Buffalo Road 1985
When the sky went green, Agnes White bolted the shutters and double-checked to make sure she’d brought all the laundry in. Unburdened of its freight, the line hung listlessly in the heat. The prairie was an eerie place without the wind. She stood on the front porch with Otis panting at her feet, looking out over the tall grasses. The landscape was as still as a painting, shades of citrine and sage against a peridot sky. Agnes had only seen clouds that color once before, back in 1921. The year of the floods in San Antonio. Over 200 people dead, although she was too young at the time to understand the death toll. The floods had been the result of a cyclone, but there was nothing like that on the horizon; she knew that much from the small weather radio that hung in the kitchen. She kept it on most days; it was good company while she canned or did chores. No, today was something else. Tornadoes had been forming across the state, leaving behind widespread swaths of destruction. It was early in the season for such storms, but Agnes had never seen a twister that cared much about being on time. She’d already prepped the shelter inside the barn. She and Otis would camp out in there for the night, just in case the storm decided to show up in the wee hours. “Good thing the horses are gone, huh old boy?” she said, reaching down to scratch Otis behind the ears. He closed his eyes in doggy ecstasy for a moment and yawned, decidedly indifferent to the fact that there were no other animals to take care of. Agnes had sold everything off the year before; when her arthritis got so bad she could barely close a fist, she knew it was time to make a change. It was the right decision--the chickens had been a pain in the ass--but she sometimes missed the horses. They’d been wild and beautiful things, running around the fields with manes flying behind them like ribbons. Not much use in keeping them, though, and she’d gotten a fair price for them at market. The money had allowed her to pay off what was left on the mortgage, and social security helped with the rest. She would never be rich, but that was fine. Hers was a small life, but comfortable. “You hungry?” she asked Otis. He stood and nosed the screen door open, padding inside the house. Agnes dumped a helping of chicken, oats, and gravy into his bowl and got herself a glass of water as he lapped it up, drank it leaning against the kitchen counter. The mercury had shot up at least five degrees in the last couple of hours, and the air in the house was close. She plucked the front of her shirt between two fingers and waved it back and forth, creating her own breeze. It was too hot to even consider eating her own dinner; she didn’t feel like chasing down her food after it rolled off the fork. Damn heat gave her the shakes something awful. There was an air conditioner--a window unit--in her bedroom, which helped her sleep when summer really got cranked up, but it didn’t do much for the rest of the house. The weather radio suddenly erupted in a burst of static, drowning out the report that Tom Bevins was giving. Agnes only caught snatches, a word here and there, but it was all she needed. She'd been listening to Tom for 20 years and there was no mistaking the urgency in his voice now. "C'mon, Otis," Agnes said briskly. "Time's up." They walked in the gathering wind, both of them haunted by the whistling sound that careened through the weeds. The clouds were low and dense, fat blue waves with veins of white running through them. Agnes paused once they reached the barn and turned to look at the house; it looked so vulnerable there, sitting alone as it was. Briefly, she wondered if the Thompsons had heard the warning and made it to their own shelter. She could just see the edge of their roof across the prairie, about a half mile down the road. "Nope, they're still in Florida," she said to Otis. "So that's okay." The closest neighbor on her other side, Ed Tankersly, was visiting his daughter in El Paso until Tuesday, and Agnes said a little silent prayer for that. Ed was in a wheelchair and she couldn’t imagine the difficulty she would have had getting him down into her shelter; he didn’t have one of his own. She led Otis inside the barn and wedged a 2x4 across the doors to hold them in place. All the tools that might become flying weapons of destruction had already been removed; the place was as empty as she had ever seen it, and she felt a pang of grief strike a chord in her midsection. With the horses, she’d had living things relying on her, beautiful creatures who greeted her everyday with pleasure. She’d cared for animals of some sort every year of her life since she was a small child. Now it was just her and the hound, and he was slowly going blind and nearly poisoned her every night with his dogfarts. The wind began to pick up, keening through the cracks between the weathered boards of the barn like a mother who has lost her child. Agnes helped Otis down the steps, into the cellar, and ignited two lanterns before securing the doors above their heads. As the storm cranked up, she wrapped a blanket around her shoulders and pulled Otis close, breathing in his comforting doggy scent. When the floorboards overhead began to shiver, Agnes looked up and saw a whirlwind of light and shadow, flickering like an old television set. As the barn creaked and groaned, Agnes and Otis hunkered down underground and waited for the future to come for them. *** When the quiet rolled in, Agnes half-stood and cautiously duck-walked to the cellar doors. There was light, but it was faint. At nearly 7:30, dark was swiftly falling behind cloud cover. She pulled the latch and pushed open the doors, trailing one hand behind her to guide Otis. He nuzzled her palm with his wet nose and followed her outside, where the world seemed to have been tipped sideways. “Glory,” Agnes whispered as she surveyed the land. The prairie was filled with blue light. The line of trees that grew at the edge of her property were splintered into lumber, all except for one at the end that merely leaned drunkenly to one side. There was a swath of grass leading to the treeline that had been laid down in a perfect row by the twister. The house was, miraculously, still standing, but the roof was missing a great chunk, as though a giant had walked up and taken a bite. Shingles lay scattered across the front yard; wood beams had been thrown as far as the eye could see. Trash and debris dotted the landscape. Agnes could see empty cereal boxes of a brand she didn’t even buy; they must have flown over from the Thompson’s. One lonely Walmart circular flapped in the breeze and stuck to her foot, a refugee from the decimated mailbox. “Well, shit,” Agnes said. There was nothing to be done for it but get to work. The yard could wait, she realized, but the roof would have to be covered before the rain started up again. The storm had taken out the patch of roof just above the living room, leaving debris and exposed wires dangling from the hole. The power was out, of course, and all the furniture was soaked with rain water. Agnes led Otis carefully through the mess and into the bedroom, where he plopped down in his bed with a deep sigh that said he’d had enough action for one day. There were tarps and a ladder in the garage; Agnes fetched them and began the arduous task of nailing the plastic down on the roof. Her fingers went numb about halfway through, so it was slow going. With no light inside, there was little else to do once she was finished but go to bed. Agnes stripped out of her muddy clothes and crawled under the covers, already tired with just the thought of all the work to be done when morning came. When a rustling sound broke the silence sometime after midnight, Agnes stirred in her sleep. But she didn’t wake, not even when something crashed outside her bedroom window. Not even when the scent of something living wafted on the air, the smell of a cage in a zoo. *** The mess was much worse in the early light. Dusk had provided too much cover, too many shadows to hide the worst of it, but when the sun came up the fields practically glittered with mess. Agnes locked Otis in the house so he wouldn’t hurt himself and set out for the day, armed with trash bags and thick gloves. She placed these inside a wheelbarrow and grabbed a rake from the tool stash inside the shelter. Within an hour, she had two large black bags filled; these went to the dump behind the barn, where she kept a barrel for burning what she could. This far out in the boonies, there was no trash service. She made her way out to the tree line and stood silently for a moment, surveying the land. It was truly a shame, the storm taking what it had. Those trees had been standing for longer than Agnes had owned the land, had provided shade and shelter for various animals. She walked closer, kicking aside twigs and broken limbs, and found what she’d known would be there: a tire on a rusty chain. It was over thirty years old, but until yesterday it had still been attached to the tree. Agnes sniffed and turned toward the house, her thoughts moving to a cold glass of sweet tea. Otis would be expecting a few blueberries, or maybe a sliver of cantaloupe; she usually had fresh fruit with lunch and he always got a bite. When the toe of her shoe caught on something firm, she stopped and looked down, blinking in the sun against a glaring bright spot in her vision. “What the devil…?” she murmured, kneeling down to inspect the shiny object closer. It was an oversized resealable plastic bag, like the kind she kept vegetables in when she wanted to freeze them. Only instead of squash or zucchini, this bag held fat rolls of money. Agnes sat down in the grass, felt the seat of her jeans wet through immediately, and ignored it. What the hell was a bag of cash doing on her property? And more importantly, who might be looking for it? Reluctantly, she picked up the bag, hefted its weight. More money than she’d ever held in her lifetime, more than she had ever had in the bank. The rolls of green were secured with rubber bands, each bigger than her fist, twenty rolls in all. She couldn’t leave it here. She’d take it with her, keep it safe until she could find out who had lost it. This might be someone’s life savings I hold in my hands, she thought. Agnes wrapped the package in a black trash bag and secured it in the bottom of the wheelbarrow, which she moved to the inside of the barn. She couldn’t have said why, but she felt better knowing it was safe...and not in her house. *** “But why wouldn’t it be covered?” Two days later Agnes sat in her kitchen, looking up at the jagged hole in her roof, sweating through her t-shirt. She’d been on the phone for twenty minutes, trying to make heads or tails of her insurance policy with a man named Walter. So far, Walter wasn’t being very helpful. “I see here that you changed your homeowner’s policy back in…’82, is that right?” Walter said. “Yes. I spoke to someone named Janet who assured me that it was the right decision, since I was looking to save money. It dropped my premium by almost fifty dollars.” “I understand that, Mrs. White, but we made some changes to our policies last year. You should have gotten information about it in the mail.” “Changes?” “Yes. See, you’re currently on the bronze tier, and that level no longer includes damages from natural disasters.” Agnes closed her eyes and sighed. “So you’re telling me that I have a hole in my house, destroyed furniture, and water damage, and the policy I’ve been paying on for twenty years isn’t going to help me with any of it?” “I’m afraid not. Now, if you want to upgrade your policy right now, I can do that over the phone--” Agnes hung up and scrubbed a hand over her face, wishing she had a cold beer. She rarely drank these days, but damn if a frosty bottle didn’t sound incredible. She looked around the house, at the holes where her furniture had been; she’d dragged the damaged pieces outside, where they sat waiting for the junk man to come haul them away. A man from the electric company had already been out to restore power and she’d had him take a look at the exposed wires dangling from the ceiling. They’d turned out to be connected to external sources, the porch lights and garage and the big lamp over the barn door. It would take them some time to fix it, the man had said, and there was already a backlog of problems up and down Buffalo Road, so it was going to take a few days at least. By Wednesday, she might be more of a puddle than a woman, she thought bitterly. Agnes looked down at Otis, who was panting at her feet, and scratched behind one long, silky ear. He was a purebred Basset Hound, but these days he was more interested in sleeping than sniffing anything out. He opened one bloodshot eye and rolled it up to Agnes, almost as if he knew what she had in mind. “C’mon,” she said. “It won’t be so bad. At least there’ll be a breeze to speak of.” *** Buffalo Road ended on a bluff overlooking the Salt River, and it was there that the residents gathered every Sunday to hold an unofficial farmer’s market. It was the perfect spot, since the only access road to the river for fishermen and picnicking families ran alongside the bluff and t-boned Buffalo. This early in the year there wouldn’t be many customers, but Agnes had canned peach and apricot preserves to offer to the ones who did show and besides, she liked the company. She hadn’t seen her neighbors since the storm had hit, had no idea what sort of damage they were looking at in their own houses. There was indeed a decent breeze coming off the river. Agnes spotted Ed in his silvery wheelchair, as well as Steve Thompson and two of the Harvey girls from further down the road. There were simple canopies set up over a few card tables, which were laden with homemade blueberry muffins, banana bread, zucchini bread, and cornbread; so far, no customers. “There she is!” Steve cried heartily as she walked up, pulling her red wagon full of preserves. Otis walked dutifully alongside her and sat without grace in a spot of shade, where one of the Harvey girls--Agnes thought maybe it was Lily, the eldest--cooed over him and stroked his head. “How is everyone? Still got backends on yourselves, I see,” Agnes said with a smile. “Just barely,” said Ed. “Twister cut right through my barn, flung the riding mower two hundred feet. It’s smashed to pieces.” “Oh, you’re kidding,” Agnes said, reaching out to pat his gnarled hand. “Was it insured?” “Nah. It’s alright. After this, my daughter offered to have me come live at her place. I’m gettin’ too old to live alone, anyway.” “Well I’m sorry to hear that, Ed,” Agnes said, and she meant it. She’d known Ed and Maureen Tankersly for three decades or more; when Maureen died of cancer in ‘77, Agnes practically lived at their house for weeks, taking care of Ed and helping him adjust to living alone. He’d been using the wheelchair for a couple of years, ever since being diagnosed with diabetes, but until he lost Maureen, he was a healthy, vibrant man. Grief had taken so much from him. “But I’m sure your daughter will love having you. As for the mower...I feel your pain. I’ve got a hole in my roof and the insurance company says they won’t pay.” “Lordy,” Ed said. “Ain’t that a kick in the head?” “That can’t be right,” Steve said. “Did you look over your policy? Double-check the wording?” “Oh yeah, I’ve been all over it. Talked to an agent this morning. He dug his heels in and tried to get me to upgrade my policy, but I hung up on him. I’ll figure it out.” “I’m sorry I haven’t been down to check on you,” Steve said to Agnes. “It’s been crazy up at the house. We just got back this morning and Sarah is going nuts, trying to get everything in order. I told her it will take some time--the storm took out a tree in our front yard and it busted out the picture window in the living room, did some damage to the siding--but she’s insisting on fixing it now. Plus the twister knocked out part of our barn and sucked a bunch of stuff up, threw it everywhere. And Michael, he’s...well, he’s a teenager. You know how they can be.” “Yes,” Agnes said. “I do.” “Oh, hey,” Steve said softly. “I’m sorry about that. I forget, sometimes--” “No sorries,” Agnes said briskly. “It was a long time ago.” “Anyway, I talked to Joe from Texas Light & Power, and he said he’d just been down at your place and that you were okay.” “Just dandy, although I had a mighty fine mess on my hands,” Agnes said, taking a seat in one of the camp chairs beneath the canopy. “Storm blew everything hell to breakfast around my yard. Speaking of which, I think I got some of your trash. Sweetum-Os?” Steve laughed. “Oh yeah, Mike loves that sugary shit, pardon my French. Kid’s going off to college in the fall but he still eats like he’s nine years old. I’ll come down there later today and take care of it.” “No worries at all, it’s done,” Agnes said. “I’m sorry to hear about that picture window, though. I always admired it.” “Yeah, well, Sarah will have a bigger and better one put in soon enough, I guarantee it. Ah, hell. Some good came from it, I guess, we got a little rain. Maybe we’ll be able to hold off a drought this year. At least the corn field wasn’t damaged.” Agnes caught a quick look from the younger Harvey girl, whose expression was unreadable as she regarded Steve from beneath heavy blue eyeliner. After a moment, she turned away and plucked a dandelion from the side of the road, stuck it in her mouth to chew on the stalk. “Did you get a call from animal control?” Ed asked Agnes. “What? Why would I? About Otis?” “No, there’s some wild beast on the loose around here apparently.” Agnes turned to Steve, who was nodding. “I haven’t found anything around our place, but Bob Harvey said there were some big tracks around their garage this morning. Called animal control, but they couldn’t find anything either.” “Any ideas on what it could be?” Agnes asked. “Not a one, but Bob said whatever it is, it’s big. Could be a bear, I guess, although what it would be doing around here I’m sure I don’t know. Maybe the storm blew it off track.” “A bear,” Lily Harvey shuddered, wrapping her arms around Otis. “I truly hope there aren’t bear tornadoes coming through here.” Everyone laughed at that, but it felt false in Agnes’ mouth as she looked at Ed, a man confined to a wheelchair who lived alone. She thought of offering him a shotgun; she owned two, purely for security reasons, and had never used one since the day she’d learned to shoot. Ed would probably scoff at the idea, or worse, think she was trying to mother him. No, she’d better keep her offers to herself. But she would take one of the guns from it's locked drawer later, just to be sure. *** Later, Agnes lay in bed with her arms folded beneath her head, looking up at the ceiling in the dark. It was the money that was keeping her awake. All that money, just laying unclaimed in her barn. Rolls and rolls of it, fat rolls at that, bundles that would make thick stacks when laid flat. She couldn’t begin to guess an amount, but she was sure it was enough to cover the cost of a roof repair twenty times over. What was she considering? She didn’t recognize the thoughts swirling in her head. It was as though they were coming from an alien transmission, ideas that weren’t her own but had been placed in her mind forcefully. How could she even think about taking something that wasn’t hers? On the other hand...who knew she had the money? No one, and no one ever would, her mind whispered. Agnes swung her legs over the side of the bed and grabbed the flashlight she kept in the nightstand. Otis lifted his head from his spot on the floor and watched with interest for a moment, then laid back down and farted magnificently. “Christ, Otis, you’d think I only fed you broccoli and liver,” Agnes said, wrinkling her nose as she made her way cautiously to the doorway. “You sure know how to clear a room.” Outside, the moon was high enough to provide quite a bit of light, turning the grass a shade of blue that reminded her of Kentucky. She’d visited once, a million years ago. The barn loomed ahead, a keeper of secrets shrouded in gloom. Agnes shone the flashlight through the big double doors and spotted the wheelbarrow, right where she’d left it. The cash was safely tucked inside, beneath layers of trash bags. Agnes pulled it out, debated sticking it back, and rolled it up under her arm before she could change her mind. On the way back to the house, a strange sound reached her. Snuffling, grunting. The smell of something wild and humid filled her nose as movement in the brush to her left caught her eye. “The bear,” she whispered. Counted the steps to the house, where a shotgun sat waiting. Why, Lord, why hadn't she brought it with her? She tried to remember what she had been taught, how to load and how to pump, but all she could pull up in her memory was how to aim. If it really was a bear, and if he was as big as Steve claimed, her aim was the last thing she was worried about. The bushes rustled again and Agnes backed up, readying the flashlight in case she needed to throw it, but what emerged was not a bear. It wasn’t even close. “A pig?” she cried, and erupted into relieved giggles. It was a pig alright, a big black one, wild as the day was long. It snuffled along the ground, not even paying attention to Agnes as it hunted for something to eat. “You hungry, Bubba?” she asked. The storm might have misplaced him; she’d never seen a feral pig outside of the woods, and there were no forests for miles. In the kitchen, she grabbed the bag of compost material she kept for the garden and dumped it into a large bowl; potato peels, carrot ends, green onion bulbs, corn cobs. She sat it outside along with a bowl of clean water and smiled, imagining the look on her neighbors’ faces when she told them about their “bear”. As she turned to go back inside, the smile wilted from her face. She had the strongest feeling that someone was watching her. The tiny hairs on the back of her neck stood up as though electrified. She scanned the horizon, but nothing moved in the moonlight. If someone was watching her, they were doing it from the shadows. *** Two days later, Agnes watched as a truck full of roofers pulled up in front of the house, armed with tools and ready to work. Doug Sanderson, the contractor she’d hired, pulled in right behind them and hopped out of the truck. He looked very official with his clipboard and hardhat. “Morning!” Doug called. “Looks like your place got a little beat up in that storm.” “More than a little, but not a lot,” Agnes said from the porch, smiling a little. It was what she’d thought to herself while pulling money from the bag to fund this operation: More than a little, but not a lot. Otis grunted at her feet, seemingly able to read her mind. She felt his judgement and sniffed. “Hush, you,” she whispered. “Well, we’re ready to get to work if that’s okay by you. Alright if we take those tarps down and lay them inside? They’ll provide good cover for your furniture.” “That’s fine, but I don’t have much furniture in there. Water damage.” Doug nodded. “Ah. Sorry about that. Well, we’ll try to be as quick as possible so we can get out of your hair.” “Take your time. I’ll be in the garden if you need anything.” Agnes led Otis down the steps and to the side of the house, where her little garden was thriving. There was no sign of the pig, but the bowls she’d sat out were empty. He must have gotten his fill and moved on. It had been several days since she’d tended the garden, and the weeds were taking over. Agnes pulled out the little stool she kept outside for just that reason and sat down, started yanking them out. It was too early in the season for much, but she’d already planted cucumbers and tomatoes, plus some herbs in a smaller plot. When summer came she’d have a nice harvest, especially with the corn she got from the Thompsons. The heat rose steadily, and by eleven o’clock Agnes was ready for a break. She stood slowly, not wanting to invite dizziness, and waited for Otis to follow. A glass of iced tea sounded perfect; she’d make a big jug of it to share with the roofers. Their steady banging had provided a soundtrack to her work in the garden all morning; surely they were ready for a break, too. Before she could make it inside, a figure on the road caught her eye: Steve. He waved and she returned it, stretching her back for a moment before walking up to meet him. Otis padded dutifully along, her constant companion. “Morning,” Steve called. “I heard all the hammering and thought I should check and make sure you’re alright. Looks like you’ve got things under control.” “Oh yeah, I got some people working on the roof. Sorry about all the racket. They said it shouldn’t take too long to finish.” “No, no, that’s okay. We’re about to have our own workers making noise. They’re coming to remove the trees today.” Agnes shaded her eyes with the flat of her hand as the sun bore down, looking up at Steve curiously. There was something in his voice, something that felt out of place. “Everything okay?” she asked. “Well, I had another reason for coming down here,” he admitted. “I wanted to warn you.” “Warn me?” “Whatever that animal is that’s roaming around here, it came up to our place last night.” Agnes laughed. “Oh, that’s right, I was going to tell you! It was here last night, too. It’s just a wild pig! He was a big old boy, but friendly. Just looking for a bite to eat.” Steve shook his head. “No, Agnes. This was something else. It, ah...it got Bo.” Agnes gasped. “No! What happened?” It was simple; Bo, the Thompsons’ 3-year old beagle, had been tied up on his runner outside the house after dinner. He was so quiet that the family didn’t think to let him back inside until bedtime, and when Steve went out to fetch him, he found the body. Mangled, he said, throat torn out. “That is just awful, Steve. I’m so sorry,” Agnes said, feeling her eyes prickle. She couldn’t imagine coming upon Otis that way. “Sarah’s pretty torn up. Mike, too. He loved that dog,” Steve said, choking back his own tears. “Anyway, I wanted to let you know so you’ll keep Otis inside. He’s a good old boy, aren’t you?” He reached down and patted the dog’s head affectionately while he regained his composure. Agnes was inclined to give him a hug, but there had always been a guard up around Steve that she couldn’t quite cross. She wasn’t sure if it was because he wasn’t a local--the Thompsons were from away, having moved to Texas from Illinois ten years ago--or because he just wasn’t the touchy-feely type. Either way, she kept her hands to herself. “I’d better head back up to the house,” Steve said abruptly, swiping a forearm across his eyes. “Lots to do today, and every day for the foreseeable future.” “Take care, Steve,” Agnes said. “Please tell Sarah and Mike how sorry I am about Bo.” “Will do,” he smiled, and turned to go. After a moment, he turned back. “Say, did the insurance company come through for you?” It was such a sudden change in conversation that Agnes was lost for a second. Of course. She’d told everyone about how her insurance company had screwed her over, and now there were workers fixing everything up. What was the better lie? That she’d miraculously gotten through to a multinational conglomerate and made them pay, or that she’d dipped into her nearly non-existent savings account? Steve would know better than that. He’d been giving her free produce for years because he was aware of just how tight things were. “Oh, yeah! They sure did. It was a nice bit of good news after all this,” she said finally. “Ah,” he said, and he was smiling but his expression was puzzled. “Good. That’s real good.” Agnes watched him amble back up the dirt road, wishing she could take it all back. Now not only was she a thief, she was a liar, to boot. Otis looked up at her, nuzzled her hand. He had an uncanny ability to sense her moods and always knew when she needed comfort. “Come on, boy,” she said, her heart feeling heavy. “Let’s go make some sweet tea.” *** Later that evening, Agnes sat on the edge of her bed, feeling incredibly weary. The past few days had taken a toll, both mentally and physically. She was far too old to be climbing ladders and hauling wheelbarrows around; she did it not because she was the only one who could, but because she feared that if she stopped moving, she wouldn’t get back up. She glanced over at the wall beside the bed, where several framed photos hung. In the most prominent one, a young man smiled forever out at her from 1969, never knowing that he would be dead within a year. He had dark hair and the same bright blue eyes as Agnes, only without the laugh lines. He’d been just 21 when he was drafted. Over the years, the photo had stayed in one place, but it had become just another piece of furniture to Agnes. Too painful to look at, but unbearable to think of taking down. It was like the tire swing: there, but peripheral. She found she didn’t need too many physical reminders. Tim was on her mind every day. Steve may have forgotten that Agnes once had a teenage son, but she would never forget. And all that remembering made her feel very tired. At her feet, Otis whined softly and stood up, padded slowly into the living room. He’d been asking to go out more and more often at night, and if she didn’t let him outside to pee at least once after ten o’clock, he’d have an accident. She followed him to the door and opened it up for him, stood there for a moment looking out over the moonlit fields. The weather had turned a bit milder and a cool night-breeze skated over her skin. She checked the bowl of odds-and-ends she’d left for the pig; it was empty. She grabbed the tin bowl and refilled it and made sure there was still clean water available. Then Agnes called Otis inside, locked the door, and went to bed. When a low growl pulled her halfway to waking around three a.m., Agnes groaned and pulled the covers higher around her shoulders. “If you don’t quit with the farting I’m gonna stop giving you so much cantaloupe,” she murmured to Otis, who was snoring in his own bed. She never saw the shadow move across her window. *** Morning dawned foggy and still, already hot by eight a.m. Agnes fed Otis breakfast and prepared a gallon glass jug to make sun tea. The day was so quiet that even with all the windows open there wasn’t a breath of breeze moving anywhere. She moved to her bedroom and sat on the bed, pulling out a word search and sighing with relief in the blast of arctic air that blew from the window unit. As her eyes roved over the letters, Agnes felt her mind drift to the stash of money hidden in the kitchen. If she really wanted, she could take a little bit more and update her air system and live out the rest of her days in comfort. And didn’t she deserve that? Was it asking for much not to have to sweat through the summers, when so much had already been taken from her? She was a good person, had lived a good life. She had cared for animals since she was a child, she had raised a fine young man who had been snatched away from her by the trials of war. She had already taken money from the bag; what was a little more? It was wrong, she thought, irritated. She recalled the sorrow she’d felt at having to lie to Steve. There would be no more of that. But what was she going to do with the cash? It wasn’t like she could take an ad out in the Daily Bugle, asking for the owner to come forward. The questions circled around her head until she felt dizzy, and by suppertime she was too nauseous to eat. She tipped most of her plate--chicken-fried steak with potatoes and green beans--into Otis’s bowl and did the dishes irritably, knowing that between the heat and her conscience, sleep wouldn’t come easy. She let Otis outside and surveyed the living room. It was mostly back to normal, although of course she’d have to paint the redone area. That would be another headache unto itself, finding a color to match what was already on the walls. Maybe it was a sign that she needed a change. She scanned through the possibilities in her mind as she readied the house for end-of-day, turning off lights and wiping down the kitchen counter. She discarded peach as too country and yellow as too bright. Maybe a nice eggshell shade, something soft. “Otis!” she called through the screen door. “C’mon, boy. Bedtime.” No answer. She flipped on the porch light and nearly jumped out of her skin when a dark figure loomed into view just inches from the screen. “Lordy! Mike, you scared the bejesus out of me!” Agnes laughed, putting a hand to her chest. Her heart was hammering like a hummingbird just beneath it. “I’m sorry, Mrs. White,” Michael said. He was a good kid, with his mother’s sandy blonde looks and strong arms from years of farm work and pitching baseball. