Brick Coffins: Chapter 1

Main Street

Table of Contents:

Prologue

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The beating heart of his little Indiana town was captured within a quaint quarter mile strip of asphalt. Flat fronted brick buildings, like that of the old west, formed a tunnel lining the road. If you were lucky enough to approach downtown around sunset, you could watch as the faded red bricks blended ever so slightly with the pink midwestern sky before surrendering to the amber-yellow light of the street lamps.

Thomas’s 1975 Ford rattled lazily into town. Flanked by diagonally parked cars of pastel color, he slowly scanned the sidewalks on his left and his right. Twenty five mile an hour speed limits are the perfect pace to chase down old memories, and Thomas had no shortage of them. Now that his dad was gone, he seemed to be living in a constant state of remembering. Time seemed to freeze in the cab of his truck as each moment played back in his mind. The barber shop was no longer just MacAllister’s, it was the place where his dad took him for his first real haircut. Six short years removed from his service in Korea, Thomas Sr. watched as a silver haired barber snipped and clipped his son with such detail that you would’ve thought the three year old was headed off to basic training himself. Thomas wasn’t all too sure that he remembered the experience itself or the stories that he was told about it years later. In any case, the pictures of him in that barber’s chair with tears in his eyes filled in any gaps between the two.

One memory seemed to melt indistinguishably into the next. Across the street sat Ruby’s, a diner that had been a local favorite since 1926. When he was a boy, his father would take Thomas’ baseball team out to dinner after their games. The laborious nature of Thomas Sr.’s work never stopped him from coaching every team his son had ever been on. Thomas was thankful for that. He was never happier than he was back then throwing the ball in the yard with his dad.

The memories weren’t just limited to his father. Something about the death of a loved one changes you. You’re a different person than you were, completely locked out of that life you knew when they were still living. Thomas felt himself constantly peering back into that old life, untainted as it was, gripping every last memory until his knuckles were white and his heart empty. He saw a young couple, no more than sixteen years old behind the plate glass window of the ice cream parlor. The girl with a blue bandana tied up in her hair, the boy shyly grinning with awkwardness. Nine years ago that was him with his girlfriend, now wife, on their first date. There wasn’t an inch of Main Street that didn’t stir up nostalgia in him - he liked it that way.

As downtown slowly drew to an end, and the painted wooden signs that jutted out from the brick storefronts faded into the rearview, he slowly approached his favorite view on earth. The terminus of this brick tunnel of civilization quickly opened up into a wide expanse of green cornfields that wrapped around a sharp blue sky. The world beyond seems to unveil itself in a trapezoidal sprawl. It wouldn’t be long now before that speed limit jumped up to a freeing fifty five miles an hour. As it always did, the open road called to him, but today he had business in town. He idled into the very last parking spot on the street, and with his father’s yellow sticky note folded neatly in his wallet, Thomas hopped down out of his truck.

Near the top of the glass door sat crisp white letters that read Green Bros. Hardware. When Thomas pulled that door open the smell overwhelmed him. Something about smells triggered vivid memories for him. The fresh aroma of the lumber reminded him of Saturdays as a boy, riding to town alongside his father to gather supplies for a weekend project. The burnt coffee smell reminded him of mornings before work, lingering around the coffee pot for a little longer than he should.

The store was strikingly organized, in almost an obsessive way by the owner, Henry Greene. Thomas spotted him right away, explaining the importance of polyurethane sealant to a customer with a level of gravity that would make an onlooker think the weight of the world rested upon this conversation. Thomas chuckled to himself. Henry was his father’s best friend. They served in Korea together along with Henry’s brother, Daryl, who was killed in action by a Chinese mortar at the Battle of Pork Chop Hill. When Henry returned home he named his store Greene Brothers in honor of Daryl. Even at fifty five, the store owner was still lean and sharp. He still shaved every morning before work, never let a bad word pass his lips, faithfully prayed over every meal, and never drank to the point of drunkenness. Henry Greene was the kind of man every man wanted to be, that is until it came to the trouble of actually being that kind of man.

As usual, his store was well occupied, not only by shoppers, but lingerers as well. Any small towner worth their salt is rather proficient in the art of lingering. There were men in overalls gathered around a wooden checkerboard, making one move at a time separated by at least ten minutes of tall tales and yarn spinning, often forgetting whose turn it was. There always seemed to be a few more of the same sort standing around the coffee pot, playing a unique game of roullette wherein the man to finish the pot was tasked with making the next batch. The last group of lingerers occupied the front of the store, where five creaky rocking chairs sat around the newspaper stand looking out onto the sidewalk.

Before Thomas could find his way to the wood screws, Henry wheeled around to face him. It was the first time they’d seen each other since the funeral. He greeted him warmly, the same way he did when he was a boy.

“Tommy Gun!” The wrinkles around his eyes seemed more pronounced than Thomas remembered. His mouth smiled but there seemed to be a glint of worry in his pale eyes. Henry Greene was not a man who worried, he was the man you go to when you have worries of your own.

“How long has it been?” Henry asked earnestly.

“Almost a year,” Thomas responded.

“I still can’t believe he’s really gone. You’ve grown up a lot in that short time.”

“I didn’t have much of a choice”

“He’d be proud.”

“I hope so.”

They chewed the fat for a while before a customer interrupted, and Thomas took that as a good opportunity to go grab what he came for. As he rooted through the bucket of wood screws, he couldn’t seem to shake Henry’s worried look from his mind. Something was off, and maybe that something was Thomas, he had become quite the recluse recently. After far too much internal pondering, he scooped up an acceptable amount of screws and continued wandering around the store. He found himself lost in the aisles, discovering forgotten memories on nearly every shelf. It wasn’t until he reached the checkout line that his daydream was rudely interrupted. Sitting on a shelf below the register was a copy of the local paper. The headline read in ominous bold black letters: Newly Finished Interstate Opens Door for Big Business.

Thomas knew what this meant. He had sat through enough of his father’s dinner table rants to understand what the interstate and all of its fabled “progress” could do to businesses like the ones all over his little town. It’d already happened all over the east coast, and now much faster than anyone had anticipated, it had reached them too. Henry’s worried look wasn’t so puzzling anymore.