When Totems Fall (2 page)

Yeah, in defiance of the seemingly unstoppable wave of modernity, this building said
been there.

Dalton's head came forward, his eyes focusing this time on the window not three feet from his face.

Slight swirled flaws in the glass.

Must be original.

The seals, he could tell, had been replaced a few times. The workmanship and materials were from another era entirely. How the owner had passed code on this he was unsure but he was in awe. This shop had everything right; the beans
and
the vibe. One could imagine a crusty old trapper making his way in from the wet and cold, wolf-dog at his side, shotgun in hand, feeling right at home.

Zeb detested the coffee drinking faux-elite that gathered in earthen-toned, pop-jazz infused rooms built for community and conversation. As far as he was concerned they were not welcomed here. This place was an escape from the posturing. And this particular seat—Zeb's regular spot in this fur warehouse turned Shangri-La for introverts—was the best in the house. Tucked, as it was, around and behind two oak shelving units overflowing with yellowed reading matter and next to a small bank of windows, it was thankfully removed from the cafe's normal customer traffic. The trek from here to the front counter, along a darkened thirty-foot long connecting hallway complete with peeling wallpaper and aging plaster, tested your commitment to the need for a fresh cup. But the solitude it virtually guaranteed was glorious.

There were two chairs in this secluded backroom area, the one Dalton occupied facing the street and another, a few feet behind and to the left. In Zeb's opinion, one of them could go. Though he felt this way all the time, this perspective only grew stronger on days when that other seat happened to be occupied by someone wanting to engage in meaningless small talk.

Like this morning.

TWO

For the last hour and a half on this stereotypical Seattle spring morning, Zeb had reigned as king of his coffee and silence domain. Now, out of basic courtesy, he'd be obliged to interact with another human being.

An explosion of sarcasm,
heavy and duly noted as such, came from behind an unevenly folded daily edition of
The Seattle Times.

"So, the Hawks look like they're gonna blow it again, huh?" the voice questioned and opined at the same time. "Wasting a first round pick on that beat-up tailback from Alabama? Sheer genius."

Keep it simple. Keep it short. He'll go away
.

"Didn't follow it, man," Zeb offered back.

The paper came down, revealing a sad, almost pitying expression on the man's face.

Oh no.

Plan A—complete avoidance of the conversation—failed, miserably so. Instead of retreating back into the sports page, this new companion took Dalton's tepid response as a sure sign that he knew little about the game.

What's a concerned citizen to do in times like this?

Apparently the only proper response is to begin unearthing the intricacies of the NFL draft, hoping that this pathetic football virgin would have his moment. Think of it as a needed back-filling of an intellectual and cultural void; a public service, in essence.

Seeing the renewed vigor in the man, his overwhelming concern and commitment, Zeb headed in a different direction. Time for Plan B, an approach rife with body language and symbol.

Zeb tilted his mug to the spilling point, indicating he needed to get more coffee and therefore couldn't finish out the chat, as much as he would love to. There, that should work.

It didn't. Seahawk Guy kept going, unfazed.

Plan C, more uneasy acceptance of defeat than any real scheme, was the only one left in the playbook. Zeb would now simply play out the clock. So for the next few minutes Dalton feigned nominal interest, praying his overt lack of enthusiasm might bring the forced interaction to an end.

The wave of his cup in Plan B had only been a diversionary tactic but glancing down—anywhere other than directly at the guy for fear of encouraging him—he noticed that the F117 Nighthawk stamped onto his mug was slowly disappearing. He turned the fading image toward the guy, thinking it would help.

So, I'd really love to hear more about where the Spring owner's meeting landed on the issue of player's headbands without official logos on them but as you can see… my plane is gone.

Unfortunately, this fact meant nothing to the man. He didn't know it was supposed to work this way, that the fading came not from of overuse or age but from the change in temperature of the liquid inside. Warm coffee: plane appears. Cold coffee: plane goes away and it's time for more java.

Zeb remembered the first time he'd seen this clever little giveaway to Boeing employees in the 1990s. Teen Dalton had just thought it was cool. It actually turned out to be a brilliant promotional idea as well as a celebration of an aviation tech breakthrough, forever altering the balance of power in global air warfare. While this personal keepsake from his favorite uncle could seem a bit out of place—who drags their own ceramic mug around with them everywhere they go?—it was only further indication of how awesome this cafe really was. As if this hideaway didn't rate high enough by virtue of the building and java alone, the staff also encouraged regulars to keep a personal cup on their shelves. They'd even clean it, making sure nobody else used it until you came back around again. As one of only a few items he took with him to college, it also remained one of the few things in his life still working some twenty years later.

Zeb glanced up from the empty, Nighthawk-less cup and half-rose from his chair, only to see that Seahawk Guy was still going stronger than ever and in his fervor had re-positioned himself in a way that made passage difficult.

Dalton sat back down heavily.

The lecture,
focused originally on the mechanics of how teams acquired rookie players, had now blossomed into a full oration on the game in general. It wasn't necessary. Dalton's antisocial behavior had nothing to do with the sport itself. On the contrary, Zeb loved the favored American pastime. He did, although, interact with it differently than pretty much everyone else on the planet.

Most viewers zero in on a popular player or obvious focal point of the play. Big run: eyes on the tailback. Great tackle? Zoom in on the crushing concussion and ensuing smack talk as teams regrouped to their huddles. Single points of focus. One, maybe two players at a time. That's what others experienced.

In contrast, Zeb saw everything.

