An Incidental Reckoning Read Online Free Page B

horizon at any time before that. Life didn't always work out like a movie on some women's television network. Jon was content with the distance between them, a situation much better than living under his roof.
     
    Now, after Will’s expression of his fears, he wondered if something had worked within his subconscious, or at least augmented his conscious reasons. A boy with a coward for a father would probably turn out the same way, or worse hold his dad in contempt and become unmanageable. Get involved with the wrong crowd or companion. Maybe someone like Brody.
     
    Even his relationship with his wife Erin suffered, he knew, from the lack of watching a father and mother interact. He found it fascinating how one could recognize deficient traits in the process of practicing them, and yet still carry on as though programmed and devoid of the ability to change. But Erin had her faults as well, selfishness being one of them, and he knew it as the main reason behind her own desire to remain childless. He wouldn’t call it a model relationship in any sense of the word, but he did the best he could with it…and realized that this had become his mantra. And probably just as much an excuse for the mediocrity that he had settled for in so many areas of his life.
     
    He hadn’t done anything extraordinary, nothing that would ever stand out, would end up as another name on a headstone that if he were lucky would entertain a few visitors now and then. He had a few friends, or at least people to watch the game with or meet for a beer. And in this wasn’t he like most people, just trying to get by? But then he had never really attempted anything beyond himself, either. Did it, like Will seemed to think, stem from a personal deficiency? They had never feared taking on each other in a fight, because they knew it wasn’t real, even though some of the blows had felt real enough…
     
    Jon put his fingers to his temples and rubbed to thwart a nascent headache. Too much thinking. He had tried hard to steer clear of anything that could be considered a mid-life crisis, didn’t see the point of re-evaluating it all. You made choices, and you lived with those choices. You did the best you could. Then one day your heart quit or some rogue cells began to multiply and chewed up your insides and it was over, quick or not so quick. The handful of people who got to rise above the masses and live the good life, the musicians and sports stars and celebrities, all bought it in the end, too. And if one could simply be content with small pleasures, would the mind know they weren’t on scale with the delights available those who could afford them? Erin, for any other faults, was still fun in bed. On the occasions they had sex. Not a model’s face or body, but once the lights went out, did it matter? Only if you made it matter.
     
    You did the best you could. It had worked for him this far, it would work until the end. He just didn’t need to think about it anymore. And he wondered now if there would be a camping trip next year. Will seemed to be following a path he didn’t wish to tread.
     
    Throwing rocks at Brody’s car.
     
    He couldn’t even imagine…well, no he could. But imagining is as far as it would have gone. Jon had spent too long avoiding the bullied and humiliated kid he had once been to fan the embers of the past into an inferno that could consume it all.
     
    He stood up and stretched, noticed two points of light, the firelight reflecting off of the retinas of an opportunistic raccoon lurking in the shadows, and did a quick check of the picnic table near the fire ring to make sure no food had been left to encourage the thief.
     
    “I think I’m going to turn in, Will. Been a long day. Will?”
     
    “What? Oh, okay Jon. Just going to sit here for a while longer.”
     
    “Good night, then.”
     
    Will didn’t answer, had already gone back to the place that Jon had intruded on. He studied his friend for a bit longer, then