really wanted someplace to lie down and curl up, maybe suck my thumb a little. I wasn’t really hurt: cuts and bruises—large bruises—and a grisly furrow in the heel of my right shoe where a passing slug had left splinters of copper and lead.
I labored along, people staring at me a little, and me staring right back. Whatever the local ordinances were, I saw more low-slung handguns, more dirks and daggers, than in a dozen B-westerns and swashbucklers spliced together reel to reel. I found myself grabbing convulsively at my left armpit more than once. Fort Collins sure had changed!
Maybe they were all dressed up for some kind of fair. I didn’t recognize the costume period. Most people, including some cops I know, are frightened by weapons of all kinds, knives worse than guns, for some silly reason. These must all be toys, part of the celebration. I tried looking closer without being nosy—not my jurisdiction, after all—but the effort still brought tears. There hadn’t been a hardware collection like this since the Crusades were catered. Women and children sporting arms right along with the men. But wait. Were they children, waddling like circus midgets, even brushing the ground with an occasional knuckle?
If only the fog of weariness and pain would—can you have a migraine in a dream? Mud- and blood-splattered from collar to ankles, amid all this resplendent sartorialism, I was about as attractive and dignified as a Larimer Street wino. I’d even managed to split a crotch seam.
At last I reached a low, meandering wall of multicolored brick, more bewildered than ever. The street was a broad ribbon of sea-green crabgrass full of traffic, not a single vehicle even remotely familiar. There wasn’t a wheel in sight.
I’d once ridden an English hovercraft, admired the same sort of ground effect machine on Puget Sound before Ralph Nader shut it down. This wasn’t the same at all: these whispered along, quiet as an usher in church. I was beginning to get an idea that I was more than lost, I was profoundly misplaced.
Maybe I’d been hurt and was wandering around with amnesia.
That old Greer Garson flick— Random Harvest ?—real people have spent years like that, building new lives, families, then coming back in shock to their original personalities. This world around me was some artist’s conception of Tomorrowland. Had I spent the last twenty years being someone else? It would explain the age I felt right now! Had decades passed between the lab explosion and whatever happened in the park, and now, after some second stress or injury, was I myself again? Random Harvest —Ronald Colman was the guy.
Across the street, a three-story Edwardian building had a low wall around it, too, and a large bronze sign:
LAPORTE CITY UNIVERSITY, LTD.
EST. A.L. 117
117 A.L.? They don’t start a new calendar every election year. What had happened here while I was out to lunch? And where the hell was here, anyway? All I wanted was to crawl off somewhere and lie down for a couple of months. I was through detectiving. Let someone else do it.
I guess I came pretty close to flipping out at that moment. That I didn’t, I attribute not to any sterling qualities, but simply to well-worn habits of mind and, perhaps, a dollop of shock-induced euphoria.
If I could just find someplace to start, some loose thread to pick until this whole mystery began to unravel—before I did. Do you just walk up and ask someone, “Excuse me, what year is this?”
I could always call the cops. They might want my badge and gun for their museum. Hell, they might want me for their—hold it! I was still carrying that badge, and the .41 caliber weight swinging against my ribs wasn’t a grilled-cheese sandwich. I was still wearing my faithful old gray suit, my second-best tie, and everything else I’d put on in Denver this morning. However I’d gotten into this mess, it wasn’t via any twenty-year amnesic vacation.
So much for the Random Harvest
I labored along, people staring at me a little, and me staring right back. Whatever the local ordinances were, I saw more low-slung handguns, more dirks and daggers, than in a dozen B-westerns and swashbucklers spliced together reel to reel. I found myself grabbing convulsively at my left armpit more than once. Fort Collins sure had changed!
Maybe they were all dressed up for some kind of fair. I didn’t recognize the costume period. Most people, including some cops I know, are frightened by weapons of all kinds, knives worse than guns, for some silly reason. These must all be toys, part of the celebration. I tried looking closer without being nosy—not my jurisdiction, after all—but the effort still brought tears. There hadn’t been a hardware collection like this since the Crusades were catered. Women and children sporting arms right along with the men. But wait. Were they children, waddling like circus midgets, even brushing the ground with an occasional knuckle?
If only the fog of weariness and pain would—can you have a migraine in a dream? Mud- and blood-splattered from collar to ankles, amid all this resplendent sartorialism, I was about as attractive and dignified as a Larimer Street wino. I’d even managed to split a crotch seam.
At last I reached a low, meandering wall of multicolored brick, more bewildered than ever. The street was a broad ribbon of sea-green crabgrass full of traffic, not a single vehicle even remotely familiar. There wasn’t a wheel in sight.
I’d once ridden an English hovercraft, admired the same sort of ground effect machine on Puget Sound before Ralph Nader shut it down. This wasn’t the same at all: these whispered along, quiet as an usher in church. I was beginning to get an idea that I was more than lost, I was profoundly misplaced.
Maybe I’d been hurt and was wandering around with amnesia.
That old Greer Garson flick— Random Harvest ?—real people have spent years like that, building new lives, families, then coming back in shock to their original personalities. This world around me was some artist’s conception of Tomorrowland. Had I spent the last twenty years being someone else? It would explain the age I felt right now! Had decades passed between the lab explosion and whatever happened in the park, and now, after some second stress or injury, was I myself again? Random Harvest —Ronald Colman was the guy.
Across the street, a three-story Edwardian building had a low wall around it, too, and a large bronze sign:
LAPORTE CITY UNIVERSITY, LTD.
EST. A.L. 117
117 A.L.? They don’t start a new calendar every election year. What had happened here while I was out to lunch? And where the hell was here, anyway? All I wanted was to crawl off somewhere and lie down for a couple of months. I was through detectiving. Let someone else do it.
I guess I came pretty close to flipping out at that moment. That I didn’t, I attribute not to any sterling qualities, but simply to well-worn habits of mind and, perhaps, a dollop of shock-induced euphoria.
If I could just find someplace to start, some loose thread to pick until this whole mystery began to unravel—before I did. Do you just walk up and ask someone, “Excuse me, what year is this?”
I could always call the cops. They might want my badge and gun for their museum. Hell, they might want me for their—hold it! I was still carrying that badge, and the .41 caliber weight swinging against my ribs wasn’t a grilled-cheese sandwich. I was still wearing my faithful old gray suit, my second-best tie, and everything else I’d put on in Denver this morning. However I’d gotten into this mess, it wasn’t via any twenty-year amnesic vacation.
So much for the Random Harvest
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