Free Day Into Night by Dave Hugelschaffer

refrain. The door on the bottom of the cupola slaps open and the towerman — resigned to the fact that his visitor won’t leave without some prodding — descends the narrow ladder like an insect intent on escaping a spider’s web.
    “How ya doin’?” he says, coming up behind me. He’s an old guy with a potbelly, long grey beard and sun-burned dome. His vintage tie-dyed shirt is so worn the colours have faded to the point of competing with the sweat stains under his arms. He’s short, wearing sandals, looks like a hobbit from the sixties. Tower people can get a little loopy if they stay in the profession too long, but he seems okay. Of course, it’s still early in the season.
    He sticks out a hand. “Gabe Peterson.”
    I stand up, introduce myself.
    “Out for a little ride?” He’s looking at my abandoned mountain bike. “Get a few hardy souls like that every year. Most just drive up.” His eyes wander back to me. One eye is bright blue; the other, pale grey. It’s a little disconcerting, as though he were put together from spare parts — like the Chevy. “You want something to drink?” he asks. “I made a pitcher of lemonade this morning.”
    At the mention of cold fluids, my knees go weak all over again. I follow Peterson into his cabin, which is crowded with stacks of boxes like he’s just moved in. But it’s not natural for a towerperson to have this much gear, even a tower with road access, and I wonder if Carl knows about this. The boxes are stacked to eye level and Peterson vanishes among them, a layer of boxes indented to allow passage for his midsection. One of the boxes is on its side and I can see bundles of little plastic sandwich bags. Curious, I tug a baggie part way out, expecting ganja or something like that. It’s filled with a flattened clod of hair — black mixed with grey — and has a date on it: August 14, 1982. Peterson might be going into the seniors toupee business, but I don’t think so. This is serious fetish material and I shudder to think what else he might have in these boxes.
    Suddenly, I’m not so thirsty anymore.
    “Yup,” he hollers from somewhere ahead, as though confirming an earlier statement, and I shove the hair back into its filing system.
    “Been in this tower for 38 seasons now.” He comes around a corner in the labyrinth, sideways, chuckling, two glasses of cloudy liquid jostling in his hands. “I reckon they let me keep coming back so they don’t have to move all this stuff.”
    I nod, take the offered glass, retreat outside.
    We return to the bench — it’s so roomy out here — spend a few minutes staring across the valley at a puzzleboard of brown cut-blocks on a far slope. Gabe sets aside his drink, which makes me nervous. “You from the city?” he says.
    “No. I’m a country boy.”
    “Good for you. This place is too goddamn close to the city.”
    There’s a pause. I used to take care of a half-dozen towers up north and would visit them once a month, to bring in groceries. Just as important for the towerperson were the few hours of human contact. Most would babble continuously, cram in an entire month’s conversation. Others would be sullen and taciturn, couldn’t wait for you to leave. “What do you do in the winter?” I ask politely.
    “Guns,” he says, grinning. “I’m a gunsmith. Out of my garage.”
    A gunsmith with a hair collection; I’ll sleep better knowing that.
    “What about you?” he says. “What do you do?”
    “I used to be a Ranger.”
    Gabe nods and something passes across his face. I get the feeling he’s recognized me; my picture was in the papers quite a bit a few years ago. If he does, he’s polite enough not to say anything. We both gaze at the mountains. The cutblocks across the valley look familiar. The angle is different and I’m farther above them, but they look like the blocks I saw from the bombing site. Which means the site can’t be far away. “You notice anything strange in the past few