The sky seemed to open. Sunlight streamed through the clouds, accompanied by the moist heat of a New Hampshire summer. Hvergelmir's roar became the crackle of a campfire. The mingled reek of mold and death transformed to the lighter aroma of pine. Larson watched himself with the detachment of a movie. He was twelve years old.
"Al!" The familiar voice of his father rose over the rustle of grasses in the wind. "Let your sister tend the fire. You've got more important things to do. I promised you'd teach your brother to fly his kite."
Larson felt his heart quicken at the sound of his father's voice. He watched himself trot across a plain of weeds to where his father stood beside his little brother, Timmy. Spectator to his own memory, Larson examined his father with a stranger's eye. Carl Larson was a large man, powerful yet gentle. His close-cropped, blond hair had a tendency to stand on end, giving him an air of harshness. But his soft, blue eyes betrayed him.
The vivid vision of the dead father he loved brought te'ars to Larson's eyes. Instantly, the scene changed. Larson saw his mother kneeling beside the dented fender of his father's brand new Plymouth. Tears blurred her pale eyes and drew crooked lines through the blush on her cheeks. It took Larson several seconds to recognize the child at her side, himself at age five, torn by his mother's sorrow.
He remembered the scene well. Planning to take the Plymouth for its first test drive, Cindy Larson had backed the car into the garage wall. "Tell him I did it," Al Larson told his frightened mother. The ridiculousness of his suggestion made her laugh through her tears. She hugged him to her chest, and Larson reveled in the memory of her warmth and the touch of her lips against his forehead.
"Mom!" Images dimmed, crumbled, and reformed in a different sequence. He heard his father's cheers, mixed with the goading cries of other parents. A soccer ball whuffed toward Larson's knee. Twisting sideways, he stopped the ball's momentum with, his calf, dribbled several paces forward, and kicked a pass to the right wing. A crowd of players overran Larson's position at fullback. As the ball reversed direction, they turned and raced after it.
The shrill of a whistle called the first half to its conclusion. Larson took his turn at the water bottle and sat on the bench. His closest friend, soccer hero Tom Jeffers, dropped to the seat at his side. "Nice block, Larson."
Larson combed hair from his eyes with his fingers. "Thanks, T.J. You're doing pretty good yourself. Think we'll catch them in the second half?"
"Think?" Jeffers winked at a girl on the side-lines. "I know it, man. I'll put in a couple shots. You just keep them scoreless."
Larson watched the girl blush and turn away, slightly jealous of his friend's rugged good looks. "Talk to the goalie. I can't make a promise like that."
Jeffers met Larson's stare, and the center forward's face waxed pensive. "I got a promise for you. Keep them scoreless next half, and I'll get you a date for the prom with my sister."
"Terry?" Larson's voice rose in surprise and excitement. He cleared his throat and continued at his normal octave. "You serious?"
Jeffers laughed. "Yeah. Sure. Just play that defense. I want to win this one."
"Yeah. Sure." Larson's mind turned from the game to a picture of Terry Jeffers. Long-legged, dark-haired, blue-eyed, Terry Jeffers could find her own share of dates. And he never possessed the courage to ask her.
Jeffer's voice and his heavy hand clamped to Larson's shoulder pulled the fullback from his reverie. "So what are you doing after graduation?"
"I don't know. College, I think. What about you?"
Jeffer's started toward center field. "I'm joining the army. Going to Vietnam to become a war hero:"
Larson's memory broke with jarring abruptness. He felt his consciousness jolted to the path of a different recollection. It was the summer after his high school graduation. Seeking spending money for college, he found a job working as a day camp counselor. The pay was comparatively high for employment of its type, and the benefits undeniable. Camp Collinswood had two pools, four athletic fields, sixteen tennis courts, and fifty wooded acres. Yet despite the many facilities, the boys in Larson's group preferred a game which required no special equipment.
Standing with his assistant before a dozen rowdy seven- and eight-year-old boys, Larson heard himself ask. "What do you guys want to do now?"
"Kill the counselor!" they chanted, nearly in unison. A wave of small bodies converged on Larson and his assistant. Resigned to the punches and prods of children too young to inflict significant pain, Larson alternated between feigned defense- lessness and throws which sprawled the campers in giggling heaps. He passed off wrestling moves as karate throws, or tricks from his days of "alligator tussling" and "dinosaur hunting."
"Al's got a girlfriend. Al's got a girlfriend," one of the youngsters chanted teasingly. Larson rose, dumping two boys from his back. Terry Jeffers stood several feet from the game. Her drab-colored dress was rumpled, and her hands knotted together at her waist. As he drew closer, Larson noticed her eyes, red and swollen, hollowed by anguish.
"Terry:? " he started uncertainly.
"Al." Her voice was a tenuous quaver. "It's:"
The scene shattered with Loki's muttered curse. Larson's thoughts jumped to his prom with the disquieting transition of a scratched record.
Terry wore a gown of blue satin. Dark hair haloed her face in burnished waves. Eye shadow and mascara focused attention on the sapphire depths of her eyes. Breathless, Larson stared. But his thoughts drifted back toward the unfinished sentence of his previous memory. Somehow, Larson knew Terry's message was extremely important.
Loki's presence nudged Larson back toward his vision of Terry Jeffers before the prom. Each line in the petals of her corsage blossomed into vivid focus. Satin swirled about her slender hips:
Damn you, Trickster! Vidarr shoved Larson's memories askew as the gods circled the flawed and tangled circuitry of his mind with the caution of dancers on a bed of needles. : Terry's dress went black as death; her head buried in her hands.
Loki snarled. Larson felt sanity slide beneath a wash of terror. : He danced to a slow ballad. Terry's head rested against his shoulder. His sweating palms left marks in the fine, blue satin of her dress: : But the feeling was all wrong. The music muted to the heavy toll of bells, chilling harmony to the anguished sobs of Mrs. Jeffers. Terry stared at a closed coffin. And Larson remembered. T.J. died in Vietnam!
Rationality broke beyond control of the sparring gods. Thoughts merged in a disharmonic orchestra of memory. Lights flashed as one: the cold yellow of porchlight, the glaring red-orange of mortars, the multi-hued explosions of sorceries. Larson felt alternately hot as fire and cold as death. Grief and hatred, sorrow and vengeance, self-pity and empathy swirled to a numbing, incomprehensible mix of emotion which tore screams from his throat.
Larson froze, listening to the echoes of his own pained cries. Gradually, sanity drew his crumbled thoughts together like pieces of a puzzle. It was all a lie, a world of men who sought honesty in falsehoods and war in the name of peace. They preached "turn the other cheek" and practiced "kill or be killed." We believed in death for freedom, and honor, yet dismembered the dead without respect. I've seen too much fear and not enough glory, a single God who promised forgiveness and banished his children to hellish tortures for their doubts and uncertainties. My country trained its babies to kill, then condemned them as murderers.
"Larson!" Loki's plea jerked Larson back to the present. Gaelinar stood watching, his eyes dark with concern. Again, Larson raised Valvitnir, its steel a dull, gray shadow in the mist. His arm rose and fell. The blade sheared through Loki's back, the god's death justified by the lives of the innocent, the unborn casualties of future wars. And Larson wept for the other casualties, men and women whose existence became nothing more substantial than his memories of them. His own existence became a paradox, a life from a future which was no longer reality.