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I just wondered if I could talk to you for a minute?” “Well sure, Mike, what’s on your mind besides hair?” She stepped out onto the front porch, into the buzz of cicadas and the soft flapping of moth wings against the porch lamp. Texas evenings were never silent in summer; there was life teeming all around. “Well, it’s about the storm,” Mike said. “We lost a lot, see, like maybe more than my dad let on.” “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that,” Agnes said. “He mentioned the twister took out your barn. And I’m so, so sorry about Bo. I know how much you loved him.” “Yeah. Well, there was some pretty valuable stuff in the barn. Some of it’s broken, some destroyed, some just scattered around our field. But there’s one thing that’s missing, and it’s really the most important thing.” Agnes felt her heart speed back up and did her best to keep a neutral expression on her face. This is it, she thought. This was her reckoning. The money had an owner, after all. She’d have to explain herself and hope that the Thompsons understood. She would have to find a way to pay back the $6,000. It would take the rest of her life. And that was if they didn’t just decide to press charges against her for theft. “Mike, I--” “See, I talked to Doug Sanderson. He does a lot of work for my dad, so all it took was a few well-placed questions and he told me what I needed to know. That you paid for that big roofing job in cash.” Agnes took a deep breath, her mind racing as she tried to come up with a good excuse for why she’d done it. Nothing sounded right in her head; every line led to the same road. “I don’t know how much you know about what me and my dad do, but it ends now. What we grow in our own fields is none of your goddamn business,” Mike said, his voice on the bare edge of a growl. Agnes felt her eyes widen, but before she could respond, a high-pitched whine sounded from the side of the house. “Otis?” she said softly. Her voice shivered in the dark. She moved past Mike, giving him a wide berth, and jogged down the steps, calling for Otis again. She found him lying on his side in the dirt, breathing heavily, his skin laying in shredded flaps. Blood glistened darkly in the moonlight; the high iron smell of it hit Agnes as she got close and tilted her stomach. “Oh, God,” she whispered, sitting down hard in the dirt. Mike came around the corner, holding something against his thigh that glittered: a knife. A big one. Agnes pushed herself backward with her feet, feeling a sweaty flop of hair tumble into her eyes. “You killed Otis!” she cried. Her voice was a tattered sob in the night. “Why would you do this? I’ll give you the money, I wasn’t going to keep it!” Mike peered down at her, then at Otis. “I didn’t do this.” Agnes thought suddenly back to the day she’d gone up Buffalo Road, when Steve had told her about the storm damage at their house. The twister knocked out part of our barn and sucked a bunch of stuff up, threw it everywhere, he’d said. And then, At least the corn field wasn’t damaged. The Harvey girl had looked at him then, as if she was reading between the lines, and suddenly Agnes felt so stupid. “We’ve been growing pot in those fields since I was a kid,” Mike said softly. “Did you think we’d been able to make a living on corn all these years? Not likely, not when there’s a drought every fucking summer. This goddamn place, it’s like a cancer. It gives a little, and then it takes twice more. Pot has kept us above water for years, and that money was all I had in this world. It was going to get me the hell out of here. Now you tell me where you hid it, bitch. Don’t make me use this.” He waved the knife at her; it shone greasily in the evening light. Was this it, then? Had Mike killed his own dog and blamed it on a wild animal so her death would look like more of the same? She remembered, suddenly, the day Tim had taught her how to shoot. How to load the gun, how to steady the stock against her shoulder so it wouldn’t kick too hard. She thought of the sunlight on his face and how, if she looked closely enough, she could see the child he used to be, hiding under the angles of a man. The tears wanted to come harder at that, but she pressed her fingernails into the palm of her hand and focused on that, instead. “The money is inside,” she said. “I’ll have to show you, it’s too hard to explain.” “Let’s go, then,” Mike said, waving the knife again to get her going. Agnes stood up reluctantly, casting a glance down at Otis as she went. He was still alive, but barely. One eye rolled up to look at her pitifully and she tried to communicate with her eyes: It’s okay. Don’t go. I’ll be right back. She walked slowly into the house with Mike right on her heels, knowing if she made one false move he would stick her. “Does your daddy know you’re down here, threatening an old lady’s life? Killing innocent animals?” “I told you, I didn’t do that to your dog,” he said through his teeth. “And what my dad doesn’t know won’t hurt him. He’s the one who told me about your little fixer-upper project, how weird it was that your insurance company wouldn’t pay and then all of a sudden they did. That’s when I knew you had my money. Fuckin’ storm. I tried to convince them to come back from Florida early so I could move it somewhere safe, but they wouldn’t hear it.” Agnes led him into the kitchen, feeling sweat pooling in the small of her back. Even after he got his money, he’d likely kill her. She knew too much. “It’s there, under the sink.” Mike frowned. “That doesn’t sound so complicated.” “There’s a false bottom, under all the bottles of cleaning stuff. See the seam? Lift it up and there’s a box of dog treats hidden there.” “Jesus,” Mike sighed. “You really didn’t want it to go anywhere, did you?” “I told you, I was keeping it safe for you. I mean, I didn’t know whose it was, but once I figured it out I was going to--” “Stop!” Mike yelled. Agnes had been inching her way toward the drawer beneath the stove, where the shotgun lay waiting in the dark. “Don’t move another fucking muscle.” She sized him up, eyed the knife in his hand. She could get to the drawer before he could make it across the kitchen, she was sure of it. Time ticked by on the clock above the sink. Agnes licked salt off her upper lip and dove, yanking the drawer open and going for the gun. She could hear Mike behind her, scrambling to his feet on the linoleum as she pulled on the shotgun, but it was stuck. The barrel was so long that it was wedged inside the drawer, and no matter how hard she pulled, it would not come out. Agnes felt a sudden searing pain in her shoulder and for a wild moment she thought she’d pulled a muscle, but then she felt the warmth spreading down her left side. Mike stood in the middle of the kitchen, hand outstretched as though waiting to be handed a package, and then Agnes understood. She looked down and saw the knife sticking out of her shirt, black handle vibrating slightly. She opened her mouth, then closed it again, like a fish out of water. That was when a massive black bull charged through the wall of the living room and dove at Mike, headbutting him with such force that he was lifted off his feet and thrown violently down the hall, towards her bedroom. Agnes sagged against the stove, looking at the hole in her wall and the black night beyond it. She could see stars peeking out from behind dissipating clouds and wondered, distantly, if Otis had enough life left in him to see them from where he lay. Chewing sounds from in the bedroom. Slick, wet sounds. Agnes felt terror slipping into her veins and concentrated on her memory of Tim’s face, imagined him coaxing her outside. It was the only thing that could get her moving. She pulled herself to her hands and knees and crawled, silently, through the kitchen, into the living room, past the massive hole in the wall, and to the front door. Otis lay where she’d left him, still breathing. She knelt and gently picked him up, being mindful of his wounds--and her own--as she held him to her breast. The knife still stuck out of her shoulder; she didn’t want to pull it out and release a deluge of blood. Otis wasn’t a small dog, but adrenaline had kicked in and she was prepared to run to the barn with him, where they could take refuge in the storm shelter. When Otis whined, she stopped while she was still on the ground and turned around. It wasn’t a bull at all, but a wolf. A black wolf larger than a man, with the shoulders and torso of a weight-lifter. Covered in course, wiry hair, with paws bigger than Otis’s entire body, and wickedly sharp teeth glinting in the moonlight. Agnes felt her bowels loosen as the sweat that had pooled between her breasts and under her arms suddenly freeze. It moved with eerie grace for such a large beast, walking slowly across the grass, its eyes never leaving Agnes. They gleamed silver, like two headlights in the distance. She could smell a wild scent wafting toward her, the odor of a den full of predatory stalkers, and she knew that this was the thing that had attacked Otis. It had killed Bo, too. What did it want? As the beast padded slowly toward her, Agnes kept her head down, locking eyes with Otis. She could hear it breathing heavy, could smell the blood on its lips. Mike’s blood. Her stomach did a slow, greasy roll as she imagined what might be left of the boy in her bedroom and she thought suddenly of the two silver dollars she had hidden in the antique chest at the foot of her bed. She’d gotten them during a vacation at the Grand Canyon in 1965, a girl’s trip with her old friend Ilene. If only I had a few hours and a blast furnace, she thought wildly, I could make myself a fine silver bullet. The wolf was close, so close she could feel her hair wavering beneath its exhalations. She closed her eyes and waited, wishing she could say something to comfort Otis and hoping he could feel how much she loved him as he lay dying in her arms. The heat from the beast’s mouth was overpowering, the stench unbearable. Agnes held her breath and felt the end breathing down her neck, but the end never came. She opened one eye warily and looked up, into the giant, gaping maw, and saw its tongue lolling out. It was licking Otis’s wounds, taking care not to create more damage. Agnes let out her breath in a whoosh, her arms trembling from exhaustion and from the anxiety coursing through her veins. She watched as the beast backed up, locking eyes with her for a moment before loping over into the side yard. It picked up the tin bowl--the one that had been filled with food for the wild pig--in its mouth and flung it so that it landed near her, then turned on its powerful haunches and ran away, toward the treeline in the back field. Agnes stared at the bowl for a long moment. I’ve been feeding him, she thought, all this time. I thought it was the pig, but he probably ate that pig days ago. I’ve been taking care of a werewolf. And he knew it. Otis whined again, a smaller sound this time that reminded her of a baby. She looked down and let the tears flow freely; they dripped from her nose and onto his fur, which was matted and gory. Her shoulder throbbed like a rotten tooth, so she laid Otis down in the grass and held his paw in one hand, trying to dispel the shakes before she went inside to call the police. They’d have to find an all-night vet, but she thought he would be okay. “Otis,” she said, kissing his paw. “Look at us. Just a couple of worn out old dogs with bad teeth.” He snuffled and lifted his tail, thumping it against the ground weakly to show he was listening. With a grunt, she picked Otis up once more and limped into the house, staring at the hole in the wall for a long moment. She sat him down gingerly on the couch and wrapped him in the afghan there. In the kitchen, she picked up the phone and sat at the table, gathering herself. When someone answered, she spoke; her voice only shook a little. She requested animal control, and then she asked for officers to come. She listened for a moment, then shook her head. “No, officer,” she said, eyeing the plastic bag full of cash on the linoleum, “I have no idea why he attacked me.”
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Linda Barrett has always been a writer. She wrote her first book at the age of eight and put it in the McKinley Elementary School Library. She lives in Abington, Pa., a suburb of Philadelphia in a house which is as old as she is. Her work is featured in Literary Yard and Pure Slush as well as this magazine. The Gazebo Ron didn’t want to come on the New Directions road trip but his stepbrother, Tim, forced him into it. Agnes DellaRossa, the support group’s leader recommended it to him when she called him earlier that morning.
“Ron!” she shouted in her usual cheerful manner. Ron grumbled and cursed as he put the telephone to his ear in his dirty, cluttered room. “Do you want to go on Irving’s Outing to Yellow Springs today?” He’d rather lie in bed and dream about ways to end his life. He’d been thinking of that for so long but nothing ever came of it. It was just like him, always thinking of something but never getting around to it. Ron turned his head to see Tim’s tall form in his bedroom’s doorway. Putting on his thick, silver wireframe glasses, he squinted at Tim. Tim stood there, nodding his head while he held onto the overflowing trash can. Ron didn’t want to go to Yellow Springs but his stepbrother emphatically nodded for him to go. “Sure,” Ron said in a flat monotone. “Tell them I’ll drive you over,” Tim whispered. “You can’t spend another day eating Fruit Loops and watching the Wrestling Channel!” Ron grit his teeth. “Where should I meet you guys?” he asked in the same disinterested voice. “At the Warminster American Baptist church parking lot!” Agnes said, “See you there!” Ron brooded in silence as Tim drove his battered 1997 Ford truck down Route 611. He sat beside his stepbrother, listening to the country and western music. At least the songs on WXTU-FM seemed more sympathetic to his lovelorn plight than Tim’s constant chatter. “What’s wrong with you? Why are you so depressed all the time?” Tim asked him. “I can’t hold down a job! I can’t get a girl friend! I can’t find a place to live and you keep telling me to get out and get a life!” Ron moaned. “Ron,” Tim whined, “You can’t find the right kind of girl by sitting around watching wrestling all the time and CNN News!” “If it wasn’t for my social anxiety, I’d be like you!” “Ahhhh,” Tim laughed, “Now you’re thinking more positive!” “Divorced and working at a dead end job, driving a beat up pick up! Dad told you not to marry Peggy!” Ron pounded his fist on the dusty dashboard. “Ahhh,” Tim wagged a finger at him, “But at least I thought I was in love! Until Peggy found that landscaper! At least I have money coming in despite my so-called ‘dead end’ job!” “You’d find something positive about even a nuclear war!” Ron glared at Tim. “My life’s been a mess since I came out of Mom! How can I look on the bright side when everything I’ve ever had is misery! Aren’t there any girls out there who have warm hearts and pure natures? Not skanks like Peggy!” “Maybe you’ll find someone at Irving’s outing! You never know!” Tim shrugged. “Right,” Ron grunted. Ron sat in the back seat of Irving’s white Acura wrapped in a cocoon of total silence and self-pity. Agnes Della Rossa sat up front with Irving Shapiro, the mastermind behind Irving’s outings. Ron glanced side long at Irving’s wife, Sally. Sally didn’t have that much of a face or a body but Irving loved her. A question formed in Ron’s mind. “Sally?” he asked her a few times. Perky Sally blabbed on and on about Irving’s new position as Chief Lab Technician at Abington Hospital’s Willow Grove Campus. “Sally?” he asked again. “What?” she asked, turning her head to him. Sally always seemed sympathetic to Ron whenever they were clustered together in the small group sessions. She understood what it was like to have been all alone in a world of so many couples. She met Irving when the rest of her big, Jewish family wrote her off as a complete old maid ten years ago. “What’s wrong, Ron?” Ron sighed. “All my life, I’ve wanted a girl to love me,” Ron began, wetting his lips. “You say that all the time in our small groups!” Irving said. “Yeah,” Ron heard his voice crack, “But I can’t find one who’s not a skank like my former step-sister-in-law! All the girls in New Directions have boyfriends or husbands or ex-husbands. I’ve never even had a girlfriend! Not even in High School! In fact, I never even finished high school!” “What’s that got to do with Yellow Springs?” Irving raised back his head to eye Ron in the rear view mirror. Ron slumped in his seat. “I just want to find someone, someone female and pure of heart and soul! Isn’t there anyone else in this group that’s like me?” At Yellow Springs, Irving parked the white Acura in the parking lot next to the Washington Building. Climbing out of the back seat, Ron noticed there was only one car. “What happened to the others who wanted to come along? I thought last night at the meeting all the other people wanted to go.” Ron asked. “They probably had to work or go to school,” Agnes said. School and work always dragged people’s lives down. If it wasn’t for his nervous breakdown in his first year of high school and his father’s death, Ron wouldn’t have to quit school and work as a supermarket bagger to support his stepfather and mother. Tim would have gotten him a job at SPS Iron works in Glenside. If it wasn’t for that damned George W. Bush and his wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Tim wouldn’t have joined the Army to serve over there. It was Ron who had to stay home with an alcoholic loser stepfather and a mother suffering from the early stages of dementia. “My whole life’s just a bunch of thwarted plans!” Ron cried deep within himself. Listening to the blonde middle aged tour guide on this bright, spring day didn’t do him much good. He stared down at the Yellow Springs’ sprawling property and brooded over his loneliness. Why should he care about the Lenape Indians coming here for centuries before the white man to sample the springs? People came here from all over the world and the early United States to partake of the spring’s allegedly healing waters. If he drank from them, could those waters make him attractive to women and get him a better job? After the tour, he crossed the street to see if he could find the rest rooms. It was just a bunch of old buildings and a stream running through them. Staring down the hill, he noticed something in the gazebo. Within the gazebo’s ornate and yellow painted structure, a woman in a long flowing dress stood, holding onto the wrought iron railing. She had a huge flower in her curled blond hair. Ron saw the pure spring light flash on her spectacles. Did she see him from up on the hill? She seemed to be looking around her for something or someone. He decided to descend the hill. At the hill’s bottom, he noticed something. The old buildings didn’t look so old. Around the gazebo, he stared at a ring of green bushes with white/pink flowers on them. His mother, who came from the South, recognized them as camellias. It was the same flower that the girl in the gazebo wore in her hair. She didn’t seem to notice him. Swirling around in her dress, she hummed a song. Ron hid behind a huge pine tree and watched her. Her round, little face seemed to have red acne blossoms. Ron studied her nose. He realized it looked like a white bunched up caterpillar. Where did he see that face before? She swirled around again as if swept up into some wind. Her skirts ballooned about her. His foot stepped on a twig. A loud cracking sound caused the girl to stop in her whirling and jump. She grabbed at her chest with a delicate hand. “Who’s there?” she shouted in a trilling little voice. Wearing a disgusted face, Ron came out from behind the tree. He did it again. He tripped up over his big feet again and scared her off like a deer. “Hi,” he grunted, “My name is Ron Haversham!” The girl blinked her eyes from behind her thick wire framed spectacles. She looked as near sighted as he was, probably worse. Her optometrist made her a pretty strong prescription from what he noticed. He liked the way her eyes sparkled. They seemed to show some kind of life in them. Something he needed to cheer up his miserable spirits. “My name’s Camillia Debroux!” she cheerfully sang, extending her arms out to him. “From the New Orleans’ DeBrouxs! Are you a guest here?” she asked. “No,” Ron said, stepping into the gazebo, “My support group made me come here. Where’s the music coming from?” Ron listened to the faint sound of classical music coming from the house in front of him. Maybe Agnes was playing some classical music for Irving to sample. Yet, it didn’t sound like a CD player coming from Irving’s Acura. He heard a faint cough and people talking in hushed voices during the music. A woman emitted a shrill laugh but Ron was sure that no one in his group laughed like that. Camillia turned her head to the sound. She looked back at Ron with a tearful pout. “That’s my mother,” she sighed, “She’s probably drunk too much champagne again.” Lowering her head, she fumbled into her little pocketbook for a handkerchief. Tears streaked down her round cheeks. “My step-father used to drink a lot, too.” Ron said, feeling a twinge of sympathy for her. Camillia took off her spectacles with one hand and dabbed her eyes. “She brought me here to find a husband. I’m near thirty and none of the gentlemen will dance with me!” she sobbed. “How come?” Ron asked. “My mother knows I’m too plain for a decent husband! But she’s so desperate to save our family name! My father died of the Fever a few months ago and he left us with so much debt,...!” Ron sat down on the gazebo’s bench. Camillia stood there, sobbing. “Can’t you get a job?” he asked. Camillia frowned at him. “I’m from a society family! No one from society should earn their living with their hands! Are you a laborer?” she looked up at him, fresh tears falling in rain drop fashion down her cheeks. “My brother is. He wants me to work the family business but I don’t have much of an education. I could get a GED but....,” Ron shrugged. “What’s a GEE-ED-DEE?” Camillia asked, going from distraught to curious. “It’s something you get when you can’t finish school. I had some trouble with my step-father and my mother and I had to leave school. You go to school?” Camillia turned away from him. “It was a ladies’ school up North. They taught me sewing, cooking in the French manner, dance, painting flowers on china but I didn’t like it there. The girls were all so pretty and so catty. They played all sorts of cruel tricks on me. I hated it so much but Thank Providence! Father died and I had to leave that horrid place! Ma Mere kept me there just so she could drink and flirt with all sorts of men!” Camillia turned to him, her curls bouncing around her face. “Does your mother beat you?” Ron asked. Camillia sat down beside Ron. “No, but she says such awful things to me. Worse than the girls at that school!” she looked down at her hands. Ron noticed she wore fingerless lace gloves like Madonna used to wear back in her 1980's videos. He used to like Madonna when he was a little boy watching MTV when school stopped for the summer. “Did you learn anything there? Anything to get you a job?” “Ma Mere wants me to marry a rich man but none of them seem interested in me!” Camilla snapped. “They know I’m too plain! They’re looking for Lola Montez!” “Who’s that?” Ron asked, “Some Mexican T.V. soap opera actress?” “She’s a scandalous woman! Beautiful as Delilah in the Bible but wicked! Ma Mere should be happy I’m plain. Lola Montez is an actress and they’re up to no good! She was a mistress to a few kings!” Camillia paused for a moment. “I wish I was a mistress sometimes!” she harumphed. “You need a nice guy. These guys your Ma Mere’s pushing you onto they don’t seem to be that nice.” Ron looked at her profile. She resembled someone familiar but he didn’t know where. Maybe he came across her picture in this tourist trap. “They’re rich.” Camillia lowered her head. “I guess one of them will marry me but he’ll have Lola Montez as a mistress and even a few chambermaids. Sometimes, I wish I could run off with a common laborer and live with him on a small farm some place and have lots of children. Like common people!” Camillia gave Ron a sidelong glance. “I don’t know who my dad is. He left my mom because he was scared of being caught by my grandpa. My mom said he went to Atlantic City to be a professional gambler. I live with my step-brother, Tim,” “He could be a king, you know. They do that to common girls, leave them with child and go back to their palaces in Europe!” “They don’t have kings in Europe no more. They have presidents now. I watch CNN sometimes,” Camillia leaned closer to him. “Where are you from?” She asked. “Warminster,” “In England?” “Pennsylvania!” he blinked his eyes at her. “How did you get out here?” “Irving drove us,” “Who’s Irving?” “Irving is this lab technician at Abington Hospital. He makes all this money and he can afford an Acura,” “What’s an Acura?” “It’s a car!” Ron waved his hands in confusion. What planet was this chick from? He thought. “A car?” Camillia gasped. “Then, how did you get here?” he asked her. “We took a ship from New Orleans and docked at the Philadelphia harbor then we took a carriage until we came here. Ma Mere and my slave, Jilicey,...she’s wonderful, you know. Raised me as my wet nurse,...Do you own slaves?” “Well, my step-brother Tim, he like does all the house work. Nobody has slaves anymore unless you watch FOX News...,” “Ohhhhh...good!” Camillia bounced up and down, “I’ve always been an abolitionist at heart! Treating those poor brutes the way they do!” “What’s an abolitionist?” Ron asked. “Ohhhh,” Camillia whined, “You must have come from out of a rock or something! Do you want go with me and dance? They brought in this band all the way from Philadelphia! A wonderful orchestra! Do you know how to waltz?” “I know some dances I saw on MTV. But I’m not that good!” Camillia grabbed his hand and he followed limply behind her. “All you do is swirl to the music,” she began. Agnes and Irving spent the rest of the day searching for Ron. Sally called his cell phone every five minutes. She turned to Irving. “I can’t even hear it ringing!” she breathed, looking up at her husband. “Did he turn it off?” Agnes wondered. Her heart started pounding. Did he throw himself into any of the springs? She thought. Sally punched in Ron’s stepbrother’s number. “Is Ron there?” she asked Tim. Tim decided to go on Map Quest to find the directions to Yellow Springs. It took him a full two hours to arrive at the parking lot. He spent the whole day searching the grounds for his step-brother. Even the groundskeeper joined in the search. Ron was nowhere to be found. “Let’s call the cops,” Tim moaned, sitting in the Yellow Springs Library. Chester County Police brought in the dogs to smell around the woods and the fields. Ron’s face was plastered all over social media throughout the United States. No one found the pudgy, dark haired Ronald Q. Havisham with his out-of-date wire framed glasses. He seemed to have vanished off the face of the earth. The search grew and grew into a major psychic event. UFO maniacs and conspiracy theorists wrote endless blogs about what happened to Ron. Even a ghost hunting television program joined in on the search. One night, the ghost hunters set up their ghost finding equipment around the Yellow Springs gazebo. Pat and Mike Charleston, the ghost hunting twin siblings, adjusted their video tape cameras to pick up the gazebo’s eerie goings on for that night. The Charleston twins sat behind the massive pine tree and smoked their cigarettes, waiting for the sun to set in order for them to record the ghost sightings. Around nine o’clock at night, they awoke to the first movements of a Schubert quartet wafting from the structure. Hiding behind the pine, they witnessed the spirits of a man and a woman. The woman wore the ball gown which was the height of 1848 fashion. Her dowdy features seemed alive with the light of a new love. Tears dropped from behind her thick spectacles. She looked into the eyes of a young man who swirled her around the gazebo. “Isn’t that Camillia DeBroux, the daughter of that New Orleans courtesan who disappeared in June 1848?” Pat nudged the equally goggle-eyed Mike. “Yeah,” Mike murmured, “Her portrait hangs in the closet of the old mansion down in the French Quarter. She ran away from Yellow Springs and they never found her body. Like she disappeared off the face of the earth! What’s her ghost doing here?” “Look who’s dancing with her!” Ron Q. Havisham wore a laughing expression in his frumpy 2015 jeans and baggy shirt as he waltzed Camillia around the dance floor.
Lucy’s Garden I never really got over my father’s murder. It happened when I was twelve years old, and all because he was trying to save some woman on the street he didn’t even know. He wasn’t a cop or a firefighter or anything like that. He hadn’t dedicated his life to saving others. No, he was just your regular average Joe. That was literally his name. Joe Rowe—radio talk show host. His show was called In the Know with Joe Rowe. Cheesy, but it worked for him. Everyone in town knew who he was. His show aired every weekday morning and afternoon. It played in people’s cars during their commutes, in the barbershop downtown, even in Mr. Milner’s hardware store over on Maple. My dad had a way of using the airwaves to spread his infectious, lively personality to the entire town.
