Free Flashback (1988) by Michael Palmer

from Suzanne the hostility in his eyes was icy.
    “Hey, no big deal, Jason. No big deal.”
    “Good. Well then, we’ll have to see what we can do about drummin’ up a little neurosurgical business for y’all.”
    “Thanks.”
    “Meanwhile, you might try to steer clear of politics around this place—at least until you’ve been here long enough to learn everyone’s name.” He checked his gold Rolex. “Suzanne, dear, I b’lieve we still have time to complete our business. Nice to see you, Iverson. I’m sure you’ll make the adjustment to this sleepy little place just fine.”
    Without waiting for a response, he took Suzanne’s arm and strode down the hallway.
    Andy O’Meara, red-cheeked, beer-bellied, and beaming, strolled among the tables of Gillie’s Mountainside Tavern, shaking hands and exchanging slaps on the back with the twenty or so men enjoying their midday break in the smoky warmth. Over nearly twenty years he had come to know each and every one of them well, and was proud to call them his friends.
    “Andy O, you old fart. Welcome back!”… “Hey, it’s Mighty Mick. Way to go, Andy. Way to go. We knew you’d beat it.”
    First the cards and candy and flowers when he was in the hospital, and now this welcome back. They were a hell of a bunch. The very best. And at that moment, as far as AndyO’Meara was concerned, he was the luckiest man alive. Tomorrow would be Independence Day—the day for celebrating the birth of freedom. And this day was one for celebrating his own rebirth.
    “Hey, Gillie,” he called out, the lilt of a childhood in Kilkenny still coloring his speech. “Suds around, on me.”
    After three months of pain and worry, after more than a dozen trips to Manchester for radiation therapy, after sitting time and again in the doctors office, waiting for the other shoe to fall, waiting for the news that “We can’t get it all,” he was back on the road, cured. The bowel cancer that had threatened his very existence was in some jar in the pathology department at Ultramed-Davis Hospital, and whatever evil cells had remained in his body had been burnt to hell by the amazing X-ray machines. The backseat and trunk of his green Chevy were once again filled with the boxes of shoes and boots and sneakers that he loved to lay out for the merchants along route 16, and the rhythm of his life had at last been restored.
    “To the luck of the Irish,” he proclaimed as he hoisted the frosted mug over his head.
    “And to you, Andy O,” Gillie responded. “Were glad to have you back among the living.”
    Andy O’Meara exchanged handshakes and hugs with each man in the place, and then set his half-filled tankard on the bar. It was his first frosty in more than twelve weeks, and with a full afternoon of calls ahead of him, there was no sense in putting his tolerance for the stuff to the test.
    He settled up with Gillie and stepped out of the dim, pine-paneled tavern, into the sparkling afternoon sunlight. He prided himself on never being late for a call, and Colson’s Factory Outlet was nearly a thirty-minute drive through the mountains.
    He switched on the radio. Kenny Rogers was admonishing him to know when to hold and know when to fold. The country/western music, usually Andy’s staple, seemed somehow out of keeping with the peace and serenity of this day. At the edge of the driveway he stopped and changed to a classical program on WEVO, the public station.
    Better
, he thought.
Much better
.
    The tune was familiar. Almost instantly, it conjured up images in Andy’s mind—softly falling snow … a stone hearth … a roaring fire … family. As he hummed along,Andy tried to remember where he had heard the haunting melody before.
    “… What child is thi-is, who laid to re-est in Mary’s la-ap, lay slee-eeping? …”
    He surprised himself by knowing many of the words.
    “This, thi-is is Christ the Ki-ing, whom shepherds gua-ard and angels sing.…”
    It was the Christmas