Esme's Piano

I'm not sure when all of the madness started. The day I stepped off of the small plane from Virginia to Washington to start a new duty station as a ranger seemed like any other day.

It was raining. The cool spring wind added a slight hint of humidity to the air despite the coolness. This was going to be just like any other transfer, I thought but little did I know I was wrong.

I was about to find myself in a world unlike any ever seen before. Some folks dream about it, others claim to have seen it but rest assured the world written about in this memoir is real. They are real.

Before I begin, I feel the need to explain myself a bit. I'm not sure how I came to remember these words I'm about to share. For years the memories lay suppressed in the deepest recesses of the black hole of my mind.

It was only after I left that place they returned as though the place itself was the spell that bound them.

What I'm about to tell you may sound like a dream. It may sound made up. A rambling of an old fool who spent too long at the bottom of the bottles of whiskey and Scotch beside his bedside.

I assure you, what you are about to read is real. It all happened what seems like so long ago but it happened nonetheless.

****

As I said, the day I stepped off of the plane bound from Virginia to Washington didn't seem like anything special. It was raining and muggy, humid and sticky despite the coolness of the air.

I stood outside waiting for the sheriff's deputy sent to take me from Seattle to the new duty station I was assigned in the small town of Darrington, not too far away. About an hour's ride.

He didn't talk too much save for a few questions like asking why in God's name I decided to travel across the country to a new duty station.

I replied to him saying. "Hell if I know. I just go where my orders tend to send me."

We both got a good laugh out of it and started talking about our days in the military and how we both got to our current standing in life. Turns out we had more in common than I thought.

Dustin Martin, as he came to be known to me, dropped me off at the ranger's post just outside the town limits.

"What's your name, son?" the chief asked me.

"Dakota Faraday, sir. Reporting for duty."

"Good. We need some new blood out here. Too many lawbreakers thinkin' they can get away with poachin' and kids thinkin' the park is their personal party space and trashcan." Mike Thomas, the chief of the rangers I would be reporting to seemed bitter but disciplined. "You'll need a truck. Luckily we heard you was comin' and got yours looked at."

He led me to the truck I would be using. It wasn't special, I'd seen many like it, driven many like it.

"This is yours. Take good care of her and she'll serve you well. Report tomorrow for trainin' and the tour of your station."

"Yes sir." I replied, happy to oblige him seeing as he seemed like he just wanted to go the bar and drink.

****

I decided to drive into town to get to know the locals. The bar known to the town as the Dusty Shoe was, according to the folks at the gas station playing checkers, the best place to go to get to know people around here.

Upon stepping inside, it wasn't anything I hadn't seen before. An old bar table curved around towards the bathrooms, behind it were shelves of bottles with a tap loaded with Bud Light. The man behind the bar was fat with an ashen gray beard wearing an old plaid shirt and jeans cleaning out one of the glasses left behind by the drunks.