That was over forty years ago. I don’t think the town ever recovered from his death. Or maybe it was just me who never recovered. Everything was suddenly grey. It was like a storm cloud rolled in and never left. Had it always rained so much here? I couldn’t recall. There isn’t much I can remember about my dad to be honest. I remember he never got my ponytail right; it always sat a little to one side. I remember he had a favorite hunter green tie he wore at least twice a week. I remember helping him build his model cars in the garage. I remember just how big his smile could get. Everything else became a blur over the years, but I held onto those little things like they were my lifeline. Everyone had always said nothing bad happens here, but they were wrong. The worst happened to me. My dad was killed by some drifter. My parents were getting out of a late-night show at the local playhouse when they heard a woman scream a block away. My dad rushed over to find the woman on her knees and a gun in the drifter’s hand. I don’t know what he was thinking or why he felt the need to play the hero. But that’s what they called him afterward—a hero. He saved the woman’s life that night. Still, the drifter got away while my dad bled out on the sidewalk. No one’s ever told me life is fair. If they did, I would laugh in their face. My mother passed about six years after my dad. I guess she couldn’t survive the heartbreak any longer. She left the house to me, and I’ve stayed there ever since. I never considered moving away, even though I probably should have. I think I was worried about losing what few memories I had of my father. His signature tie still hung in the closet. Unfinished model cars remained in the garage. My mom never got rid of those things, and I couldn’t bring myself to either. His memory haunted me, and still I never left. I became the town’s recluse. I really only went out to do my shopping at the neighborhood market once a week and rarely for anything else. I even worked from home, hosting piano lessons for those willing to pay. It wasn’t much money, but it was enough to live off of considering I wasn’t a very materialistic person. The ivory keys beneath my fingers became the only touch I craved. I began playing shortly after my dad died. My mom thought it would be cathartic. I suppose in a way it was. The music kept my soul alive when I didn’t have much fight left in me. A day never passed when I didn’t play. It was mostly Vivaldi but sometimes Chopin, Debussy, or Brahms. The rosewood baby grand was situated in the living room with a view through the window into the front garden. I didn’t tend it much; it was mostly weeds. Every couple of years I would get in the mood and buy a few plants, but they never lasted more than a couple weeks. Everything around me dies. I am the sole survivor of the Rowe family curse if there ever was one. I stared out at the garden, having another one of those urges to plant something as my student played “To a Wild Rose” beside me. I’m sure it was due to the fact the young boy had sketched a rather lifelike drawing of a rose at the bottom corner of his sheet music. He played the piece a bit too fast despite the metronome sitting next to the music rack. I hid a grimace as he stumbled clumsily over a few notes. “It’s really coming along, Dylan,” I encouraged after he finished. Reaching over, I turned off the metronome and stood up from the bench. The small boy gazed up at me with pride beaming from his bright, hazel eyes. His youth reminded me of my own I had lost a long time ago. The strawberry blonde hair on top of his head bounced as I walked him to the front door and turned the knob. “I’ll see you next week. Just work on that tempo, alright?” Dylan nodded, a wide grin stretched across his face as he skipped down the walkway toward the car parked in the driveway. His mother sat in the driver’s seat. I smiled and waved from the threshold. Once Dylan was in the car and they were pulling off, I returned inside and shut the door behind me. My face relaxed, the smile fading. Exercising those particular muscles took too much effort, so I never forced it longer than necessary. Returning to the piano, I sat back on the bench. I stretched my fingers and began playing a piece from memory. The melancholic prelude by Chopin filled the living room as my fingers glided gracefully across the keys. My eyes closed, and my body moved with the mellifluous rhythm. Hans von Bülow once called the work “suffocation” which seems fitting. I can imagine Chopin feeling the same way while writing it as I felt while playing it—as though we were drowning in a sea of despair together. The music crescendoed as I allowed it to reflect the sadness that still thrived deep to my core. Something had to, because, after so many years, there were no tears left for me to cry. The prelude ended with smorzando as it died away and the last note rang out. The doorbell rang, and my eyelids flew open. I didn’t get up right away, instead pondering who it could be. I wasn’t expecting another student, and I never had any other visitors. The doorbell rang again, so I quickly removed myself from the bench and ambled to the door. Realization hit me as I opened it and was greeted by a bouquet of pale orange gladiolus. Today was the anniversary of my father’s death. The bearer poked his head around the flowers. “Delivery for Lucy Rowe.” “That’s me.” He handed me the bouquet and then held out a clipboard. “Sign here please.” After setting the flowers down on the console table, I scribbled my name on the slip of paper and then shut the door. As I carried the bouquet into the kitchen, I admired the crystal vase wrapped with a white lace ribbon. There was no note to inform who the flowers were from. There never was. However, I knew exactly who sent them. It was the same person who sent them on this day every year, without fail, since my father died. They were from the woman whose life he had saved. My mother always kept them, but after she passed away, I started throwing them out as soon as they arrived. After a while, I decided to hold onto them. For as long as they survived at least, which was never long. The gladiolus were dead in less than three days. It was another three days before I finally got rid of the corpses. I kept the vase though. It also worked fine for silk flowers—the kind that couldn’t die. Several weeks passed. I was sitting at the dining table reading the paper after pouring my morning cup of coffee from the French press. Steam billowed from the dark liquid inside the mug while its rich aroma wafted throughout the house. I never paid much attention to the obituaries. However, as I flipped by the section, a name captured my attention. Kathleen Virginia Walker—the woman whose life my father saved all those years ago. She was dead. I wasn’t tempted to go to her funeral at first. I left the newspaper open on the table to Kathleen’s obituary, and throughout the day, the thoughts just sort of crept in. I changed my mind at least half a dozen times. I’m not sure what possessed me to even consider it. Her memorial service was the next day, so when my eyelids became heavy that night, I decided to sleep on it. When my eyes fluttered open the next morning, they were greeted by the rays of the rising sun peeking in through the teal curtains. I laid there for a while, watching the dust particles dancing in the orange glow. For the first few moments upon waking, I forgot all about the decision I had to make. It wasn’t until I sat up in bed that it came back to me, like a heavy stone suddenly dropping into the pit of my heart. I didn’t want to go, but I felt an invisible force urging me. I got out of bed, made some coffee, and spent the morning at the piano. When noon came around, I decided to get ready. I found a black dress in the back of my closet. I couldn’t remember the last time I had worn it. I couldn’t even remember when I bought it. Fortunately, the gown still fit. I left the house, backed the car out of the garage, and drove across town. It was the farthest I had traveled in quite some time; I couldn’t even remember how long it had been. The town had grown in the last thirty years, and I had barely noticed. The sky was overcast with thick grey clouds, threatening to release a torrent of rain upon the entire town. The chapel was on the outskirts down a poorly paved road with no lines. Trees bordered either side, stretching above and creating a tunnel. I hadn’t been here since my mother’s funeral, yet I needed no directions. The parking lot was packed. I sat quietly in the car for a few minutes, trying to find the courage to walk inside. I watched as another vehicle pulled up and a couple got out. Seeing my opportunity, I exited the car and shuffled in behind them. Inside, the chapel was even more crowded, nearly to capacity. Every pew was practically full. Attendees ranged in age from young children to guests who were older than me. There was even a young woman with a baby in her arms who was sleeping peacefully with its head nestled on her shoulder. A slideshow played on a projector at the front of the room next to the open casket. Photographs scrolled by of Kathleen with her husband. They progressed in chronological order, eventually showing her children and then her grandchildren. A soft requiem filled the chapel, mixed with the sounds of quiet sniffles and gentle voices. Tears cascaded down rosy cheeks, gleaming beneath the dim, artificial lighting. Despite the pervading sadness, the ambience was remarkably serene. Rooted to the spot in the back of the room while looking out over the congregation, I was floored. It was difficult for me to fathom one person having an impact on this many people. I had been standing there for only a couple of minutes when I was blindsided by a woman who approached me from my right. She smiled kindly at me, curiosity in her eyes. Her cheeks were stained with dry tears that left trails through her makeup. The wrinkles on her face showed her years as I judged there to be about forty of them. She had almost as many grey hairs as I did. However, there was something about her that made me believe aging had not been as wretched an affair for her as it had been for me. “Thank you for coming.” Her tone was sincere as she studied me. “How did you know my mother?” “I didn’t. Not personally.” She raised her brows. “Oh? I’m sorry, who you are?” “My name’s Lucy Rowe.” Her eyes lit up with recognition, and her mouth fell open. “You’re Joe Rowe’s daughter.” All I could do was nod my head as I felt a warmth creep up and my face flush. The woman’s expression fell ever so slightly as her lips formed into more of a half-smile. She appeared to proceed with caution. “My name is Elizabeth Walker. Kathleen was my mother. I don’t know if you ever knew this, but when your dad saved her, she was pregnant. With me. He didn’t just save her life that night.” “I didn’t know that,” I admitted, my voice so quiet it came out as almost a whisper. Turning to scour the crowd, Elizabeth pointed to the young blonde woman holding the baby. “That’s my daughter and her son.” The baby’s eyes flitted open briefly, allowing me to see the intensity of their emerald green. His skin was soft and new, his disposition surprisingly calm. He smiled listlessly in my direction before his eyes closed once again. My throat closed up as I was overwhelmed with emotion. At first, I couldn’t identify it. Then I realized it was guilt. I had wasted my life, but Kathleen hadn’t wasted hers. While I had consistently failed at tending a garden, Kathleen had planted seeds that grew roots and blossomed. “I have younger brothers and sisters, and they have children too,” Elizabeth continued. “Your father didn’t just save my mother and me. He saved all of us. Without him, most of us wouldn’t be here.” “I’m very sorry for your loss.” I didn’t know what else to say. “She had a good life.” Her smile turned sad, but it never disappeared. “You’re more than welcome to stay if you’d like.” “I really should be going.” I had seen what I had come there to see. “I just came to pay my respects.” “Thank you, Ms. Rowe.” She shook my hand with both of hers. Before exiting the chapel, I took one last look over my shoulder at what had come of Kathleen Walker’s life. There were tears of sorrow. There were smiles of reminiscence. There was significance. Her life had meaning; my father’s had purpose. I left with a strange sense of peace I had never known. As I drove home through the torrential downpour, I understood something for the first time. My father really was a hero. And maybe it wasn’t too late to give my garden another chance. THE END James Meaney is currently a student at Full Sail University pursuing his Bachelor's degree in the field of Creative Writing. He hopes to work in the tabletop gaming industry in the future. James is a veteran, he served in the US Army for seven years, deploying to Iraq twice. He is married and has three children (20, 15, and 10), they are his motivation for his future endeavors. HER FATHER’S SHADOW After tucking their kids in bed, the young couple sat down for an evening of electronic free conversation. It began as most conversations do.
“How was your day?” He hated to ask because she would come home every day with dreadfully long stories about a subpar day that sounded so miserable. Through numerous twists and turns the conversation somehow found its way to their parents and childhoods, a usually taboo subject. “We were middle class, never had too much, sometimes never enough. My parents always made it work though,” he described his mediocre childhood, not bad, just not a fairytale. She scoffed at the story. Is that all you’ve got? “My father would beat me, mercilessly, with anything he could get his hands on, belts, electric cords, spatulas, anything.” she said. “He would hit ALL of us for one of us doing something wrong. Talking back, that got you choked. He would come home drunk and that’s when the verbal abuse would start, he’d wake us up from a sound sleep to make us feel like less than nothing. All the while my mother would sit there and watch, the silent witness. Sometimes he made her hold us down.” Paralyzed by her words, mouth agape. He had heard bits and pieces but never like this, never so raw. His closest friends, the love of his life all had these familial skeletons in their closets. Ashamed for any lackluster thoughts about his own childhood. It’s like survivor’s guilt. He went to her side and embraced her, gently stroking her hair, as she started to tear up. “It’s in the past and we will never treat our children like that, ever,” he said. As her sobbing slowed, his mind began reeling with questions. Our parents are all about the same age/my grandfather died around that age/could she ever forgive him? “What if he called tomorrow and said he was dying, that he was sorry for all the things that happened when you were younger, and that he wanted to have a relationship with his daughter and his grandchildren. What would you say?” he said, not really thinking about the repercussions of such a deep question. Her eyes narrowed to slits as she gritted her teeth. “Are you stupid? How could you, after all that I’ve said, even suggest that. He’s a monster. He deserves to die alone,” she said, the words escaping her mouth so fast and sharp as if they were premeditated. Upset all over again “He doesn’t deserve a relationship with me or our children.” “He is still your father,” he said, trying to defend this faceless, evil man that he had only met once, knowing deep down he was a monster, but still a father. She had joked for years that she was adopted. “He’s not my father. I don’t have one of those. Fathers don’t force daughters to get abortions, tell them they are garbage, and treat them like they never wanted them in the first place,” she said, now red in the face. You really did it this time, didn’t you, Dummy. He watched as she stormed into the kitchen and started fumbling through the drawers. She pulled out the corkscrew and reached for a bottle of wine. All those years earning those coins wasted, no don’t say that you idiot. “Are you sure that’s what you want to do right now?” he asked. “Oh, screw you! Are you that much better than me that you think you can judge me right now?” she said. That wasn’t much better actually. “Look, I’m sorry, I’m sorry I said anything, I’m sorry I let the conversation go that way. I should have known better. The subject is off limits for a reason. Come back and sit on the couch and let’s talk about something else, anything,” he pleaded with her. No, no, dummy, it’s too late. She slid down the counter and sat on the floor, bottle in one hand, wine glass in the other. “Leave me alone, go back to your perfect Mommy, you can be her perfect little momma’s boy again,” she said as she cried, her makeup ruined. He just stood there, watching as she poured glass after glass and drank herself into a stupor. Eventually smashing the glass on the floor. She hates him so much that she is willing to become him. What if one of our kids asked a question like that, just curious about their absentee grandparent. Would she hit one of them. I AM their father, it’s my job to protect them. She needs counselling but will refuse. She needs to go back to AA but will refuse. I can’t live like this again. It’s not fair for my kids. “I can’t bear to see you do this to yourself again, to our family again. In the morning, I’m taking the kids and moving out, we need to take some space for a while,” he said as he walked out of the room. END
In the Face “I want my … I want my MTV,” became the familiar buzz phrase, reused worldwide and brandished across all media like a tidal wave tsunami of conformity. With the Dire Straits, Sting collaboration, Jake's world of clubs, bands, and earning a living playing covers, while sneaking in original music, had ended. With minimal gigs in sight, he was off to Paris. He didn’t know how to handle having strong feelings for a woman, let alone two women. He didn’t know how to be without a band, so he went looking for a label, or a gig, or a place to play, in Europe. He was both flying and running away in the face of chaos. He packed his guitar, the three and half other things he owned, and rolled a fat J for his airport departure.
Linda went to the airport with him and begged, “Jake, PLEASE! Please take me with you, I want to go with you!” What the hell was wrong with him? Here was a wonderful woman who loved him but he was too deaf, dumb and blind to recognize it. He was unable to shake, rattle, or recognize the subconscious influence, the lifelong magnetic pull towards a familiar sorrow. Confounding roots locked him into soft iron shackles of staying alone. Ironically, Linda was offering him all that he ever really wanted. It was all right there but he turned away. With passport and guitar, Jake surveyed the terminal of Logan International Airport, Boston, MA, USA. It was an easy taxi ride from Orly airport to Paris. Normally, Jake had very little patience for traffic, but he was in no hurry. Getting a slow feel for the city, as it came into view during its morning rush hour, was a welcome retrograde. He exchanged some U.S. money for French francs and started the all too rapid reduction of his limited cash supply. But he was optimistic, blindly optimistic with one foot on the gas, and the other hoping not to need the brakes. Walking around Paris with a guitar, box of gear, rucksack full of clothes, and in a state of semi-shock, Jake took a break and finally sat down. At a café, enjoying a beer and a bite, he mused that Blindly Optimistic would be a brilliant band name. ‘But where to stay tonight?’ He could feel his cash flying. Finding what seemed the most reasonable hotel, he checked in for a couple of nights, intending to follow through with the contacts he had in his 9” x 12” black book. In the meantime, he didn’t really want to busk on the streets of Paris, or London, or at the ferry landing, but he did. Much to his surprise, when he landed in Paris, Jakes passport was stamped, in midnight blue ink with a black border framing the words: “Under no circumstances can this U.S. Citizen be hired for work or receive monetary gain without the properly filed authorizations under French Government laws, International regulations, and a Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat.” Words to that effect were a harsh realization but still, he had to work. He looked for signs that all would be well. He would meditate on being where he needed to be, and encourage himself to remain positive in the face of self-doubt, and the question, “Am I crazy for doing this?” After some sleep and a complimentary Continental breakfast, Jake mustered patience and listened to his own voice, a voice that was afraid to sing in sixth grade music class, calling now for an answer to an unasked question, a question that was storming into his awareness … “Where is my family?” Band contact number 1. A musician friend gave Jake contact information with someone who led a band, and was working a lot in Paris. Before Jake left for Paris, with a pocketful of coins, calling from a phone booth in Cambridge, Jake spoke with Henré and explained that he was coming to Paris. Henré was gracious, excited, and said that they could definitely play together. He had gigs, and the phone call was perfect timing. He would at least get him in contact with other musicians. “Ahh, Ze American geeetarists, I dunn know ‘ow zey do eet!” Sounded good, too good to be true. So much of Jake's time was walking, observing, listening for venues that had live music, looking for musicians, walking with his Stratocaster and looking at everything. He felt a shock of aloneness as he found his way to Henré. Jake raised a heavy brass door knocker to its apex, and let it fall. He admired the heavy wood door, it looked old, and the stone masonry of the building. A young woman answered his knock, and the door opened. He smiled and apologized for his poor French. She was gracious at first but suspicious. Mindful not to waste her time, Jake got to the business at hand. In very calm and courteous English, he explained that he was looking for Henré. With that, she switched gears and was ready to slam the door in his face, but Jakes stunned expression rendered her one final wave of patience as she explained that Henré was out of his mind, and that she hated him and all of his stupid musician friends. Henré was gone, she didn’t know where, and she didn’t care. She slowed herself down, offered Jake her eyes, beautiful soft dark eyes and said, “I’m sorry. Good luck.” The door closed with a heavy certainty. The Tom Scholz Rockman allowed Jake to play through headphones and enjoy a decent sound. He brought it along so that he could plug in to whatever was available and be ready to play, in any situation. Busking on the street was the last thing he wanted to do, and it came down to that too soon. His funds were floating away faster than an unanchored set-list at an outdoor gig on a windy day. Jake came from established roots of playing in clubs and getting paid, but he rolled with these changes and his own guiding voice, ringing more patiently, “Here you are now, in Paris, Great! You can act, you can sing, you play guitar really well, and you know a ton of songs. Be resourceful. Make some cash.” Jake passed a pawn shop and noticed some cheapo, battery powered boombox in the window. He bartered. It wouldn’t sound as good as a proper amplifier, but it was cheap. He could power it with batteries for playing outside, and could carry it easily. Plugged in to the Scholz Rockman, his guitar had a big, chimey sound that he could sing above. But busking felt like begging. He was tossed coins, bills in francs, and the odd smile from a French beauty on her way to work. But mostly, this type of survival was embarrassing. Jake was skinny. When that French woman stopped, dressed so nicely, with an apologetic smile, turned back on her tall heels and left her pain au chocolat, wrapped politely in wax paper, in his guitar case … that singular moment was an adrenaline fueled bolt of fulgurous lightning, and a wake-up slap. Busking seemed to ask the musical question: Can’t you get a paying gig? Band Contact number 2. Patrick McKee was the owner of New Rose Records in Paris. They had spoken on the phone but when Jake arrived, Patrick was out of town. He would be back in a week. Band Contact numbers 3 & 4 were barely worth mentioning. Jake was told by tried-and-true musician friends back in Boston, that Le bar de plongée was a club that always had bands, and an open mic with a jam scene. Upon his arrival, the club was more of a TV bar with no stage, and MTV blaring. The other music venue, Bar à musique du diable, was now a rock ‘n roll clothing store with MTV gloating on multiple screens. Petit Hôtel Fier de Paris was an expensive stay, so he decided to leave Paris for a few days. Back home, Jake had a best friend, Chef James. His French girlfriend, Suzette, was also a chef, now living with James in Charlestown. She suggested that Jake could stay at her home in Quimper, France. The six-hour train trip to Quimper was not cheap, but it was clean, quiet, and the countryside was a peaceful change of scene. Arriving in rural France, with guitar, gear case and rucksack, he hitched a ride to Suzette’s farm house. Suzette said that Luic, her ex, was still living there, taking care of the place, and would be glad to have some company. But upon his arrival, Jake was viewed as the enemy. Luics’ English was much better than Jakes French. Jake tried to tête-à-tête but as soon as Luic saw the guitar, he asked, with a blistering sneer, “Are you Chef James’s friend?” Assuming that was a good thing, but seeming like it was not a good thing, Jake said that he was Suzette’s friend. Luic told him that he could stay but he was not happy. Luics’ displeasure was heavily amplified, “Fuck Chef James, fuck that asshole and his fucking guitar.” Tension. Jake settled in as Luic blasted off on a loud dirt-bike, leaving deaf chickens to scramble for their lives. Le Coq Rouge was a short walk down a country lane, and a very nice restaurant for his single meal of the day. It was delicious farm fresh food, and Jake splurged to enjoy a beer and an amazing piece of chocolate cake. Good night Luic. While the accommodations did not exactly convey, ‘Welcome,’ Jake slept. In the morning, he heard Luics noisy reminder, making his point with unnecessary motorcycle revving, and a blastoff that re-freaked the screaming deaf chickens. With the charismatic host finally gone, Jake showered, had a few glasses of fresh country water, and with thumb in hand, made his way towards the White Cliffs of Dover. It was an easy hitch to the ferry, although there was some rain. Jake was going to London to see what could be found for an American rock musician with a passport declaring ‘DO NOT HIRE.’ The ferry was fairly full, and rain fell more heavily as the boat set to sea. Once underway, the dining tables of the common area were turned over to become gambling tables. Black Jack was the game and Jake considered playing. Maybe he could fortify his financial supply with a good win? While considering the stakes, he was approached by a tall, noticeable young woman. With a lovely accent, Scottish maybe, and with a sad, tired smile, she asked Jake, “Could I just sit next to you with my bag here, and try for a few minutes of sleep? I’m sorry to bother you, but I’m just so tired, ya see.” He suspected it might be some kind of scam, but of course she could. They sat together, she rested her head on his left shoulder and hooked her arm through his. It was sweet. He could read that there was nothing more to this moment than just this moment, which he liked. It was nice to be a secret white knight, a good guy. He revised the classic lyric, “Nights in white satin, on a ferry to England,” said the Moody Blues, never. But the Moody’s were from England, and decades of influential music came from this place Jake was now approaching. White Cliffs of Dover came into, and then faded from view. With some sudden sun, his sleeping beauty was awake, refreshed, smiling less sadly, and gone. The sea air and cool water spray on the upper, exterior deck of the ferry, felt good. With guitar and all hands on deck, the sun was rising over England and so was Jakes hope, renewed. Wandering around and eventually finding what seemed to be the most affordable accommodation, Jake settled into London and became familiar with its locales. Walking, forever walking to save cash, London was a spicy pepper of cultures and people. Hackneys, black cabs, and double-decker buses rattled and rumbled loud and proud on the opposite side of the road. With access to beautiful parks, Jake took advantage of the flora for moments of deeper, slower breathing, writing, or playing guitar, when weather permitted. He had time, too much time, and all that time had him thinking. A hunger for home and family started to force itself to the forefront of starvation. But Jake was still on his mission. The woman who managed the Bed and Breakfast was friendly. She may have been friendlier than he realized, but Jake was focused almost exclusively on finding work. She asked him to call her, Rebecca, and continued with, “Oh, and you must meet my son Jeffrey. Jeffrey does the sound board work for a band called Culture Club. Have you heard of them?” Culture Club were huge all over the world and of course Jake couldn’t wait to meet Jeffrey. Finally, a way into the music scene in London. When Jeffrey and Jake met, they hit it off like old friends. He took Jake ‘round to a few pubs and said that he would introduce him to people, but first he had a favor to ask. Jeffrey had given Rebecca two tickets to see Frank Sinatra at the Royal Albert Hall. She wanted Jake to escort her to the concert but was too shy to ask. Jake was not at all interested in seeing Sinatra, but the Buddy Rich Orchestra was the opening act and he very much wanted to see that. They took a cab. Decked out and happy, Rebecca looked beautiful. Jake had his nicest black, double-breasted jacket, his only jacket, and brand new, high laced black leather boots he bought that day, on Oxford Street. The celebrated Royal Albert Hall was a humbling site to behold. It was a theater in the round with great royal redness and gold trimmings. The Buddy Rich band was a thrill and half. Enjoying the swing and the grooves, Jake was taken out of his punk-funk snobbery. With his Sony cassette recorder secretly in a jacket pocket, Jake was naive and hadn’t considered the risk of bootlegging. He just thought it would be nice to record Sinatra, for Rebecca. They had great seats and the sound was amazing, but what Jake didn’t realize was that Sinatra was about to blow his mind. The moment the lights came up and Sinatra released his voice into the crowd, Jake was converted. He was all in. Frank was musical magic, magnetic, and Jake suddenly understood. Now he could hear it. After the concert, they shared drinks and laughs. It was a lifelong dream for her to see Frank Sinatra. She was happy, and Jake was content to see her in such good spirits. Upon their return to the B&B, Jeffrey was packing suitcases. Culture Club were going back out, and so was he. Rebecca asked her son, “How long this time Jeffery?” “Four months, Mum.” Now looking at Jake, “Stay in touch, mate. I’ll hook you up when I get back.” Four months? Rebecca invited him to stay, and with the invitation there were advantages, but he held focus on the work needing to be done. Enough time had passed in London and Jake kept thinking about New Rose Records, back in Paris. Driven, pushed forward by separateness, his path led back to Paris. He hasn’t eaten in 14 days, he, he hasn’t dreamed in that long either, so how does he sleep? He hasn’t had a lamp or a candle. He hasn’t let the sun in either, so, how does he see? He sees her standing naked in moonlight He knows the feel of her ribs when they’re touching his hands. Trying hard to sneak closer to her, climbing walls and braving barbed wire, he’s making his move. The painting of the walls, the spinning of his flesh the separation calls, he’s peeling his regrets. To never know again – the feeling of her skin To never know again – the feeling of her skin When he’s dreaming again He’s dreaming again Jake had contact information with Georgie, a waitress friend, from the Harvest restaurant, where they’d worked together. She had an apartment in a nice section of Paris, where she was stressed from waiting for Lance, married man Lance, a wanna-be writer, who led her on and lied about coming to join her in Paris. Jake knew Lance well enough to suspect that he was just taking advantage of her willing figure. But Georgie was nice to Jake. She helped him get some work as a model. First, there was a photo shoot for an up-and-coming fashion line. Jake also stood naked, silent and still for art classes. Georgie welcomed Jake as well as the opportunity to split some rent. With a place to stay, he could now focus more on connections, and getting a band, or getting signed. It was time to visit Patrick McKee. New Rose Records was a humble place, very humble. It wasn’t what Jake expected to see at a record label headquarters, but he had a meeting with Patrick. McKee was polite and calm as they sat together and listened to four of Jakes eight songs, on cassette. Finally, Patrick stopped the tape and commented. His accent was very musical, but sadly, he sang words of rejection. He was complimentary of Jake’s sound and writing but insisted that, as soon as he was paid an advance and had some success in Europe, “You will go back to the USA to sign a better deal. Everybody does that. Besides, it’s all MTV now. Live music doesn’t stand a chance.” His voice and manner grew more agitated as he pounded his point home, “You have to make videos and get on fucking MTV!” In earnest, Jake tried to explain that he really wanted to work in Europe, but he made his best case to deaf and blind ears. Patrick told Jake to stay in touch, to let him know when he had a gig. He would come out. Jake thanked Patrick for his time and suggested, with a smile, “Keep the tape, for when you come to your senses.” At Georgie’s apartment overlooking the stone structures and streets of her little corner of the city, Jake was finishing his shower. The shower was in an open space in the kitchen area of Georgie’s small loft. There was no curtain and Georgie seemed to sadly enjoy Jake getting clean. She had just received a ‘Dear Georgie’ letter from Lance, and she was crushed, heartbroken, and in tears by the news that they would not be together in the City of Lights. She was inconsolable but had an idea. She had befriended a man named Iraj Azemi. He was a successful Israeli filmmaker she met in a cafe. He had invited her out for dinner and said that Jake was welcome to join. A nice meal would be better than staying at the tear-filled apartment. Iraj was a gracious host and talked, among other things, about film music. Jake was inspired and hoped there may be a connection there for him. Iraj promised to listen to Jake's cassette. As Georgie momentarily excused herself, Iraj went off into a tirade. He started off with a declaration of hatred regarding the influence of MTV, and then, with reddened cheeks, Iraj confessed his intense desire and passion for Georgie, his Goddess, his dream of connubial bliss. He begged Jake to let him be with her. Confused, Jake explained that it was up to her, they were just friends. The eyes of Iraj lit up like a Christmas tree under the Arch de Triomphe. But he would have to pursue Georgie another day. She was feeling her many glasses of wine, as well as the hot attention of her fascinating, filmmaking, hope-to-be-lover. Feeling the Hell fury of a woman scorned, Georgie shared her need, her immediate need for fresh, cool Parisian air. They left Iraj, crushed for now, but ever hopeful. With her arm wrapped inside Jakes arm, he steadied the unsteady stride of her high heeled sandals. She smelled delicious. The long straps of her sandals wrapped and climbed, making grooves in the muscular curves of her calves. She let a wild vocal howl loose into the echo of late night. Her emotion bounced off of Notre Dam and the river below. Body heat warmed and further ignited the scent she wore. Gargoyles watched from above when Georgie threw herself at Jake, right there on the street, and then again at the apartment. He was reminded of a dozen years earlier, when Derek Lee and he were performing at a pool party. After their final set, Stella McCauliff asked Jake if he would give her a ride home. Sure, he would! On the way to her home, she asked Jake if he could pull over along the Farmington River, so they could make out. Sure he could. With the river humming and Stella puckering, with a face full of vodka, she breathed, “Ohhhhhhh Derek, I love you!” Sixteen-year-old Jake wanted to reply, “I love you too,” and have away with that bra which seemed simply too tight under her white leotard. But with a smiling stiff upper lip, he fired up the truck and drove her safely home. Jake knew that Georgie’s sexual welcome was just a reaction from her Lance pain, although he had some lance action of his own growing from down under. “Just let me give you a blow job,” Georgie said. It seemed like a waste of great passion, but he just held her. Her emotions and hungry lips slowly fell to rest. Finally relaxed, her ‘call of the wild’ was loud enough to get his attention, but a drunken fling was not the thing. Not tonight. The next day, walking, always walking with the guitar, Jake sat under the Eiffel tower and had a revelation. The sun's warmth fueled a feeling of gratitude and provided a moment of clarity. Hearing something, maybe his own intuition, a song flowed into his awareness and onto a page of the 9” x 12” black notebook. With the Scholz Rockman satisfying his guitar itch, Jake wrote, In the Face. Through the song, he realized what he surely needed. All of the striving for success and recognition, all of the writing and the mountain of recording were nothing without love. Jake felt the aliveness of love but he needed to feel it coming back, in return. In the Face. If my feet and if my hands hurt from holding you the day after Wyoming is my open heart water flowing with your laughing In the face of my future memory Crashing on the rocks and spreading but in the end changing nothing. I don’t live here I don’t live where I’ll be shaving again in a day or two. Learning language just to send a letter that I wrote to you In the face of running past the roses My hands bleeding from grabbing, instead of holding This warm day this autumn hour dreaming beneath the tower amazed to see so few things changed strange to see my hands and face Still running, still grabbing, still on the move at least for now In the face of the world I can see all of me Returning from Europe was a rough landing. Staying with Sheila in Delaware was a mistake. He wanted to contribute to the household but it was nearly impossible to find any kind of work, other than minimum wage fast food work, and playing Santa Claus at the Delaware Valley Mall. There was zero activity on any kind of music front, but Jake didn’t care. What good would music do him now? He just wanted a feeling of family, but his hope for a rekindled connection with Sheila reflected back like the icy field of dying hay outside of her apartment complex. The local morning paper would not take long to search through. He would jog, take a walk into the woods to meditate or try to listen for guidance, but nothing responded. Decaying leaves post-harvest. They were strangers held together by some ancient coupling ritual. Jake did not belong there. Waking up New Year’s morning, she was gone but returned with a rental car, tank full, and the car keys in hand. She had packed his few items of clothing and his guitar, and was ready for him to leave. Sheila stood outside the white rental. She told him, with no kindness, that he would be better off wherever he could play music. Shutting the drivers’ door, her final icy motion was handing Jake a plastic baggie with two fat joints, a lighter, and another mini-bag of white stuff, cocaine. They had not indulged in anything like that together but he had some suspicions that maybe she was a bit more of a wild thing when she was on her own. Evidence had been visible but he chose to ignore them. Her final words were ice. “I thought you might want this for your drive back to Boston, or wherever. Goodbye.” She turned and walked away without looking back. He drove. It was a torturous drive on a freezing New Year’s Day and Jake was about to be 100% alone. It was a white-knuckle drive and he was out of my mind. “Where the fuck do I go?!!!” Weed, tears, and cocaine got him to Boston. No food. No water. Just a desperate fool at the wheel, Jake's intuition led him. After seven hours on turnpikes, screaming with crying eyes and a dead hoarse voice from wailing alone in a crap rental car with his single worldly good, he found the location to return the car in Charlestown, and then collapsed. The apartment keys were hidden in a secret place. After a shower and crashing on their bed, still physically shaking and internally quaking, Jake was overripe for the next chapter of life. I Can Do This. When you go away, take your strength with you. Do you hear a strange buzzing? I’m tied up in knots, believe it or not. On the edge of my bed, weighing in the many things she said I could choose to be a tortured soul but that’s not me. That’s not me. All night long, the wind blew in on my expectations, now growing thin. I finally get it. Did I get it too late? Saying nothing, saying nothing too late. I can do this. And in my dreams you’re hauntingly beautiful You’re haunting me. I’m letting you. James and Suzette arrived home and found him whiter than the Cliffs of Dover, starved, dehydrated, and numb with blackened, sunken red eyes. Moving quickly, availing every resource from any positive past, Jake found a place to live in Beacon Hill. It was a beat-up place and a five floor walkup, but it became home, a safe haven with windows, light and air. He got a job at a copy shop, as well as waiting tables part time at the Harvest. Jake survived the shock of rapid change, bought new guitar strings, bought food from the farmers’ market, tried to be frugal and was, in a way, reborn. Nights were for walking and being in the moment. So intensely in the moment, he would look at women and wonder, “Should I say hello, or is this just lust? Am I out of my mind?” Walking through the parks of Cambridge or Back Bay, smelling the night air and changing seasons, walking along the Charles River as the boats passed, as cars carried families, people together, people going home … where was home? Jake was home.
