Red's CD Project Part 2

Note: I made a change in the first part concerning the date that Hal's father wrote him the letter. I didn't want Hal to be that old. Anyways, I hope this keep everyone interested.


Disc 1
Track 4
Marching Bands of Manhattan
Death Cab For Cutie
Plans

Sorrow drips into your heart through a pinhole.

Putting the beers on the end table whose top was cluttered with magazines and a stack of newspapers, Hal reclined back in his chair, his eyes heavy by the time his head hit the cushioned headrest. Minutes earlier, he hadn't been tired at all.
He pawed through the rubble on the table to find the remote for the television, but his initial failure to find it left him even more weary. He took a swig from one of the beers and relaxed in the chair.
Like a light blinking off with a flip of a switch, he was out. For eight dreamless hours, he snored in a sleep comparable only to death.
When he awoke right before daybreak, he felt better than he had since before Mary left. His body felt lighter like all the sorrow and sadness that had collected the last two months had poured out during his sleep and now he was empty. Not happy, but not sad either.
Then he thought of the chest sitting on the floor of his kitchen and a new emotion – dread – filled him like water from a faucet turned on high.

Disc 1
Track 5
God Says Nothing Back
The Wallflowers
Rebel, Sweetheart

Open up these graves, let these bodies talk

He dragged the chest from the kitchen to the living room, placing it in front of the chair where he had slept. Before opening it, he took a drink from one of the very warm beers and contorted at the taste of the flat, stale ale.
His father had spoke of fate and destiny in his letter. Only now did that seem ironic to Hal. He had never known his father to worry about either. As a farmer, he had only been concerned about crop yields and livestock nutrition. Neither of those depended upon fate, but on hard work, weather and luck. The chest had spooked his father out of his dying dementia. It had effected him so much to write him a letter almost 30-years earlier. This all terrified Hal.
Eyeing the chest, the wood almost seemed rotten. Deep scars slashed through the grooves of the corner. If not for the brass handles on each side, he would have had a handful of slivers trying to carry it by the wood.
Inhaling one long breath, he snapped back the lock and opened the lid again. His father's letter was gone, but his eyes were instantly distracted by the massive collection of objects inside. On top, glistening for him to look at was the sight from a shotgun. A voice inside told him to pick it up and to take a look.
Closing his left eye, he put the sight up to his right eye. The image inside was in black and white. There was a parade running through the streets of a town, a man and woman rode in a car. He'd seen this before.
"Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country." The quote shot through his mind as the bullet tore through Kennedy's head.
His father had been in Dallas on November 22, 1963 with some college friends. He had told Hal so years later.
The image changed in the sight. It was New York in 1965. Malcolm X was bleeding on the floor of an auditorium. His father went to New York during that week to see where his father had landed when he migrated from Germany.
Then there was a hotel in Memphis and Martin Luther King was walking up the stairs, standing outside his room. His parents had met in Memphis in 1968.
Hal was getting dizzy.
What followed was a history lesson in assassinations and assassination attempts. Robert Kennedy, George Wallace, Gerald Ford, John Lennon. They stopped at Ronald Reagan on March 30, 1981. The day Hal was born.
But his father didn't do these things. There had been investigations and arrests made. Some of the killers had fessed right up to doing it. He knew his father had been in the same city during many of these events, but it was coincidence.
Then a thought occurred to him.
"Evil doesn't always pull the trigger." He whispered it. His father had said this once when they were watching the news on the first Gulf War. George Bush was on the screen explaining the tactics of the campaign and the words slipped right out of his father's mouth. Hal was no more than 10-years-old, but the statement sent shivers up his spine.
He put the sight down and saw the next item in the chest. It was an old photograph of two young men. He made out his grandfather immediately, even though he was very young. The man standing next to him looked eerily familiar. He picked up the photo and started to turn it over, but sound filled his ears and shock caused him to drop it.
The phone rang loud through the apartment.


Disc 1
Track 6
Pale Blue Eyes
The Velvet Undeground
The Best of the Velvet Underground

Thought of you as everything. I've had but couldn't keep

"Hello" Hal strained to wipe the fear from his voice.
"Hal? Is that you?"
"Yes, Mary. I am just..."
"You don't sound so good."
"Well...umm...it's been a hard week."
"I know it has."
They spent about 30 seconds listening to each other breath.
"Is there something you needed, Mary?"
"No, I was just calling to see if you were O.K."
"I am O.K."
They were quiet for another 30 seconds, hoping the silence would speak for each of them.
"I was thinking maybe I'd stop by for a little while. Do you have to work?"
"No....No... I mean. Mary stuff is just going on. I don't know if I can handle it."
"I think I should come over. I'm scared for you."
"Scared?"
"Yeah, I had the most terrible dream."
"Dream, Mary what are you talking about?"
"I don't know. Can't I just come and see you?"
"I'd like that."
"I'll be there in a half hour."
"Mary."
The line was dead. Hal put the receiver down and looked over to the chest.