Literally everything.

To the former military man, American Football created a giant moving formula; a dynamic, living entity worthy of his observation and engagement. Every action and reaction of the twenty-two men on the field presented an ever-changing array of potentialities. An offensive lineman shifting six inches to the left, instead of seven. A defensive back's first three steps in coverage at a slightly reduced speed than was his norm. Zeb not only noticed these minute adjustments, his fertile mind immediately registered their impact.

At once. Clearly.

It was no exaggeration to say that when watching, and he often did, that Dalton was viewing an entirely different game than the millions of others tuned in at the time. Like a giant, three-dimensional display hovering in mid-air, Dalton factored and connected the unending lines, arcs, and data fields. To anyone other than Zeb, the sight would appear both stunning and confusing. For the former signal corpsman it was simply the way he accessed the world.

This ability to account for and compute all existing contingencies was nothing new for Zeb, had in fact shown itself in early grade school. A jumble of information at first, sometimes frightening to the young boy, this sensitivity eventually emerged as a hyper-aware, calculated view of events unfolding around him. Like any such gift it had to be corralled, disciplined, lest it lead to chaos, potentially madness. More informed calculation than instinct, his mind chopped through reams of data as efficiently as a hi-tech combine rolling across fields of gold at harvest time.

The current status of his thinking then—dulled, preoccupied, slow—was quite unsettling. All in all, a new and unpleasant experience.

A look down to the screen of his smartphone.

7:45am.

Plan D—work, would be the winner.

"Uh, I need to get going..." Zeb said, pointing faintly to the indisputable numbers.

Thankfully, no last words were spoken, no parting shots given. Zeb's beautiful cone of silence lie shattered before him. His coffee was cold, no stealthy plane gracing the cup's exterior to indicate otherwise. And while the office wasn't too far away, the downtown congestion of the Emerald City could always be a bear on a weekday morning.

Frustrated, Dalton grabbed his stuff, dropped the mug off at the counter, and walked out the front door.

THREE

Zeb's usual routine brought him across mid-town, toward the waterfront piers and ferry landings.

From there he would
head south past Safeco Field and Century Link Stadium, edging his way into the parking lot of the Bay City Printing Company as the workday began.

Dalton was your basic sales guy. His trade: full color, offset press work. Corporate identity. Brochures, catalogs. Lots of pages. Perfect or spiral binding.

Need something printed?
Z. Dalton—BCPC
, had you covered.

Like everyone else the firm expanded into digital delivery and web-presence as the industry evolved. Their bread and butter, though, was still paper, run through an inked press four times and finished according to customer needs.

While employment as an account rep might not be the best match for his training and skills, it did put food on the table and keep him out of trouble. Zeb logged ten to twelve hour days, not because he loved his work. Truth be told, he didn't have much else going on in his life and the thought of endless hours in front of the TV appealed to him far less than calling on an overzealous client rep, even one trying to squeeze him for ever-increasing product while paying as little as possible for it.

Things had changed so much in the last number of years. The stark contrasts in Zeb's vocational and professional histories were, to say the least, intriguing. A near-decade in active-duty hot zones throughout the world. Life and death, comrades and enemies. Nowadays he sold printed paper products to mom and pop shops and medium-sized businesses. In comparison the present drill came off as dull, even numbing. Maybe in a good way. His life while donning the uniform had been a never-ending sequence of extreme stress and life-threatening circumstances. Now eight years on the outside, the closest he got to a danger-fed adrenaline rush was a customer signing off on a sales contract. In triplicate.

So today's first step, the beginnings of another presumably mundane day, would be simply getting to his car three and a half blocks away.

Zeb headed out,
taking in the fresh morning air while navigating the sharply vertical orientation of his hometown. The seven hills of Seattle's urban core presented a calf-burning exercise for pedestrians and a clutch-burning dilemma for motorists with manual transmissions. At the moment, the first of these maladies was calling on his lower extremities.

Though the overnight hours deposited a brief shower on the city—expected and ordinary—this budding spring day was starting out as clear and clean as they come in the Northwest. A nominal breeze moved in and among gleaming high-rise structures as a hint of the salted waterfront landed at Zeb's nose. Many mornings in this seaborne community the tang of brine overwhelmed. Today it smelled wonderful.

Zeb's medium build brought no unwarranted attention as he strode on among the grumpy, early rising pedestrians. At slightly over five foot ten Zeb didn't come across as physically imposing, not by any means. A few pounds had been added along the way but at thirty-seven, keeping a burgeoning belt line from becoming the first thing people noticed when you walked into a room had to count for something.

Dalton wore his hair longer than military-standard but still quite short. This was nothing new. Even in high school he had chosen a well-groomed cut over the predictably long and wild expressions of his classmates. Its color had held, even now a dark brown with only slight hints of gray. As far as physical attributes were concerned Dalton owned the middle ground in all things average, with a composite appearance rating somewhere between nondescript and lackluster. Except for his eyes. They were a different story altogether.

Amber, warm, curious. Often probing, never revealing, sometimes unsettling. Unique, unexpected. You had the sense they were searching, seeking beyond mere appearances to something more on the level of depth, character, heart. Not in a judgmental way. More inquisitive than damning.

Zeb's company didn't mandate business-wear, so khakis and a short-sleeved polo worked fine most days. It suited his casual style and BCPC's clientele seemed to prefer it as well. The presence of relaxed apparel somehow spoke "down-to-earth" to them, producing a vague perception of trustworthiness along with it.