Leap of FaithThousands of miles above the silent earth, hurtling forward and down at an inconceivable speed, the comet 1000a (Alhazen) narrowed its metaphorical eyes. Inconsequential fragments of other minor asteroids blew past, interstellar dust and debris, tumbleweeds on a cosmic scale.
And down below the turning clouds, stolid and resolute on a vast, dry continent, a billion brave Chinese citizens stood before their little red stools, quietly awaiting the command. Beautiful, crystalline and clear, echoing brightly across the nation, the Speaker System for Solidarity broadcast the first few testing taps on a microphone. “Right foot, up!” the disembodied voice was heard and understood everywhere in the enormous country, from the southern mountains, to the western deserts, to the fertile river plains. Every Chinese citizen placed his or her right foot on the plastic stepping stool. “Left foot!” cried the disembodied voice. The entire nation now stood eighteen inches off the ground. “Jump!” An impact, a detonation reverberated beneath the landing of ten billion shaky toes; houses caved, bamboo forests shook, volcanoes erupted, and massive waves bunched and receded, exposing strange squid and deep sea serpents to gasp and flail on the naked sand. Smacked by the blunt weight of 77 million tons, the earth staggered and shuddered in its orbit. The skies rolled and roiled, and everything went black. # ONE WEEK EARLIER: The phone buzzing in my pocket was driving me crazy, but I couldn’t pull it out because Mr. Thom was still hovering over my back. Beneath his wild John the Baptist beard, he had this nervous smile on his face, like he was my friend and he wanted to apologize for coming over to make me work. I could picture his expression perfectly even though I wasn’t looking up. He couldn’t hear the phone buzzing; my email notifications were on, but they were set to one of those mosquito ring tones that are too high-pitched for adults. Everyone else in the room heard it though, a persistent whine that made you want to swat at something. I could feel it too; it was like being jabbed over and over again with a miniature needle; it was an all-consuming itch. Sighing and wincing, clenching my jaw, I reached into my pocket and pulled out a pen instead. “There,” I growled without looking up at the teacher. “I’m working. You can go now.” Mr. Thom stopped smiling, I’m sure; I could hear his fur-muffled mouth smack open and closed, tasting for the right response. But eventually I felt his shade pass over me as he walked away. Someone snickered. I pulled out my phone as soon as I could and placed it hidden in my lap. The place where it had been vibrating against my leg kept twitching, and I scratched at it compulsively while I waited for the message to load. I have one of those old silver RAZRs; my mom says it’s all she can afford, even though she buys iPhones for herself. But I don’t mind; I mean it’s sleek and it flips open. It’s stylish, in a retro sort of way – like old-school communicators from Star Trek. We were supposed to be studying some formula for flood geology – “catastrophism,” or something . . . I glanced at the worksheet while I waited for the message to load. Mr. Thom’s class was all about solving complex formulas and imputing data. The worksheet asked us to calculate the “levels of dissolved oxygen in the troposphere required to support gigantism in antediluvian arthropods” – which was way too technical for me. I prefer science fiction, where you can rest easy in the knowledge that the big words don’t really mean anything. But I used to think I was okay at science, too, until Mr. Thom’s class. He had been hired at the end of last year, when the old science teacher, Mr. Shore, quit. I guess there was some sort of scandal, you know; the state board of education said our school would lose its accreditation if it didn’t teach “mainstream” science, and Mr. Shore refused to tow the line, so he left. He hadn’t ever done much, to be honest, besides show us angry lectures from Australia about the global, pro-evolution conspiracy – but at least he was organized. And his classes were way easier than Mr. Thom’s. Some people doubted whether Thom was even a Christian, though I thought he probably was. After all, our principal, Coach Kroger, had hired him. And if you weren’t Christian, why would you even apply to work at Veritas Bible Academy? Apart from their dullness, there was nothing especially sinister about the facts that he had us look at or the numbers he wanted us to crunch. Everything we researched was stuff that came from creation scientists or people who believe in intelligent design. Thom said he just wanted us to check their facts. Sometimes they were plausible; sometimes they weren’t. Either way, there can’t be anything un-Christian about looking at the facts, because the truth is Jesus (John 14:6), right? And facts are truth. Mr. Thom definitely wanted to know the truth. But his dusty way of checking up on it made my head hurt. When it came down to it, I guess I didn’t really care. The message had loaded. It was from Rachel Wedgwood. My leg twitched wildly and my phone almost toppled out of my lap onto the floor. Why would she write to me, and why in the middle of the day? I knew she had study hall now, in the computer lab; all the Seniors did. But I was a Sophomore, and she’d never addressed an email just to me before. Maybe she’d finally noticed how I was filling out my school uniform this year. Checking the address bar, and . . . yeah. It was a forward. It’d gone out to the whole student body. A quick glimpse around the room revealed at least half of the rest of the class was playing with their cellphones too. Mr. Thom had returned to his desk and collapsed invisibly behind the ragged piles of papers that he never handed back to us. Cautiously, I took my phone off my leg and placed it on the desk behind my book. # (“Fwd: END TIMES ALERT,” read the subject heading. “Is this for real? Check it out and pass it on!”) > > > >begin forwarded message: > Calling on all True Believers in the One God, the Alpha and >Omega, the Lord Jesus Christ who will come to judge the living >and the dead: > >Christian sources within the WHITE HOUSE have confessed that >tonight a MAJOR PROPHECY from the BOOK OF REVELATIONS will be >fulfilled!!! This evening, the President will call a press >conference to announce that he is signing the SOVEREIGNTY of the >United States of America over to WORLD GOVERNMENT, otherwise >known as the UN and the “People’s” Republic of Communist >China!!! > >These events are clearly prophesied in the BOOK OF REVELATIONS, >in verses 13:7-8: “And he was given authority over every tribe, >people, language, and nation. All inhabitants of the earth will >worship the beast . . . .” The beast was GIVEN authority, just >as the president tonight will GIVE authority to the United >Nations!!! > >This also fulfills the prophecy of Rev. 13:11-12: “Then I saw >another beast, coming out of the earth. He . . . spoke like a >dragon. He exercised all authority of the first beast on his >behalf, and made the earth and its inhabitants worship the >first beast.” Obviously, the second beast is China! (Many >traditional Chinese are actually dragon-worshippers!)PRAISE GOD >that the meaning of HIS prophecy has been revealed!!!! > >Dear brethren in Christ, a time of strife and trial is coming – >and has now come! It may be too late for us to stop the >President now. But those who are washed in the BLOOD of the >LAMB must resist SATAN’S NEW WORLD ORDER unto death! Expect UN > “peace keeping” forces to soon arrive in your city. They may >STEAL (or “commandeer”) your property! They may ABDUCT and even >MURDER your families!!! > >He who has an ear, let him hear. >If anyone is to go into captivity, into captivity he will go. >If anyone is killed by the sword, with the sword he will be >killed. >This calls for PATIENCE, ENDURANCE, and FAITHFULNESS on the >part of the saints. Rev. 13:9-10 > >Brethren, NOW is the time for TRUE CHRISTIANS to come together >beneath the BANNER of our LORD!!! “Do not fear those who can >KILL the BODY . . . fear rather HE WHO CAN KILL the SOUL!!!” >(Matt. 10:28) For “BLESSED are the DEAD who DIE in the LORD >from now on. YES, says the SPIRIT, they will rest from their >LABOR, and their deeds will follow THEM.” Rev. 14:13 > > > > > # I raised my eyebrows and looked up from my email to see that most of the rest of the class was still reading. I’ve always been a fast reader, and the rest of them were probably tipped off to check their email because they heard my phone buzzing. Or they weren’t consciously tipped off, but my phone subconsciously suggested theirs in a Jedi mind trick sort of a way. Sitting in front of the teacher’s desk, Franklin Gifford finished reading his message too. He shrugged his shoulders and stashed his phone away just as Mr. Thom stood up to take another tour around the room. I looked down at my worksheet. “Gigantism in Antediluvian Arthropods . . .” yeah, whatever. I picked up my pen and prepared to doodle in the corners. “Mr. Thom?” Franklin raised his hand, mercifully distracting him while the rest of the class also hid their cellphones. “Yes, Franklin?” Thom said, turning to him and smiling eagerly beneath his beard. Please, his whole being seemed to cry, please ask me something about humidity and dissolved oxygen in the troposphere! “Aren’t the Chinese, like, the only nation that believes dragons are good?” Several other students laughed, and Thom smiled nervously at this mysterious specimen of teenage wit. “I don’t know,” he said slowly; “I mean, I think the Japanese have benevolent dragons too. There are probably a lot of them in other Asian cultures . . . .” “Yeah, but,” Franklin persisted, “those are all pretty much just Chinese, right? I mean, there’s not really that big a difference between any of them.” A few other students laughed again. Thom’s eyebrows furrowed, and his whole look blackened like a thunderhead. (How could anyone think Mr. Thom didn’t believe in God? Unless it was some medieval Father Christmas thing he was going for. But really, sometimes the man looked like he’d fallen off the ceiling of the Sistine chapel.) “What did you get for question seven, Franklin?” he asked, officially dropping the subject of differences between Asians. “Not done with it yet?” He pivoted and caught my eyes before I could avert my gaze; “Patrick? Nothing yet either? You said you were working! Hmm. I’m disappointed.” He scanned the classroom to see if he could call out anyone else and make them feel bad too, but they were all already looking down. He grunted. “This assignment is now due before you leave.” # # # The President’s press conference was all over the news when I got home that day. The newscasters were speculating about the end of the world – except they didn’t put it like that because the news is mostly controlled by secular progressives. My mom already had the TVs on – the one in the kitchen, the one in her bedroom, the two in the living and dining room. We are a TV loving family. We only get basic cable, because there’s a lot of immorality on the more expensive channels, but we like to make the most of what’s included. The TV in the kitchen was set to UPN2, usually, so that we could watch reruns of shows like Nighthawk and the old MacGyver while we were cooking or doing the dishes. The ones in the living/dining room were typically on the major networks – either the evening news or America’s Got Talent. In her bedroom, my mom endured heart-rending stories about eating disorders on the Lifetime network. I had my own TV too, with an old DVD player built in, but I pretty much just used it for video games. Tonight every set was fixed on a news station, and on every one of them reporters “live in Washington” made up nonsense to kill time before the President’s speech. Mom stared intently from the couch. Her eyes flitted between the screen in front of her and the one closer to the table. “Do you know anything about this?” she asked when she heard me drop my book bag behind the door. She rarely checked to see if it was me when I came home. Mahalo’s a pretty safe town, I guess, as long as you don’t go walking around certain areas after dark. “Yeah,” I said as I sat down beside her. “I, uh, got an email about it. But, I mean . . .?” and I shrugged my shoulders in a way that said, yeah, but what the hell? without actually swearing. We sat in silence for awhile, watching the predictions and analysis on the screen. Fox News kept using the phrase “the end of American sovereignty,” but they didn’t explain what that meant. Apparently there was some big natural disaster about to happen, and the President was working with the UN to try and stop it, or minimize the impact, or something. A telephone poll asked, “Do you trust the President’s choices?” which I thought was dumb because he just won the election, so obviously plenty of people trusted him. “You want any chips, or anything?” I asked mom. I pushed up off the couch and headed for the pantry. “Oh, no, no,” she said without looking at me; “I’ll make dinner later, OK?” “Yeah I’m not that hungry.” When I got to the kitchen, the President had started walking out to the podium. There were two other guys with him, standing on either side: One was Chinese and the other had this little, colorful hat on – like he was a Muslim sailor or something. So apparently the rumors were true. I couldn’t believe it, even though I’d read about it in Rachel’s email: We were about to see the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy! Here was the leader of the free world, and he was about to voluntarily hand all his power over to the Dragon and the Beast! I decided not to open the chips until I’d heard what he had to say. He began with something about how “the best impulses of humanity” were “those that served the common good.” “We as a nation,” he said, “have always striven to do more than simply look out for ourselves. The true American identity is one that advances the light of liberty and justice far beyond our own frontiers.” He paused for a moment, as if he were looking down at his notes – which I thought was odd, handwritten notes instead of a teleprompter. “I have recently received information about a threat to all life on earth as we know it. The danger is serious, and it is imminent, and this government cannot overcome it on its own. That is, on our own, we the American people cannot overcome it. But the American spirit – which is itself the brightest light, the clearest expression of the best hopes of humanity – the American spirit, I say, cannot and will not be defeated. It cannot be broken. It can and will always overcome. “What does it mean to be American, truly, if not to stand up to the challenges that are the most historically profound, that face all humanity? To lend strength and succor to the poor and the oppressed of the world? What is it to be American, in spirit, if not to reach out to souls everywhere who are striving to breathe free? What is it to be American, if not to recognize the kindred spirits of all who look to the light of justice, throughout the world, and to acknowledge the universal brotherhood of all humankind, regardless of race, or color, or religious persuasion? “Last night I received word that a recently rediscovered comet, known to the scientific community as 1000a (Alhazen), threatens to collide with the planet Earth in one week’s time. The ensuing catastrophe would be beyond the scope of human history or even imagination. It would stir up a dust cloud that would block out most of the light of the sun, for a period of unknown thousands of years. It would easily rival the impact that formed the Chicxulub crater 65 million years ago and caused the extinction of the dinosaurs. “Since eight o’clock last night, I have been in constant counsel with the leaders of NASA and our military, and I have spoken to the leaders of most of the world’s countries. There is no single, independent action that can save us from this crisis. This is not a science fiction movie; there are no nuclear warheads we can launch, no maverick astronauts who can guarantee the harmless destruction of the comet 1000a (Alhazen). But there is a hope – there is a solution – if we can come together not just as a nation, but as an entire world. We can defend the planet Earth – our mother Earth – if we stand united as her children, and take action in solidarity together with the entire race of humankind. “Our best hope – and indeed, our only hope – begins with the incredible discipline and manufacturing capacity of the great nation of China. The Chinese government has informed me, and our top scientific advisers have confirmed, that a single, coordinated jump by every person alive in China would generate enough force to knock the earth out of its course around the sun. If timed correctly, this jump would also knock us out of the path of 1000a (Alhazen). The Chinese are prepared to take this step. Indeed, they have already begun the manufacture of over a billion little red stepping stools, of exactly the height necessary to optimize the jumping potential of the Chinese people. “Now, this action on the part of the Chinese is only half of the solution. Without additional impacts of significant force in other locations around the globe, the Chinese jump would cause a disaster at least as drastic as a collision with the comet 1000a (Alhazen). Therefore, I have agreed that the United States will participate in a multilateral, worldwide effort to put the earth back into balance. With the assistance of UN peacekeeping forces, the US Army and the National Guard will be establishing jumping centers in various locations throughout the most geographically advantageous regions of the continental United States. “We ask for your participation in this momentous, worldwide project. The soldiers I am sending into your cities and towns are under the strictest orders to protect the laws of the United States and the civil rights of its citizens. I have not signed away the leadership of this country, and we are not under martial law. However, all of our nation is in a state of emergency, as is the entire world. I ask for your patience, your understanding during these trying times, and your help. We cannot knock the world back into orbit if we don’t have enough people to jump. “In order to generate the required amount of concentrated force in specific areas, it may be necessary for large populations to migrate, for a time, to certain designated jumping areas. Announcements regarding this particular will be sent to your state governors’ offices later this week. Again, your civil rights will be respected, and no one will force you to leave your home. Consider, however, that the fate of the entire world may hang upon your temporary cooperation with our worldwide plan. Because of its diplomatic and humanitarian resources, the United Nations is coordinating the bulk of this effort internationally, and is prepared to move groups of volunteers to the United States from neighboring countries in South and Central America, should the need arise. “This threat is serious; it is the single greatest challenge ever faced in the history of humankind. It is also a great opportunity for us to prove the strength and resilience of the American spirit, and the human spirit. Many nations have come together before – to stamp out the plague of ignorance and hatred propagated by the Nazis in World War II, to take a firm stand against terror in the years following the attacks of September 11th, and to provide disaster relief in diverse times and places all over the world. Never have we faced an enemy so potentially devastating as this one; but if we can stand together, I believe we are up to the challenge. “Some of you may disagree. It may be tempting for some to give up, tempting for some good people to give in to reactionary denialism, or cynicism or despair. To those of you who begin to feel this way, I say I believe that God has never yet let a temptation arise without also providing the faithful with a means to overcome it. In these current circumstances, the way forward is clear: It is time for us to put our doubts and our selfish fears aside. It is time to be trustworthy, to love our neighbors, and to be bold. We must step forward, reach out, and take the hand of fellowship extended by the rest of the world. This is the path that Providence has provided for us. We are Americans; we must be an example of how individuals from the world’s most diverse corners can stand united in the face of a true, mindless evil, a common foe. Thank you; God bless America, and God keep . . . everyone.” # He stepped away from the podium as he finished, despite the cries of “Mr. President, Mr. President!” flashing with the cameras among the press. I crinkled the bag of Doritos in my hand and dropped it on the floor to see what would happen. I mean it felt like the right reaction; I felt like I ought to be shocked and dropping things, eyes bulging, jaw slack, etc. I had just heard about the end of the world. And so I stepped down on the bag and crushed the chips. It seemed like the least I could do. “Come here, Patrick,” my mom called from the other room. Her voice wavered. She was still staring at the TV but wasn’t actually watching it anymore. For once she did turn to look at me when I came into the room. “Come sit here,” she patted once on the couch; “I’m gonna want you here. I’m gonna want you near me . . . .” “Oh my God,” I said, hugging my chest as I dropped into the cushions next to her. All of a sudden it was really cold in the room. “Patrick!” she grabbed my by shoulders and shook; “Don’t blaspheme! Oh, Patrick; don’t blaspheme, not now.” And she started to cry, and I put my arms around her and held her until she stopped. She fell asleep, and I just sat there, watching the TV screens without listening. I don’t know why I didn’t go to bed . . . it was Friday, it had been a long week. But I guess I was waiting to see a picture of the comet that threatened an end to the American way. # # # I slept late the next morning and went to the Wedgwood’s house for youth group that afternoon. When I arrived, all the overstuffed leather furniture was taken. The Wedgwood drawing room was rich – mahogany cases for the electronics, wall-to-wall carpeting with persian rugs on top. There was a half empty bottle of Coke on the coffee table, and a metal bowl with a small pool of tainted water where Rachel’s mom must’ve put out some ice for us. “Hey,” Charity Dale said in greeting, cocking her head and waving her foot where it hung over the arm of a recliner. She was pink and sweating, flush with the kind of faux-sunburn you get from sitting inside all day without air conditioning. She wore this stretchy cotton T-shirt that looked like it was deciding whether or not to be skin, and jean short-shorts cut so that the bottoms of the pockets stuck out. Those shorts were cool and expensive, but Charity lived on the same street as me. I wondered if she’d massacred a pair of her mother’s old Levis. “Patrick Smith, welcome; come on in.” Rachel turned and gestured for me to come into the room. This house was her estate, and she was Charity’s opposite in just about every way. Lithe and slender, with pale skin that still managed to look cold despite the heat, she could have been a Greek statue brought to life by Zeus, if there really were such pagan goddesses. There was definitely something more than human about her. Charity Dale’s hair was normal, neither blonde nor brown, but vital and ambiguous. Rachel’s was as straight and black as her skin was clear and white. The contrast was stark and uncompromising. It made it hard to do anything but agree when she spoke to you. “Come in, Patrick,” she repeated. “Would you like a drink?” “Yeah . . . uh, yeah.” I shrugged my shoulders. “I thought Mormons couldn’t drink Coke,” said Randy Cunningham. He was wearing a red mesh jersey with the armpits all stretched to let air in and his pecks out. He dominated the big couch in front of the coffee table. “I’m not a Mormon. I’m . . . um, a Sophomore?” I said, confused and feeling totally lame. Randy didn’t come to youth group often, but he had to know I was a Christian. I mean I knew him. We both went to VBA. “Randy, what? How does that make any sense at all?” Rachel asked, kneeling down in her dress and pouring me a drink. “Cause his last name is Smith, you know, like Joseph Smith?” Randy expanded even more upon the couch and put his arms behind his head. “Har har har,” Franklin Giffords mocked him. “Anyway, don’t the Mormons, like, own Coca-Cola?” Cameron Wilson raised himself up on his elbows and then dropped back down into his chair, defeated by the humidity. “Patrick, please have a seat,” Rachel opened a gray folding chair in front of the coffee table. Then she went over the couch, shoved Randy’s legs off it, and fell into the cushions next to him. I had a sinking feeling that didn’t stop when I hit the metal seat. Our youth pastor was AWOL, so Franklin opened the meeting with a prayer. Then Rachel took over. She was all business. While the rest of us slouched, she sat upright, on the edge of the couch, back straight as a princess awaiting coronation. She was so snowy and so cool, like she had a secret stash of December between her sun dress and her skin. She didn’t even miss a beat when Randy kept trying to swing his socked feet up into her lap, nor did she seem to be distracted by the way he toyed with the hem of her skirt with his toes. “Basically, this is it,” she said, “The Tribulation. The beginning of the war to end all wars. You know what the Bible says. Open up to Revelation 8:10.” We picked up Bibles from the coffee table and began to rifle through them, but she already had her finger in the page. “‘The third angel sounded his trumpet, and a great star, blazing like a torch, fell from the sky on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water – the name of the star is Wormwood. A third of the waters turned bitter, and many people died . . . . A third of the sun was struck, a third of the moon, and a third of the stars, so that a third of them turned dark. A third of the day was without light, and also a third of the night. As I watched, I heard an eagle that was flying in midair call out in a loud voice: Woe! Woe! Woe to the inhabitants of the earth. . . .!’” “‘Woe, woe,’” Randy echoed, sitting up and then falling calamitously into Rachel. She snorted and shoved him off of her. “This war is gonna touch every human being on the world,” she continued. “It’s gonna mark us. I mean, the Bible says, you either get marked with the mark of the Beast, or with the Name of the Lamb, right? “But a mark is something you can see. If you can’t see it, it isn’t a mark; it isn’t there. I don’t know about you guys, but I want to be marked with the mark of the Lamb. I want to see it! And I want people to see” (she paused for emphasis) “whose side I’m on, right? ‘Cause I’m gonna side with the Lord!” She nodded at everyone in the room, her deep blue eyes unblinking. And she had our attention. I sat still, probably gaping like a moron, frozen in fascination on the hard folding chair. The rest were still draped at large across the luxurious upholstery, but they were transfixed too. They watched and listened quietly, hardly even daring to breathe – except for Randy, who made little smacking sounds and pulled with his toes at some black lace on Rachel’s skirt. “Right,” Charity Dale and I said at the same time. She looked at me and then looked down, biting her lip. I guess it was because we weren’t really that close anymore. I mean we had grown up on the same street, but nobody else had to know that. But Rachel beamed straight into my face. I thought for a moment a skylight had opened in the roof, and her face was an icy mirror, and a ray of sunlight shone down on her. I’m sure it was the way Moses’s face had glowed, when he came down from the mountaintop. I had to blink and my eyes . . . I was almost, like, weeping, I was so dazzled. “That’s right, Patrick!” she said, her voice glowing too. “We want to be seen. We want to show them. So how are we gonna make ourselves seen? How are we gonna display the glory and power of the name of Jesus?” She sighed in dismay and put her snowy hand on Randy’s foot. “I mean, they’re already invading our country. UN troops are gonna set up their camp just outside of our town? And they’re everywhere! And our President’s like the antichrist, and there are lots of ‘Americans’ – you know, like liberals – who’re already willing to do whatever he says. So what are we gonna do, to put a stop to this, to draw a line in the sand?” Her blue eyes blazed with zealous passion and cobalt fire. It was just too glorious. I had to look away, but I had to do it casually, so that no one would notice how helplessly I had been staring at her. “We need to strike back!” Randy roared. He sat up and smacked Rachel’s thigh as he shouted, letting his fingers settle on her where they fell. She slid them back downwards to her knee. Everyone else groaned. The sudden movement sent eddies of heat across the room and snapped the cool, divine trance Rachel had held us in. “Randy! Bro!” Cameron complained, wiping sudden sweat off of his forehead; “Seriously.” “No, I mean it,” Randy insisted, gazing around the room with almost the same intensity Rachel had, except with his jerkiness replacing her icy hotness. “This is a war, like you said, and they have invaded our territory. It’s time we struck a blow in self-defense.” “You don’t mean, like, actually fight against the army out there?” Franklin asked. “Like, throwing rocks at tanks in Gaza, that kind of shizzim?” “We probably can do better than that. We are Americans, not, like, homeless people in the Third World,” Randy crossed his arms behind his head and smiled. “Would anyone like any lemonade? I just made it this morning,” Mrs. Wedgwood, Rachel’s mother appeared abruptly, holding a sweating pitcher and looking – like her daughter – entirely unaffected by the heat. Hands went up lazily across the living room. “I don’t think we should plan to hurt anybody,” Charity said, glancing over at me to see if I was about to say the same thing again. I was, actually, or at least I wanted to; I was glad she got to it first. “Well,” Randy sighed, exasperated. “I guess we can all just sit here and wait for them. They will come for you, you know. All of you! 666. They will, frickin’, try to write it on your forehead.” “Watch your language, Randall,” Mrs. Wedgwood murmured, pouring lemonade into Franklin’s glass. “Sorry, Mrs. Wedgwood. But we gotta do something, and it’s got to be really something, you know? It’s gotta be, like, big. Something that God can get behind. We gotta try and stop them!” Everyone was looking at Randy now, except