for me. As always, whether it’s a collection of poetry or a long personal essay or a book of fiction, I am indebted to Kate Gale and Mark Cull, the co-founders of Red Hen Press. Kate had me re-imagine the several chapters that conclude Against the Wind, not once or twice, but three times. It was a pleasure working with her. I am convinced that Mark is one of the best book designers alive.

       for Deborah

      CHAPTER 1

      The details are not unusual. He collapsed during the meeting; the paramedics arrived. They carried him on a stretcher down the freight elevator, gave him some nitroglycerin. Making it to the hospital on time without getting stuck in New York City traffic—that was a bit unusual. It turned out to be a minor heart attack. He stayed in the hospital less than a week recovering from a routine procedure to install stents in two obstructed arteries. It’s the longest he’s ever spent confined to a room.

      It gave him time to think. That part is also unusual. Ralph has led a hard-charging life that has given him little time to think about anything other than work. Little time that he’s chosen to take because he knows the answers to his important questions are not what he wants to tell himself. It was easier to focus on the court cases at hand. The notion of a bucket list had never entered Ralph’s mind until the episode with his heart. But lying in bed all day with only the occasional stroll down overlit hallways, he imagined the upcoming canoe trip, a reunion of old camp friends. They’d been hard to find after more than forty-five years, and sadly, harder to convince.

      The past three months brought another reunion. This one by chance, although, reflecting on it in the hospital, Ralph suspected it was bound to have happened, three onetime grade school friends coming together again, he and Lynn, high school sweethearts, he and Dieter, high school rivals, Dieter the loser in the battle for Lynn’s affections. Thrown together in a fight over wind farms in the county where Lynn now lives.

      All in all, the unfinished business of past lives brought forward and played out, offering opportunities to put things right.

      Mark, Ralph’s second-in-command at the office, visited the hospital only once. When he started to talk business, Ralph told him to carry on running the office without him, much as he has done for the past year. Ralph’s sharp-tongued assistant, Mary Ann, came to the hospital every day. On one visit she caught him flirting with a nurse, an attractive woman, a good twenty years younger.

      “So you had to have a heart attack to rejuvenate your love life?” Mary Ann said, looking directly at the nurse, not Ralph. The embarrassed nurse excused herself.

      “You’re such a positive influence. She probably thinks you’re my wife.”

      “I know you too well.”

      That nurse reminded him of Lynn. The short brown hair, the way she had it pushed back behind her ears, her grayish eyes, and especially her small, thin lips. When Mary Ann left, he lay back and let his head sink into the pillow, closed his eyes, took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. Thought back to a dinner with Lynn three months earlier after not seeing her for more than twenty-five years. Thought back to the twentieth high school reunion. Back to the days in high school. The run-ins with Dieter. The time at summer camp. Canoe trips.