Tom Rainmaker had a wonderful life, a long life that now, in the cool afternoon fall was coming to an end. His wife sits beside the medical bed set up in his room caressing his grey thin hair; her smile sad but filled with happiness of a life of great memories. Three fully grown children stand underneath the window outside amongst scrambling children talking nodding crying. The sound of the children rising up into the air wafting through the window and into Toms dying ears mixed with the magic smell of decaying leaves sparking memories of his own childhood life. His minds eye raced, he heard his mother calling him at this same house, she stood at the door with a dish rag in her hand wearing a golden sundress sparkling in the summer sun. He wiped his boyish hands on his muddy overalls and stuffed the frog into his breast pocket “coming,” he mumbled as is eyes fluttered in dream. His wife’s eyes filled with the ocean. Tom felt her tear on his cheek. Beneath the fluttering eyelids he stood in the drenching rain calling out to her, His muddy overalls changed for a dripping brown military uniform and black shoes. He screamed at the old farmhouse until the lights started on. His huge grin revealed his perfect white teeth. The rain fell around him, Her dad appeared on the porch, she appeared in the window. I love you” he screamed through the pouring rain. “I love you and I will marry you”. I can not die! and will not die over there! I will be back and ill marry you.” Her tears were the same as she waved from her bedroom window sad, sweet buetiful tears that fell now at his deathbed. His mind moved onto the vivid memory of the war and the scars that forever changed his entire understanding of life. His back against the dirt berm of the bunker, explosions all around his friend John from Omaha dead’s eyes staring at him, his body torn off at the waist. Awake for twenty four hours the cammand came, charge!! This is it! Run straight into the wall of bullets and cannons. As he turned to jump out of the bunker into the face of hell he didn’t think of the Charlie horse in his thigh, or the cuts all over his body, All he thought of and all he saw was her. He ran toward her. His uniform pristine and starched now black shoes polished hit the train station platform running through a glorious celebration of the survivors he dropped his bag and swooped her up in his arms spinning her around shedding all the horror right there in the train yard seeing only his wife crying shrieking as he held her caressing her head now as she sweated. “Push now! Push now! Almost there!” the doctors voice bled into the sound of the crying baby and the silence of the struggling mother. He looked at his lover you did it baby it’s a boy you did it, I love you. “
She caressed his head now looking down at her lover grey and accomplished. Their children came in the room together sorrounding their beloved father’s bed. They took his hand and their mothers hand. “Remember my fourteenth birthday when dad slipped bringing in the cake with all the candles lit singing happy birthday and the glowing confection went flying through the air splatting right on the table. They all laughed with non focused eyes, lost in the sharp smell of memories. Yeah dad laughed and laughed and stuck a couple more candles in it and lit em and started singing again, happy birthday to you… that was too funny. We ate that cake right off the table. It was alright. They all laughed. Remember the time dad went sleepwalking
Toms eyes fluttred slower and separate, then they opened to see his buetiful wife above him and his three children around his bed all crying and smiling holding on to each other and holding on to him. He took a deep breath and smiling his infamous grin reached out for his wife’s face. Touching her face caressing her cheek he looked her in the eyes solomley and said “That was fun” . his words trailed off into a whisper, his arm fell to his side and his last breath exhaled. He was dead.
Tyler opened his eyes and the blur and disorientation began to wear off he came into focus. Coming back into reality he knew his friends he had grown up with were around him, he couldn’t here them yet though, he remembered taking a huge pull of smoke from a long pipe his friend Kevin made from tuotulin tusk. He began to hear their laughter. His vision came into focus, their they were, his friends he knew so well that they were made up partially of himself. “But how, what the Holy Shit.” His friends rolled with laughter around him. “You were out man, totally fucked up by the elhorn root, I tolled you that it’s a life altering trip man.’ ‘What? A trip?” What an unreal trip. He thought. “So real. M, M , My name was Tom Rainmaker, I had a famly, I was in a war!”
“Yeah, Yeah! heavy huh!”
“I was in a war too, I lived in a place called Germany. HEAVY trip man.”
Tyler looked at his friends, he knew they were real, Kevin, Tim, and Monica all watched him smiling at him. They had all went first on this new powder root given to them by a tribe elder. “How long was I out, the last thing I remember was hitting the tusk,?”
About twenty five minutes, you hit the pipe said something about your mom and fell back into the pillows that monica kindly set up for you. We told you that it is a doozy, you never done anything like elroot. Tell us about it. What happened to you.
Well, my name was Tom Rainmaker, I had a wife and three kids......

madmark