Mrs. W., who continued to pour drinks. It was his show, and it was like . . . it was like, everyone except me seemed to think he really cared, all of a sudden. I mean it was a joke; I could totally tell he was just trying to see how far he could go, but no one called him out. So I just drank my lemonade and watched, like I was on the outside. And I felt like I was on the outside, because Rachel just kept looking at Randy, with those round blue eyes. She’d forgotten all about me. She was no longer including me in the cool brightness of her gaze. “Sabotage,” Randy was saying. “We don’t need to actually shoot at anyone or blow anything up, just screw with their equipment a little. They want people to stand up on these jumping platforms. But what if the platforms buckle under a certain amount of weight? What if their boards develop mysterious cracks, or supports disappear in the middle of the night?” “But those’ll be guarded,” Charity said. “I mean, they’re gonna expect someone to come in and try and screw them up. Even just, like, taggers from the public schools.” “You have a better . . . idea?” he said, snapping at her at first, and then pronouncing the last word like he was all nice and sincerely interested in her opinion. She shrugged her shoulders. “What about the clocks?” Franklin suggested. “Everyone’s supposed to jump at the same time, right? What about screwing with the, like, the clock tower? We could probably climb inside there and reset the hands, so that everyone who looks at it would be all confused and wouldn’t jump. And there are all those other signboards around town, too, with, like, digital displays. I bet we could take over a fair few of them.” “That’s a great idea, Franklin!” Rachel beamed at him. “How can Satan accomplish his work if his followers don’t even know when to jump? If we can make them wait long enough, maybe some of them can still be saved.” “Brilliant! Good job Franklin,” Randy added, trying to retrieve the attention. “But maybe we can do both. Get to the clocks and the platforms at the same time, and use the clocks as a distraction. Because, really, they’ll be able to reset the clocks, but they won’t know about the platforms until it’s too late, if we do it right. And anyone who plans to jump is just as good as marked already anyways.” He glanced around with this expression of openness and concern. “I know you’re all afraid of what might happen if you get caught, but we are at war. And this is, like, the Tribulation, too; this is Biblical prophecy, you know. We shouldn’t be worried about what will happen if we get caught. We should be more worried about what’ll happen if we don’t do anything.” “Do not fear those who can kill the body; fear rather He who can kill the soul,” Rachel quoted (Matt. 10:28). Randy patted her leg, all possessive, and they looked into each other’s eyes and smiled. “So, what’s the plan, then? Who’s gonna do what?” Cameron asked. I thought of watching while the legs of some UN platform collapsed under the weight of a dozen people standing ten feet off the ground. I thought about what it would be like to see some of our non-Christian neighbors up there, so sure they were a part of some big scientific movement that was going to save the world, only to come crashing down before they had a chance to put that final seal on their lack of faith. I did kind of want to be the one to show them they were wrong, but if something like that happened . . . I kind of didn’t want them to know it was me. And I thought of all the digital displays along the road, attached to banks, gas stations, former Radio Shacks. I thought of trying to break into one of those at night, and then get into computers, and make the change and get out without being caught. It would be like Mission: Impossible, except it wouldn’t work. I would have no idea what to do. “I’m going analog,” I said. “What?” Randy and Rachel both turned to look at me at the same time, their heads turning one other, cogs and wheels. “I’ll take the old clock tower.” # # # The public schools were closed until the crisis was passed, but VBA stayed open. Coach Kroger called all of our parents and told them attendance was a matter of conscience. “Of course it’s a personal decision; you have to do what’s right for your family,” he assured them. “But as for me and my family, we will be at school tomorrow.” When Monday rolled around, there were even fewer absences than normal. All the teachers showed up; they probably had their own “as for me and my family” chats with Coach K. The volunteer moms were out in full force, too. They stood clustered in foyer, talking to each other in low voices and touching us all on the shoulder as we walked by. Rachel and Randy kept planning for our counterattack on the platforms and the clocks via cell phone – and no one seemed to mind if we had them out in class anymore. The teachers spent most periods praying with us, reading from Scripture, and lecturing on how Jesus said to keep busy at the End of Days, how in both parables and prophecy He indicated He didn’t want to come back and find we hadn’t been doing anything but wasting our time. The exception was Mr. Thom. He greeted us Monday morning with a new packet of worksheets in his classic, befuddled style, and he kept building on it all week. We were supposed to be doing all these equations with inertia and velocity, or something like that. Every day he kept our heads down, cranking out numbers. He didn’t sit still behind his desk, either. He circled like some sort of dark cloud caught in a cyclone, ready to unleash lightnings on anyone who looked up from his work. It was like he actually still thought studying science was important. It was nice, too, for awhile, just to not have to think about the fact that the world was about to end and Lucifer was making his big power play for all the hearts and minds of our nation. It was nice just to stare at numbers, and just breathe easy among these totally abstract concepts, and not have to constantly remind myself that breaking the law and risking jail might be bad, but would impress Rachel and definitely show God I was on the right side. So Thom’s class was actually the most relaxing hour we spent at school. And then, Wednesday morning, Franklin asked him what we were actually working on. “Mr. Thom, hey.” He raised his hand. Everyone looked up from their papers, blinking as our eyes refocused. No one had spoken a word out of turn in science class since we arrived on Monday. “Hey. What does this mean?” He asked it like an accusation, waving the worksheet as if it was exhibit A. Mr. Thom sighed and paced over to the whiteboard. “Well,” he said, “we’re trying to calculate potential energy. If we take an object with a mass of 60 kilograms times ten to the ninth power,” he wrote it on the whiteboard, “and drop it from half a meter at the speed of gravity – nine point eight meters per second, squared . . . you get a potential force of 3 joules times ten to the eleventh power.” He fiddled with the whiteboard marker nervously and glanced around the room. “So what are we trying to prove?” Franklin asked again, folding his arms. “What is this sixty billion kilogram object? You gonna tell us what it is?” Mr. Thom smacked his lips behind his stormy beard. “It’s approximately the weight of all the people in China.” There was a complete silence, even from Franklin, as we took stock of what we had been doing. Without knowing it, we were trying to prove the science behind the jump; trying to validate the premise behind the whole Chinese/UN takeover of the world. It felt like . . . I don’t know, like we had been learning how to raise demons, or dance before the golden calf or something. “But this is only one part of the equation; you all have different pieces;” Mr. Thom sounded hurried now, kind of frantic. Maybe he knew what was coming. “Today I was going to put you in groups of three, so you could pool your data, and you could find out for yourselves whether or not you thought it would work. It’s very complicated. You, Michelle,” he strode over to her desk and pointed at her worksheet, which she leaned away from, lifting her hands as if it was a hairy spider; “you were working out the different effects of the impact if all its force hits an object in one small spot, versus if it’s all spread out across a wider area. “And you, Patrick,” and suddenly he was towering over me, smiling proudly, an over-emotional grandfather, “you have the really tough equation. This one.” He held it up for everyone to see. “Because the jump doesn’t introduce any new mass or energy into the system; it just displaces what’s already here. It’s not like . . . the comet, which could whack us from the outside, like a cue ball; it’s more like what happens when you shake a half-full gallon of milk. Waves made on the inside can cause the whole thing to jiggle and move.” He licked his lips and actually seemed excited, like we should be excited too, instead of just worried about what would happen when somebody found out we’d been working on this. A girl behind me made a gagging noise. “I feel like I’ve been trying to talk to Amy Winehouse on a Ouija board,” she said. The sunburst sank back beneath Mr. Thom’s beard and the stormy glower returned. “So, what? You want us all to go sign up for the big jump?” Franklin was playing the cold interrogator. “Join hands with the One World Movement, and turn our backs on heaven?” Mr. Thom ran his fingers through his sideburns. “I want you to think for yourselves,” he said, “and to make informed decisions. That’s all. That’s all I’ve ever wanted for you. Look” – he raised his hands like he was going to point at something, and then dropped them without finding an object – “They try to tell you that this comet is Wormwood; they’re saying it’s a star cast down from the heavens, sent to bring desolation to a third of the Earth. It’s from the book of Revelations, and it seems to fit. Yes. And I know everyone around you says there’s no way we can avoid it. But this isn’t the first time world events have meshed well with the symbols of Biblical apocalypse. Would-be doomsday prophets have concocted flawless interpretations of Revelations every few decades for the last two thousand years! “And there have been massive meteor strikes on Earth before. Not many in human history, perhaps, but . . . the geologic record is full of them. It happens. Just look at the craters on Mars! Or on the moon. The moon’s like a shield for us, basically, but still, plenty of stuff gets through from time to time. Collisions are common on the cosmic scale. “But even if Alhazen is the real, Biblical Wormwood; even if it is supposed to kill a third of the population, and destroy third of the land, and poison a third of the sea . . . does that really seem like such a good thing? Aren’t we supposed to protect life – especially human life? Take out your Bibles!” he ordered, in a fair impression of every other teacher at VBA this week. He didn’t wait to see if we did it, though. “In Genesis, Abraham pleaded with God not to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. He made God promise He wouldn’t, if He could find ten good people in either city. In Exodus, Moses begs God not to destroy all the Israelites in the wilderness, and God changes His mind. He changes His mind! Jonah warns the Ninevites of God’s coming wrath; they repent, and God spares them. In the Gospels, John asks Jesus if they should call down fire on a city that rejects Him, and He says no. He says no. And yet here we are, assuming that this comet is God’s will. But what if . . . what if, even if it is His will, there’s still something we can do about it? What if a third of the people on Earth die, and there was something you could do about it, and you didn’t? Don’t some of you feel like you at least ought to try?” The door opened behind us, and Coach Kroger stepped in. He looked cool as always, authoritative, calm and professional. He towered over the rest of us – even over Mr. Thom – a bald mountain top, peaking out over a sea of clouds. He shook his head once at the science teacher, who had frozen mid-rant at the appearance of his administrator. “It’s time for you to go,” Coach Kroger said. His expression was one of sadness and disappointment masking tightly controlled, muscular anger. Mr. Thom flushed red and squeezed the marker in his fist, but then he dropped it and stormed quietly out of the room, a breeze sucking at the worksheets in his wake. We caught them and held them to our desks reflexively. “Did you hear. . . ?” Franklin asked him. Coach Kroger nodded. “Yeah. Thanks for texting me. I came as soon as I got your message, but I stood outside listening for a while.” He sighed. “I had to be sure he meant what he said, that it wasn’t just some exercise. The time of the harvest has come, and Lord begins to separate the wheat from the weeds.” He pulled a chair to the front of the room, and sat on it backwards, facing the class. “Let’s pray.” # # # They sent us home early from school that afternoon; I guess Coach Kroger didn’t want to have to deal with angry parents demanding he account for his heretical science teacher. Mom came to pick me up. She was smiling, and she had tears shining in her eyes, like she hadn’t ever expected to see me again until we met in heaven. “Miss me since breakfast?” I asked, as she got into the driver’s seat and closed the door. “Let’s just not go anywhere until . . . let’s just stay at home together for awhile,” she said. “I went shopping this morning; that was quite the experience.” She looked distant for a moment, and I could almost see the scenes of carts and competition playing behind her eyes, like some grocery-based reality show. She blinked and sat up, started the car and looked over her shoulder. “But there’s enough food in the house now for a week or two. We won’t need to go anywhere.” “So you’re not jumping?” I asked. I had meant to be sarcastic, but I guess it didn’t come out quite right because she screwed up her forehead a little, the way people do when they’re trying to think and still keep their eyes on the road. “I don’t know,” she said finally. “Have you seen the height of those platforms? They’re ten feet tall at least. There’s no way you can land safely coming off one of those things.” “Mom,” I said, stretching the syllable in dismay. She looked at me quickly, then checked her mirrors. “Kidding,” she said. She was quiet for a moment. “So you think it’s pointless, then, Patrick? You think it’s all over, after this weekend? I heard about what happened with Mr. Thom this morning.” I couldn’t quite figure out how to answer her, because I couldn’t really believe she was asking me. Like, she was my mom. If the world were going to end, shouldn’t she know about it before me? “Look,” she said; “I’ll make this deal with you: I won’t go anywhere if you don’t either. We stay together and watch the whole thing from our living room, or we go together, and face whatever’s coming. How’s that sound to you?” “Good,” I said, because I didn’t know what would happen, with Rachel and the clocks, or Randy and the platforms, but I knew I wanted mom to stay home, in front of the televisions, where she was supposed to be. And it felt like she was treating me like a grown up. But I guess everyone is a defacto adult at the end of days. Adults come and go when they please; I snuck out of my window at 11:30. Mom had come and stared at me from the doorway an hour earlier, which meant she had probably gone to bed. I’d pretended to sleep. Everything in the house was silent except the background electronics. The TVs were muted if they were still on. I stepped out into the gravel below my window as quietly as I could and didn’t look back. It felt like . . . like the air wrapped these cold fingers around me then, and pulled me forward. Like even if I had turned around all I could have seen were these black, icy fingerprints. So I stuffed my hands in my coat and kept going. I don’t know how long my phone buzzed before I noticed it. I flipped it open to check the time when I got to Gordion St., and there was this whole long series of messages. The cc: list now included the entirety of Veritas Bible Academy. I had to duck under the shadow of a feral juniper to wait for all the messages to load. Rachel and Randy had concocted this elaborate plan, with three layers of action, codenames, synchronized watches. Franklin was heading up a group of protesters; they were going to throw rocks at the UN troops after all. Another senior named Matt, who could pass for a Mexican, was supposed to go out to the poor neighborhood, convince people to violate the military curfew, and start a riot. I wasn’t entirely clear on how he was supposed to do it, but I guess Rachel and Randy thought he was up to the job. Cameron and Charity led two groups to sabotage the jumping platform on Hewitt Blvd and the digital clock above it. Rachel and Randy had given themselves the biggest set of platforms, the ones beneath the old clock tower in Mahalo square. The last message in the list was just for me, from Rachel. # Dear Patrick, # I know you have a tremendous heart for God, but there’s been a change of plans. Don’t worry about messing with the main clock tower. We will take the platforms alone. Stay home and support us through prayer. # Blessings, Rachel (Gen. 29:17) # It had Rachel’s tagline, but I could read Randy’s sweaty fingerprints all over it. He had convinced her to ditch me. But I was already more than halfway there! I could see the clock tower now, illuminated in spotlights above the houses. And if I closed my eyes, I could just about picture Rachel tied to its top, dangling over a precipice, Randy her captor. Behind my eyelids, his whole aspect flashed with malice; he laughed and leered and dared me to the rescue. So I pushed my way back through the shrubbery and into the street. There was no turning back. The clocktower was mine. If everything went according to plan, there would be no one else in the city that night. Just Randall Cunningham and me, battling for the princess at the end of the world. # When I got to the clock tower, there was no one else there at all. White platforms extended in every direction, suspended in the night like a spreading deck of giant, floating cards – or like a table prepared for me in the presence of my enemies (Psalm 23). Except there were no enemies present. Perhaps the National Guard realized they were in the service of Babylon and deserted out of protest, or perhaps Matt’s curfew riot worked. Either way, the way was clear for the Lord. Access to the tower had once required a key, but it opened into a little tourist information office that had been abandoned even before the invasion. Shuttered but not locked, of course, because Mahalo was as safe as it was boring. The few tweakers and pot smokers in town stuck to the fringes. They avoided this place, most likely due to paranoia about enclosed spaces, but VBA kids had used it for secret prayer meetings as long as I could remember. It was a thrill, like hiding in the upper room – except that it was the opposite, a sunken, basement office, several steps down from the rest of the surrounding plaza. The ceiling hatch up to the clock tower had always been unlocked before. I myself had been up behind the clock several times. Someone had installed an old PC interface on the landing in the nineties, but the basic organs were much older. It was entirely possible to turn the gears and reset the whole thing by hand. All I had to do was get across the square undetected, raise the shutter enough to crawl underneath it, and I would be good to go. I turned in a circle to make sure no one was watching, then rolled like a ninja across the final shadow to the sliding metal door. My heart beat so powerfully that it made my arms feel comparatively weak, and for a moment I doubted I’d be able to lift the shutter on my own. But it rose almost at the touch of a finger, gliding upwards and rattling just enough to make me wince. Inside, the office was dank and humid. It was shady and still but somehow far hotter and wetter than the open Mahalo night. I switched on my flashlight, located the ladder to the hatch. I had just made it to the second rung, when the pearly gleam below the half-raised shutter erupted in red and blue. When the siren hit, I felt almost physically knocked over, as if it were some sort of sonic laser beam aimed directly at me. A disembodied voice, terrible and compelling, commanded, “Come out with your hands over your head . . . .” And I just knew. I knew in that moment that the Beast was laughing and the Lamb was slain. # # # “You shoulda stayed home,” Randy said to me for, like, the eighteenth time. “You shoulda gone home like we told you to. The operation would have been effective. But no, the little dipstick’s gotta be a hero, gotta try and impress the ladies. Yeah, I know what this is about.” He maneuvered in front of me to catch my eyes while I tried to look away. “You jeopardized the fate of nations for the sake of your sick little crush on Rachel Wedgwood. Hah. Good luck with that now, turdblossom.” “Get off his back, Randy, geez,” someone called from the other side of the cell. We were in an old-fashioned, small town jail, a drunk tank for all the assorted tweakers and disorderlies rounded up over a weekend. It was maybe half the size of a typical classroom, with discount brand, lime green paint over concrete walls, floor, and ceiling. Actual iron bars cast fuzzy, fluorescent shadows across the faces of all my fellow inmates. On a typical evening they would mostly have been cadaverous losers, bloated or scrawny, in unwashed shirts. And there were a few greybeards here and there, islands of surliness and stench. But they were overwhelmed by a sea of well-groomed, teary-eyed VBA students tonight. The air was heady with regret and Axe body spray. The girls were in another cell down the hall. At first we could hear them crying, and for awhile some of them were singing worship songs, but for the most part they had gone silent. It had been at least two hours since we were picked up – or at least that’s what it felt like. There were no clocks on the walls anywhere. The officers had taken away all our cell phones when they loaded us into the back of the van. And it was my fault, I guess; I did trip that alarm when I rolled underneath the shutter to the clock tower. They had some sort of infra-red security system, like the kind that keeps your garage door from closing on you. If it wasn’t for me, they might not have caught us so fast. But they were there before I’d even made it up the ladder – like, a whole squad with flashing lights and blaring sirens, and riot gear, and the paddy wagon. I hadn’t told them where the rest of us were, either, but they managed to round up just about everyone. Randy wouldn’t believe I didn’t snitch. I didn’t bother telling anyone. If there was about to be a rapture, it was probably best just to leave it between me and God anyway. The door at the end of the hall opened, and another officer came in to talk to the one leaning against the wall there, guarding us. We couldn’t hear what they were saying, even though we all quieted down to listen. But someone was getting out; it was obvious, and the whole cell full of teenagers kind of stood up at attention, like we were all strays and if we wagged our tails hard enough maybe someone would choose to take us home. The guard at the end of the hall stood, too, with the keys actually jingling in his hands. They walked together towards us; those closest to the bars took a step back instinctively. And they walked past us – down the hall, toward the girls. Several boys groaned. A moment later there was a squealing metallic sound – carrots pulled from the gardens of vegetarian nightmares – and then the whole female contingent of VBA activists paraded by, hunched and weeping. It was so sad, it was like they were straight out of Schindler’s List, except for the fact they were wearing perfume and clothes. Even Rachel looked broken. She paused to look into our cell as she shuffled by, and so did a few of the others, and I expected her to give us a word of encouragement or prophecy, or even just recite Psalm 22 or something; but all she did was frown and shake her head and then look down again. “We’ll keep fighting, Rach; you hear me?” Randy called after her. “‘Not peace, but a sword,’” someone else shouted from the back, Franklin, I think, and then the whole group was pushing up past me, banging on the bars of the cell and shouting “‘Not peace, but a sword!’ ‘Not peace, but a sword!’” Charity Dale lagged behind the rest of the group. She stopped and turned at the door, just before the metal detector, and scanned through the whole crowd as if she was searching for something. She looked scared – terrified – but not like she was scared she was in prison. I mean, it looked like she was scared of us, of the noise the other protesters were making, like we were rioters or anarchists or animals or something. Not the elect, not her brothers in Christ. She looked disgusted, and her eyes met mine. I don’t know how, exactly, but in that moment I could see it in her eyes; I could see that she was weighing it; she was deciding between me and the jump. It wasn’t all the world, and VBA, Alhazen, the Chinese, and God and all the angels; it was just her, and me, and leaping from a white platform. Her head tilted slightly. She looked askance, curling her lip into a sneer. And then she turned again and walked out after the crowd. The boys settled back in after the girls left. I guess their parents had shown up to collect them; I don’t know. No one told us, and no one came to quiet us down, either. I mean, I would have been afraid that someone would get hurt, the way they were carrying on and pressing into the iron, but the guards didn’t care. They knew why we were here – I hadn’t squealed, but plenty of the other kids had – and they understood well enough; it was like they didn’t believe in any of it. Like they looked at us and just saw a bunch of juvenile delinquents; they didn’t catch any of the spiritual energy. I almost saw us like that, too, for a second, staring back at myself out of Charity Dale’s eyes. I suppose Jesus was right. At this moment in history, so near the end of the world, even the elect might be deceived, if that were possible (Matt. 24:24). “It’s not like you could have reset the clock tower anyway, dipstick.” Randy was talking to me again. He’d rushed the bars when the girls walked by, like everyone else, and afterwards he’d gone a ways into the corner with Cameron and Franklin, to pray or shoot craps or something. But now he was up in my face again. I looked up at him, forgetting to check my reflexes for a moment. “What? You just realized I was talking to you?” he blinked and smiled; “Yeah, you frickin’ slug; I’m glad you’re finally paying attention. You got us all caught, you know that? But it’s not just about us, right? It’s not just about Rachel and Charity. It’s about God’s plan, about being faithful to the end. Who are you faithful to, Patrick Smith? Do you ever think about anyone but yourself?” I opened my mouth to say something, but it was, like, buzzing with the sounds of crime, and the costs of crime, and everywhere else in the cramped little room people were already saying whatever I might have thought to say anyway. So I looked down again. “Randy, geez, leave it alone!” Franklin came up next to him and shoved him away by the shoulder. “It’s not like he’s getting out of here anyway.” “What do you mean?” This was Cameron. Franklin pulled them both into a huddle and said something quietly. They paused to look at me and smirk periodically. I strained to hear, but only picked up that they were talking about Franklin’s father, who was a local bigshot lawyer that everyone knew and respected in Mahalo. # Half an hour later (or an hour, or three, or five long minutes) everyone was gone except me and the graybeards. One of them was sprawled out and snoring alongside the back wall, another was talking to himself in the corner. He flicked a glance at me every once and awhile, and I had tried to listen to him for a little bit, but eventually I decided it was best not to. The guard by the door strolled by periodically and asked me how I was doing. “Okay.” “The rest of those boys, they weren’t friends of yours? Why did they leave without you?” “I dunno,” I shrugged. It was a question I’d spent a lot of time thinking over myself. No one told me, but it seemed likely that Franklin’s dad had sprung everyone else, threatening to sue the police station or something. Somehow Randy had convinced him to release everyone except me. They hadn’t said anything to me as they left, but they were crazily smug about giving each other high fives right in front of me without acknowledging my existence at all. The guard sighed. “Well, if either one of these” (he pointed to the two drunkards) “gives you any trouble, you just holler.” I nodded and he walked away. # It was luridly, depressingly lit in the cell and the adjoining hallway, with no windows anywhere by which you could tell day or night, but the industrial silence of the building and the quality of the air seemed to shift, eventually, into early morning. The guard on duty changed shifts again, and the talkative drunkard fell into a slightly less noisy sleep. It was colder, I could tell; it was the morning of the jump, and I was still stuck in jail. I realized I hadn’t prayed since before I was caught. I’d spent hours – it felt like hundreds of hours – feeling sorry for myself, cursing Randall, working out explanations for my mom, and practicing apologies to Charity and Rachel, trying to figure out how it wasn’t my fault, but I hadn’t actually taken it to Jesus at all. As soon as I realized this, I felt a wave of revulsion. Here we were, facing an extinction-level event and the end times, the comet Wormwood cruising in on us and threatening to take out a third of the world, and I was in a jail cell, muttering to myself about how some high school girls felt about me. Maybe Randy had been right. Maybe Charity was right, and that’s why she looked so appalled and disgusted when she left. This was small potatoes, these little dramas in my life, compared to what was going on at the global – at the cosmic – scale. So I bowed my head. # God, I prayed, have mercy on me. Have mercy on us, according to your great love and patience. God, all I wanted was to stand with you. I mean I wanted to impress Rachel, too, by showing her what a great soldier for Christ I was, but, I mean . . . I meant it. I want to do your will. Is it your will that this comet collides with the earth, and the sky rolls up like a scroll? Did someone do something, or is it just, like, a timer went off in heaven, ding, and that was it? Is it your will that I sit here, doing