2019.
March 6th, 2010
In Robertson’s dream, he was speaking with his father about a favorite street of his near the port of the big city. And his father spoke of a bustling street with a clock tower, a bank with high columns and a hotel called the Alexander where celebrities and dignitaries would stay the night after stepping off the ship, resting before taking the long journey to the city itself. And then Robertson was walking the place his father had spoken of fondly, finding it decayed, empty, buildings falling down. Storefronts that had once been dress shops long ago were shuttered liquor stores. It was a lonely, diesel wind that blew down these streets that no one wanted anymore.
When he awoke, Robertson remembered the dream clearly. Three years later when he found himself back in the town to care for a sick friend, he went down to the street of his dream and found it all gone, scraped clean by something called a redevelopment agency. And it occurred to him that it wasn’t the ghost of his father that had visited his dream, but rather the ghost of Beacon Street, fighting to be remembered, even if by the son of another country.