TOY GUN & WILL
Herb put all his weight on the suitcases to close them. When he finally unfolded his body from seat 24C his $500 dollar suit looked like a $5 suit. He headed north to the Catskills but as the bus drove through Sullivan County the roads were peculiarly quiet. He arrived to find the festival had already ended, inspite of it running over by a day. Herb would have to stay longer than planned to sell the contents of his suitcases, ‘a grab bag of 60s crazy hallucinogens’. Twenty one years later he was still there, the drugs were gone and he’d found a wife. They settled in West Hurley, three miles outside of Woodstock. At the edge of their plot was a small orchard. One weekend Herb and his 5 year old son, Will, were digging over the soil. Will found this tiny toy gun. Herb explained that 100 years ago there’d been a little boy, just like Will, playing just here. And Will’s world condensed, even as a 5 year old this felt like an epiphany. Will still has the gun, held together with the fine wire that Herb coiled around its broken barrel nearly a quarter of a century ago.
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