nothing, while the whole world comes to an end? God, please, please, take care of my mom. # I was mumbling this over and over, with my eyes closed, and I probably sounded like the crazy drunk guy, when I heard a gentle rap on the iron bars above me. # “They say there’s gonna be an earthquake,” the guard said, laughing, as he opened the door for me. “You can tell them that the ground shook, and your chains fell off, and the door swung open and you escaped.” I hesitated for a moment. “You mean like Paul and Silas?” “Hell yeah, I know my Bible!” he smiled. “It’s too late for you to interfere, you know. There are protesters out there – adults, who really should know better – but there are more soldiers and police, and we are better prepared. So just run on home. Go see how that mother of yours is doing.” # # # I could hear them all somehow – the rioters, the protesters, the U.N. Peacekeeping force, all the rest of the town and the immigrants who had been brought in for the jumping – but I couldn’t see anyone. The streets were totally deserted; everything was concentrated downtown. I could feel the pull of it, too, like it was impossible to stand still, and any direction I went besides towards the center felt like running uphill. It was almost like the ground was tilted, slanted . . . I wondered if the Chinese jump had already taken place, and maybe what I felt was gravity gone screwy, tugging me forever away from the Lord’s intended course for the earth. The front door of our house was open when I got there, and the screen was propped as if someone had been carrying furniture. I wondered if there had been looters, or something, but the rest of the block was peaceful and quiet. The house was quiet, too, as I rushed in without bothering to unstop the screen behind me. “Mom?” I called into the silence. There were no televisions on, and there was no response. “Mom?” It wasn’t like the TVs were on mute. I paused to listen for a second, but I couldn’t even hear the electric buzz that you get when you lower the volume during commercials. It was actually just off; the whole house was silent. I could hear the wind outside, but the house itself was like a husk, an empty shell cast off by the living creature of entertainment and information that used to reside within. “Mom?” I went down the hall and into her room, but she wasn’t there either. Her bed was sort of half made, like normal, with the sheets and blankets all pulled back so it could air out during the day. There were a few clothes on the floor, but the drawers were mostly shut, and her suitcases were still in the closet. No signs indicated that she had packed frantically and left in a hurry, like in some secular action movie. Maybe she had been raptured! But then she wouldn’t have had time to turn off all the TVs. I looked for a note, like a suicide note, or like Martin Luther’s theses nailed to the door, but there was nothing, not even on the whiteboard on the refrigerator. But there, plugged into a jack on the kitchen counter, by the microwave, was her cell phone. Why would she leave that? There was her purse, too, under the end table by the couch. Maybe she had indeed been taken up – maybe the rest of the neighborhood had, too, and that was why it was so quiet everywhere except where all the rumbling was coming from, to the north, in Mahalo center. Or maybe . . . an iPhone screen could shatter, falling from ten feet to the ground. I imagine you wouldn’t want to carry anything else with you, either; if the earth did reverberate from the impact, it could be dangerous to have bags and keys and things swinging around in the crowd. Or maybe she was kidnapped or something, and that’s why the door was propped open. Someone had carried her out. It was a weird decision; I mean it felt like some sort of renunciation, some sort of ritual, but I had to find out what happened to my mom. Stuffing my hands into the pockets of my coat, I fished out everything – gloves, pens, receipts, forgotten candy wrappers – and dropped it in the kitchen trash can. I took my phone out of my pocket too, and my wallet, and my house keys. For a moment I thought about throwing these away, too; I mean, it was the end of the world, and if I was raptured, I wasn’t planning to take them with me. But you don’t just throw away a cellphone, even if it’s outdated. There are chemicals in those things that can seriously poison the groundwater, and poor children in third world countries can get sick by taking them apart and selling their components. So I put my valuables on the counter, flew out the door, and ran back towards Mahalo square. It was weird running openly down the same streets I had snuck across so stealthily just the night before. It was almost as dead this morning as it was last night, too, though the sun was shining, and there were some birds. And I could hear, somehow, the low but rising roar of whatever was happening downtown. It felt good to be moving toward that sound instead of away from it, like I wasn’t fighting anymore, like I was caught in the vortex and I was just going with it. I let Gordion St. pull me where it would, and before I knew it the jumping platforms were looming up ahead of me again. I heard the crowds before I saw them: Hundreds of protesters filled the end of the street where it ran into the square. Some of them crouched closer to the buildings with kids, trying to screen them from the main body, in case it erupted into violence. Others pushed forward, waving signs and shouting, “Wormwood!” “Wormwood!” “Wormwood!” It was their rallying cry, and it seemed to come from everywhere at once as I worked my way through them, toward the broad square filled with white platforms. Riot police with plastic shields stood in formation, blocking the way. They kept a perimeter clear behind them, a strange calm between the roiling crowd of protesters and the meeker masses milling about beneath the platforms in the square. I wondered why they didn’t fire tear gas to disperse the crowd, but then I realized: The wind, like everything else, seemed to be drawn toward the square in the center. If they gassed the protesters, they’d get fumes all over the platforms, too. Protecting the jump was paramount; the cops had gas masks, but the jumpers didn’t. I pushed my way toward the front of the crowd. I’d never seen a group of people so angry before, so many angry faces and so much outrage in one place! It was all I could do to keep myself from shouting “Wormwood!” along with them. I caught myself mouthing it. One of the cops behind the shields yelled at me to halt. I don’t know how I heard it over the rest of the din; he must have been using a megaphone or something. I couldn’t tell which one it was, but I just spoke to the one directly in front of me. I told him, “Please, I need to get through. I need to see my mother,” and I don’t know if he heard me either, but after a moment rifles (with rubber bullets?) appeared atop the shields to my left and right, the wall of shields opened up just enough to let me through. “You have five seconds,” the megaphone voice said again, bodiless and omnipresent. I rushed through, passed the officers, and into the calm of the demilitarized zone around the square. I could hear the shouts of “Wormwood” still, of course, but now they sounded accusatory, like they were all directed at me. And then the sound of the shouts faded, as I stepped up onto the curb and in amidst the masses waiting to mount the platforms. Somehow the air was stiller here, and a palpable silence hung in the air, an aggressive mute, like the kind you notice just before it really starts to snow. “Mom?” I called out into the silence. I mean I tried to shout, but either the atmosphere of the place just swallowed the sound, or else I was too tense to use my diaphragm effectively. I could barely hear myself or anything else. A couple of people shifted near me, ruffled just slightly, like emperor penguins. No one else moved. Their attention was too focused or too divided between the platforms and the sky. “Mom?” I tried again. There was no way to see her from the ground; it was just listless, frozen, penguin people everywhere. I needed to climb up to get a higher vantage point. A UN guard seemed to be climbing both up and down the steps to the platform. She had the richest, most flawless black skin I had ever seen. She was definitely not originally from Mahalo. “Please let me by,” I muttered, my words disappearing in the void. “I need to get up there. I need to find my mom.” She looked down at me (or up at me; I guess it just felt like she was looking down) and opened her mouth to speak. Whether her words simply vanished like mine had, or whether she had yet to make a sound, I don’t know; whatever her response had been, it was interrupted by a clear, crackling voice that seemed to come from everywhere at once. “The Chinese jump . . . has occurred . . .” the disembodied voice echoed across the crowd. “You may begin to feel . . . tremors . . . . Brace yourselves . . . .” Via some telepathy common to the unredeemed, the crowds around the bases of the platforms immediately organized themselves into orderly lines. I turned and flinched to find myself at the front of mine. The beautiful guard stepped aside and gestured for me to move on. There was nothing to do but climb up the ladder. From the top I could see thousands of other people, people of all races, sexes, and ages crowding onto similar platforms. It felt as though I could see beyond the mere boundaries of Mahalo, Oregon. I stood above the earth, above its curvature, and I could view multitudes and nations. My own mother was somewhere out there, standing resolute. She had to be. Mr. Thom was somewhere too. I tried to pick them out, but it was no use. But . . . half a dozen platforms away, standing right at the brink, and gazing back at me . . . Charity Dale. She nodded as she met my eyes. And then the Voice came again. “You must . . . await the signal . . . . There will be . . . many false signals . . . . The real signal . . . will appear . . . like lightning . . . from horizon . . . to horizon . . . .” The platform bounced below us with the concussion of feet, hundreds of feet, as more and more people clambered on. I was already too near the edge; any more shoulders and I wouldn’t be able to keep my balance. This wouldn’t be a jump. This would be a letting go, a giving in to the pressure and just tossing yourself into the air. I pushed backward, only to find that the ladder had emptied. Everyone else was standing still. Their attention was fixed on a ball of fire that was dawning out of nowhere, growing until it was a third the size of the sun. It hung deceptively stationary in the broad blue sky, staring down at us. We stared back in stillness while the platform shook. The platform bucked; the platform tilted – “Prepare to jump . . .” the Voice said. The crowd around me surged forward. I turned to face the ledge and looked up once more at the star Wormwood, comet 1000a (Alhazen). And then the sky rolled and roiled, and everything went black. The Healer |
Writer Go Hyee is a second language teacher. She started writing for a newsletter in college and for a local newspaper as well. She deems creative writing as a form of catharsis where she could express her thoughts without bias and judgement. She wants to remain anonymous to get a sense of freedom in expressing her thoughts—unbriddled by the norms. "In writing, I could be anyone and be in anyone's mind." |
The Vampire in the Ruins
The queer mystery surrounding the somber ruins haunted all the kids in our neighborhood. I, being a brave skeptic girl, would like to think that "The Vampire in the Ruins" was just a folklore our parents used to scare us so we wouldn't go out at night. However, my mind changed when one afternoon, before dark, I saw a faint flickering light from the upper room of the ruins. For a moment I thought it was just my imagination so I pointed it to my friends when suddenly an indistinct figure appeared standing by the window. We were all horrified! My friends had nightmares after that.
No one from the neighborhood dared to enter its gates. No one had the courage to find out if the Vampire truly exists. From my father's father's story, not a single person has disturbed the creature which got me asking: Was the vampire a male or a female? Where did it come from? Could vampires really turn into bats? I think it was just my curiosity that wanted to know the answers.
You see, I like scary stories and peculiar beings. Growing up, I and my friends always hang out reading our favorite books with lovely princesses, handsome princes, fairies, unicorns, butterflies...Yes, we read the same books but we never liked the same characters. I ended up liking the witches, the monsters, the goblins, the evil queens... was it weird? I just thought they are more interesting than the princesses who always need help. So perceptibly, it was becoming of me to take interest in the Vampire as I grew up.
The ruins where the vampire lives is a sight of curse to our neighborhood. It is the best place to shoot a scary film, if you would ask me. The old oak tree beside the fountain gave it a creepier look. Some old folks have seen women came into the house very late in the night--a victim after another-- but no one ever saw any of these women came out. According to some stories, Mr. Thomas, the father of Mrs. Bryce, once warned a woman from going inside but when she looked at him, her eyes were dark and lifeless as if her soul was sucked out from her body, then she just continued walking as if being hypnotized of some sorts.
Our town's sheriff never bothered to investigate. Don’t you find it weird? Well, come to think of it, the Vampire has never harmed anyone in the neighborhood-- it was just there, existing among us.
So, there I was with my friend one day standing outside the ruins. I slipped my head between the rusty metal railing trying to use my X-ray vision though the house. I wanted to see it! I wanted to know if a vampire really exists! Then I made up my mind to go inside. By the way, that was me being bold and stupid at the same time. I didn't really have a plan- more so a course of escape when necessary.
I begged my friend, Ada, to accompany me to sneak into the ruins. Vampires are asleep in the day so what harm could it do to us?
In broad daylight, we creeped in straight to the front door and cupped or hands on the glass pane. Nothing was odd. It was just a typical living room with old dusty wooden furniture. Of course, we knew that the front door was locked so we went around the house and saw the backdoor slightly open. Was it a trap? Like in Hansel and Gretel? We didn't care.
We sneaked inside the house from the backdoor, went stealthily up the creaking stairs all the way to the upper room- the Vampire's lair. I pulled out a small dagger that I took from my father's shed. Was I ready to kill? Of course, not! It was just reassuring to know that I had a knife around.
We put out ears close to the door. There was not a sound. See, I was right! Vampires do sleep in the day and we were perfectly safe! I opened the door as quietly as I could. Oh what a smell! the Vampire sure did keep the bodies of the victims there, I thought.
There was just a thin ray of light peeking from a small gap between the heavy drapery covering the window. I saw our best chance to beat the Vampire! Vampires are afraid of the sun! I quickly rushed to the window and welcomed the light! My friend shrieked and I jolted! We saw the Vampire lying face down on the floor. Was it asleep? Shouldn't it be sleeping in a coffin? Was it dead? Already? Why didn't we hear it scream as its flesh gets scorched in the sunlight?
Ada stood petrified for a moment. I mustered all my courage and went slowly around it with the dagger still in my hand. It was a male vampire. He sure was old. Do vampires grow old? There was an ash tray full of cigarette butts on the table. Do modern vampires learned how to smoke? I wondered. On his left hand, he was holding a silver... wand? Was it a wand? Aren't vampires afraid of silver? Was he a witch then? I couldn’t make out everything in a single weave.
My friend was hammered to where she was standing when something caught her attention. She walked slowly trying to recognize something that seemed very familiar. She took it out from the dusty shelf and read to herself, "The Princess and the Colorful Butterflies... by Alfred Edinsworth."
I went up to her and we both gazed at the sturdy mahogany shelf fully stacked with our favorite fairy tales.
THE BOY AND HIS SHADOW
A Locket For Anita
I met your grandmother when she worked as a servant girl in the bakery beside the cathedral. She started working there a month after she ran away from home. All I know is that she was an orphan raised by her abusive stepmother-- a typical fairytale in the making if you would ask me. A simple pale skinny maiden yet she was the loveliest in my eyes.
I would buy bread in the morning for breakfast, bread for snacks, bread at noon, and another piece of bread for dinner. At night, I would be lying on my bed half asleep excited to rise early to do it all over again. I knew your grandmother liked me because she always wore that same sweet smile every time I came buying. For months, I had been religious in my routine--never tired of going back and forth to see her smile.
When the war broke, I had to leave. So I decided to confess my love which she warmly accepted. As a sign of my devotion, I gave her this gold locket that I've worked hard for. Honestly, I wasn't hopeful that I would ever return but I told her to wait for me so we could both have our photos taken for the locket.
Four years had passed and I returned home as a man. I went to the bakery but I didn't find her. The owner told me that she went back to her hometown the day I went to war. Without waiting for another day, I set forth to find her. My dire heart has longed enough and I wouldn't waste another day without her by my side.
When I came near to the wooden gate, I saw Anita from a far as lovely as ever. My Anita, wearing the necklace I gave her. When our eyes met, my heart raced! I ran to her and hugged her really tight. It took her a while before she wrapped her arms around me and hugged me even tighter so tight that it seemed as if she never would want to let go. Just three days after, I asked her to marry me which she happily agreed to. My Anita... My Anita... I loved her every day since. Sadly, your grandmother died not knowing who I was to her-- her dementia caused her lot. Her last words were "Anita, Victor, Anita, Anita, Victor" and I said, "Yes, my darling, I am here."
She peacefully passed away holding this locket which she cherished with all her heart. A month after the funeral, while I was on the porch holding this locket, I could imagine my beautiful Anita dancing, prancing, and laughing under our favorite tree. The gold locket is old but it still glimmers. When I opened it, I saw my picture which was taken after the war. On the other half, a picture of two girls who looked exactly the same.
Thomas Joseph is a retired physician living in upstate New York who is new to writing for the non medical audience. He has published multiple medical peer reviewed articles over the course of his practicing career. In retirement he has remained engaged in medicine by teaching in a nursing program, He also teaches English to immigrants through the Literacy New York Program and enjoys traveling writing short story fiction and poetry, painting with watercolor and as of late helping to care for his year old twin grandsons, Curtis and Wesley. |
A Doctor's Lot
On other encounters for more serious maladies requiring a more thorough quickening of the blood so to speak, as in the case of migraine, sciatica or the loss of concentration which as of late had been more frequently affecting Mrs Dimwittie, a stronger remedy was required. Then the doctor was by necessity obligated to disclose a more serious matter such as the Doltish's reluctance to pay their bills in a timely fashion or their attempts to claim that they had paid when they had not, or the bane of all physicians' existences, a request for a medical consultation during a social occasion often veiled in “a friend of mine suffers...” format. During one of these encounters, the time required for the good doctor to relay the Doltish's doings in adequate detail to elicit the desired outcome, allowed for his turbot's Bechamel sauce to congeal into a glutenous paste rendering it inedible.
He had dined with both families over the years and with each had concluded that the only topic of conversation guaranteed to placate either was the other. He began to fear that he had not been as judicious with this drug as he should have been and that an addiction had ensued. It had come to the point now that just to maintain either family in a state of homeostasis, he felt it necessary, as a matter of course, to prepare one or two choice tidbits of gossip and bring them to the table in much the same manner as a zoo keeper brings herring in a bucket when he visits the seals.
ONE WAY ONLY
and community we have
taken the sad decision to..…
An orange sun was dispersing the early morning mist.
One walk a day allowed. He preferred to avoid the street ballets, where lone bodies were trying to give each other distance in the spring sunshine, and go out in the cold of the early morning, at dawn. How quickly this virus had attacked the human world. He’d read somewhere that a ‘eugenicist’ had said all this was Nature having a clear out, and even referred to those younger ones who’d died in corpore sano as ‘collateral damage’, indifferent to where managed attempts at human perfectibility had ended up in the past. Someone was kicking a tin can around the precinct, and a stray dog was crossing the road.
Before the lockdown he'd felt a misfit in an alien world of frenetic activity, and was pulled towards ‘self-isolating’ long before it became a Government diktat. Now that activity had become regulated and minimal, and street movement was tense and self-conscious, he felt more of a kindred feeling, sharing a general sense of weakness and vulnerability.
The John Barleycorn, where he’d spent many an evening over a pint, observing and listening, was shuttered up, a daily menu still visible on the chalkboard.
He tried to imagine the overcrowded city-centre flats of those who were out of work and had next to no food, and the sickness among them. But the real horror was beyond him.
He got near the corner and stopped. There were footsteps, soft and steady behind him. Instinctively, he skipped to one side. Why are they not following the rules? He looked round and saw Darrell walking his sloppy mastiffs.
“Scared ye, eh? Didn't expect to see me at this time of day.” Darrell grinned and moved away from him. The mastiffs knew Craig and ignored him.
“Not really.” He may look as though he’s going to kick your head in but he’s as soft as King Kong, he thought. “Your mother all right?”
“Yeah.” Darrell’s mastiffs pulled him off to the left.
“When this is all over, I’ll pop round.”
“Yeah.” And disappeared around the corner.
Craig liked him, and despite their differences, he would sometimes see him sitting alone in the pub and stop for a chat. Darrell's parents were originally from London and he had never sounded anything other than a Londoner. His mother used to clean for them before they split. Darrell always felt he was a bit different to those around him, thought he had something between his ears; to Craig he belonged to a class that had been dispossessed of its working class roots, and left to face a materialistic world alone. Craig wanted to believe that he had more affinity with that old working class than his own, but it was an illusion and he knew it. His own class fared little better, except materially. All were in the grip of money one way or another.
Where to now? Back ‘home’, but it wasn’t home any more. When the world had been ‘normal', and the Great Machine was demanding more of everyone, he’d felt his caravan was to be a place of less, a retreat from the madness, from his old job at the bank. But now with the Machine nearly quiet he sometimes felt more mad than they were, away from the solace of his old domestic routines. What had he done?
At first he’d loved every little detail of the new life, living in nature without exploiting it, and he taught himself to notice everything – the hacking call of his ‘sarky Cassandra’ in the mornings, a yaffle that jabbed away for ants, the daily robin taking off twigs to its nest, the swaying reeds and the sticklebacks darting about in the flow of the river. And on the path from the farm the hedgerows and banks coloured with pink campion, meadow buttercup and cow parsley, all rampant. There was a sense of fulfilment he’d never felt before. But as soon as it was clear that the whole of human life was threatened by a virus he began to feel he was in the wrong place, and wondered how it would be if he and Charlotte were still together.
He walked slowly out town, just a few dog walkers coming in the opposite direction, the odd cyclist getting a daily fix, a steady stream of food lorries, each with the word ‘logistics’ on it, and cars of lone ‘essential workers’ hurrying to work . Normally, the totality of this outdoor activity reduced to ‘essential’ gave him a buzz in spite of himself, but not this morning. He thought about the time at the gym when he’d bumped into Darrell and told him that he was going to quit his job, and how Darrell’s jaw had tightened.
“All right for you. You can afford to.”
He was right. It was an indulgence, and stupid. After that there had been a lumpy silence between them as they got changed.
The class thing too, and education, and the resentment.
But Darrell liked to read, not that he would admit it, and venture beyond the stuff his mother read.
Craig recalled the first time he’d met him properly. Before that, he’d only seen him with his mother, and they’d exchanged looks.
It was a cold evening, early in the year, when the politicians seemed to think the virus was a foreign problem.
“’Ere. You deaf or what?”
“Sorry?” And Craig looked round to see four lads and a couple of girls lounging about on the grass twenty yards away. He had been vaguely aware of them but they seemed to pose no threat so he ignored them. He had recognized one of them, a boy Charlotte had taught a few years before. The boys were waving their beer cans around and both girls were jabbering into their phones, and smoking.
“I said, Are you deaf?” And without thinking Craig waved his hand dismissively and turned away. Which was all it took.
The boy doing the shouting jumped up, walked forwards a few yards and threw his beer can at him. One of the others had been triggered into a rage and tore over to him.
“You fuckin’ tramp. You don’t do that to me,” and launched a kick into Craig’s side. Stunned, Craig fell to the ground. As though everything was part of an automatic process, the others charged over and started kicking him, including the girls. The boys laughed and the girls squealed about getting a happy-slappy movie on to their phones. Craig instinctively curled himself into ball. He had no choice but to take it. After what seemed like forever, aware of pain and blood, hanging on to life, he drifted into unconsciousness.
The next thing he felt was someone licking his cheeks – where the hell am I? – but he couldn’t open his eyes, and only heard the heavy panting – my God, it’s a dog – and then a gruff voice.
“You all right?” It was Darrell. Never had his laconic manner sounded sweeter or more welcome.
“No, I’m not all right. My leg.”
“The bastards were having a real go. But don’t worry. I know who they are. They'll know what's coming to them.”
“No, no, no need. Please.”
And Craig felt Darrell wiping the blood from his face with a handkerchief and for a moment the bourgeois boy in him wondered if it was clean. Darrell’s movements were careful and considerate. He pulled him gently on to the bench.
“Shall I phone the police?”
“No, no, no.”
“Good.”
And when Craig managed to open his eyes, he said, “I’ll be all right. Thanks. Did you manage to frighten them off?”
“What do you think? I’ll get you home.”
“No, I’ll be all right. If I could just have a wash.”
“Yeah.” And Darrell helped him to his mother’s house.
All that felt so distant, now that not even the local roughs got close to one another until they’d had a few beers. If you’re going to get the bloody disease, you’ll get it pissed.
Back at his new home, he remembered the time he’d blurted out his plan to Charlotte, about the abandoned caravan by the river, about speaking to the farmer, about wanting to live there, about giving up his job, about wanting her to come too. He’d put it to her that they’d paid off the mortgage, their children had left home, and now he wanted to live without greed, living off the land. And yet, he sensed an apprehension in himself, which he daren't fully admit to, that she might possibly agree, when really he wanted her to say no and free him. Without fully realising why, he felt uneasy, almost frightened.
“We’d get water from the river, a small wood burner and a compost toilet, all that sort of thing. A solar panel, and we could make a simple cooker from a couple of large tins. I’ve heard it’s been done. We’ll plant our own salad and vegetables. It’ll be fun. It’ll be different.”
She detected insincerity in these enthusiasms, as though a veil of youthful immaturity were being used to cover up more selfish motives. At first she was speechless, undecided which insult would hurt him most. The repressed agitation, which over recent years had become a feature of her daily self, was now intense and dangerous.
“You self-centred, egotistic bastard. You wanker”, and her anger burst its banks. Her word torrent flooded the room and their despair left them numb.
The collapse had been coming. He'd become distant and more introverted since their son had left home; and carelessly she’d struck up a friendship with a Polish teacher who when they talked in the staffroom gave her the kind of frisson that reminded her of her younger self. But neither Craig nor Charlotte consciously wanted the collapse, indeed they feared it, but both had the vague feeling that there was a fate carrying them forward, making decisions for them, creating situations, as though the causes were created long before, by themselves, without realising it, and what they were living through now were the effects.
In his numb guilt-ridden state he didn't know what to say. Perhaps he was a self-centred arsehole after all, dreaming of the freedoms of youth. It's not uncommon. A reckless wilful spirit and a search for the new. It's often the case when the children leave home. But he knew no-one who had acted quite as dramatically as he had.
Then he remembered his own parents, who had resisted the call of the wild, and settled into getting old together, constantly bickering, accepting their empty domestic and social routines without thinking, as though it were just in the nature of things and there was nothing to be done.
So if it was true for them, why not for him? That's just how it was. He would not resist.
After he moved out of the house the feeling grew in him that this was self-deception. He hated the duplicity, the not coming clean, the pious talk of a simpler, less naturedamaging sort of life, and expecting others to believe him, as though it were the whole truth. Anarchic nihilism expressed as virtue. A reckless dash for freedom hidden under a contemptible display of virtue. Sickening self-righteousness. A wilful ego looking after itself, not caring about the consequences, a slow, degenerative disease eating away at empathy and sympathy.
And now the virus had taken hold and brought all our societal relationships into question, he began to feel that there must be something that could be done. But what? What had been normal before was no longer normal, and he didn't know which way to turn.
Charlotte’s reflex teacherly existence at school had started to disintegrate when Craig was still living at home, long before the virus arrived. She tried to compensate by being pleasant to everyone but it struck a false note. Always she seemed to be smiling, busying herself, apologizing, in a hurry. At home she would look at herself in the mirror and see someone who wasn’t herself. She thought the image haunted, dislocated from everything, and felt very alone. Her sleep became fitful, and full of staffroom images. In one she was sitting in the corner, crying, knees up to her face, with the expressionless faces of the other teachers staring ahead. Then Craig standing over her, with hair growing uncontrollably, laughing at her scornfully, and the Head standing on some steps opening her locker and going through her things. Oh, God, no. There’s nothing there. Really. Then Piotrek passing in front of her, stopping, and a tear falling to the floor and transforming itself into a wild garden, with nettles and thistles. The next minute he was behind his desk in the classroom and she heard herself ask What does the name Piotrek mean? but he didn’t seem to hear, and she could see herself shouting noiselessly, For God’s sake, tell me. Please tell me. But he didn’t register. He got up and passed down the corridor. She panicked as she realised he was a fancy that would soon fade. She hurled herself after him desperately. I must ask him – I must, I must – Do you miss your country? I want to know. At that moment she heard his voice – angry and threatening – coming from another place, away from the evaporating image: This is my country. I am an alien in Poland. Do you understand? I’m going to take Protestant vows and my parents will never speak to me again. Do you understand? I’ll give back my MA. They can give it to someone else. I’m going to ask the priest to give me a PGCE. Do you understand? She heard herself gush: I understand. I understand. And then she was back in the staffroom, hiding under the table where they make the tea, biting her nails, and crying I didn’t ask him if he lived alone. And now he’s gone. Peeping out, she saw one of the new younger male teachers seducing the Head, caressing her breasts, and she gasped. At that moment she sat up in bed, dazed.
The school was in the poorest part of town and many of the children had behavioural issues, a resistance to learning, and difficult parents. Usually her nightmares were centred on her classroom or staff meetings. Her dreams all had an air of aggression and she would wake up exhausted.
A few days after Craig had left, she went to stay at Fran’s house. They’d been work friends for years and, and when Fran saw her brushing away tears, she got the story out of her and offered a spare room for a few days. They could keep her company. At first Charlotte was reluctant. She wanted to keep the mess to herself, and didn’t want it compromised by sympathy. After a week, she could no longer bear home, empty and full of reminders, and took Fran up on her offer, feeling herself drifting downstream, buffeted on all sides. If she had stopped to ask herself, truly do I want all this to happen, she would have rationalised her feelings of desolation and disintegration and said they were inevitable elements of any major life-change. But.
Fran noticed that Charlotte had been oddly impersonal, trying to hold herself in, carrying on in a forcedly cheerful way, hardening her external self, closing down her usual sensitive awareness of others. Fran understood, and was there to listen, if needed. Charlotte kept her disclosures to a minimum, which created tension in Fran. Peter remained indifferent. He was a science teacher, and a wonderfully-talented linguist and musician, and kept himself to himself. Fran said he was always either trying to learn a new language or practising the clarinet. Although he had an analytic mind and was fascinated by scientific processes – the bedroom was stacked with copies of New Scientist – his chief joy was losing himself in a world of scales, declensions and syntax. What was going on with Charlotte was of minor interest, her presence in the house hardly registering with him until Fran forced him to have a view on something. When he gave his opinion, she was always amazed, and a little disappointed, not at how sensible he was – he was always that – but how banal and unimaginative he could be, as though the lives of others were solely figurative, as though they had no feelings. Fran had given up trying to unlock him, and Charlotte saw him as a warning as to what can happen when the vital connections in a marriage are lost.
At school, Charlotte’s reserve caused its own strains. Her blond hair had always been dramatized by the black clothes she wore for teaching, her face softened by natural smiles and a general vivacity. But now the smiles were forced, tension lines had appeared around the eyes, and her hair seemed listless and uncared for. School stains appeared on her clothes and were only half-heartedly cleaned off. Sensing her own disintegration, she decided she must get hold of herself.
Then the Government imposed a lockdown and she could neither work nor spend time with friends.
Only go for her daily walk. Which she did, and took liberties with the rules, extending her route daily. She would look idly at places to live, knowing that before long she would have to sell, no matter what Craig wanted, not because she was compelled by money, but as an inevitability, for a new start.
Two weeks after the lockdown, she’d had another dream. During a walk she was passing by the side of a motorway, cars and lorries brushing her arm and splashing her in the rain. Then she saw a car coming right at her with Piotrek at the wheel, calm and passive, and in the same car, another Piotrek leaning out the window leering at her and another Piotrek sitting in the back laughing at her and yet another smiling understandingly. She saw herself mouthing Why? Why? but no sound came out, and she jumped out of the way.
She’d never seen where was Craig was living but knew roughly where it was. She was curious and toyed with the idea of walking in that direction but couldn't quite make the decisive move because it would feel like a transgression, and, besides, what if Craig caught sight of her?
“How’s Dad?”
“No idea. I haven’t seen him.” She wanted to add, And I don’t care, but resisted out of tact, and also because her voice would probably give away the lie, which she could barely acknowledge to herself, let alone admit to her son.
Charlotte was on her weekly video call. Lucas had been working as a research assistant at Aix-Marseille University in Marseille when the lockdown happened. For months before then he had feared he would have to leave because of his country’s political decision about Europe. Now he was unable to get his basic shopping without filling out an ‘attestation’, let alone travel back home.
Her younger daughter Jo was living with her Italian boyfriend, Marco, in La Spezia, and had been doing some part-time English teaching in a private school.
Lucas asked about Marco but Jo disappeared off screen.
“Just a sec.”
“Best not to press,” whispered Charlotte.
“I heard that, mum,” said Jo as she came back into a view. “It’s OK. He’s no worse. Still self-isolating. I just hope he doesn’t go into a second stage.” Lucas paused and let the sound of a siren fade away.
“And you?”
“So far so good. Hopefully my immune system is doing its job. There’s no point in me trying to keep away from him. We don’t touch, I’m sleeping on the sofa but that’s about it.” “Do be careful.”
But Jo wasn’t telling the truth. Two days ago, Marco’s temperature had gone crazy and he’d developed a dry cough and been rushed into the kind of hospital situation her mother would have seen on the news. She had to keep it all back. Charlotte was so vulnerable. She even kept back the anger towards her father. It would only be a matter of time before she got symptoms herself, and then what? She agonised about whether to be more truthful. Her mother would be furious if she finds out and I'd said nothing. But a combination of cowardice, Lucas’ presence, and the rather stilted exchanges of a video call kept her silent. Their normal intimacies, their body messaging, the subtle tones and looks, their mother-daughter love would have made openness possible. But right now, if there were any dips in her mother's mood, she'd feel helpless.
Darrell, stuck in the suffocating atmosphere of his mother’s house, hated the lockdown. His father had died a few years’ before and he’d stayed on to help his mother. It was bearable all the time he could get out, and before the confinement did a number of minor house repairs for neighbours. He’d got himself a good reputation as someone reliable and cheap, and good at what he does. He could decide when to work, when to get in some serious gym training, and when to pop into a pub, as long as he was home around five for tea. He was also a first-class shot and spent the weekends clay-pigeon shooting, often in competition. After the virus struck all that disappeared. His younger brother also lived at home, and both were tetchy with each other, and said things to their mother that were meant to hurt her. She however never showed any hurt, and each comment rebounded on them and built up a lasting feeling of guilt which neither of them could acknowledge. Her placid smile was like a calm sea shielding them all from the troubled depths below.
Once in the early days of his acquaintanceship with Craig, long before the current troubles, Darrell was out on a Sunday walk with his dogs in the park and had seen Craig lying on the grass reading a loose page of something or another. He had wanted to move away without being seen but the dogs had recognised Craig and started to bark.
“Oh, hi,” said Craig vacantly.
Darrell growled at his dogs to sit down and not move.
“You all right?”
“Yeah. What are you reading?”
“Rabbie Burns. A Scots poet. He what wrote Auld Lang Syne. Found some poems of his online.”
“Poet. I thought you were a banker, not a wanker,” Darrel smiled complacently.
“I also read poetry. I couldn’t live without it.”
“You pissing me about?”
“Nah. Listen.
He was a gash an' faithfu' tyke, As ever lap a sheugh or dyke.
His honest, sonsie, baws'nt face
Aye gat him friends in ilka place.”
“Didn’t understand a fucking word.’
“Neither did I till I read the notes. It's about a couple of dogs who were mates. One was from a posh family, the other was a farm worker’s dog. It belonged to Burns.”
“What’s the point if you have to look at the notes?”
“I needed help with the Scottish dialect. He was a gash an’ faithfu’ tyke – crap accent, sorry – ‘gash’ means wise, and ‘tyke’ a mongrel. As ever lap a sheugh or dyke – as ever leaped over a ditch or a pile of stones, or something like that. His honest, sonsie, baws’nt face – his honest, pleasant… ‘baws’nt’... the little doggie's got white streaks on his face. Aye gat him friends in ilka place – always got him friends everywhere.” Silence. They both looked at each other. More silence.
“Read it again,” said Darrell reluctantly.
Craig did.
Another silence.
“All right, I suppose,” Darrell said finally. “I still don’t know the fuck what it means.”
“Yes, you do. I’ve just told you.”
“So that was the farmer's dog, not the posh one. That meant to be me?”
“Neither,” said Craig defensively. “It’s just a poem about two dogs. And you’ve got two dogs. I just thought… Oh, never mind.”
“See you sometime. Come on you two. Shift yourselves.” And with that Darrell ambled off, pulled along by his mastiffs.
Spencer was still living with his parents, and it felt as though every time a major decision had to be made their stock phrases would echo around his head: ‘get on’, ‘rise up the ladder’, ‘achieve your potential’, ‘make something of your life’. But the library didn’t pay him enough to be able to rise very far, and the disappointment they felt at his lack of ambition left them depressed, and in his father’s case, contemptuous. He couldn’t afford to live on his own so he would either have to flat-share or stay on in his parents' two-up two-down, leading a dreary, predictable life.
He didn’t know anyone he wanted to share with, and he didn’t want to share with anyone he didn’t know, so what choice was there but to carry on, and pay his parents rent? Now with lockdown threatened and not even the library to escape to he felt locked into his own mind, with their voices droning away on the outside, pummelling his brain with their talk about the statistics, the Government’s lack of decisiveness, the difficulties of getting home deliveries – so much so that the tension in his head was unbearable, on the verge of snapping. Irritatedly, he sometimes wished, God forbid, he would catch the bloody disease and be transported away from them to hospital. Stupid thought.
“What’s the matter with our son,” George would say? “He hasn’t had a girlfriend for three years. Do you think he’s gay?”
“No,” rejoindered Sally. “He’s just very sensitive. He’ll find someone right for him when he’s ready.”
“Why did we call him Spencer?” George asked in a grump. “Were we trying to make him sound posh?” But this was an old battleground and he knew what her response would be.
“It was you, because you liked that stubborn old fisherman in the movie. Spencer Tracy, remember?” – he did, he'd been reminded a thousand times – “The huge fish which pulled him along and then got eaten by sharks.”
George and Sally were a 1960s couple, whose warmth and eroticism had faded quickly, so that it died almost completely after Spencer was born. In its place there was a steady vein of friction and irritation, which rarely exploded into full anger. After the lockdown and the almost exclusive commitment to each other’s company there were mini flare ups which neither of them wanted but couldn’t help. Spencer stayed in his room when he sensed more tension than usual between them. He hated feeling trapped, and hated his father in particular.
Before, the library had been his salvation and it was there that he’d first spoken to Craig when the Government was hoping that the epidemic would just go away. Craig was looking idly looking through the literature section, which seemed to get smaller each time he came in.
“Are these all the poetry books you have?”
“’Fraid so. Nobody around here reads much poetry. A few ask for Thomas Hardy.”
“If there were more books, people might pick them up and get interested. I need a selection of Burns’ poems.”
Spencer said he’d have to order one from another branch, or Craig could do it for himself online.
“Not to bother. I’ll think about it. Haven’t I seen you before? The film club?”
“Oh, yes,” and Spencer remembered. Craig had been the only other person on his own. The other twenty or so were all couples. They’d glanced at each other and smiled. Spencer had noticed his alertness, and thought he looked intelligent. In recent years he had become disappointed with people. They were all like each other, replicas rather than the real thing. You looked at them and it was almost as if they weren’t there.
He and Craig chatted for a bit, about nothing much.
“Anyway, thanks. If I decide to order it, I’ll do it online.”
Spencer hesitated. He thought no more about it at the time. Craig took away the memory of a boyish open smile.
Charlotte was baking cakes for nobody in particular. The seclusion that everyone was enduring left those on their own finding ways to fight off their boredom, and those in families fighting off the irritations caused by the constant presence of the others. It was then she thought of work, the pleasures and frustrations of the classroom and the relief she had felt at first when they were told they would be closing till further notice. Her mind drifted to Piotrek, and what a mystery he was to her. At lunchtimes, he would munch away in silence, his jaw barely moving, showing no pleasure or interest in his sandwiches. Charlotte with her made-up mix of salad and fruit, was a careful discriminating eater, very aware of what each mouthful contained. A few casual words might be exchanged and when they had to work together they were friendly, nothing out of the ordinary. And yet both felt there was a warmth and sympathy between them. He was a reserved but easy presence in the school and kept himself separate from the others and their febrile backbiting.
Piotrek had always missed the family warmth he remembered from his own home in Poland.
His adopted country was in many ways weird. Hard work and thrift had ceased to be values in anything but name. Teachers worked long hours but did so with little spirit, joy or even efficiency. When he got a job in a primary school most of the teachers thought him strange.
They resented his popularity with the children and resented his ability to handle the paperwork and not make a fuss. The Head liked him because he was prepared to speak his mind in meetings, whereas the others sniped away behind her back. He also found it odd how often parents were encouraged to come into schools and help, even though they complained their children weren’t being taught properly. And weird too the obsession with literacy and numeracy at such a young age, and endless testing. Why not more music, poetry, art and simple play? Education, what education? Sometimes when he helped the children to read it broke his heart. So lost were they, in a confusing, incoherent world they had no hold on.
Products of the village. The techno-media-political world unable to recognize its part in making them thick, imposing yet more meritocratic systems on them to fail and then blame the schools. He had had one sweet little boy who just sat there and looked at him, so frail, tears in his eyes, and Piotrek couldn’t get him to do anything. He heard afterwards the social services had been in and given the parents some kind of warning. The boy loved school because it was the one place he could find warmth and someone prepared to give him time. But that wasn’t good enough for the system. The school had poor results and was put under special measures.
The boy was taken out and Piotrek never knew what happened to him.
He didn’t think much of the young teachers. They were frivolous, self-centred and loud, where he was serious and caring; they were hedonistic and materialistic, where he was more spiritual, a Slavic soul with a Catholic upbringing. The children sensed his warmth and trusted him, even though he was not particularly outgoing. He wasn’t really tuned into their media world. He taught them well and they made good progress. But at the end of the year he received far fewer presents than less able but jollier colleagues.
Among the teachers only Charlotte interested him. Charlotte, too, had sensed his spiritual nature and it drew her to him. He was all reserve and gentleness, and kept the secrets of his inner life to himself. He simply got on with the job. And he too sensed that she knew all this.
The day before the lockdown she was walking out of school and Piotrek was getting into his car, and stopped without thinking, and looked at her.
“Can I offer you a lift?”
“Eh, no thanks. No. That’s kind of you. I need to walk. I need the fresh air.”
She was overcome with panic. Partly because the idea of social distancing had become current but also because she felt there would be a whole string of consequences that she hadn’t the courage to deal with.
“I didn’t know you were a fisherman.”
But Darrell just looked at him, with a half-smile, mocking.
Craig had wandered down to the chalk stream, to try and clear his mind.
“What are you after?”
“Trout. Why? Have you got a poem about that, too.” Craig smiled, and sat down a bit apart.
“From tomorrow it looks as though we won’t be allowed.”
“They won’t stop me fishing.”
He looked at Craig, curiously, and mocked him in silence.
“My caravan’s not far from here.”
“I know.”
“You know?”
“Yeah, I’ve seen you.”
Craig was taken aback but said nothing. Darrell turned and stared at his float.
“If you want to borrow books, I’ve got plenty.”
There was a long silence before Darrell replied.
“Like what?”
And immediately regretted his show of interest and closed down. “Not just poetry. Novels. Books on wildlife. Only if you’re interested.” A pause.
“Maybe.”
A swirl of half formed thoughts and contradictory feelings were battering away at his surface calm. Willing himself not to say a word, he tightened into an even deeper silence. Yes, yes, he would go, rummage through the books, take some away, and check out this fucker’s lifestyle.
But tangled up in such a want was repulsion, shame and indifference, and he would reject any such offer.
Craig could feel the tension and decided to leave.
“See you.”
“Yeah, see you later.”
But when he left, Darrell felt a sense of loss and Craig felt it had been a missed opportunity.
Both were depressed.
Spencer was lying on his bed letting images drift through his semi-awake self. The effect of a brief exchange with Craig had puzzled him. Why? It had been fairly inconsequential. Sure, he was nice enough, a bit intense perhaps, but he was a different generation, not much younger than his father. Nevertheless, part of him felt he'd quite like to see him again. Asking for a book of poetry made him interesting. He himself read a lot, particularly poetry, and since university he'd never met anyone he could really talk to about things like that.
From his early teens he had felt an outsider. Often during the day, he would amble along the streets, peering in at windows, particularly offices. They had a deadly fascination for him. The scenes inside were like masques, behind which there was uncreated life, a weird anonymity, as though a complex of mechanical functions were being performed without movement. Phones jammed between ear and shoulder, faces transfixed by screens. Money was being made for the great Pyramid but it was ant life, static, and had a banal inevitability about it. Those at the top have the power, the rest settle for crumbs, getting paid just enough to live on and have an occasional ‘good time’. He resisted all undercurrents pulling him into this world, for money's sake, for a career. He was outside, and would stay outside.
But he needed someone to talk to, someone who could help shore up his isolation.
Charlotte was looking out at the empty street. How long before she’d be able to get back to work? She was enjoying the simpler life but there were long stretches of boredom. What would it have been like living with a husband planning to desert her? Thank God she was alone, but how she missed the little drops of humour and vivacity in mundane social exchanges. She forced herself to be chatty in the distancing queues, but customers were wary, more were wearing masks, and the two metre gaps made it a strain. No, she said to herself, she didn’t need anyone, but her dreams told her she longed for sensual pleasures. Yes, she wanted this restricted life to end but dreaded a return to the old. And Piotrek? Well, they couldn’t even meet, let alone take it further.
She had loved Craig so very much. She recalled those moments when they were both thoughtless of others, and the world was reduced to themselves, before the children were born.
She had first seen him when she was putting in a cheque at the bank, long before he became the manager. They exchanged pleasantries and his light humour and slightly mocking tone were attractive to her. He seemed to want to show that he was only a banker in appearance.
She was in her first year at school and carried along by the successes and failures of teaching and the relentless routines of school life. There were threats of a new inspecting body and schools were fearful of losing their freedoms to teach as they saw fit. In the evenings the younger, newer teachers would meet in the pub, and it was there one evening, a bit tipsy, she saw Craig sipping a beer in the corner and asked if he’d like to join them. He had recognised her and declined. After another chance encounter there was mutual attraction and this time they agreed to meet. Within a matter of weeks, it became a physical affair and went from there to marriage and children, in a predictable sequence which at the time gave her deep satisfaction and a sense of security. Where would life have taken her if she hadn't seen him that day? Over the years the predictable sequence became a burden, and security turned into insecurity. Both worked long hours, and she tried to keep their domestic, family life together.
They would make sure that on Saturday or Sunday they were alone together for at least part of the day, but their hold on those precious moments grew tenuous. Charlotte found the pressures at school demanded more of her time, and the domestic chores which they liked to do together were given to a cleaner and gardener. Their meals became more perfunctory, time-saving and ready-made.
Craig was distracted, and dissatisfied with life at the bank. He missed the warmth and marital love there had been in their early days, and they became more irritable with each other. His amiable manner appeared to be under constant strain. When they had important things to say they did it through the children. Communication between them became minimal, and had less and less meaning. Each knew the other wasn’t happy and blamed work but they couldn’t talk about their unhappiness. When Craig told her what he intended to do she was shocked but not shocked. Shocked because no matter how much you expect and fear it, when it happens it feels as though the world is falling away. It was as though Craig had been gripped by madness.
If it had been the usual 'other woman’, she would have exploded but understood it. But for this? Why?
Charlotte compensated with a more driven commitment to work, obsessed with becoming as good a teacher as possible, spending evenings out with the younger teachers. Piotrek was someone she had transitory fantasies about, but before Craig left he had not filled any significant part of her inner life.
“We’re getting a new kitchen,” Darrell announced, poking away at his food.
His mother just looked at him and blinked.
“I only finished painting this one last week. We don’t need a new kitchen.”
“There’s a mate who’s got one going. He’ll fit. Won’t be just yet...” The lockdown had been announced earlier in the evening.
“Why didn’t you talk to me before?”
“I wanted to surprise you. What’s wrong with a new kitchen? This one’s shit. Too old.”
“It’s nothing that can’t be fixed.”
The truth is that after his fishing trip yesterday, he felt restless and angry. He wanted to lash out, but at what? He couldn't bring his feelings into thoughts that made any sense to him. He’d try an extravagant gesture of some kind, at home, to try and calm the beast, and phoned one of his mates from the gym who was desperate to do business.
In the silence that followed he had to repress the thought that all this was the same kind of shit as that stupid fucker's giving up his life to live in a fucking caravan.
Spencer had been busying himself among the periodicals. The council had asked them to cut the periodicals budget by a half and the chief librarian had asked Spencer for his view. He found the task difficult. Would he cut those he thought were rubbish or those that few visitors read and were expensive? He was flicking through Dogs Today, when he was aware of a presence behind him.
“Hello. Can I help you?”
“Yeah, poems. About dogs.”
Spencer couldn’t keep his surprise from his face.
“What’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing, nothing at all. Let me see. That’s a tricky one. We don’t have a very large poetry section. People don’t read poetry so much these days.” Darrell said nothing.
“I’m not much of a dog person, but I’d like one, one day. You?”
Darrell still said nothing. Spencer was distracted and Darrell wasn’t going to waste his words.
“Let me see… I think I saw… Let me try... Yes, there a Chilean poet. Here. I saw it when I was putting it away.”
He flipped through and found what he was looking for. He passed the poem to Darrell. “Just the one.”
Darrell read silently.
His friendship for me, like that of a porcupine withholding its authority, was the friendship of a star, aloof,
The rest was just a blur to him, and he slammed the book shut.
“I’ll take it.”
Spencer was struck by the tension in the man, and Darrell felt like a porcupine himself.
Piotrek’s wife and child had gone back to Poland two years before. Speaking little English, and shy in the presence of strangers, she had never really settled in England. With the constant fear that she was living in a country largely hostile to foreigners, she missed the familiar routines of home. Her whole existence was taking their son to school, cleaning the flat, cooking and sleeping. Occasionally, another lonely Pole would call, and for a while she cheered up and relaxed. Conversation with Piotrek was tense and unnatural, and there was little of the family warmth that both of them craved. When he got home he was frequently on the end of irritable sniping, which she hated herself for but couldn’t help. When she decided to go back to Poland, Piotrek applied for permanent UK residence, because of Brexit and because he knew that if he went back with her he would be subjected to the overpowering will of his mother-in-law.
After the lockdown he felt lost. There was talk of some teaching online but it never materialised. All he could do was what everyone else was doing – walking, cycling, and staying at home, reading and streaming movies.
Lockdown had been announced in late March and there were further restrictions in April. Some were eased in late May and more in early June but schools were still closed. Fishing was ‘allowed’ and one evening Piotrek found himself a quiet spot he’d never been to before.
“Have you paid?”
He had closed his eyes and was waiting for a bite.
“’Scuse me?” He sat up and looked round into the setting sun and there was this huge bulk hovering over him, closer than he should be, with two huge dogs with drooping ears.
“No, I didn’t think you had to on this bit of the river. I thought the farmer didn't mind.”
“Sometimes he does, sometimes he doesn’t.”
“You know him?”
“Yeah.”
And Darrell started to walk away. “I usually fish where you are.”
Piotrek felt relieved. “Oh, I’m sorry. I can move.”
“Don’t bother. Next time try further down.”
Piotrek said OK, and heard Darrell mutter, partly to him, partly to himself, “Foreigner?” “Yes, a Pole.”
Darrell said nothing, and they both carried on. After an hour, Piotrek saw him coming towards him. “Do you want tea?”
“That’s kind, but no thanks. I’ve got some.”
This time the man did stop a couple of metres away before he spoke. “Where have I seen you before?” His voice was a mix of feigned assertiveness and unease.
“Maybe at the primary school. I’m a teacher. Have you got kids there?”
“No. Mother…” and his voice trailed away. He was a little defensive about her cleaning job. So what, he thought. Teachers think themselves so much better than anyone else but they’re not.
“Caught anything?’’ he asked.
“No, not even a bite.”
They froze into silence, both feeling awkward.
“There's a bloke who lives in a caravan near here,” said Darrell. “His wife’s a teacher there.” Piotrek felt himself tense up a little.
“I’ve seen him. I know who you mean. Why?”
“Dunno. Just wondered.” And in some confusion Darrell wandered back to his rod.
Piotrek delved into his backpack and got out a couple of beers.
“Want one?” he shouted to Darrell.
“Nah… Yes. Thanks.”
Piotrek left it half way, moved off and sat down. The dogs eyed him suspiciously.
“How you been coping?” he asked.
“OK.” Darrell resented the question. He didn’t want to be looked after by anyone. Whatever he did was whatever he did. It was no business of anyone but himself.
Silence. But Darrell couldn’t help himself.
“It’s those posh politician bastards who’re telling us what to do, then don’t do it themselves.”
He swallowed what he really wanted to say, that they were fucking lying cunts, he hated the lot of them. And the fucker in the caravan was no different from the rest of them.
Piotrek thought this might be a veiled attack on himself, but no one could accuse him of being posh. He waited for something nasty about foreigners and immigration but it never came. Perhaps out of delicacy or because foreigners were like him, outsiders. “Absolutely. Very depressing.” “But it’s not really your country, is it?” Here it comes.
“Well, it is and isn’t. I’ve been living here a long time now.”
Piortrek felt this wasn’t really going anywhere, and got up to leave.
Darrell smiled, thanked him for the beer and offered to stand him a pint when the pubs reopened. It was beginning to get dark.
The old bruiser set up his line and dozed off. Within seconds he was dreaming that his dogs had broken from their leads and were running away from him. The harder and the faster he chased, the greater the gap. When he slowed down the gap narrowed. He was tired. As soon as he had recovered, he was after them again but they forged ahead. Something inside him was desperately trying to understand what was going on. Perhaps he shouldn’t give chase, but the compulsion was too great and the chase continued, until suddenly – shit – there was a shot, and he could see himself screaming, but could hear nothing except the tail end of that shot, someone was shooting his dogs, he sped up but they disappeared further into the distance, they were getting smaller, and it was all exasperation, vexation, frustration. And there it was, another shot, which this time woke him up. He looked around in panic. “My dogs,” he said, over and over again.
In the semi-darkness he made out the dim silhouettes of a couple of blokes with shotguns pointing at the water. The bastards, he thought, they’re shooting my fish. And he leapt up, let out a scream and charged at them. The dogs were barking, excited and frightened. The men, terrified, turned their guns in their direction. But Darrell was too quick for them, and they were paralysed with fear. “You’re shooting my fish!” They spoke little English but it hardly mattered. Their guns were brushed aside and they found themselves being pushed towards the water. In they went, screaming, and Darrell shouting after them, stabbing his finger in their direction – “Nobody shoots my fish. Nobody!” – sentimental tears rolling down his cheeks.
At that Darrell picked up his gear, turned on his heels in self-righteous fury, not conscious of where he was going.
Charlotte had been texting Jo to agree a time for their video call but got no response. She hadn’t heard from her daughter for two days now, and before that Jo's texts had become shorter and more uninformative.
“I’m worried, Lucas. Have you heard anything?”
“No, nothing since last week. Maybe Marco’s in hospital.”
“Yes, but I doubt if she can visit. What if she's ill too?”
“I’ll try phoning the hospitals. Give my rusty Italian an outing.” They made small talk before Lucas couldn’t resist any longer.
“Will you divorce?”
Charlotte had a fit of shock, panic and confusion and stared woodenly at the screen. Jo's health is what is important right now, and carelessly she thought Craig’s madness would pass like the bloody virus, and things would return to where they were.
Her mind began to drift, and Lucas just looked at her for a while. But no, her old life was over.
All she wanted was to be secure in the warmth of someone new. The desire was so great.
Besides, it's difficult to keep up with these long-distanced children, and nothing could ever return as it was. This slide into family fragmentation was inevitable.
And then she remembered that her daughter might be fighting for her life, and she was all helpless frustration.
“Mum?”
“Oh, sorry, no. I don’t know. It’s too early to say. I’d be a lot happier if I knew Jo was OK.”
As the weeks of semi-confinement wore on Spencer felt the numbness of continuing boredom.
Friction and frustration downstairs, boredom and frustration upstairs. Only the daily walks gave him any release. When the days were crisp and sunny, a sense of well-being would return and he felt himself opening up. At this point he would come to understand that it wasn’t just this difficult phase that was frustrating him but the whole of life. Jobs and money didn’t interest him, and in the company of others he was nervous and insecure. He found it difficult to make friends. There was never any chance for a longterm relationship, let alone marriage and children. His time at school and university had been awkward. He felt he wasn’t like the others. The one reward was when he was able to fight off the pressure of having to study for exams and found the time to read real books. His best tutors had understood the influential power of the books they were encouraging him to read, as well as the destructive results-driven forces of the education system they were part of.
After university he drifted into low paid work in the library, which had the unfortunate effect of committing him to parent dependency.
His dalliances with women had been brief and unsatisfying, a mile away from the sexual fantasies that had haunted his college years. He had had a short-term affair with a temporary librarian, and felt fleetingly the joys of mutual sexual fulfilment, but regretted the lack of deep mutual love.
During lockdown he would often walk through the dense birch woods on the edge of town. He would follow the narrow tracks just visible in the undergrowth until he came to a familiar clearing of beech stumps, which in spring had been carpeted with bluebells. There, absent from the human world, he would try to put himself back together again, to find what he termed ‘a more authentic self’, and the only way there was inwards, towards a deeper self.
One cold, crisp dawn with the broken rays of the sun in his face, he approached the clearing when he realised he was not alone. Tightening, he trod cautiously and made out a figure he recognised. This figure was looking alarmed and on alert. They gave each other an awkward greeting, and awkward half-truths of why they were there. Both selfconsciously stood at a distance from one another, as advised, before finding separate stumps to sit on. Spencer outlined his current living circumstances, in response to Craig's questions, and Craig gave the gist of his.
Spencer wondered how a man like this, used to material comfort, could survive. They eyed each other warily, Spencer not certain that Craig, a much older man, wasn’t a pervert. Craig was not certain how much he wanted to give away to this callow youth but there was a certain naivety and ease in him which he found attractive. Against what he had always promised to himself, he invited the youth back to his lair for tea. Spencer recoiled at first, fearing it wasn’t right, but then trusting to the fundamental honesty of the man and reasoning that if he had any nasty intentions here would have been as good a place as any, he accepted. There was a reality about Craig, even if he was a bit obsessive. He seemed to have more about him than most people.
“At the beginning I did a bit of odd-jobbing for the farmer. Grow my own vegetables, pick berries. That sort of thing.”
“It sounds ideal.”
“It can be hard, particularly when I can't find much to eat. It's true I still have some money in the bank but I'm determined not to touch it. Besides, my wife...” But this was all too much, and the response was inevitable.
“At least you know you've got it. You won't starve,” said Spencer sharply.
Craig wished he'd kept quiet and felt diminished.
“Excuse the mess,” he said opening the door.
And Spencer felt a rush of warm air coming from inside. The burner was still going and Craig fussed a little, and lit a few candles. Really it seemed quite cosy.
“I’ll make some tea,” he said pouring off some warm water from a little tank.
Spencer looked around. Books scattered everywhere – the bed raised from the floor, clothes stuffed in the space underneath, a shelf of pickled vegetables, onions and garlic.
“And your loo?”
“Oh, that’s outside, a homemade compost toilet. No need for water.”
Craig told him about Darrell and the yobs. He explained that the kids were just hopeless and helpless victims of a system that only values economic solutions and has no idea what education is. “Inevitably, we now have an uneducable underclass. Most don’t have a chance from the day they’re born. Yet they assert their rights because they know it's the only way to get what they want, whereas you and I can get it through clever talk. You can’t really blame them.”
Spencer sat down and exhaled in such a way that Craig thought there might be irony there. Is he just an old Jeremiah sounding off?
“How have you been coping during lockdown?” Craig asked, changing tack.
“OK. It’s a drag having to live at home. I’m glad we’re coming out of it. I need to get out.”
In fact, this was not quite true. In some respects, Spencer had quite liked the lockdown, since he didn’t have to engage with people he had nothing in common with. As long as he could detach himself from his parents' moods and chatter, which wasn't easy.
Nothing much more of consequence was said. Both felt a certain warmth for each other. A tacit understanding, despite their age difference. Craig told him that if he wanted to come again, to feel free.
On his way back Spencer wondered whether Craig wasn’t a little mad. Being a drop-out at his time of life, when he had had all the comforts, wasn’t that just a middle-class indulgence, a marriage-wrecking act of self-love? But how could he, Spencer, criticise anyone, when he was still taking refuge in his parents' house? At his age for heaven's sake.
Craig meanwhile was wondering why he had invited him and worried that he'd come across as lonely and needy. Perhaps he was. Which might account for the unease he felt whenever he reflected on his situation.
“Why didn’t you say no?” asked Charlotte.
And a look of confusion came over Darrell’s mother. She was a little frightened of her son as well as a little excited at the prospect of a new kitchen. A 'no' would have stuck in her throat.
Besides, he would have taken no notice. It had been like this since his father had died. He had his own way in everything.
“Well, you won’t have to repaint for a bit,” laughed Charlotte. “When it’s allowed, you’ll be able to come and clean for us.”
“Oh, I thought you were on your own.”
“Oh, yes I forgot. For me, I meant,” and she laughed again.
Old habits die hard, thought Charlotte evasively.
“I don’t know when. The boy’s feeling a bit poorly right now. I hope he hasn’t got it.”
“Oh, so do I. You’d have to self-isolate.”
Charlotte thought that might have sounded as if her need for a cleaner took priority over the boy's health. ”Sorry, I didn’t mean...” But the old woman had interpreted nothing and walked on into the shop. Everything was a matter of course. But Charlotte walked away, disconsolate, without really knowing why.
Craig was poking at his ragged mattress, trying to sleep off his depression but images and half thoughts were keeping him awake. Darrell with his class resentment, his contradictions, and his tentative steps towards a different kind of thinking. Spencer, a solitary youth, good natured with a touch of innocence, a lost presence in an uncongenial world. There were connections of spirit between them which he might not have seen so clearly in 'normal' times. He and Spencer had detached themselves from the semi- educated middle-class they grew up in, and Darrell was pulling away from the dispossessed state of his class. Long before Covid the world had appeared to him to be in the grip of the virus of materialism, its moral culture lost, the deeper social bonds weakening. How he hated it and despaired. Now, though, the world had the shared purpose of keeping itself alive and he dared to hope the grip might weaken, and the four winds blow away this miasma.
The cause and effect of the Covid pandemic could be more easily traced. Someone selling a diseased bat in a market and unleashing a rapid reaction among humans. Careless, deliberate or simply an accident, who knows? If an accident, apportioning blame is harder. Can accidents ever be blameless? And yet he remembered scaring a rabbit out of its grazing once and it ran straight into a car. Despite his feeling of guilt, he hadn’t meant to do it so how could he be guilty? He hadn’t even been careless, which he would have blamed himself for. It was chance.
The cause was an accident but the effect was deadly.
The cultural virus was rarely acknowledged, so embedded was it. It had everything in its grip, politics, the means by we expressed ourselves in the media and literature, and in education. Our inability to see and say things as they really are, without pretence or distortion, lies or evasion, to take responsibility for what we say and do, honourably. To Craig it felt like a Godless post-rationalist world he lived in and it left unsatisfied his deeper needs. Was it not the same for Darrell and Spencer? Why did Charlotte not see it? In the young, particularly from better-off families, he saw lightness and fresh-faced kindness. He recalled the lines When I consider everything that grows, Holds in perfection but a little moment and his dread of sclerosis and decay would return. That must be it, he thought, we were in the clutches of a decaying culture, the moments of perfection over.
He thought back to his many years of owning a house, and buying things he didn’t really need.
How much better to be away from all that. After all, without repair, material things fray, rust and deteriorate, unable to resist the pressure of time, and he didn’t want the responsibility of ownership.
Such thoughts were exhausting and without intending to he fell asleep.
Piotrek couldn’t settle into any one thing for very long. He had tired of fishing, and for short, snatched periods read bits of books, and waded through a string of TV catch-ups.
He was restless and bored, and lonely. The scraps of activity that filled his days lacked coherence.
Above all he was lonely, and the only thing that steadied his mind was remembering the last few months at school, and the sense that there had been a growing mutual attraction between him and Charlotte. Why had she turned down his offer of a lift that day? He knew that her first impulse was to accept but she had forced herself to resist. Why? He knew it wasn’t out of dislike or fear of him as a person. Probably it was just too soon after the break-up of her marriage.
The one thing he did a lot of was walk. He had found out about her situation at school, not because she gossiped but because he'd heard some comments Fran had made in the staffroom. He had never met her husband, and didn’t know what he looked like, but he fancied he had seen him in a number of faces when out walking. He recalled Darrell’s slighting comments. He couldn’t deny he was curious and thought that one afternoon he might try and stumble upon his caravan ‘by accident’.
“You look a bit peaky? You OK?”
“Yeah, just bit of a cold,” he grumped.
Darrell started to cough, and Craig who had kept his distance retreated further.
“What about a temperature?”
"Nah," he said, and he trundled off, letting the mastiffs pull him.
"Look after yourself," said Craig. But he was worried. If Darrell's got the virus, his mother will get it too, and if she gets it, she'll give it to Charlotte. I must get a message through to her. Tell her to put the cleaning on hold. I'll go home and put a note through the door. A pause.
Home? What home? And a wave of despondency came over him when he remembered the lack of contact with his children.
Darrel rushed back to his house but coughed violently and felt sweat coming from his forehead.
Charlotte had just begun her video call when she heard the letter box snap shut.
“Don’t worry, mum. She’s in good hands.”
‘She’s got the virus, hasn’t she?”
“Yes, but I spoke to the hospital and they’re hoping she’ll start to mend at the end of the week.”
“Give me the number. I must speak to them.”
“Mum, it took me forever to get through and they weren’t best pleased. And hardly anyone there speaks English” – although he didn't know whether or not that was true.
Charlotte looked blankly at the screen, irritated and distracted, and she felt her spirits sink.
“Mum?”
She forced herself back again into responsiveness.
Lucas asked her if she had heard from dad. He hadn’t a clue how to contact him. No matter what had happened he was still dad. Charlotte said she had no idea. She only had a rough idea where he was living.
“Do ring the hospital at the end of the week and let me know.”
Lucas told her a bit about the return to something resembling normality in Marseilles, and they both felt there was nothing more to say.
Charlotte went down the stairs and saw the note on the mat.
When Piotrek arrived Peter was practising his clarinet and Fran was marinating chicken pieces.
They had invited a few friends to a ‘socially distanced’ barbeque. Piotrek had misunderstood the arrival time but Fran told him not to worry and asked him to get the garden furniture out.
“Peter, Piotrek’s here. Could you come down and help him with the furniture?” Peter was trying to perfect a couple of very tricky bars and was irritated.
“What’s the problem?” he asked as he descended. “Hi, Piotrek. How ye doing?”
Piotrek was uncomfortable and didn’t quite have the easy banter of the insider English. All the same he bustled around with Peter, who always seemed a little separated himself. Two other couples arrived and everything felt a little easier though he was conscious of being on his own.
“I wonder where Charlotte’s got to?” Fran asked Peter, and Piotrek was confused and felt a desire to leave. What was going on? Had the situation been engineered by Fran to get them together. If so, he resented it.
Drinks, and the smell of chicken cooking, and still no Charlotte. Fran gave her a call but it went straight to answerphone.
“I hope she’s OK. I know she was worried about her daughter.” “She’ll be fine,” said Peter. Piotrek felt tense.
Social chat, and some cooked prawns in mayonnaise, and then the doorbell.
“Ah”, said Fran and Peter in unison.
“I’m so sorry,” Charlotte whispered.
‘What’s up? You look awful.’
“I went for a walk and got lost. So sorry.”
In fact, Craig’s note had left her disturbed, not because of the message but because Craig had put it through the door. Before, her fate had seemed clear and inevitable but this was an unwelcome disruption. But why? Craig had attempted no contact – he was simply doing the ordinary decent thing in these strange times, protecting another human being from the virus.
Why did it register as more that? If not for him, then for her. They had lived together for so long and he was the father of their children. So? It might have been different if he'd sent her a text, but he had no phone. So? Somehow putting a handwritten note through the door, was more than a simple act of concern, or so it seemed to her. It brought him back into her consciousness and it shook her certainties. Why? She didn't know. No doubt her confusion would settle down in time but life during the virus had dislodged itself from the norm. She didn’t confess it to Fran but she had wanted to see where Craig lived, not to make contact, but just to see. She had wandered around trying to find the spot, unaware of the time. But she couldn’t find it and headed back home depressed and humiliated that she should ever have done what she did, when she remembered what time it was, and oh, damn, the barbeque. Would she try again? She didn't know.
Charlotte did her best to make animated small talk but once she had got over her irritation at seeing Piotrek she had a detached air, as though everyone was really an irrelevance to her. She suspected that Fran had engineered the situation to bring them together but knew it would be rude to try and ignore Piotrek. To protect herself, she fitted him into the same disconnected pattern of chatter, which both pained and offended him.
“Is everything OK?” He had caught her at a moment when she was on her own. She smiled and said nothing and he thought he saw her social mask slip for a few seconds, and warmth and desire filled his body. But she quickly gathered herself.
“Yes, fine,” and she looked away. “And you?”
Before he could answer Fran had rounded her up to help out in the kitchen. Something’s happened. Perhaps her husband. She’s so different.
Relaxing her guard after a couple of glasses of wine, she confessed to Fran where she had gone, and said she had been troubled by her daughter’s condition and wanted to tell Craig to try and make contact.
Imperceptibly, the hosts and the guests grew closer to each other and their conversation became more animated.
Charlotte was overcome with tiredness and withdrew to the sitting room and into herself. She saw Piotrek glance in her direction, and self-consciously turned away, only half aware of what she was doing. She hoped he wouldn't take it as an act of cruelty, even though he was bound to see it as a reversal of her earlier behaviour. Part of her hoped he would make excuses for her and keep the potential alive in himself. But that was wrong. Besides he was married too. If she went off with him, they'd only be exchanging one mess for another. He didn't know what had happened to her. How could he? That the simple act of Craig posting a note about Darrell through the letter box had reconnected something for her, whether or not it was significant to Craig. She wanted to share with him her sense of helplessness about their daughter. But what if she were disillusioned by his reaction? And here she was closing down the chance of a future with someone who's marriage was also on the rocks.
Struggling to keep awake, she recalled the span of her own marriage. From the passionate and loving to passion's decline as the children grew up. Instead of a drift into affectionate and considerate old age, which she'd always wanted, there was discontent and frustration. What caused what, and was it a question of fault or blame. Weren't these changes just inevitable and in the nature of things? But if that was the case, why didn't it happen to every couple? It was surely because Craig had his fantasies of being somehow different, and she had she lacked understanding. If he was to blame, so was she.
Whereupon she fell into a deep sleep, and Fran came over and gently shut the door.
Was he asleep or awake? Images were floating through Craig's agitated mind. No, he was asleep, he was in a huge room, downstairs, it felt like downstairs, in his old house which didn’t look anything like his old house, and there were lush tropical plants everywhere and exotic furnishings from the East, and it wasn’t his house any more, no no no it was Charlotte’s, there was a huge bed in the middle and Charlotte was lying propped up on her elbows, her head held back, her lips full and soft, and he asked her what she was doing here and said he felt stupid for asking. I live here, silly, don't worry, there are no children around, come here, and he moved towards the moist sensual lips and he was very stiff and she pulled him into her and she was more aroused than he’d ever known her and he was aching aching aching with desire. He awoke, startled, still aching for ecstasy, and with some shame gave it to himself. He got out from under the smelly blanket, shaken and disorientated, exhausted, still possessed by erotic images.
“He’s not a boy any more. He doesn’t have to tell us where he’s gone,” answered Sally.
“Common courtesy. And we’re not fully out of lockdown.”
George understood his son’s needs to break from their domesticity, what young man wouldn’t want the same, in fact he shouldn’t be living here at all, but out there on his own or ‘settled down’. All the same he was irritated and didn’t fully understand why, whether there was envy that Spencer could at least be free if he wanted to, or whether he wanted his son to recognise the tragedy of his own weakness, being ‘settled’, he didn’t know. What he said was he didn’t like not being informed as to what he was up to, the sheer impoliteness of it.
Spencer had told his mother that he'd bumped into a library contact, an odd fellow, but she thought it best not to mention it.
Craig couldn't quite let go of his dream, or forget the guilt he was feeling about what he had done to his family. And he worried about Darrell. The old thug-who-wasn't was a kindly man, and although he’d heard that he annoyed his mother by taking over his dad’s role, he was by all accounts generous. The woman accepted pretty well everything he did once she’d said her piece. Actually, she was rather proud of him and his prizes for shooting. He might be bullish but she never thought him nasty, and if he got into fights he never started them. No doubt the way he spoke to her would sound rude to people like Craig and his family (‘unacceptable’) but nobody was getting smacked around, and anyway Darrell’s neighbours probably thought nothing of it. Why should they?
He’d looked awful the other day and Craig was quite sure he’d got the dreaded disease, and given that he was overweight from his weightlifting days he might well be seriously ill. But what could he do? Drop round and ask if he was OK? Then what? No-one would answer the door because they would all be self-isolating. He could offer to do the shopping, but he couldn’t phone and they couldn’t contact him so it was all rather futile, even to think about it. All the same he did think about it. It would be so cruel if he had succumbed, just as the rest of the country seemed to be getting out of it, and he remembered the awful fate of soldiers killed on the last day of a war.
Anyway, he argued to himself, he trusted Darrell’s neighbours would offer support.
Perhaps he could leave him some books to read. No, no, no. Darrell would hate that.
On one of his walks he passed by the house but saw no signs of life.
Craig felt frustrated at the helplessness of his own situation, no money he could offer, and without a phone, no practical help.
After a couple of days in bed Darrell had felt better, and as if to prove something, despite the protests of his mother about it being illegal, went for a walk, careful to avoid contact.
Finding the caravan shut up, Spencer walked round to the back and on to the vegetable patch, but there was no-one there. He felt stupid, and irritated that he’d given in to the impulse to come. Yes, he was bored, the lockdown routines had become tiresome, but all the same.
This man had something, which seemed to parallel his own feelings of separateness. He hadn't exactly been lured to this isolated spot – he had made the choice himself – but he had been drawn to it. He trusted Craig was no madman who chopped up his victims and buried them. He was just an odd bloke. How could he be interested in me? A nothing really. He felt his own vulnerability and was afraid.
He walked down to the river and sat for a while. His search for a more authentic self was all very well but it still left him a prisoner of time. He knew he had a religious sensibility and understood the limitations of self. Most people of his age were either contemptuous or indifferent to any such thoughts. He saw little religion in his parents and he’d never belonged to a Church himself. He would always avoid discussions about whether or not he ‘believed in God’ or whether ‘there was a God’. They seemed senseless and irrelevant. He didn’t understand atheists and agnostics. Why do they want to close themselves down to the possibilities of religion? Didn’t its poetic images have deeper meaning than the facts of history or science? Do we really live in a void of physical existence – mere matter and space, subject to time? Thus he reflected as he watched the ineluctable glide of the clear, fresh water disappear into places beyond his view.
Spencer realised that Craig had his limitations, wrapped up as he was in himself and his societal and environmental notions. At the deeper levels he could never really connect with him. He was so much older for a start. Spencer would have to make his own way, submit to the promptings within, no matter where they took him.
For one glorious moment all fear in him had gone.
Lucas tailored the tone of his voice so as not to panic his mother.
“No, she relapsed. Something happened.”
“I’m going over, even if I have to drive.”
“No, no, no, they’ll never let you in. You’d get in the way. Please don't.”
“I don’t care, I have to be near her.”
“But you could end up in hospital yourself, it’s crazy. You’d only be a burden and you’d have to pay for any treatment. Forget it, mum, please.”
Charlotte looked away from the screen and Lucas waited to get her attention. “Mum. Don’t.”
“I must speak to your father.”
Smoke could be seen miles from the town. The first thought of those at home when they heard the sirens was that the virus had claimed another victim but when they heard the fire engine their insides tightened with excitement. More like a car accident at this time of the year, but those still out walking could see smoke in the distance. Maybe a hayrick had caught fire but why the ambulance?
The scene was one of confusion. Foam had been squirted everywhere and a bored ambulance crew wearing masks lounged about waiting to see if they were needed. Blue lights flashed in the late evening gloom and two police officers – a stocky policeman and a tall police woman, laced with phones and a battery of other devices – were taking a statement from a farmer when they were interrupted by a shout.
“Move your car away, please, sir. There are sparks around. We don’t want another fire, do we?”
John Reedham, the farmer, was a short man, in his seventies, dressed in his lifelong uniform – tweed, cords, frayed checked shirt and brogues. He had progressed from Marlborough to Cambridge to farming, was a ‘name’ at Lloyds, and very visibly gave patrician support to the local community. He was notoriously bad tempered to strangers, which helped those who knew him feel favoured when he spoke or acted kindly. He was telling the police officers that he’d been thinking of turning the field into a paddock with stables and he would need the owner of the caravan to move somewhere else. He had another field a couple of miles away, he could go there. The owner didn’t much like the idea but Reedham had told him that nothing was definite as yet and he’d give him plenty of notice.
“Do you know where the owner is, sir?”
“No, I haven’t a clue. I haven’t been up here for a couple of days. He can’t be in town, everything’s closed. Perhaps he’s walking somewhere. He’s not inside, is he?”
“Not as far as we know. The door was open, which was odd, but they won’t know for sure until they can examine the debris. Also they’re not sure whether or not it was started deliberately.”
“‘It’s awful, but I can’t say I’m sorry the thing’s gone. It was a heck of an eyesore.” And he went to move his Range Rover.
Peter was showing Fran the headline on the screen – CARAVAN BLAZE SUSPICIOUS.
“They thought it started accidentally. Now they’re not sure because they can’t get hold of the owner.”
“Let me try Charlotte again. She can’t still be out.”
“All very strange. He couldn't have been in the caravan, could he?” muttered Peter
Fran didn’t hear him as she held herself in tension listening to the continuous ringing tone.
“Bizarre. Who would want to do it?” mused Peter.
“Who knows what he’s been up to in recent weeks. Where is she?”
That evening Spencer was lying on his bed staring at the ceiling, reviewing his life, Piotrek was trying to get through to his wife, and Reedham was sipping whisky and deciding which side of the field he would build the stables.
Four lads and two girls had dropped their bikes by the roadside and were guzzling beer and laughing.
In the night, Darrell was rushed into hospital.
The next day the rules about social distancing were relaxed and hotels and pubs were allowed to reopen. In the evening the John Barleycorn had a few seated customers that were being waited upon. The large hotel in the centre had no bookings until the following week, and the manager was about to close up for the day when in the soft afternoon sunshine a late middle-aged couple walked through the front door without any luggage. They looked vaguely familiar but he couldn’t place them. Neither spoke to the other. The manager took off his mask, forced a smile, and straightened his tie.
At the dinner table the couple attracted his attention because of their silence. There were no other guests. They ordered mechanically and ate mechanically. He had thought it strange that they had booked separate rooms when they had no luggage. They seemed to be a couple rather than working colleagues and yet didn't speak to each other. They must have had a row. Towards the end of the meal he noticed the man take a piece of paper and put it on the table for the woman to see. He was improperly curious but couldn’t work out what was going on. The woman glanced at its contents. She looked up at the man and gave a half smile. The manager didn’t know why but he felt very emotional. Was it a romantic gesture? No, but it was obviously significant. They seemed to know each other very well. But why won’t they talk? He was overcome with curiosity and went to offer them some wine, apologise for the limited menu, make a fuss, anything so that he could see what was on that paper. The man ignored him, apart from a halting gesture to stop him clearing away the plates, but he was at the table long enough to catch sight of a printout of a receipt for Eurotunnel. One way only.
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